Monk could remember the Great Stink of '58 very clearly, when the overflow of effluent had been so serious the entire city of London became like a vast open sewer. The Thames had smelled so vile it choked the throat and caused nausea simply to come within a mile of it.

The new sewer system was to be the most advanced in Europe. It would cost a fortune and provide work, and wealth, for thousands, tens of thousands if one considered all the navvies, brick makers, and railwaymen involved, the builders, carpenters, and suppliers of one sort or another. Most of the sewers were to be built by the open cut-and-cover method, but a few were deep enough to require tunneling.

"So Mr. Argyll was a wealthy young man?"

"Oh, yes." She straightened up a little. "This is a very nice class o' place, Mr. Monk. Don't live 'ere cheap, yer know."

"And Miss Havilland?" he asked.

"Oh, she were quality, too, poor creature," she responded immediately. "A real lady she were, even with 'er opinions. I never disagreed wi' airin' opinions, meself, fer all as some might say it weren't proper for a young lady."

Having married a woman with passionate opinions about a number of things, Monk could not argue. In fact, he suddenly saw not Mary Havilland as she was now, white-faced in death, but instead the slender, fierce, and vulnerable figure of Hester, with her shoulders a little too thin, her slight angularity, brown hair, and eyes of such passionate intelligence that he had never been able to forget them since the day they had met- and quarrelled.

He found his voice husky when he spoke again. "Do you know why she broke off the relationship, Mrs. Porter? Or was it perhaps a generous fiction Mr. Argyll allowed, and it was actually he who ended it?"

"No, it were 'er," she said without hesitation. " 'E were upset an' 'e tried to change 'er mind." She sniffed again. "I never thought as it'd come to this."