She had talked to the tough, stringy little woman who cleaned the church every Monday. They had stood among the wooden grave markers, under a hot sun. The woman had suggested Mrs Pangborn, who was often having to perform ‘little operations’ for her working girls. The next evening, when Collis had been staying late at 54 K Street to talk to Leland, Hannah had taken the carriage and driven herself to Eighth and L, just as she was tonight.

Collis had never known. Nor, she thought, would he ever know.

It was dark by the time she reached Mrs Pangborn’s house. She tethered the horses around the corner on Ninth, so that the carriage wouldn’t be seen outside the whorehouse. Then she walked across the street, her face veiled, her black coat swishing on the dusty road. Very faintly — so faintly that she could scarcely hear it — a piano was playing ‘Roses Red and Roses White’. She stepped up to Mrs Pangborn’s door and knocked.

One of Mrs Pangborn’s girls let her in — a frizzy-haired blonde with pink cheeks and a chubby bottom. Hannah was sure she had seen the girl working during the day at Oppenheimer’s Pastry Parlour. To serve cakes by day and fornicate at night — that was a strange way to make a living. There were red chrysanthemums on the wallpaper, and the hallway smelled of perfume and tobacco. The smell brought back her fear.

Mrs Pangborn herself was waiting in her back parlour. It was a small, stuffy room, with a heavy sideboard, a bookcase crowded with dog-eared editions of pornographic books, and a tall china Dalmatian with one of its ears chipped off. The leaves of the mahogany table had been extended, and Mrs Pangborn had draped it with a white sheet. On the sideboard, her instruments were laid out, with towels, bandages, and a china basin of water.

‘Well, my love,’ said Mrs Pangborn. ‘You’re back again, then.’

The statement was neither accusing nor surprised. Mrs Pangborn was as forgiving and as tolerant as twenty priests, and apart from that she had seen between more legs than most people could count. She was small, and well rouged, with a face as intense as a beaver’s, and her gingery hair was piled into tight curls, out of which her diamond earrings swung alarmingly. While Hannah stood in the doorway, she tied a floral apron around herself and gave Hannah a reassuring grin.

‘All right last time, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘No problems, no complications? Well, it’s going to be just the same tonight.’

Hannah felt faint, as if she were dreaming. But she took Mrs Pangborn’s words as the cue to take off her coat and lay it over the arm of the sofa. Then she turned around, so that Mrs Pangborn could unbutton her dress.