The woman looked up and blinked in the lamplight. “Dorothy, my lady. Dorothy Martindale.” Her voice rasped on the n, as if she had not spoken the name in a long while.

“How long have you sold your flowers on this corner, Dorothy?” Julia asked.

The woman closed her hand around the coin. “Nigh on twenty years, my lady.”

“Am I right in thinking you see everything that happens in Bedford Street?”

She considered Julia for a second, a lightning-fast reckoning of an unusual situation. A lady did not often crouch on the pavement beside a flower woman for a chat. “That I do, my lady,” she finally said.

Julia held up another shilling. “Can you tell us something?” She gathered me into the conversation with a glance. “I am Lady Julia and this is my sister, Lady Augusta. We wish to know if there is a gentlemen’s club somewhere along here. A club called—”

“The Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin,” Dorothy whispered. She glanced across the corner and gave a small nod. “Number 2, down there.”

Julia handed over the coin, quickly closed in the filthy hand.

“But you don’t want to go nowhere near it, my ladies,” Dorothy added. “It’s a bad place, full o’ bad men.”

“In what way?” I asked, although I already knew from the colonel’s report.

Dorothy drew in a portentous breath. “Sometimes girls go in there and I ain’t seen ’em come out.” She looked at us defiantly. “It’s true.”

“We believe you,” I said. “When does the club open? Is it every night?”

“Most, my lady. After the Evensong bells.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping into a whisper again. “Sometimes even on Sundays. Most of the coves come out ’bout a few hours before dawn. All of ’em foxed. They wear masks too.”

“Masks?” Julia asked. “You mean like loo masks for a masquerade ball?”

“No, like the old mummers.”

So, they kept their faces completely hidden.

Julia looked at me: Anything else we should ask?

“What do you think happens to the girls that do not come out?” I asked. “Have you heard any rumors?”

Dorothy shrugged, wariness shrinking her sunken mouth even more. “Maybe I’m wrong and they go out another way. There’s a yard out the back of them row of houses. Could be they go out there.”

She huddled back into her ragged clothes, ducking out of the light of the lamp. Our shilling, it seemed, had run out.

“Thank you, Dorothy,” Julia said, rising from her crouch. “We appreciate your help.”