My rooms lay above a bakeshop in the tiny cul-de-sac of Grimpen Lane, which ran behind Bow Street. The bakeshop was a jovial place of warm, yeasty breads, coffee, and banter when it was open. Mrs. Beltan let the rooms above it cheap, and I'd found her to be a fair landlady. The shop was closed now, Mrs. Beltan home with her sister, the windows dark and empty.

As I reached to unlock the outer door that led to the stairs, a voice boomed at me out of the darkness.

"Happily met, Captain."

I recognized the strident tones of Milton Pomeroy, once my sergeant, now one of the famous Bow Street Runners. The light from windows in the house opposite shone on his pale blond hair and battered hat, the dark suit on his broad shoulders, and his round and healthy face.

In the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons during the Peninsular War, Pomeroy had been my sergeant. In civilian life, he'd retained his booming sergeant's voice, his brisk sergeant's attitude, and his utter ruthlessness in pursuit of the enemy. The enemy now were not the French, but the pickpockets, housebreakers, murderers, prostitutes, and other denizens of London.

"A piss of an evening," he said jovially. "Not like the Peninsula, eh?"

Weather in Iberia had been both hot and cold, but usually dry, and the summers could be fine. Tonight especially, I longed for those summer days under the sweltering sun. "Indeed, Sergeant," I said.

"Well, I've not come to jaw about the weather. I've come to ask you about that little actress what lives upstairs from you."

I regarded him in surprise. "Miss Simmons?"

"Aye, that's the one. Seen her about?"

"Not for a week or so."

Marianne Simmons, a blond young woman with a deceptively childlike face and large blue eyes, eked out a living playing small parts at Drury Lane theatre. She lived in the rooms above mine and stretched her meager income by helping herself to my candles, coal, snuff, and other commodities. I let her, knowing she might go without otherwise.