William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

next at the crowd as it passed. “You’re ruinin’ me trade, mister! People is won-derin’ why you don’t buy!”
    “What else?” Evan pressed. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner I’ll buy a fish and be gone.”
    “A quack coming to the third ’ouse up on ’Arley Street, an’ a maid out on the tiles with ’er follower. The place was like bleedin’ Piccadilly! I never got a chance to do anything.”
    “Which house did you come for?” Evan asked, picking up a fish and examining it.
    “Corner o’ Queen Anne Street and Wimpole Street, southwest corner.”
    “And where were you waiting, exactly?” Evan felt a curious prickle of apprehension, a kind of excitement and horror at once. “And what time?”
    “ ’Alf the ruddy night!” Paddy said indignantly. “From ten o’clock till near four. Welbeck Street end o’ Queen Anne Street. That way I could see the ’ole length o’ Queen Anne Street right down to Chandos Street. Bit of a party goin’ on t’other end—footmen all over the place.”
    “Why didn’t you pack up and go somewhere else? Why stick around there all night if it was so busy?”
    “ ’ere, fresh cod—all alive—best in the market!” Paddy called over Evan’s head. ’Ere missus! Right it is—that’ll be one and eight pence—there y’are.” His voice dropped again. “Because I ‘ad the layout of a good place, o’ course—an’ Idon’t go in unprepared. I in’t a bleedin’ amacher. I kept thinkin’ they’d go. But that perishin’ maid was ’Alf the night in the areaway like a damn cat. No morals at all.”
    “So who came and went up Queen Anne Street?” Evan could hardly keep the anticipation out of his voice. Whoever killed Octavia Haslett had not passed the footmen and coachmen at the other end, nor climbed over from the mews—he must have come this way, and if Chinese Paddy was telling the truth, he must have seen him. A thin shiver of excitement rippled through Evan.
    “No one passed me, ’cept the quack an’ the maid,” Paddy repeated with irritation. “I ‘ad me eyes peeled all bleedin’ night—just waitin’ me chance—an’ it never came. The ’ouse where the quack went ‘ad all its lights on an’ the door open and closed, open and closed—I didn’t dare go past. Then the ruddy girl with ’er man. No one went past me—I’d swear to that on me life, I would. An’ Mr. Monk can do any damn thing ’e can think of—it won’t change it. ’Oever scragged that poor woman, ’e was already in the ‘ouse, that’s for certain positive. An’ good luck to you findin’ ’im, ‘cos I can’t ’elp yer. Now take one o’ them fish and pay me twice wot it’s worth, and get out of ’ere. You’re holdin’ up trade terrible, you are.”
    Evan took the fish and handed over three shillings. Chinese Paddy was a contact worth keeping favor with.
    “Already in the house.” The words rang in his head. Of course he would have to check with the courting maid as well, but if she could be persuaded, on pain of his telling her mistress if she was reluctant, then Chinese Paddy was right—whoever killed Octavia Haslett was someone who already lived there, no stranger caught in the act of burglary but a premeditated murderer who disguised his act afterwards.
    Evan turned sideways to push his way between a high fishmonger’s cart and a coster’s barrow and out into the street.
    He could imagine Monk’s face when he learned—and Runcorn’s. This was a completely different thing, a very dangerous and very ugly thing.

2
    H
ESTER LATTERLY
straightened up from the fire she had been sweeping and stoking and looked at the long, cramped ward of the infirmary. The narrow beds were a few feet apart from each other and set down both sides of the dim room with its high, smoke-darkened ceiling and sparse windows. Adults and children lay huddled under the gray blankets in all conditions of illness and distress.
    At least there was enough coal and she could keep the place tolerably warm, even though the dust and fine ash from it seemed to get into everything. The women in the beds closest to the fire were too hot, and kept complaining about the grit getting into their bandages, and Hester was forever dusting the table in the center of the room and the few wooden chairs where patients well enough occasionally sat. This was Dr. Pomeroy’s ward, and he was a surgeon, so all the cases were either awaiting operations or recovering from them—or, in