"Yes. She was a little self-conscious," Rose admitted. "She was defensive about it, so I suppose that means she did. But that is the thing-the week or so before she died, she was more fully herself than ever before! She had realized that she had her father's gift for engineering and was happy with it." Her face was very earnest. "Mrs. Monk, she really was not going to kill herself!"

"Even if she had discovered her father to be mistaken?" Hester hated having to say it, but it would be not only dishonest but destructive of all they hoped to do, for themselves and for others, to conceal it now.

"I believe so," Rose said without hesitation.

The omnibus reached the end of the line. They dismounted and walked briskly around the corner to the stop for the next one, which would take them as far as the hospital where most injured men would have been taken after the collapse of the Fleet sewer. On this journey they discussed tactics and decided that Rose should begin the conversation as the wife of a member of Parliament, but when it came to medical details, then she would ask questions as Hester prompted her.

It was a long time since Hester had been inside such an institution, but it was exactly as she remembered. In the long hallway she smelled again the forced cleanliness masking the odors of sickness, alcohol, coal dust, and blood. Almost immediately she saw junior doctors, excited, self-conscious, walking with a mixture of arrogance and terror that betrayed the fact that they were on the verge of actually practicing surgery, cutting into human flesh to heal-or kill.

She found herself smiling at her own innocence in the past, imagining she could change everything except for a few individual people here and there.

It took them half an hour to gain access to the appropriate person. Rose was magnificent. Standing a little behind her, Hester could see her hands knotted with tension, and she already knew Rose well enough to be very aware of how much she cared, however much she might lie with candid and superb ease, at least on the surface.

"How kind of you, Dr. Lamb," she said charmingly when they were in the chief surveyor's office. "My husband wished me to learn a few facts so that he will not be caught out if asked questions in the House."

Lamb was a middle-aged man with a quiff of sandy-gray hair and rimless eyeglasses, and not quite as tall as Rose, so he was obliged to look up at her. "Of course, Miss ... Mrs. Applegate. What is it the honorable gentleman wishes to know?"

"It's really fairly simple," Rose replied, still standing in front of his desk, thus obliging him to remain on his feet also. "It is a matter of the nature and frequency of serious injuries to men involved in the work on the new sewer system."