“I can’t help you,” Hester said softly, remembering the women who had come to the house the previous night, all of them injured more or less. “Five women came, but they all went again and I have no idea where to. I don’t ask.”

“Their names?” he said without expectation.

“I don’t ask that either, only something to call them by.”

“That’ll do, for a start.” He put down his mug and fished in his pocket for his notebook and pencil.

“A Nell, a Lizzie and a Kitty,” she answered. “Later a Mariah and a Gertie.”

He thought for a moment, then put the pencil away again. “ ’Ardly worth it,” he said dismally. “Everybody’s a Mary, a Lizzie, or a Kate. God knows what they were christened-if they were, poor souls.”

She looked at him in the sharp morning light. There was a dark shadow of stubble on his cheeks and his eyes were pink-rimmed. He had far more pity for the women of the streets than he had for their clients. She thought he did not particularly want to catch whoever had pushed the man down the stairs. The murderer would no doubt be hanged for something which could have been at least in part an accident. The death may not have been intentional, but who would believe that when the woman in the dock was a prostitute and the dead man was rich and respected? What judge or juror could afford to accept that such a man could be at least in part responsible for his own death?

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t help.”

He sighed. “An’ you wouldn’t if you could… I know that.” He rose to his feet slowly, shifting his weight a little as if his boots pinched. “Just’ad ter ask.”

It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning when the hansom pulled up at her house in Fitzroy Street.

Monk was sitting in the front room he used to receive those who came to seek his services as a private agent of enquiry. He had papers spread in front of him and was reading them.

She was surprised to see him and filled with a sudden upsurge of pleasure. She had known him for nearly seven years, but had been married to him for less than three, and the joy of it was still sharp. She found herself smiling for no other reason.