She conceded, giving him a quick, gentle kiss, and then all but stumbled her way to the bedroom.

Monk left the house and went into the city to begin searching for the information which would help him answer Katrina Harcus’s questions. He tried to concentrate, but nagging like a constant, dull toothache was the sight of his own name on the receipt of Baltimore and Sons from seventeen years before. He did not even think of denying it was his. He had recognized it beyond doubt, the familiar, bold writing, more assertive than now, written by the man he used to be, before he looked more closely at himself and knew how others perceived him.

He went to see a merchant banker for whom he had solved a small domestic mystery to his great satisfaction.

“Baltimore and Sons?” John Wedgewood said, hiding his curiosity with difficulty. They were sitting in his oak-paneled office. A crystal tantalus was on the side table, but Monk had declined whiskey. “Well-respected company. Financially sound enough,” Wedgewood went on. “A great tragedy, especially for the family. I take it that it is the family who has asked you to investigate? Don’t trust the police.” He pursed his lips. “Very wise. But you’ll need to move very swiftly if you are to forestall scandal.”

Monk had no idea what the man was talking about. It must have been clear from his face, because Wedgewood understood before Monk had time to frame a reply.

“Nolan Baltimore was found dead in a brothel in London,” Wedgewood said, puckering his brow with distaste, and something which might or might not have been sympathy. “I apologize. I rather leaped to the conclusion that you had been asked to find the truth of the matter before the police, and if possible to persuade them into some sort of discretion.”

“No,” Monk answered, wondering for an instant why he had not read about the case in newspaper headlines, then realizing the answer before the question was on his tongue. It must be the murder Hester had referred to, and which had set the police buzzing around the Farringdon Street area in what was very probably a hopeless quest. No doubt the press would learn the reason for all the activity soon enough. They had only to ask one of the local inhabitants sufficiently inconvenienced, and sooner or later the story would emerge, suitably dramatized.

“No,” he repeated. “I am interested in the reputation of the company, not Mr. Baltimore personally. How good is their work? What skill and honesty have their men?”

Wedgewood frowned. “In what regard?”

“All regards.”

“Are you asking on behalf of someone interested in investment?”

“In a manner of speaking.” It was true enough. Katrina Harcus was investing her life, her future, in Michael Dalgarno.