Death of a Stranger - Anne Perry [8]
“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.”
He stared at the distance, the potbellied stove halfway along the wall, his eyes unseeing, his voice still too quiet to carry beyond the table where they sat. “ ’E’d been in a fight. Scratch marks on ’is face that never came from any fall. Look like a woman’s fingernails. An’ he were dead after ’e hit the ground, all them broken bones an’ a bash on the head. Wouldn’t ’ave moved after that. An’ there’s blood on ’is ’ands, but they wasn’t injured. It weren’t no accident, Mrs. Monk. At least not entirely.”
“I see.”
He sighed. “It’s going to cause a terrible row. The family’s going to raise ’ell! They’ll ’ave us all out patrolling the streets and ’arassing any women we see. They’re going to ’ate it . . . an’ then customers is going to ’ate it even more. An’ the pimps’ll ’ate it worst of all. Everybody’ll be in a filthy temper until we find whoever did it, an’ probably ’ang the poor little cow.” He was too wretched to be aware of having used a disparaging term in front of her, or to think of apologizing.
“I can’t help you,” Hester said softly, remembering the women who had come to the house the previous night, all of them injured more or less. “Five women came, but they all went again and I have no idea where to. I don’t ask.”
“Their names?” he said without expectation.
“I don’t ask that either, only something to call them by.”
“That’ll do, for a start.” He put down his mug and fished in his pocket for his notebook and pencil.
“A Nell, a Lizzie and a Kitty,” she answered. “Later a Mariah and a Gertie.”
He thought for a moment, then put the pencil away again. “ ’Ardly worth it,” he said dismally. “Everybody’s a Mary, a Lizzie, or a Kate. God knows what they were christened—if they were, poor souls.”
She looked at him in the sharp morning light. There was a dark shadow of stubble on his cheeks and his eyes were pink-rimmed. He had far more pity for the women of the streets than he had for their clients. She thought he did not particularly want to catch whoever had pushed the man down the stairs. The murderer would no doubt be hanged for something which could have been at least in part an accident. The death may not have been intentional, but who would believe that when the woman in the dock was a prostitute and the dead man was rich and respected? What judge or juror could afford to accept that such a man could be at least in part responsible for his own death?
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t help.”
He sighed. “An’ you wouldn’t if you could . . . I know that.” He rose to his feet slowly, shifting his weight a little as if his boots pinched. “Just’ad ter ask.”
It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning when the hansom pulled up at her house in Fitzroy Street.
Monk was sitting in the front room he used to receive those who came to seek his services as a private agent of enquiry. He had papers spread in front of him and was reading them.
She was surprised to see him and filled with a sudden upsurge of pleasure. She had known him