I left the house and walked to Bow Street. I made this trip often, strolling out of Grimpen Lane to Russel Street and around the corner to the left to Bow Street. Today I made it under the June sun, which had at last chased away the drear of winter. I preferred warmer climes, having grown used to the stifling heat of India and the warm summers of Spain. Grenville had recently invited me to accompany him to Egypt when next he went.

I wondered, as I perfunctorily tipped my hat to a passing housewife, whether Grenville had told Marianne he wanted to leave England for several months, and what her reaction would be when he did. He believed Marianne cared not a fig for where he went, but I knew better. I hoped they settled things between them soon, because both were driving me mad.

I approached the Bow Street magistrate's house, a tall, narrow edifice that comprised numbers 3 and 4. The chief magistrate lived upstairs, and the unfortunates dragged in to appear before him in the large room downstairs spent the night in buildings behind the house as well as the cellar of the tavern opposite. These unfortunates consisted of pickpockets, prostitutes, the drunk and disorderly, thieves, illegal gamers, housebreakers, brawlers, and murderers. Those accused of more serious crimes, like murder or rape, generally saw the magistrate in isolation. The petty criminals tumbled together in a mass of unwashed and surprisingly good-humored humanity.

"Mornin,' Cap'n," slurred a man who was brought in for drunkenness nearly every night. He did not simply drink himself into a stupor-many a man did that and went home and slept-but Bottle Bill, as he was called, could become quite frenzied when he was drunk.

In the light of day, Bill was a quiet creature, ashamed of himself, smiling gently and apologizing to those he might have hurt the night before. He could not help himself, he said. If he did not have drink, he became wretchedly ill, near to death. A few glasses of gin, and he was right as rain. But then he could not stop drinking the gin, and so he went round again to losing his senses, starting fights, breaking furniture, and ending up at Bow Street.