Death of a Stranger (2 page)

Lizzie retched again. Hester handed her the whiskey and hot water, this time with an infusion of herbs added. It was bitter, but the alcohol and the heat would ease her, and in time the herbs would settle her stomach and give her a little sleep.

“Stay here tonight,” Hester said gently, standing up and putting her arm around Lizzie as she rose unsteadily to her feet. “We need to see that bandage stays all right. If your hand swells up a lot we’ll have to loosen it,” she added, slowly guiding her over to the closest bed while Margaret pulled back the covers for her.

Lizzie looked at Hester in horror, her face bloodless.

“The bone will be fine,” Hester assured her. “Just take care not to knock it.” As she spoke, she eased Lizzie onto the bed, bent and took her shoes off, then lifted her legs and feet up until she was lying back against the pillows. Margaret pulled the covers over her.

“Lie there for a bit,” Hester advised. “Then if you want to get into bed properly, I’ll come and give you a nightshirt.”

Lizzie nodded. “Thank you, miss,” she said with profound sincerity. She struggled for a moment to find words to add, and then merely smiled.

Hester went back to where Kitty was sitting, waiting patiently for her turn. She had an interesting face: strong features and a wide, passionate mouth, not pretty in the usual sense, but well proportioned. She had not been on the streets long enough for her skin to be marred, or sallow from poor food and too much alcohol. Hester wondered briefly what domestic tragedies had brought her there.

She looked at her injuries. They were mostly rapidly darkening bruises, as if she had been in a struggle with someone but it had not lasted long enough to do her the damage that Nell and Lizzie had suffered. The deep graze on her breastbone needed cleaning, but no stitches would help. It was not bleeding much, and a little ointment to aid healing would be sufficient. The bruises would hurt for some time to come, but arnica would ease that.

Margaret brought more hot water and clean cloths, and Hester began to work as gently as she could. Kitty barely winced when Hester touched the graze, cleaning away the blood, which was now dried, and exposing the raw, torn edges of the skin. As always, Hester did not ask how it happened. Pimps quite often disciplined their women if they thought they were not working hard enough, or were keeping back too big a part of their earnings. Vicious fights between one woman and another happened now and again, mostly over territory. It was best not to appear inquisitive, and anyway, the knowledge would be of no use to her. All the wounded were treated much the same, however their hurts were incurred.

When Hester had done all she could for Kitty, and given her a cup of strong, sweet tea laced with a very small drop of whiskey, Kitty thanked her and went back out into the night, pulling her shawl tighter around her. They saw her go across the square, head high, and disappear into the black shadow of the prison to the north.

“I dunno.” Nell shook her head. “She shouldn’t be out on the street. In’t fer ’er sort, poor bitch!”

There was nothing useful to say. A hundred different circumstances took women into prostitution, often only to supplement a too-meager income from something else. But it all stemmed from the eternal struggle for money.

Nell looked at her. “You keep a still tongue, don’t yer! Ta, missus. I’ll be seein’ yer again, I ’spec’.” She squinted a little at Hester, regarding her with wry kindness. “If I can ’elp yer sometime…” She left the sentence unfinished, shrugging very slightly. Nodding to Margaret, she went out as well, closing the door quietly behind her.

Hester caught Margaret’s eye and saw the flash of humor and pity in her expression. There was no need for words; they had already said all there was to say. They were there to heal, not to preach to women whose lives they only partially understood. At first Margaret had wanted to change things, to speak what she saw as truth, guided by her own beliefs. Gradually she had begun to realize how little she knew of her own hungers, except that to be tied in a convenient marriage where the emotion was no more than a mutual respect and courtesy would be a denial of everything inside her. It might seem comfortable to begin with, but as time passed and she stifled the dreams within her, she would come to feel her husband was her jailer, and then despise herself for her own dishonesty. The choice was hers; no one else was to blame.

She made it, and stepped into the unknown, aware that she was closing doors she might later regret, and which after that could never be opened again. She did not often wonder what she had given away, but there had been long nights with few patients when she and Hester talked frankly, and even touched on the prices of different kinds of loneliness, those that were perceived by others and those that were masked in marriage and family. All choice was risk, but for Margaret, as for Hester, accommodation to half-truths was impossible.

“For his sake, I can’t do that!” Margaret had said with a self-conscious laugh. “Poor man deserves better than that. I’d despise myself for it, and him for letting me.” Then she had gone for a bucket and water to scrub the floor, as she did now, and together they cleared up and put away the unused bandages and ointments, then took turns in snatching a little sleep.

Two other women came in before morning. The first needed two stitches in her leg, which Hester did quickly and efficiently. The second was cold and angry and badly bruised. A mug of hot tea, again mildly laced with brandy and a little tincture of arnica, and she felt ready to return to her room and face the coming day, probably most of it asleep.

Dawn came clear and quite mild, and by eight o’clock Hester was eating toast and drinking a cup of fresh tea when the street door opened and a constable was silhouetted against the sunlight. Without asking, he came in.

“Mrs. Monk?” His tone was heavy and a little sharp. The police hardly ever came to the house. They were not welcome, and had been told so in unmistakable terms. Largely they respected what was done there, and were happy enough, if they wished to speak to any of the women, to wait and do it in some other place. What could have brought him there this morning, and at eight o’clock?

Hester put down her mug and stood. “Yes?” She had seen him several times on the street. “What is it, Constable Hart?”

He closed the door behind him and took off his helmet. In the light his face looked tired, not merely from a sleepless night on duty, but from an indefinable weariness within. Something had bruised him, disturbed him.

“You’ad any women in ’ere last night that were knocked about, cut mebbe, or beat bad?” he asked. He glanced at the teapot on the table, swallowed, and looked back at Hester.

“We do most nights,” she replied. “Stabs, broken bones, bruises, disease. In bad weather the women are sometimes just cold. You know that!”

He took a deep breath and sighed, pushing his hand through his receding hair. “Someone in a real fight, Mrs. Monk. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t ’ave to. Jus’ tell me, eh?”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” She evaded the answer for a moment. “Or toast?”

He hesitated. His exhaustion was plain in his face. “Yeah… ta,” he accepted, sitting down opposite her.

Hester reached for the teapot and poured a second mug. “Toast?”

He nodded.

“Jam?” she offered.

His eyes went to the table. His face relaxed in a rueful smile. “You got black currant!” he noticed, his voice soft.

“You’d like some?” It was a rhetorical question. The answer was obvious. Margaret was still asleep, and making the toast would give Hester a little more time to think, so she was happy to do it.

She came back to the table with two slices, and buttered one for herself and one for him, then pushed the jam over to him. He took a liberal spoonful, put it on the toast and ate it with evident appreciation.

“You’ad someone,” he said after several moments, looking at her almost with apology.

“I had three,” she replied. “At about a quarter to one, or about then. One later, three o’clock or so, and another an hour after that.”

“All in fights?”

“Looked like it. I didn’t ask. I never do. Why?”

Hester waited, watching him. There were hollows under his eyes as if he had lost too many nights’ sleep, and there was dust and what looked like blood on his sleeves. When she looked further, there was more on the legs of his trousers. His hand, holding the mug, was scratched, and one fingernail was torn. It should have been painful, but he seemed unaware of it. She was touched by both pity and a cold air of fear. “Why did you come?” she asked aloud.

He put down the mug. “There’s been a murder,” he replied. “In Abel Smith’s brothel over in Leather Lane.”

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. Whoever it was, such a thing was sad, the waste of two lives, a grief to even more. But murders were not unheard of in an area like this, or dozens of others in London much the same. Narrow alleys and squares lay a few yards behind teeming streets, but it was a different world of pawnbrokers, brothels, sweatshops, and crowded tenements smelling of middens and rotting timber. Prostitution was a dangerous occupation, primarily because of the risk of disease and, if you lived long enough, starvation when you became too old to practice-at thirty-five or forty.

“Why did you come here?” Hester asked. “Was somebody else attacked as well?”

He looked at her, his eyes narrow, his lips pulled tight. It was an expression of understanding and misery, not contempt. “Dead person wasn’t a woman,” he explained. “Wouldn’t expect you to be able to ’elp me if it was. Although sometimes they fight each other, but not to kill, far as I know. Never seen it, anyway.”

“A man?” She was surprised. “You think a pimp killed him? What happened? Someone drunk, do you suppose?”

He sipped his tea again, letting the hot liquid ease his throat. “Don’t know. Abel swears it in’t anything to do with ’is girls…”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” She dismissed the idea without even weighing it.

Hart would not let it go so quickly. “Thing is, Mrs. Monk, the dead man was a toff… I mean a real toff. You should ’ave seen ’is clothes. I know quality. An’ clean. ’Is ’ands were clean too, nails an’ all. An’ smooth.”

“Do you know who he was?”

He shook his head. “No. Someone pinched ’is money an’ calling cards, if ’e’ad any. But someone’ll miss’im. We’ll find out.”

“Even men like that have been known to use prostitutes,” she said reasonably.

“Yeh, but not Abel Smith’s sort,” he replied. “Not that that’s what matters,” he added quickly. “Thing is, a man like that gets murdered an’ we’ll be expected to get whoever did it in double quick time, an’ there’ll still be a lot o’ shouting an’ wailing to clean up the area, get rid o’ prostitution and make the streets safe for decent people, like.” He said this with ineffable contempt-not a sneer of the lips or raising of his voice, just a soft, immeasurable disgust.

“Presumably if he’d stayed at home with his wife, he’d still be alive,” Hester responded sourly. “But I can’t help you. Why do you think a woman was hurt and could know something about it? Or that she’d dare tell you if she did?”

“You thinking ’er pimp did it?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Aren’t you?” she countered. “Why would a woman kill him? And how? Was he stabbed? I don’t know any women who carry knives or who attack their clients. Fingernails or teeth are about the worst I’ve heard of.”

“ ’Eard of?” he questioned.

She smiled with a slight downward curl of her lips. “Men don’t come here.”

“Just women, eh?”

“For medical reasons,” she explained. “Anyway, if a man’s been bitten or scratched by a prostitute, what are we going to do for him?”

“Beyond have a good laugh-nothing,” he agreed. Then his expression became grave again. “But this man’s dead, Mrs. Monk, an’ from the look of the body, ’e got’imself in a fight with a woman, an’ then somehow or other ’e came off worst. ’E’s got cuts an’ gashes in ’is back, an’ so many broken bones it’s hard to know where to begin.”

She was startled. She had imagined a fight between two men ending in tragedy, perhaps the larger or heavier one striking an unlucky blow, or possibly the smaller one resorting to a weapon, probably a knife.

“But you said he was robbed,” she pointed out, thinking now of an attack by several men. “Was he set on by a gang?”

“That don’t ’appen ’round these streets.” Hart dismissed it. “That’s what pimps are for. They make their money out of willing trade. It’s in their interest to keep the customers safe.”

“So why is this one dead?” she said quietly, beginning to understand now why Hart had come there. “Why would one of the women kill him? And how, if he was beaten the way you describe?”

Hart bit his lip. “Actually, more like ’e fell,” he answered.

“Fell?” She did not immediately understand.

“From an ’eight,” he explained. “Like down stairs, mebbe.”

Suddenly it was much clearer. If a man had been caught off balance, not expecting it, a woman could easily have pushed him.

“But what about the cuts and gashes you spoke of?” she asked. “You don’t get those falling down stairs.”

“There was a lot o’ broken glass around,” he replied. “An’ blood-lots of it. Could ’ave smashed a glass, dropped it an’ then fallen on it, I suppose.” He looked miserable as he said it, almost as if it were a personal tragedy. He pushed his hand back through his hair again, a gesture of infinite weariness. “But Abel swears ’e was never at ’is place, an’ knowing the state of it, I believe’im. But ’e went somewhere often enough.”

“Why would one of Abel Smith’s women kill him?” she asked, pouring more tea for both of them. “Could it have been an accident? Could he have tripped and fallen down the stairs?”

“ ’E wasn’t found at the bottom, an’ they deny it.” He shook his head and picked up his mug of fresh tea. “ ’E was on the floor in one o’ the back bedrooms.”

“Where was the broken glass?” she asked.

“On the floor in the passage an’ at the bottom o’ the stairs.”

“Maybe they moved him before they realized he was beyond help?” she suggested. “Then they denied it out of fear. Sometimes people tell the stupidest lies when they panic.”