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She went over and looked at Fa
“Yes?” Hester said enquiringly. “Can I help you?”
“Is this a… a place where you take in injured women who are… are…” She stopped, apparently unable to say the word in her mind.
“Prostitutes,” Hester said for her, with a touch of asperity. “Yes, it is. Are you injured?”
The woman blushed scarlet with mortification, then the blood drained out, leaving her face gray. She swiveled on her heel and went out of the still-open door.
Bessie stifled a laugh.
The next moment another young woman stood in the entrance, very different in appearance. Her complexion was extremely fair, her yellow hair thick. She had pale lashes and brows, but a healthy color in her face, which was too bland of feature to be pretty but had an ope
She put down the dish and spoon with which she had been feeding Fa
“Are you in charge here?” the young woman asked. Her voice was low and a trifle hoarse, as if her feelings were held in so tightly the effort had half closed her throat, but her diction was perfect.
“Yes,” Hester replied. “My name is Hester Monk. What can I do for you?”
“I am Livia Baltimore.” She took a deep breath. “I understand this place…” Studiously, she avoided looking around her. “This is a refuge where women of the streets come if they are injured? I beg your pardon if I am mistaken. I do not mean to insult you, but my maid informed me that this is the correct place.” Her fists were clenched by her sides, her body rigid.
“It is not an insult, Miss Baltimore,” Hester replied steadily. “I do this because I wish to. Medicine deals with those who need, it does not make social judgments.” She hesitated, uncertain whether to say anything about Nolan Baltimore’s death or not, then instinct broke through regardless. “I am sorry for your bereavement, Miss Baltimore. Please come in.”
“Thank you.” She glanced once behind her, then closed the door. “Perhaps you can also help me…”
“If I knew anything about it, I would already have told the police,” Hester replied, turning and moving back toward the table. She knew what Livia Baltimore had come seeking. It was natural enough, and showed a great deal of courage, even if little wisdom. She was touched with pity for the pain this young woman would experience as she realized more fully the reality of the places her father had frequented, whatever his purpose. She would have kept her emotions, her dreams, her grief, far safer had she stayed at home. But perhaps she would not only gain information but be able to give it as well. Even if vast areas of her father’s life were unknown to her, she would still have some sense of his personality.
“Please sit down,” Hester offered. “Would you like tea? It’s a miserable night.”
Livia accepted. Apparently the maid had been dismissed to wait for her in the carriage, or whatever other form of transport she had used. Either Livia wished this conversation to be private or the maid had declined to remain in such a place. Possibly it was both.
Breathing heavily, Bessie filled up the kettle again from a ewer on the floor and set it on the stove. “It’ll be a few minutes,” she warned grudgingly. She sensed condescension and resented it.
“Of course,” Hester agreed, then turned to Livia. “I really have no idea what happened to Mr. Baltimore,” she said gently. “I deal only with injury and illness here. I don’t ask questions.”
“But you must hear things!” Livia urged. “The police won’t tell me anything. They speak to my brother, but they say there was a woman involved, and she may have been hurt.”
Her black-gloved hands clenched and unclenched on her reticule. “Perhaps he saw a woman being attacked, and he tried to help her, and they set upon him?” Her eyes were eager, desperate. “If that were so, she might have come here, surely?”
“Yes,” Hester agreed, knowing the word was true but the thought was not.
“Then you would have seen her, or your woman would?” Livia half nodded toward Bessie, standing with her arms folded beside the stove.
“I would have seen her,” Hester conceded. “But several women come here every night, and they are all injured… or ill.”
“But that night… the night he was… killed?” Livia leaned forward a little across the table, in her eagerness forgetting her distaste. “Who was here then? Who was hurt, and might have seen his… murder?” Her eyes filled with tears and she ignored them. “Don’t you care about justice, Mrs. Monk? My father was a good and decent man, and generous. He worked so hard for what he had, and he loved his family! Doesn’t it matter to you that someone killed him?”
“Yes, of course it matters,” Hester responded, wondering how to answer the woman, little more than a girl, without overwhelming her with facts she could neither understand nor believe. “It matters when anyone is killed.”
“Then help us!” Livia pleaded. “You know these women. Tell me something!”
“No, I don’t know them,” Hester cut across her. “I do what I can for their injuries… that’s all.”
Livia’s eyes were wide, uncomprehending. “But…”
“They come in through that door.” Hester nodded to the street entrance. “Sometimes I have seen them before, sometimes I haven’t. They are either injured with cuts, bruises, or broken bones, or they are in a critical state of disease, most often syphilis or tuberculosis, but other things as well. I don’t ask more than their first names, merely for something to call them. I do what I can, and often that is not much. When they are well enough, they go away again.”
“But don’t you know how they were injured?” Livia pressed, her voice rising. “You must know what happened!”
Hester looked down at the tabletop. “I don’t need to ask. Either a customer lost his temper, or they kept a bit of the money for themselves and their pimps beat them,” she replied. “And now and again they took a bit of trade in someone else’s patch and got into a fight that way. The competition is pretty rough. Whatever it is, it really doesn’t make any difference to what I need to do.”
Livia obviously did not understand. It was a world, even a language, beyond her experience or imagination. “What is a… pimp?”
“The man who looks after them,” Hester replied. “And takes most of what they earn.”
“But why?” There was no comprehension in Livia’s eyes.
“Because it’s dangerous for a woman on her own,” Hester explained. “Most of them have no choice. The pimps own the buildings, in a way they almost own the streets. They keep other people from hurting the women, but if they think they’re lazy, or cheating them, then they beat the women themselves, usually not badly enough to scar their faces or make them unfit to work. Only a fool damages his own property.”