“Then you would have seen her, or your woman would?” Livia half nodded toward Bessie, standing with her arms folded beside the stove.

“I would have seen her,” Hester conceded. “But several women come here every night, and they are all injured . . . or ill.”

“But that night . . . the night he was . . . killed?” Livia leaned forward a little across the table, in her eagerness forgetting her distaste. “Who was here then? Who was hurt, and might have seen his . . . murder?” Her eyes filled with tears and she ignored them. “Don’t you care about justice, Mrs. Monk? My father was a good and decent man, and generous. He worked so hard for what he had, and he loved his family! Doesn’t it matter to you that someone killed him?”

“Yes, of course it matters,” Hester responded, wondering how to answer the woman, little more than a girl, without overwhelming her with facts she could neither understand nor believe. “It matters when anyone is killed.”

“Then help us!” Livia pleaded. “You know these women. Tell me something!”

“No, I don’t know them,” Hester cut across her. “I do what I can for their injuries . . . that’s all.”

Livia’s eyes were wide, uncomprehending. “But . . .”

“They come in through that door.” Hester nodded to the street entrance. “Sometimes I have seen them before, sometimes I haven’t. They are either injured with cuts, bruises, or broken bones, or they are in a critical state of disease, most often syphilis or tuberculosis, but other things as well. I don’t ask more than their first names, merely for something to call them. I do what I can, and often that is not much. When they are well enough, they go away again.”

“But don’t you know how they were injured?” Livia pressed, her voice rising. “You must know what happened!”

Hester looked down at the tabletop. “I don’t need to ask. Either a customer lost his temper, or they kept a bit of the money for themselves and their pimps beat them,” she replied. “And now and again they took a bit of trade in someone else’s patch and got into a fight that way. The competition is pretty rough. Whatever it is, it really doesn’t make any difference to what I need to do.”

Livia obviously did not understand. It was a world, even a language, beyond her experience or imagination. “What is a . . . pimp?”

“The man who looks after them,” Hester replied. “And takes most of what they earn.”

“But why?” There was no comprehension in Livia’s eyes.