William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

track which is almost completed. It will go all the way from the dockside here in London up to Derby. And we have a factory near Liverpool as well, for making railway wagons. Perhaps he was seeing someone about laborers, or steel, or that kind of thing?”
    Hester could not meet her eyes and answer. That was not the sort of business people conducted in Leather Lane at night, but what use was there in pointing that out to Baltimore’s daughter? “These women wouldn’t know about that,” she said instead. “They scrape the best living they can by selling their bodies, and they pay a heavy price for it. . . .” She saw the incomprehension again. “You think they should be in factory labor? Sweatshops? Do you know what that pays?”
    Livia hesitated. “No . . .”
    “Or the hours?”
    “No . . . but . . .”
    “It’s honest, right?” There was an edge of scorn in her voice she had not intended, and she saw the sting of it in Livia’s face. “They can’t afford to be honest at one and sixpence a day for fourteen or fifteen hours’ work,” she said more gently, but still with the underlying anger—not for Livia but for the facts. She saw Livia’s eyes widen and her throat constrict. “Especially if they’ve got children to keep, or debts to pay,” she added. “They can make a pound or two every night on the streets, even after giving their pimp his cut.”
    “But . . .” Livia started again, looking toward the curled-up outline of Fanny in the nearest bed.
    “The risks? Injuries, disease, the unpleasantness of it?” Hester asked. “Go into a sweatshop sometime, see if you think it’s any better. They’re cramped, ill-lit, dirty, overcrowded. There’s just as much disease there. A different kind, maybe, but I’m not sure it’s any better. Dead is dead, whatever the cause.”
    “Can’t you help me at all?” Livia said softly, shock and something like humility in her face. “At least ask them?”
    “I can ask,” Hester promised, overwhelmed with pity again. “But please, don’t hope for much. I don’t think anyone knows. And of course, if it was business of some sort, it would be well away from any of these women. The police say he was found in Abel Smith’s . . . house . . . in Leather Lane, but Abel swears it wasn’t any of his women who killed him. Perhaps they are telling the truth, and he was killed by whoever he went to see?” She hated telling what she thought was almost certainly a lie. But very possibly no one would ever know who had killed Baltimore, let alone why, so perhaps his daughter would be able to cling to her illusions.
    “That would be it,” Livia said, grasping hope as if it were a lifeline. “Thank you for your logic, your good sense, Mrs. Monk.”
    Hester pressed her advantage, and it was at least in part for Livia as well. “Perhaps your brother would stop asking the police so hard to drive the women off the streets?” she suggested. “It may have nothing to do with any of them, and harrying them will make them even less likely to tell you anything.”
    “But if they don’t know anything . . .” Livia started.
    “They may have seen nothing,” Hester conceded. “But they will get to hear. Word passes quickly in places like this.”
    “I don’t know. Jarvis doesn’t listen to—”
    Before she could finish the train of her thought the street door swung open wide and a young man shouted for help, panic harsh in his voice. His face was white, his hair streaked across his brow in the rain, and his thin clothes were sodden and sticking to his narrow chest.
    Livia swung around, and Hester rose to her feet just as a far larger man came staggering in holding a woman in his arms. She was so pale her skin looked waxy in the gaslight, and her eyes were closed, her head lolling as if she were completely insensible.
    “Put her there.” Hester pointed to the larger, empty table.
    “ ’Aven’t yer got a bed?” The large man stifled a sob. His face was twisted with emotion; anger was so much less painful than the terror which obviously engulfed him.
    Hester was accustomed to all kinds of feelings pouring out beyond control, and she made no judgment of them, no response to those that were unfair.
    “I need to see what is wrong,” she explained. “I have to have a firm surface, and the light. Put her there.”
    He obeyed, his eyes imploring her to help, to find some answer beyond his imagining.
    Hester looked at the girl lying in front of her. The man