A Sunless Sea

CHAPTER 7

Hester stood at the kitchen bench chopping onions to fry with the leftover potatoes from yesterday, and quite a large portion of cabbage. It would make bubble and squeak, one of Scuff’s favorite meals, and-with sausages-one even Monk seemed never to grow tired of.

She had come home early enough to prepare a pudding as well, for the first time in several days. She ran a clinic for street women, in Portpool Lane, and she had been extremely busy. Lately there seemed to have been even more than usual to attend to.

The clinic was funded by charity, and Margaret Rathbone had been by far the best volunteer at raising money. But since the trial and death of her father, she had not been to the clinic at all. She regarded Hester as having betrayed her as much as Oliver had, and their friendship was broken-it seemed irredeemably.

Hester could not change her views. She had thought about it long and painfully, wanting to salvage a friendship that mattered to her. But what Arthur Ballinger had done was not possible for her to overlook just because he was Margaret’s father. Especially the second murder he had committed, a young woman Hester had tried so hard to help. The grief of it still haunted her.

Finances for medicine, food, and fuel had all been more difficult to find since Margaret had withdrawn her help. Asking for money was not a gift Hester possessed. It required not only charm, but tact, and she had never mastered that art. She had no tolerance of hypocrisy or genteel excuses, and there always came the moment when she spoke too much of the truth. However, Claudine Burroughs had just the other day found the clinic a new patron, so the emergency had passed.

Scuff was upstairs struggling his way through a book, with a complex mixture of pride and frustration that Hester was sensitive enough to allow him privacy to deal with.

Maybe this evening Monk would be home in time to eat with them.

She had just finished chopping the onions when she heard his footsteps in the passage to the kitchen. There was heaviness in them, as if he was tired, and perhaps disappointed.

She put the knife down and washed her hands quickly to get rid of the onion smell. She was drying them on the towel hung over the rail of the oven door when he came in. He smiled when he saw her, but this could not disguise the weariness in his face. He walked over and kissed her gently.

“What is it?” she asked when he let her go. “What’s happened?”

“Where’s Scuff?” He evaded the question, glancing around.

“Upstairs reading,” she replied. “He’s not as good as he’s pretending to be, but he’s improving. Would you like a cup of tea before supper’s ready?”

He nodded and sat down on the chair at the head of the table, leaning forward a little to ease his back, and resting his elbows on the scrubbed wood.

“Nothing on the case?” she asked as she pulled the kettle into the center of the stovetop and took out the tea caddy from the cupboard. There was no need to stoke the oven. It was already full and burning well, ready to cook in.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “The only person Zenia seems to have had any real connection with is a very respectable doctor who was preparing a report for the government on opium use and sales.”

“Opium?” Hester stopped what she was doing and sat down at the table opposite him, her attention entirely caught. As a nurse, she knew a lot about the vast uses of opium. If one took it for a long time it could become addictive, only seriously so when taken as the Chinese did-not by eating it, but smoking it in clay pipes.

Briefly Monk explained Joel Lambourn’s connection with the proposed pharmaceutical bill.

“What has that to do with Zenia Gadney’s death?” she asked, not yet following his line of thought. “You don’t suspect him, do you?”

He smiled bleakly. “He committed suicide a couple of months ago.”

She was stunned. “That’s terrible. Poor man. Why did he take his own life? And if he was dead when she was killed, why are you concerned with him at all? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure if there is a connection, except that he knew her and seems to have provided for her financially.”

Hester got up and made the tea and left it to sit for a moment or two to brew.

“Why did he kill himself?” she asked again. “You are sure it was suicide?”

“The official verdict is that he did it when the government rejected his report on the damage that unlabeled sales of opium can do. His reputation was destroyed and he couldn’t face it.”

“Was he so … fragile?” she said doubtfully. “If he really did kill himself, there must have been a better reason for it than that. Was he smoking opium himself? Or did Zenia Gadney end the affair, or threaten to make it public? Would she tell his wife-that he had very odd tastes, or something?” She leaned forward a little, frowning, the bubble and squeak temporarily forgotten. “William, I don’t feel it makes sense, whether it has anything to do with Zenia Gadney’s murder or not.”

“I know.”

“Did you see this report Joel Lambourn wrote?”

“No. All the copies have been destroyed,” he replied. “And his wife, Dinah Lambourn, says she knew of his affair anyway.”

Hester was puzzled. “Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is she like?” she asked curiously, trying to picture a woman who had lost so much and was trying desperately to hold on to some kind of meaning in her life.

“Very emotional,” he said quietly. “But she has a kind of dignity you have to admire. She believed in him passionately, and still does. She thinks he was murdered.”

Hester was startled, and yet perhaps it was the obvious straw to grasp for.

“Could he have been?” she asked doubtfully.

She saw the frown cross his face before he answered.

“I’m beginning to wonder about that myself,” he said slowly. “He is said to have taken a fairly heavy dose of opium and then cut his wrists.” He gestured slightly with one hand. “Up on One Tree Hill, in Greenwich Park.”

“Said to have?”

Monk shook his head a little. “The evidence seems unclear. The doctor who examined him saw nothing containing opium, no powder wrappers, no bottle for a liquid or to drink water from. No knife or razor. And one of Lambourn’s assistants said he wasn’t distressed about his report being refused, that he intended to fight. But the other one says he was completely broken by it.”

Hester stood up and fetched the teapot off the stove. She poured a cup for each of them. Its fragrant steam filled the air as she passed one cup across the table to him.

“His wife says he was strong, and his sister says he was weak,” he said. “And even if he was murdered, I don’t know what it can have had to do with Zenia Gadney’s murder, except that his wife says there could be a connection.”

“Why does she think that?” Again Hester was confused.

“I feel it’s because she’s desperate,” he confessed. “I can’t think of anything worse than for the person you love most in the world to take their own life, without warning you, and without explaining anything at all as to why, or giving you any chance to help or understand.”

Hester felt an ache of pity for this woman she knew nothing else about. How could happiness be so impossibly fragile? One day you have a home, a place in society, and the only thing that really matters, a companion of heart and mind. Then the next day everything is gone, hideously and without reason. Everything you thought you knew swept away and what’s left only looks like what you had, but it’s empty.

“Hester …?” His voice cut across her thoughts.

“Nor can I. Everything that matters-gone.”

“Yes. Loving is always dangerous.” He gave a bleak smile and touched her hand gently across the table. “As you have told me more than once, the only thing worse is not loving at all.”

At that moment Scuff appeared at the door, looking pleased with himself and holding a book in his hand.

“I finished it,” he announced triumphantly, meeting Hester’s eyes for her approval. Then he looked over toward the stove. “Supper yet?”

“Not yet,” she answered, keeping her face composed with difficulty. “You have chores to do. Then when you’ve finished it’ll be sausages and bubble and squeak.”

His grin was enormous. He glanced at Monk just to be sure for himself that he was all right, then he turned and left. They heard his feet clattering out into the scullery and the backyard to sweep and clean up.

“So much for safety of heart,” Hester said, standing up again. “I’d better put the bubble and squeak on, and get on with the pudding, or it won’t be cooked in time.”

The following morning, Hester visited the office of a man she had known in her nursing days in the army, thirteen years earlier. She had seen him two or three times since then, and she hoped he would remember her.

Dr. Winfarthing was a large man in all respects. He was tall and rotund; his hair was thick, auburn touched now with gray, and flying all over the place. His features were generous and he regarded the world benignly through a pair of spectacles that always looked as if they were about to slide off his nose.

“Of course I remember you, girl,” he said cheerfully. “Best nurse I know, and most trouble. Who have you upset now?”

She took no offense whatever. The remark was perfectly justified, and from him, almost a compliment. When she had returned from the Crimea she had had high and totally unrealistic hopes of reforming the nursing profession. She was impatient with delay, even more so with those who clung to the old because it was familiar, even if it was wrong. When she thought people’s lives were at stake, she had not even tried to be tactful.

“No one just at the moment,” she replied with a rueful smile.

Winfarthing waved expansively to offer her a seat in his spacious, chaotic office. As always it was crowded with books, many of them not even remotely connected with medicine. Indeed, some of them were of poetry, some fairy stories that had amused him or pleased his imagination over the years.

“Should I flatter myself that you have come simply to see how I am?” he asked with a crooked smile. “Ah, this will be good fun-let’s see how will you answer now, without hurting my feelings, but still retaining a semblance of grace.”

“Dr. Winfarthing!” she protested. “I-”

“Need help with something,” he finished for her, still smiling. “Is it medical, or political?”

The question was so accurate, it reminded her just how well they had known each other, and how transparent she was to him.

“I’m not sure,” she said candidly. “Did you know Dr. Joel Lambourn?”

The light vanished from Winfarthing’s face and suddenly it was crumpled and sad, his years sitting heavily on him. “I did,” he replied. “And I liked him. He was a remarkably decent man. You’d have liked him, too, even if he had exasperated you. Although, come to think of it, he probably wouldn’t have. You really aren’t any wiser than he was, poor soul.”

Hester was taken aback. Winfarthing had always been able to do that to her. He was one of the kindest men she knew, yet his perception was scalpel-sharp, and if he liked you, he had no hesitation in speaking frankly. His trust in her was a compliment, as if they were equals, and pretense had no place in their communication.

“You knew him quite well,” she concluded.

He smiled, knowing that she had evaded his comment on her, and done it with a degree of grace. “He was the sort of man that if he had any respect for you, he allowed you to know him honestly,” he replied, blinking several times, oddly embarrassed by his emotion. “I am greatly flattered that he liked me. It was the best compliment he could have offered. Worth far more than telling me I was a great doctor-which I’m not. And don’t argue with me, my dear. My medical knowledge is adequate. Perhaps a little outdated now. It is my understanding of people that you admire, and my ability to get the best out of them.”

She met his eyes and nodded. He deserved the truth from her in that also. “Tell me more about Dr. Lambourn,” she said.

He pushed his hand through his hair, leaving it wilder than before. “Why? What difference does it make to you now? He’s gone.”

“Did you know his wife as well?” Again she sidestepped the question.

“I met her,” he said, studying Hester’s face to find what she was really seeking. “Very fine woman, handsome. Again, why? I can keep asking as long as you can keep dodging me, and you know that.”

“She doesn’t believe he took his own life,” she replied.

“Another one of your ‘lost causes’?” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I find it hard to believe, too, but they say the evidence is there. What else would it be? No one climbs a bare hill alone at night and cuts their wrists by accident, girl. You know that as well as I do.”

She felt foolish, but she would not give up. If Winfarthing did not believe Dinah, then who would? “How important was the research Dr. Lambourn was doing into opium sales and use?” she asked. “Should there be a pharmaceutical bill to control opium?”

He frowned. “Is that what he was doing? For whom? He would be in favor of such a bill, of course.”

“Are you?” she pressed.

“I’m insulted that you need to ask!” He said it sharply, but there was no anger in his face. “But it must be based on facts, not on religious or financial interests. Opium, in one form or another, is the only way most people have of dealing with pain. We all know that. God knows how many people get through the day on it-or the night.” He said it with a heaviness of heart.

“As far as I know,” she said, “what he wanted was for all remedies containing opium, which I know is hundreds-”

“At least! If not thousands,” he interrupted.

“Should be regularized and labeled as to quantity and suitable dosage,” she finished.

“Ah,” he sighed. “Poor Lambourn. Heavy vested interests against him. Lot of money in the import of opium. Even some of the best family fortunes are built on it, you know?”

“Enough to try to crush Dr. Lambourn’s report?”

Winfarthing’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you think? Political pressure? You’re wrong.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “Joel Lambourn wouldn’t have been persuaded by any man to cut his own wrists. He might have been a political innocent, but he was a first-class scientist, and far more important than that, he loved his family. He would never have left them that way.”

He blinked again. “He had two daughters, you know, Marianne and Adah. Very proud of them.” He looked at her almost angrily.

She looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Reminding me of something I was trying to forget? I know it. Don’t treat me like a fool.” He sniffed. “Why did you come, anyway? Is this about Dinah Lambourn?”

“No.” She looked up at him. “Actually it started about Zenia Gadney.”

“Who the devil is Zenia Gadney?”

“The woman who was found murdered and mutilated on Limehouse Pier, over a week ago.”

“What has that to do with Lambourn? Or opium?”

“Nothing to do with opium, so far as we know,” Hester replied. “She bought the occasional penny twist, but so does half the population. Dr. Lambourn knew her quite well, well enough to go and see her once a month, and to support her financially.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Winfarthing said instantly. “Whoever said that is either malicious or a lunatic, or both.”

“It was his sister, Amity Herne,” she answered. “But only after a little pressing. His wife agreed that she too was aware of it, but not of where Mrs. Gadney lived.”

“Mrs.? Was the woman married?” he said quickly. “Or is that a courtesy title?”

“Largely courtesy, I think, although people around her neighborhood thought she might be a widow.”

“Supported by Joel Lambourn? A colleague’s wife fallen on hard times?” Winfarthing still looked incredulous.

“Possibly,” Hester replied with some doubt. “When Dr. Lambourn died, it looks as if she might have taken to the streets to survive.”

“How old was she?”

“Middle forties, roughly.”

“There’s something wrong in this,” Winfarthing said, shaking his head. “Somebody’s lying. Has to be. Are you suggesting this poor woman was somehow connected with Lambourn’s death?”

Hester evaded the question slightly, answering with one of her own.

“If he wouldn’t kill himself because his report was rejected, and he doesn’t appear to have had any fatal illness-or any illness at all, for that matter-then he killed himself for another reason,” she said. “Could that have been an affair with a prostitute that was about to be exposed?”

Winfarthing’s face filled with acute distaste. “I suppose we never know people as well as we think we do. As a doctor, I have certainly learned that. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen-and heard.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps you would. But I still can’t see Joel Lambourn conducting an affair with a middle-aged prostitute in Limehouse.” His voice took on a more challenging tone, although it was the conclusion he fought, not Hester. “And if she were going to expose him, and he killed himself, that doesn’t answer your question as to who killed her, does it? Why do you care, girl? Was she one of the women in this clinic of yours?”

She shook her head. “No. I never met her, or heard of her before this. Limehouse is a distance from Portpool Lane, you know. It’s the manner of her death that is the worst. It’s my husband’s case.”

“Of course.” He grimaced, irritated with himself. “I should have worked that out. Well, I still find it hard to believe that Lambourn killed himself at all, over anything. I don’t mind some of life’s surprises, but I don’t like this one.”

“The alternative is that Dr. Lambourn was murdered as well, by someone who wanted his report suppressed,” she said, watching his expression to judge what he thought of the idea.

He nodded very slowly. “Possible, I suppose. There are fortunes made and lost in opium. I …” He hesitated.

“What?” she said quickly.

He looked at her, his face creased with sadness. “I would hate to think there is corruption deep enough to have a man like Joel Lambourn murdered, and labeled as a failure and a suicide, in order to cover up the misuse of opium and prevent a regulating bill that is much needed, not only for opium but for the sale of all pharmaceuticals.”

“Does that mean you won’t consider the possibility?”

He jerked forward in his chair, glaring at her. “No, it does not! How dare you even ask?”

She smiled at him with rare charm. “To make you angry enough to help me,” she answered. “But discreetly, of course. I … I don’t want someone to find you on One Tree Hill with your wrists cut.”

He sighed gustily. “You are a manipulating woman, Hester. Here am I thinking you were the only daughter of Eve who hadn’t the art to twist a man around your fingers. I’m a wishful fool. But I’ll help with this-for Joel Lambourn, not because you backed me into it!”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “If you were looking for information to make the kind of report he did, what would you look for? Can you write it down for me, please?”

“No I cannot!” he said with sudden vehemence. “One Tree Hill is quite big enough for both of us. I’ll do most of it. I’ve got excuses, reasons. You can try the ordinary apothecaries and common shops, midwives-peddlers in the street. Just see what you could buy. Ask, do you understand? Don’t get it.”

Hester nodded, and left him a quarter of an hour later with their plans made and agreed.

SHE BEGAN THAT DAY, walking the busy streets of the Rotherhithe area in the sharp winter sun. She was close to the river and she could smell the salt and fish odors on the wind, and hear the cry of the gulls. Occasionally as she turned north she saw the light on the water, glinting sharp between the rows of houses, or the dark lines of masts and spars against the sky.

She asked at small grocery shops, apothecaries, and tobacconists, and was surprised at the number of people who sold some preparation that contained an unspecified amount of opium. Of course she herself had used it at the clinic in Portpool Lane, but they had bought it in pure form and given it out very carefully measured, and as sparingly as possible. She would not have argued with anyone that it was not only the best remedy for pain, but in most cases the only one.

She began to ask the shopkeepers for advice as to how much to take, and how often. She inquired whether age or weight of the patient made any difference, and what other circumstances might alter its effect. Was there anything that would make it dangerous, such as taking other medicines at the same time, or having certain illnesses?

“Look, lady, either take it or don’t,” one busy man said to her exasperatedly, glancing at the queue of customers behind her. “Please yerself, just don’t stand ’ere arguing wi’ me. I in’t got time. Now do yer want it or not?”

“No thank you,” she replied, and went out of the cramped shop, past several strings of onions, dried herbs, and bins of flour, wheat, and oatmeal.

She did not need to spend a second day walking up and down the streets and calling at every likely shop. If it was so easy to buy opium in Rotherhithe, it would be the same anywhere else in London, and probably in every other city and town in England.

She did not mention her activities to Monk when he came home late in the evening, having spent most of the day on the river dealing with thefts, and the murder of a sailor during a brawl. It was one of those senseless, drunken arguments that got out of hand. Abuse had been shouted, tempers high and out of control. The next moment a broken bottle had slashed a man’s artery and he had bled to death before anyone could gather their wits and even think of helping him. The guilty man had run, and it had taken Monk and three of his officers most of the afternoon to catch him and arrest him without any further injury.

It had been late when he joined Orme, still searching for the “Limehouse Butcher,” as the newspapers were calling him.

Hester went in to the clinic in the morning, but only to ask the help of Squeaky Robinson, the reformed bookkeeper who had owned the buildings of the clinic when they had been one of the most profitable brothels in the area. A clever trick of Oliver Rathbone’s had manipulated Squeaky into saving himself from prison by giving the buildings to charity. Highly aggrieved, Squeaky had been suddenly made homeless, and with careful supervision and no trust at all, he had been permitted to remain in residence and manage the property in its new function.

Over the years since then he and Hester had come to respect each other, and now-at least in certain areas-Squeaky was both liked and trusted. This was a circumstance he enjoyed very much, to his own confusion. He would have denied it indignantly had anyone suggested such a thing.

Hester walked into the office where Squeaky had his files and ledgers. He was sitting at the desk looking almost like a clerk. Lack of anxiety and now regular nights had filled out some of the hollows in his face, but he was still long-nosed, slightly gap-toothed, and his hair was as straggly as always.

“Morning, Miss Hester,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t worry about money, we’re not doing bad.”

“Good morning, Squeaky.” She sat down in the chair opposite him. “It isn’t about money today. I need information about someone. Not here-in Limehouse. Who should I go and ask?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said instantly. “I know you. It’s about that poor cow as was found on the pier, isn’t it? Don’t even go looking. A lunatic like that is trouble you don’t need.”

Hester had expected an argument and was prepared.

“She lived in the area,” she told him conversationally, as if he had asked. “Someone must have known her apart from Dr. Lambourn. If she worked the streets at all, the other women would at least have known something about her. They won’t tell the police, but they’ll talk to each other.”

“What is there to know?” Squeaky said reasonably. He looked her up and down and shook his head. “She was a tart, knocking on a bit and just about past it. Her steady bloke topped hisself, Gawd knows why, so she were broke, and she got careless. What else is there to know?”

“Maybe why he went to her in the first place?” she suggested.

“Now that’s something you really don’t want to know,” he said sharply. “If he were bent enough that he had to go all the way from Greenwich over the river to Limehouse to get whatever it was he wanted, then it’s something no lady needs to know about, nurse in the army or not.” He frowned. “Which does make you wonder why she wasn’t fly enough to deal with some bleeding lunatic what wants to cut her up, don’t it? I mean you’d think she’d smell he was a bad ’un and leave him alone, not go clarting off onto the pier with him. She got real, real careless. Damn stupid place to go fornicating, anyway! But that still don’t matter to you.”

“Or she was desperate,” she said quietly. “Who do I ask, Squeaky?”

He sighed with exasperation. “I told yer! Leave it alone. Yer can’t help her, poor cow. What’s Mr. Monk going to do if you go and get yerself cut up, eh? For that matter, what are we all going to do? Sometimes I think you haven’t got the wits of a tuppenny rabbit!”

She smiled at him, ignoring the insult. “Then come with me, Squeaky.”

He sighed heavily and put away everything on his desk with more care than necessary. Then he followed her out of the door into the hallway, and then the street.

He grumbled all the way to the omnibus, and when they got off on Commercial Road in Limehouse he stayed so close to her she all but tripped over him half a dozen times. But, walking along the narrow, dank, rain-chilled backstreets, she was very pleased to have his presence.

“Told yer,” he said after the fifth person they had spoken to had, like all the others, denied ever having seen or heard of Zenia Gadney. “They’re all too scared to say anything. Want to pretend they never heard of her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hester retorted sharply. “They worked in the same streets. They have to have heard of her. And what do they think I want to know for, except to help catch the man?”

They continued for several more hours, but all they could learn of Zenia Gadney was what Monk already knew. She had been a quiet woman, well spoken. If you listened to her, she did not sound like the local prostitutes, or even like the shopkeepers, laundresses, and slightly more respectable housewives. No one they spoke to owned to particularly liking or disliking her. Certainly none of the prostitutes considered her a threat.

“ ’Er?” one coarse-faced blond woman said indignantly. “Too old, fer a start. I’m not sayin’ as she were downright ugly or nothin’. In fact, not bad, if yer took the time ter look, but dull. Dull as a bucket o’ mud, if yer know wot I mean?” She put her hands on her hips. “Got no fight in ’er, an’ no fun. A man wants yer ter more’n just stand there! If yer ain’t got looks, yer gotta ’ave something else, ain’t yer?” She looked Hester up and down, making her judgment. “Ye’re too skinny by ’alf, but yer’ve got fire. Yer might make enough ter get by.”

“Thank you,” Hester said drily. “If I need to fall back on it, it’d better be soon.”

The woman’s face split into a wide grin. “Ye’re right about that, love. Yer in’t got too many years left ter ’ang around.”

“Did she use opium much?” Hester asked suddenly.

The woman was startled. “ ’Ow the ’ell do I know? But if she did, what of it? P’raps she’d got pains. ’Aven’t we all? She don’ sell it, if that’s wot yer mean. Quiet, she was. I ’eard someone say she read books. If yer want the truth, I think she were all right once, an’ she fell on ’ard times. I’d say ’er ’usband died, or went ter jail. Left ’er ’igh an’ dry. Got by the best way she could, poor cow. Until some bleedin’ madman got to ’er. If the rozzers were any good at all, they’d ’ave ’anged the bastard by now.”

Squeaky nodded as if he understood perfectly.

Hester glared at him, and he smiled back, showing crooked teeth, several of them dark with decay.

“Well, even if you ain’t got nothin’ ter do,” the woman went on, “I ’ave.” And without adding anything more, she swirled her skirt and walked away, swaying invitingly.

Hester returned to see Dr. Winfarthing and found him sitting hunched up in his office, his expression one of deep gloom. He barely managed a smile as he hauled himself out of his chair to welcome her.

“What did you find?” she said without preamble.

“Barely scratched the surface,” he answered. “But enough to know there’s a devil of a lot going on underneath. This is a rats’ nest, girl. Hundreds of rats in it, including some very big, fat ones with sharp teeth. Lot of money in opium. I asked enough to get some idea of how they bring the raw stuff into the country, which I suppose we all know, if we thought about it. They cut it with God knows what. But it goes back a lot further than that. Back to the Opium Wars in China, ’39 to ’42, then ’56 to ’60. There’s a whole lot of that you don’t want to know about. Lot of death, lot of cheating, lot of profit.”

She sat down at last. “I know some people eat opium whom you wouldn’t necessarily expect to. Artists and writers we admire.”

He shook his head, his lips pursed. “It isn’t the eating of it that’s the big, ugly thing you’re going to uncover, girl. It’s the nice, respectable fortunes that were built on deceit, and the deaths of a lot of soldiers sent in to fight a filthy war, not for honor but for money. And God knows how many Chinese. Tens of thousands of them. Nobody’s going to like you for showing them that. It’s all right for foreign savages to behave like savages, but we don’t want to hear that we did it-that Englishmen were without honor.”

“Those of us with any knowledge of history already know it,” Hester said very quietly. Even though she meant it, it was still painful to admit. Perhaps that, as much as the senseless death, was what infuriated her still about the Crimea.

He nodded. “Those of us who’ve seen it, and had to try to clear it up, not the rest. Did you ever meet anyone else who wanted to learn about it anymore, because as sure as hell’s on fire, I didn’t.”

“Is that what was in Dr. Lambourn’s report?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s what would be in mine, if I made one. Some of the things we did out there would shame the devil.” He glared at her, angry because he was afraid for her. “Leave it alone, Hester. You can’t save Lambourn, God rest him. And it didn’t have anything to do with this poor woman’s death. She’s just one more incidental victim.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him bleakly.

“Don’t thank me!” he roared. “Just tell me you’ll leave it alone!”

“I never make promises I don’t mean to keep,” she answered. “Well, hardly ever. And not to people I like.”

He groaned, but knew her too well to argue.