The room above was cramped and dingy, but sunlight shone through a pair of windows onto a battered table and stool—and an even more battered woman, open-mouthed with surprise as she froze in the act of setting down a dish of bread and cheese.

“Mrs. O’Connell?” She turned her head toward him, and Grey froze. Her open mouth was swollen, lips split, a dark-red gap showing in the gum where a lower tooth had been knocked out. Both eyes were puffed to slits, and she peered through a mask of yellowing bruises. By some miracle, her nose had not been broken; the slender bridge and fine nostrils protruded from the wreck, pale-skinned and freakish by contrast.

She lifted a hand to her face, turning away from the light as though ashamed of her appearance.

“I . . . yes. I’m Francine O’Connell,” she murmured, through the fan of her fingers.

“Mrs. O’Connell!” Stubbs took a stride toward her, then stopped, uncertain whether to touch her. “Who—who has done this to you?”

“Her husband. And may his soul rot in hell.” The remark came from behind them, in a conversational tone of voice. Grey turned to see the apothecary advance into the room, his manner still superficially casual, but all his attention focused on the woman.

“Her husband, eh?” Stubbs, no fool, for all his geniality, reached out and seized the apothecary’s hands, turning the knuckles to the light. The man suffered the inspection calmly enough, then pulled his unmarred hands back from Stubbs’s grip. As though the action granted him license, he crossed to the woman and stood beside her, radiating subdued defiance.

“True it is,” he said, still outwardly calm. “Tim O’Connell was a fine man when sober, but when the drink was on him . . . a fiend in human form, no less.” He shook his head, tight-lipped.

Grey exchanged a glance with Stubbs. This was true; they shared a memory of extricating O’Connell from a gaol in Richmond, following a riotous night’s leave. The constable and the gaoler had both borne the marks of the arrest, though neither had been as badly off as O’Connell’s wife.

“And what is your relation to Mrs. O’Connell, if I might ask?” Grey inquired politely. It was hardly necessary to ask; he could see the woman’s body sway toward the apothecary, like a twining vine deprived of its trellis.

“I am her landlord, to be sure,” the man replied blandly, putting a hand on Mrs. O’Connell’s elbow. “And a friend of the family.”

“A friend of the family,” Stubbs echoed. “Quite.” His wide blue gaze descended, resting deliberately on the woman’s midsection, where her apron bulged with a pregnancy of five or six months’ progress. The regiment—and Sergeant O’Connell—had returned to London a scant six weeks before.