"Drownded," Palmer said sourly, turning away. "Come orff one o' the bridges, yer always are. Anybody knows that. Water shocks yer an' so yer breathes it in. Kills yer. Quick's almost the only good thing to it."

"And how stupid will we look if we say she's a suicide, and it turns out she was knifed or strangled, but we didn't notice it?" Monk asked quietly. "I just want to make sure. Or with child, and we didn't see that, either? Look at the quality of her clothes. She's not a street woman. She has a decent address and she may have family. We owe them the truth."

Palmer colored unhappily. "It won't make them feel no better if she's with child," he observed without looking back at Monk.

"We don't look for the answers that make people feel better," Monk told him. "We have to deal with the ones we find closest to the truth. We know who they are and where they lived. Orme and I are going to tell their families. You get the police surgeon to look at them."

"Yes, sir," Palmer said stiffly. "You'll be goin' 'ome to put dry clothes on, no doubt?" He raised his eyebrows.

Monk had already learned that lesson. "I've got a dry shirt and coat in the cupboard. They'll do fine."

Orme turned away, but not before Monk had seen his smile.

Monk and Orme took a hansom from Wapping, westward along High Street. The lights intermittently flickered from the river and the hard wind whipped the smell of salt and weed up the alleys between the waterfront houses. They went around the looming mass of the Tower of London, then back down to the water again along Lower Thames Street. They finally crossed the river at the Southwark Bridge and passed through the more elegant residential areas until they came to the six-way crossing at St. George s Circus. From there it was not far to the Westminster Bridge Road and Walnut Tree Walk.

Informing the families of the dead was the part of any investigation that every policeman hated, and it was the duty of the senior man. It would be both cowardly and the worst discourtesy to the bereaved to delegate it.