“I had three,” she replied. “At about a quarter to one, or about then. One later, three o’clock or so, and another an hour after that.”

“All in fights?”

“Looked like it. I didn’t ask. I never do. Why?”

Hester waited, watching him. There were hollows under his eyes as if he had lost too many nights’ sleep, and there was dust and what looked like blood on his sleeves. When she looked further, there was more on the legs of his trousers. His hand, holding the mug, was scratched, and one fingernail was torn. It should have been painful, but he seemed unaware of it. She was touched by both pity and a cold air of fear. “Why did you come?” she asked aloud.

He put down the mug. “There’s been a murder,” he replied. “In Abel Smith’s brothel over in Leather Lane.”

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. Whoever it was, such a thing was sad, the waste of two lives, a grief to even more. But murders were not unheard of in an area like this, or dozens of others in London much the same. Narrow alleys and squares lay a few yards behind teeming streets, but it was a different world of pawnbrokers, brothels, sweatshops, and crowded tenements smelling of middens and rotting timber. Prostitution was a dangerous occupation, primarily because of the risk of disease and, if you lived long enough, starvation when you became too old to practice—at thirty-five or forty.

“Why did you come here?” Hester asked. “Was somebody else attacked as well?”

He looked at her, his eyes narrow, his lips pulled tight. It was an expression of understanding and misery, not contempt. “Dead person wasn’t a woman,” he explained. “Wouldn’t expect you to be able to ’elp me if it was. Although sometimes they fight each other, but not to kill, far as I know. Never seen it, anyway.”

“A man?” She was surprised. “You think a pimp killed him? What happened? Someone drunk, do you suppose?”

He sipped his tea again, letting the hot liquid ease his throat. “Don’t know. Abel swears it in’t anything to do with ’is girls. . . .”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” She dismissed the idea without even weighing it.

Hart would not let it go so quickly. “Thing is, Mrs. Monk, the dead man was a toff . . . I mean a real toff. You should ’ave seen ’is clothes. I know quality. An’ clean. ’Is ’ands were clean too, nails an’ all. An’ smooth.”

“Do you know who he was?”

He shook his head. “No. Someone pinched ’is money an’ calling cards, if ’e’ad any. But someone’ll miss’im. We’ll find out.”

“Even men like that have been known to use prostitutes,” she said reasonably.