A Sunless Sea

CHAPTER 13

As the trial of Dinah Lambourn was beginning, Hester set out on her own investigation. The whole issue of the sale of opium was one that drew her in with increasing urgency with every new piece of information she found. Because most of her nursing experience had been with soldiers suffering from appalling injuries, or from the fevers and dysentery of war, she was familiar only with the advantages of opium as a means to reduce pain.

Her later work in the clinic on Portpool Lane had been with prostitutes. Some were as young as twelve or thirteen; but she hadn’t known of the devastation inflicted on smaller children from remedies containing opium before Dr. Winfarthing had told her.

However, as far as Dinah Lambourn was concerned, there was no time now to justify Lambourn’s report to the government. Before anything else, they must find out who killed Zenia Gadney. To do that, they needed to learn more about Gadney than the bare facts of her life in Copenhagen Place.

Most of the street women who came to the clinic in Portpool Lane were from within a mile or two of the clinic itself, but some with more chronic diseases had come now and again from farther away. There was usually not much Hester could do for them, but anything to ease their distress even a little was a help. Now she set out to find one woman in particular with whom she had sat up many nights, nursing her through pneumonia and back into sufficient health for her to return to the streets, until next time. That would probably be this winter when hunger, exposure, and exhaustion might well kill her.

Gladys Middleton was nearly forty, and had been bought and sold since she was twelve, but she was still surprisingly handsome. Her hair was thick and unmarked by gray. Her skin was fading, but there were no visible blemishes, at least in candlelight. The last illness had reduced her weight, but at this point, the loss was flattering. She still had generous curves, and walked with surprising grace.

It took Hester most of the day to find where Gladys now lived. Even after she had discovered the right lodging house, she had to wait, standing as discreetly as possible in a doorway, until Gladys returned from the public house on the corner.

Hester followed her at almost fifty yards’ distance until Gladys went through the door, and then she went in after her. She made a couple of mistakes, having to apologize before she knocked at the right room.

Gladys opened it cautiously. It was early to expect custom. There was still daylight outside, and a prospective client might far too easily meet someone he knew on the street. His presence here might be difficult to explain.

“Hello, Gladys,” Hester said with a quick smile. There was no point in pretending she had come other than for a favor. Gladys knew the way of survival and would not appreciate being patronized by lies.

Hester held up a bottle of the tonic cordial she knew was Gladys’s favorite.

Gladys regarded it with pleasure, then suspicion. “I ain’t sayin’ as I’m not grateful, nor pleased ter see yer, but wot d’yer want?” she said skeptically.

“Not to stand at the door, for a start,” Hester replied, still smiling.

Gladys backed in reluctantly.

Hester followed her. The room was cleaner than she had expected. There were no signs of trade here, only a faint odor of sweat, and recently eaten food.

“Thank you.” Hester sat down on the edge of one of the chairs. She kept the bottle of cordial in her hand. It should be understood that this was a bargain, not a gift.

Gladys sat down opposite her, also on the edge of her chair, uneasily.

“Wot d’yer want, then?” she repeated.

“Information.”

“I dunno nothin’.” The response was instinctive and immediate.

“Rubbish,” Hester said briskly. “Women who know nothing don’t survive very long. Don’t lie to me, and I won’t lie to you.”

Gladys shrugged, admitting at least a degree of defeat. “Wot are yer askin’?”

“Did you know Zenia Gadney?” Hester replied.

The color drained out of Gladys’s face, leaving her ashen. “Gawd! I don’t know nothin’ about that, I swear!”

“I’m sure you don’t know anything about the murder,” Hester agreed, telling something close to the truth. “I want to know what she was like.”

“Wot d’yer mean, wot she were like?” Gladys blinked in confusion.

Was she playing for time, or did she really not understand? Hester put her hand lightly on the cordial bottle. “This stuff is quite good for your health,” she remarked.

“Well, it in’t goin’ ter cure a slit throat!” Gladys said huskily. “Or yer guts torn out an’ tied around yer waist, is it!”

“Why should anyone do that to you?” Hester raised her eyebrows. “Anyway, her throat wasn’t slit. She was hit on the back of her head. She wouldn’t have known anything that happened after that, poor soul. You didn’t have an affair with Dr. Lambourn, did you?”

Gladys was startled. “Course I din’t! ’E weren’t like that. All ’e wanted were ter know ’ow easy it were ter buy opium, an’ if I knew wot was in the stuff I got ter ’elp me sleep, or when I got a bellyache.”

“And did you?” Hester tried to keep some of the eagerness out of her voice. She could not afford to have Gladys sense how much she needed the information. “Did you know what was in it, and how much to take? Or how long before you could take more?”

“I know it works, I don’t need ter know nothin’ else, do I!” Gladys retorted.

“Is that what he asked you?”

“ ’E weren’t askin’ me, ’e were askin’ them wot ’as kids. I were just there.”

“Did you know Zenia Gadney?” Hester went back to her first question.

“Yeah. Why?”

“What was she like?”

“Yer said that already. Wot kind o’ thing d’yer want ter know?” Gladys shook her head. “She were older’n me, quiet, not much ter look at, but clean. It’s all on wot yer like, in’t it? Some folk like ’em ordinary, but willin’ ter do anything, if yer get me meanin’? Like their wives, but easier.”

“Yes, I understand you. Is that what Zenia was like? Actually, she’s not much like Mrs. Lambourn at all.”

“Wot’s Mrs. Lambourn like, then?” Gladys was curious.

Hester remembered what Monk had said, and the effect she appeared to have had on him. “Handsome, very striking indeed,” she replied. “Tall and dark, with very fine eyes.”

Gladys shook her head, completely bewildered. “Well, Zenia weren’t nothin’ like that. She were as dull as a mouse, all browny-gray and quiet. In fact, she were a real bore, but nice, like, if yer know wot I mean? Din’t talk down at nobody. Din’t lose ’er temper nor tell lies about yer. Nor she din’t steal nothin’.”

Hester was puzzled as well. “How did you come to know her?”

Gladys rolled her eyes at Hester’s stupidity. “ ’Eard about ’er ’cos she got wot we all want, din’t she? One real nice gent wot only needed ter see ’er once a month, treated ’er like she were a lady, an’ paid all ’er bills. If that ’appened ter me, I’d reckon as I’d died an’ gone ter ’eaven. ’Ow’d she do it, that’s wot I’d like ter know. It weren’t ’cos she knew ’ow ter make a man laugh, or feel as if ’e were the most interestin’ man as she ever met, or the ’andsomest, neither.”

“Did Dr. Lambourn love her, do you think?” Hester asked. “Was she especially gentle, or kind?”

Gladys shrugged. “ ’Ow’d I know? I reckon as she must ’ave been willin’ ter do some real strange things fer ’im. All I can think. An’ ’e looked as decent as yer like, jus’ straightforward. Goes ter show, yer never know wot’s be’ind them ordinary faces.”

It was a possibility Hester had already thought of, distasteful as it was. She had never even met Dinah Lambourn. Why did it trouble her so much that she might have deeply loved a man with deviant tastes? Perhaps it was her own imagination of how she would feel were she to discover such a thing of Monk.

If it were so, would she want to kill the woman who had catered to him, as Dinah was accused of having killed Zenia? Possibly. Not as violently, as brutally, but kill her? It was strange and disturbing that murder was something that she could even imagine.

Now the whole situation looked different-sad, ugly, and unimaginably painful.

“Do you think Zenia loved him?” she asked Gladys. Was that a question that even made sense to the woman? Gladys lived, worked, and thought only to survive. Love was a luxury she would probably never be able to afford. Perhaps she had not even allowed herself to dream of it. In a hundred different disguises, that was probably true of millions of women of all ranks, from servant to aristocrat. Children would have much to do with it; neither Hester nor Gladys would have children, but Hester had love. She was perfectly sure of that.

But then many women believed they had love. Maybe even Dinah Lambourn.

She looked at Gladys again. She was sitting with her brow furrowed, a look of deep concentration on her face.

Hester waited.

Gladys looked up at last. “Mebbe. Don’t really matter,” she said slowly. “It were terrible wot ’appened to ’er. I don’t care wot she done, that weren’t right.”

Hester was not sure what to say. “Did she do something so bad?” she asked. She was afraid she would drive Gladys back into silence, but she was increasingly conscious that the other woman knew more than she had said.

“That’s it,” Gladys bit her lip. “She were kind o’ secretive, sometimes a bit la-di-da, like she were better’n the rest of us, but she were kind, in ’er own way. She acted like she’d come down in the world, but I thought that mebbe she ’ad. Something she said once. Tillie Biggs were drunk ’alf out of ’er mind. Lyin’ in the gutter like it were the only place left for ’er. Couldn’t fall out of it, likely. An’ Zenia were the only one wot ’ad time ter pick ’er up. Rest of us said the stupid cow brought it on ’erself, but Zenia wouldn’t ’ave it. Said we all brought things on ourselves, don’t mean we didn’t need ’elpin’.”

“What did she do?” Hester felt a tightening in her throat, the beginning of an emotion she could not control.

Gladys made a small, sad gesture. “ ’Eaved ’er up an’ dragged ’er into an alley doorway where it were dry, an’ nobody’d fall over ’er. Propped ’er up there, an’ left ’er. In’t nothin’ else yer can do. She knew that.” She stopped, struggling with whether to say more.

Hester did not know whether to encourage her or not. She drew in her breath to speak, then changed her mind.

“Reckon as maybe she’d fallen in a few gullies ’erself,” Gladys said quietly. “She told me once that she’d bin married. Mebbe ’e left ’er ’cos o’ the drink. Or she left ’im. Dunno.” She shook her head. “But she weren’t one o’ us, like from round ’ere.”

“Where did she come from, do you know?” Hester asked gently. Gladys’s answers had made Zenia far too real: a woman with dreams and sudden kindnesses, capable of feeling grief and pain.

“She never said. She were an odd one. Liked flowers. I mean she knew ’ow ter grow ’em, wot kind o’ soil they liked, that sort o’ thing, ’cos she used ter talk about it sometimes. Wot month they was out, an’ the like. Don’ get no flowers round ’ere. She used ter stand on the pier sometimes an’ look over the water, like mebbe she were from south o’ the river.” She shrugged. “Could a’ bin just ter be by ’erself, like; think a bit. Dream as yer could get on one o’ them boats an’ go somewhere. I think that, sometimes.”

Again Hester waited before she broke the moment.

Gladys looked up at her and smiled a little self-consciously. “Daft, eh?”

“No,” Hester replied. “We all need to dream of things, now and then. Who else knew her? What was Dr. Lambourn like? Did she ever talk about him?”

“No. But then I reckoned as she knew ’e were worth keepin’ for ’erself, like. Couldn’t share nothin’. Weren’t enough to go round.”

“Jealous?” Hester said quickly.

“Course we was, but Gawd, we wouldn’t do that ter nobody! Wot the bleedin’ ’ell d’yer think we are?” Gladys was indignant, even hurt.

“I didn’t think so,” Hester retracted. She really did not know what to ask next. Since finding Gladys and talking to her, she began to believe that perhaps Dinah had lost her sanity, temporarily, and maybe it was she, after all, who had ripped Zenia apart. Could an otherwise normal woman feel so betrayed that she would indulge the darkest, bloodiest side of her nature? Had the wounds been so deep-failure, self-disgust, hatred-that they drove her beyond sanity?

It no longer seemed unimaginable.

She changed the subject. “The shopkeeper said Mrs. Lambourn came to Limehouse looking for opium. Dr. Lambourn did, too, didn’t he? Asking questions, I mean.”

“I ’eard. ’E never asked me, but ’ow would I know anything?”

“Did you meet him?”

“Yeah, couple o’ times. I told yer, ’e were askin’ all sorts o’ things o’ people.”

“About opium?”

“Yeah. ’E wanted ter find Agony.”

Hester was taken aback. “What?”

“Agony Nisbet. Least I reckon ’er name is really Agatha, or summink like that, but everyone calls ’er Agony, ’cos she ’elps folks wot got real terrible pain.”

“With opium?” Hester said quickly.

“O’ course. You know anything else wot’ll ’elp when pain is that bad?”

“No,” Hester admitted, “I don’t. Did he find her?”

“Dunno. S’pose, ’cos ’e didn’t come back lookin’.”

“What was he like?” She asked more from curiosity than because she thought it would help. And she was not sure what she was trying to gain anymore; she had begun with the idea of finding some explanation for Zenia Gadney’s murder that would prove Dinah innocent. Now her own emotions were disturbed to the depth where she could imagine getting lost in a madness of grief, where acts of violence might be quite possible, and she was no longer certain there was another explanation to find.

Could she take that back to Monk, and to Rathbone? Would that be surrender, or just realism?

Gladys gave the characteristic lift of one shoulder again. “Not like I’d ’ave thought,” she said with surprise still lingering in her face. “ ’E were soft-spoken, real gentle. ’E treated me like I were … someone instead of no one. I guess yer can’t always tell about folks, can yer?”

Hester remained a little longer, but Gladys did not know anything more except the places where Hester might begin to look for “Agony” Nisbet. So she thanked her and left.

She spoke to several other people in Copenhagen Place, including the shopkeeper that Monk had visited, and heard his account of Dinah’s visit, which added nothing new to what they already knew.

Then she went out into the cold, gusty thoroughfare. As the eaves dripped on her and people jostled her on the wet footpath, she tried to put herself in Dinah’s shoes. Apparently Dinah had known for years that her husband had visited Zenia Gadney, and paid her. What had happened that had changed her from a compliant wife, tolerating the fact, even agreeing to it, into a woman who had lost all hold on humanity?

If Hester had discovered something like that about Monk, it would have defiled her love for him. But would it have destroyed her own values of compassion and honor?

She might have been hurt beyond bearing. She might have wept herself exhausted, unable to eat or sleep, but if her despair had been complete she would have taken her own life, not someone else’s.

Wouldn’t she?

Was it conceivable that it was Dinah who had actually killed Joel Lambourn? Had either Monk or Rathbone even thought of that, and weighed it without the tangle of emotion her pain caused in them?

But Lambourn’s death had looked like suicide. It was even gentle, with the opium to dull the pain. There was no hatred there, not even any anger. But it robbed Dinah of the respectability, the social status, and most of the income to which she was accustomed. What about Adah and Marianne? Had she even thought of them? Did a woman ever really forget her children? What had Lambourn left? Enough for them to live on, for Dinah to raise and successfully marry the two young girls?

Was it even physically possible that Dinah had done it alone? Had she lured him up to One Tree Hill in the middle of the night? Persuaded him to take the opium, then sit there while she cut his wrists, calmly picked up the bottle and the knife, and walked back home again to her children? Why take away the bottle and knife? That made no sense. If he had really committed suicide, they would have been there. And the fact that they were from her home wouldn’t need concealing, because it was his home, too!

If she were capable of such cold-blooded planning, why the insane rage in mutilating Zenia Gadney? And what could have provoked her, after years of knowing about the whole arrangement? Why suddenly commit two murders, two months apart?

It made no sense. There had to be another answer.

Hester spent the rest of the day speaking to people in the area and learning a little more about Zenia Gadney, but nothing that altered the picture Gladys had given her of a quiet, rather sad woman. Apparently she had destroyed her youth with drink, but she also appeared to have beaten whatever demons had driven her then. For the last fifteen years she had lived in Copenhagen Place. She had done the odd job of sewing or mending for people, but more as a friend than for money. It was a way of associating with others, and having the occasional conversation. She appeared to be supported by Dr. Lambourn sufficiently that if she was careful, no other income had been necessary.

Several people said they saw her out walking quite often, in all weathers but the very worst. Most often it was along Narrow Street, beside the river. Sometimes she would stand with the wind in her face, looking south, watching the barges come and go. If you spoke to her she would answer, and she was always agreeable, but she seldom sought conversation herself.

No one spoke ill of her.

Hester went to stand in Narrow Street herself, the wind stinging her face, gray water glinting in the light. Hester had a strong sense of Zenia’s loneliness, perhaps of the regret that must have crowded her mind so many times. What had started her drinking in the first place? Some domestic tragedy? Perhaps the death of a child? A marriage that was desperately unhappy? Probably no one would ever know.

There seemed to be nothing in Zenia’s life that led to her terrible death, unless it was her association with Joel Lambourn. If it was not that, then she was no more than a chance victim, sacrificed to opportunity and insane rage.

Hester had begun with pity for Dinah, a woman robbed not only of the husband she loved, but, in a sense, of all that she had believed of the happiness in her life. The sweetness of her memories were now tainted forever. Soon she would lose her own life in the awful ritual punishment of hanging.

Now as Hester stood watching the gray water of the river swirl past her, her pity was for Zenia Gadney. The woman’s life had held so little comfort, and in the last decade and a half, almost no warmth of laughter, sharing, even touching another human being, apart from Joel Lambourn once a month, for money. Hester refused to try to picture that in her mind. What could he have wanted that was so strange or so obscene that his wife would not grant it to him, and he paid a sad prostitute in Limehouse instead?

She was glad that she did not need to know.

The water was loud on the shingle as the wash of a boat reached the shore on the low tide. A string of barges passed in midstream, laden with coal, timber, and bales stacked high. The men guiding them balanced with a rough, powerful grace, wielding their long poles. The wind was rising and smelled of salt and rain. Gulls screamed overhead, a long, mournful cry.

Hester felt she had exhausted the subject of Zenia Gadney. She wondered if there was any point in trying to find out more of Dr. Lambourn’s search for information about opium. Probably not. The light was fading and it was getting colder as the tide turned. It was time to go home where it was warm, not just away from the wind off the water, but away from the impressions of death, from rage and despair, and the hunger that in the end had destroyed everything that was precious for these people.

She would make Scuff something he really liked for supper, and listen to him laugh about something trivial, say good night to him when he was scrubbed and clean, smelling of soap and ready for bed.

Later she would lie with Monk, and thank God for all the things that were good in her world.

It took Hester all the next day, and half the day after to find Agatha Nisbet. She had walked along the narrow path westward, past Greenland Dock and inland to Norway Yard. She asked again in Rotherhithe Street, and it was only a few dozen yards farther to a large, unused warehouse where there was a makeshift clinic for injured dockworkers and sailors.

She went in, walking boldly; head up as if she had the right to be there. One or two people looked at her curiously, first a young woman with a mop and bucket busy scrubbing floors, then a man with blood on his clothes, who appeared to be some kind of orderly. She smiled at him, and he relaxed and did not challenge her.

She passed two or three middle-aged women. They looked tired and harassed, their clothes crumpled as if they had been in them all night as well as all day. They brought back sharp memories of her own hospital days: cleaning, rolling bandages, changing beds, and helping sick and injured people eat, above all taking orders. She remembered the weariness, and the comradeship, the grief shared and the victories.

There were straw palliasses on the floor, all of them occupied by men, pale-faced and dirty, arms, legs, or bodies bandaged. The fortunate ones seemed to be asleep. If Agatha Nisbet had given them opium and bound up their injuries, Hester for one would have no criticism of her. Those who found fault should try a week or two of lying on this floor with bruised and broken bodies, with no ease during the long, bitter hours of the night in the cold and the darkness when even to draw breath was all but unbearable.

She had reached the end of the huge room and was about to knock on one of the doors of the cubicles at the end when it burst open. She found herself looking up at a woman who was well over six foot tall and with the broad, heavy shoulders of a navvy. Her hair was frizzy and of a fading auburn color. Her features were powerful, and had probably even been handsome thirty years ago in her youth. By now time and hard living had coarsened them, and sun and wind had roughened her skin. Fierce blue eyes regarded Hester with contempt.

“What do you want here, lady?” she asked in a soft, slightly sibilant voice. It was a little high, and did not sound as if it could possibly have come from her enormous body. There was contempt in her use of the word lady.

Hester bit back the tart response she would like to have made.

“Miss Nisbet?” she asked politely.

“What of it? ’Oo are you?”

“Hester Monk. I run a clinic for street women on the other side of the river. Portpool Lane,” Hester answered loudly, and without backing away.

“Do you now?” Agatha Nisbet’s eyes looked her up and down coolly. “Wot d’yer want with me, then?”

Hester decided to plunge in. Niceties were going to get her nowhere. “A better source of opium than I have at the moment,” she answered.

“Yer mean cheaper?” Agatha said with a curl of her lip.

“I mean more reliable,” Hester corrected her. “Cheaper would be good, but I believe that as a rule you get what you pay for.” She gave a slight shrug. “Unless you’re very new to it, and then you get less. There are plenty of dealers who would happily shortchange the sick.” She looked Agatha up and down equally frankly. “I should imagine they don’t do it to you a second time.”

Agatha smiled, showing large, strong, unusually white teeth. “Any sense an’ they don’t do it the first time neither. Word gets round.”

“So what you have is as reliable as it can be?” Hester reaffirmed.

“Yeah. But it’ll cost yer some.”

“Did Dr. Lambourn come here?” she asked quickly.

Agatha’s eyes widened. “He’s dead.”

Hester smiled as artlessly as she could manage. “And now maybe there won’t be a bill through Parliament to regulate the sale of opium because of it, at least not for a number of years.”

Agatha’s eyes narrowed.

Hester felt a sudden chill of fear, and realized that perhaps she had made a mistake, even put her own life in danger. She must not let this big woman see her unease. “Which will give me a little more latitude,” she said aloud. She was certain that her voice was husky.

Agatha stood motionless, one hand on her hip. Hester could not help noticing the size of her fist, the shining, bony knuckles.

“An’ what is it you mean by that, exactly?” Agatha asked. Her voice was so soft, had Hester not been able to see her, she might have thought she was listening to a child.

Her mouth was dry and she could not swallow. Her throat tightened. She gulped air. “That I can’t do my job if I can’t get supplies,” she answered. “The men in government don’t think of that, do they? Rich men can buy opium to give them nice dreams, but people in the streets and in the docks, people who are beaten or broken, get what they can, where they can. Do I have to explain that to you?” She allowed the final question to be tinged with a note of disgust.

Agatha’s large body relaxed and she allowed the ghost of a smile into her face. “Want a cup o’ tea?” she asked, stepping back a bit so Hester could come into the room. “I got the best. Get it from China special.”

Hester blinked. “Doesn’t all tea come from China?” She followed Agatha into the room, which was surprisingly tidy, even clean. There was a slight smell of smoke and hot metal from the wood-burning stove in the corner, very like those she had seen in hospital wards in her nursing days. There was a kettle on the center of the top, steaming gently.

Hester closed the door behind her and followed Agatha inside.

Agatha rolled her eyes. “Most, though folks reckon it’ll do well in India soon. This is the best. Delicate. Know a lot, the Chinese.”

In spite of herself, Hester was interested. She sat in the seat that Agatha offered her, and a few moments later accepted the cup of steaming, fragrant pale yellow tea, without milk. It had a sharp, clean fragrance she was unused to. She glanced around the walls and saw on one shelf at least thirty books in various stages of disrepair. Clearly they had been very well read indeed. On the opposite wall were glass jars with all manner of dried leaves, herbs, roots, and powders in them.

She forced her attention back to the huge woman now sitting opposite her, watching and waiting.

Hester sipped the tea again. It was quite different from any she was familiar with, but she thought she could learn to like it. “Thank you,” she said aloud.

Agatha shrugged and raised her own cup.

“How did you find out about this tea?” Hester asked, sipping it again.

“Plenty o’ Chinese in London,” Agatha replied. “They know a lot about medicine, poor devils. Showed me some.” She looked up quickly at Hester, sharp-eyed. It was a warning that her secrets were precious. She had won them hard and was not going to share them without a price.

Hester had a degree of respect for that. Her own skills had been learned on the battlefield. “I wish we’d had enough opium in the Crimea,” she said quietly. “Would have helped a bit, especially when we had to amputate.”

Agatha looked at her carefully, eyes narrowed. “Do that a lot, did yer?”

“Enough,” Hester replied; memory brought it back to her, as if she were crouching in the mud and desolation of the battlefield, trying to block the cries out of her mind and concentrate only on the silent, ashen face in front of her, the eyes sunken in shock and pain.

Agatha nodded slowly. “Don’t do to go over it,” she said. “Drive yerself mad. Do yer get ’em now, people with the worst pain, torn-open guts, smashed bones an’ the like?”

“Not often.” Hester took the chance she had been hoping for. “Sometimes. Stones that won’t pass, or torn open after a bad birth. Terrible beatings. That’s why I need good opium.”

Agatha hesitated as if making a difficult decision.

Hester waited. Seconds ticked by.

Agatha took a deep breath. “I can get yer the best opium,” she said, her eyes fixed on Hester’s. “Good price. But I can do better than that. Eatin’ it’s better than nothin’, not as good as smokin’ it. But there’s better still. Scottish man made this needle where you can stick it straight into the vein, right wherever the pain’s worst. Fifteen years ago, or more. I can get you one of them needles.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Hester said with a sudden lurch of excitement. “Can you teach me how to use it? And how much to give?”

Agatha nodded. “Have to be careful, mind. You can kill someone easy, if you get it wrong. And worse than that, if you give it to them more than a few times, they get so they want it every day, can’t do without it.”

Hester frowned, her heart beating faster. “How do you stop that from happening?” Her voice was a little hoarse.

“You make it less, then you stop them getting it at all. They learn. Least, most do. Some don’t, an’ they go on taking it, one way or another for the rest o’ their lives. More an’ more. Makes them as sells it rich.” The look of fury on her face made Hester wince.

“Is there another way to deal with pain?” Hester asked softly, knowing the answer.

“No.” Agatha let the one word fall into the silence.

“Is that what Dr. Lambourn was asking about?” Hester asked. “Needles?”

“Not at first,” Agatha replied. “ ’E were mostly on about deaths of children ’cos women gave ’em medicines they don’t know what’s in. He didn’t get nothin’ out of it one way or the other.”

“You talked with him?” Hester pressed.

“Course I did. I told you, even if the government’d taken his report, it wouldn’t ’ave made no difference to me nor you. An’ they didn’t anyway, so what do you care?” Her eyes were sharp, clever, watching Hester’s face.

“But he asked about addiction to smoking opium?” Hester pressed again.

Agatha grimaced. “Not much, but I told ’im anyway. ’E listened.”

“Do you think he killed himself?” Hester said bluntly.

Agatha frowned. “He didn’t look to me like that kind of coward, but I s’pose yer never know. What difference does it make to you?”

Hester wondered how much truth to tell. She looked at Agatha more carefully, and decided not to lie at all. The whole question of opium in medicines was complicated by the abuse of it. Where was the dividing line between supplying a need, and profiteering? And had any of it to do with Joel Lambourn’s death, or Zenia Gadney’s?

“I think maybe he was murdered and it was made to look like suicide,” she said aloud to Agatha. “Some of it doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah? Like I said, why do you care?” Agatha repeated, looking at Hester narrowly.

“Because if he was murdered, then that makes more sense of Zenia Gadney’s murder on Limehouse Pier,” Hester explained.

Agatha shivered. “Since when did bloody lunatics make sense? What’s the matter wi’ you?”

“Mrs. Lambourn’s on trial for the murder of Zenia Gadney because the doctor visited Zenia every month and paid her rent and all her other expenses,” Hester replied with some heat.

“Stupid bitch,” Agatha said bitterly. “What the hell good did that do ’er?”

“None at all.”

“So why’d she do it then?” Agatha said, frowning, her eyes full of anger.

“Maybe she didn’t. She says the doctor didn’t kill himself, either.”

Agatha stared at her, a new comprehension in her face. “An’ you reckon as it was something to do with him asking about the opium?”

“Don’t you? There’s a lot of money in opium,” Hester pointed out.

“Bleedin’ right there is,” Agatha said with scathing savagery, as if some memory had returned to her with the thought. “Fortunes made in it, an’ reputations lost. Nobody wants to think o’ the Opium Wars now. Lot o’ secrets, most of ’em bloody an’ full o’ death an’ money.” She leaned forward a little. “You be careful,” she warned. “You’d be surprised what big families got rich on that an’ don’t say nothing about it now.”

“Did Dr. Lambourn know that?”

“Didn’t say, but he weren’t nobody’s fool-an’ neither am I. Don’t go messin’ around with opium sellers, lady, or you’ll maybe end up somewhere cut up in an alley, or floatin’ down the river, belly up. I’ll get yer what yer need. An’ I ain’t sayin’ that fer profit. Those bastards will ’ave yer for breakfast, but they won’t cross me.”

“Did Zenia know about all this?” Hester said quickly.

Agatha’s eyes widened. “How the ’ell do I know?”

“I’d wager good money you know a great deal about anything that interests you,” Hester retorted instantly.

Agatha laughed very quietly, almost under her breath.

“So I do, but madmen wot butcher women in’t my concern, less they’re after me. An’ if they do that …” She lifted up her big hands and deliberately cracked her knuckles. “An’ I got a big carving knife o’ me own, if I ’ave to use it! Mind your own business, lady. I’ll get yer opium for yer, best in the world. Fair price.”

“And the needle?” Hester asked tentatively.

Agatha blinked. “An’ the needle. But yer got ter be real careful with it!”

“I will.” Hester stood up. She was glad the weight of her skirt hid the fact that her knees were trembling a little. She kept her voice very steady. “Thank you.”

Agatha sighed and rolled her eyes, then suddenly she smiled, showing her big white teeth.