Hester could imagine the reaction of shock, pain, outrage, but she thought young Mr. Jarvis Baltimore would live to regret his actions today. Whatever his father had been doing in Leather Lane, it was extremely unlikely to be anything his family would wish their friends to know about. Because it was murder, the police would have to do all they could to establish the facts, and if possible bring someone to court, but it might have been better for the Baltimore family if it could simply have remained a mystery, a disappearance tragic and unexplained.

But that choice was no longer open to them. It was only a passing thought, a moment’s pity for the disillusion and then the public humiliation, the laughter suddenly hushed when they entered a room, the whispered words, the invitations that stopped, the friends who were unaccountably too busy to receive, or to call. All the money in the world would not buy back what they might be about to lose.

“What if it were nothing to do with any of the women in Abel Smith’s place?” she suggested. “Maybe someone followed him to Leather Lane and took a good opportunity when they saw it?”

He stared at her, hope and incredulity struggling in his face. “God ’elp us if that’s true!” he said in a whisper. “Then we’ll never find’im. Could be anyone!”

Hester could see that she had not necessarily been helpful. “Have you any witnesses at all?”

He shrugged very slightly. “Dunno who to believe. ’Is son says ’e was an upright, decent man in a big way o’ business, respected in the community an’ got a lot o’ powerful friends who’ll want to see justice done, an’ the streets o’ London cleaned up so ’onest folk can walk in ’em.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “He can hardly say anything else. He has to, to protect his mother.”

“An’ ’is sister,” Hart added. “Who in’t married yet, ’cos she’s a Miss Baltimore. ’Ardly do ’er chances any good if ’er father was known to frequent places like Leather Lane for their usual trade.” He frowned. “Curious that, in’t it? I mean, a man that’ll go to places like that ’isself, turning down a young woman ’cos ’er father does the same thing. I can’t work folk out . . . not gentry, leastways.”

“It won’t be his father, Constable, it’ll be his mother,” she explained.

“Oh?” He put his empty mug down on the table. “Yeah, o’ course. I see. Still, it don’t help us. Don’t really know where to begin, ’cept with Abel Smith, an’ ’e swears blind Baltimore weren’t killed in ’is place.”

“What does the police surgeon say?”

“Dunno yet. Died o’ broken bones an’ bleedin’ inside, but dunno whether ’e died at the bottom of Abel’s stairs or somewhere else altogether. Could’a bin anyone as pushed’im, if it were the stairs.”