"Tonight?" Monk doubted it. It would be a bad night for barrows; no one would be able to see them in this.

"Charlie," Scuff said, as if that were explanation enough.

"Do you think so?"

"Course."

"I can't see anything. Which way?"

"Don need ter. I know where 'e'll be. Yer like chestnuts?" There was a definite lift in Scuff s voice now.

"Hot, I'd eat anything. Yes, I do."

Scuff hesitated, as if considering whether to strike a bargain, then his charity got the better of his business sense. "I'll take yer," he offered magnanimously. It was clear that Monk needed all the help he could get.

"Thank you," Monk accepted. "Perhaps you would join me?"

"I don' mind if I do."

THREE

THREE

The Portpool Lane clinic was a large establishment, not with the open wards that made nursing easy, but with numerous separate bedrooms. However, it had the greatest advantage any establishment that was devoted to the treatment of the penniless could have: it was rent-free. It had once been a highly disreputable brothel run by one Squeaky Robinson, a man of many financial and organizational skills. He had in the past made one serious technical error, and it was that upon which Hester, with the help of the brilliant barrister Oliver Rathbone, had capitalized on. It was then that the brothel had been closed down, its extortion business ended, and the building turned into a clinic for the treatment of any street woman who was either injured or ill.

Some of its former occupants had remained to work at the more tedious but far safer occupations of cleaning and laundering sheets. Squeaky Robinson himself lived on the premises, and under vociferous and constant complaint kept the books and managed the continuing finances. He never allowed Hester to forget that he was there under duress and because he had been tricked. In turn, she was aware that he had actually, against his better judgment, developed a fierce pride in the whole enterprise.

After the terrible period during which Claudine Burroughs had come, and experienced such a change in her life, Margaret Ballinger had also finally accepted Sir Oliver's proposal of marriage. Both women were working at the clinic and fully intended to remain so, leaving Hester with far less responsibility for its welfare, either in the raising of funds to pay for the food, fuel, and medicines or in the day-to-day chores.

The same bitter morning that Monk began investigating the death of James Havilland, Hester was checking the account books in the office at the clinic for the last time.