“His child died last night,” the detective whispered back.

At that moment, the unshaven man on the bed was making some point. He was emphasizing it by stabbing at the air with a surgical scalpel. The silver-haired man quickly held up his hands and rose to his feet. The hostage-taker was growing increasingly agitated, and only began to calm when the other backed off to a distance. Sebastian heard a snick of metal on metal, and looked to his side.

He saw that one of the sergeants held a Lee-Enfield army rifle and was sliding the bolt as slowly as he could, though slowing the action did nothing to make it more discreet.

The superintendent of M Division Southwark came striding out of the ward with his face set and grave. In contrast to his hair, his brows and mustache were mostly black.

Even as their commander rejoined them, the sniper sergeant with the Lee-Enfield was murmuring under his breath, “Just say the word, sir.” But the superintendent waved him down, and hardly needed to give his reasons why; not at this distance, and not with the child so close.

Keeping his voice low, he said, “I can’t bargain with him. With the nurse dead, he’s for the drop and he knows it. What can I offer a man in that position?”

“God’s mercy,” one of his detectives suggested, “if he spares the child.”

“I fear he’s given up on that. We’ll have to rush him.”

At which point, Sebastian spoke up.

“Sir,” he said, and the superintendent’s gaze swung to him.

“Who are you?”

“Sebastian Becker, sir. From the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor. May I speak to your man?”

“To what end?”

“I’m used to reasoning with lunatics. I don’t think your man’s so different. I can suggest a case for his survival if he’ll give up his hostage.”

“And if he won’t?”

“Then I have more experience with firearms than most. If he so much as lowers his guard to think it over, I can put a bullet between his eyes with no risk to the child. But for that I’ll need to be close.”

The superintendent was looking at him without warmth or, indeed, giving any sign of his feelings at all.

“A Visitor’s man?” he said.

“Sebastian Becker. Once of the Detectives Division where I served under Clive Turner-Smith. And later of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the United States of America, where I learned how to use a pistol.” He glanced over the superintendent’s shoulder, to see that the sallow man was looking down and explaining something to the child. The child was rigid with fear, a fact that the man seemed not to notice.

Sebastian said, “I wouldn’t wait, sir. I can see he’s growing maudlin.”

The superintendent considered his options.

“America,” he said. “They’re all gunslingers there.”

Sebastian said nothing.

Then the superintendent turned to one of his detectives and said, “Give him your pistol.”

They moved out of the sallow man’s sightline, and a fair detective with a wispy mustache handed Sebastian a Webley pocket revolver. Sebastian checked the load and then flipped back his coat to secure it in the back of his waistband.

He said, “Do we know the man’s name?”

“Hewlett,” the Superintendent said. “Joseph Hewlett. He carts waste from a tannery, when he works at all. He came drunk into the building, but this last hour has sobered him. You’d think sobriety would bring reason. But it’s merely allowed him to see how desperate his position is.”

Sebastian let his coat fall, swinging his arm a few times to see how easily he might reach for the gun at his back.

“One way or another,” he said, “the life he knows is over. He needs to understand that.”

NO BIG ROOM HAD EVER SOUNDED QUITE SO EMPTY AS THE Evelina children’s ward when Sebastian was making his way down it. The floors were of scrubbed board with a central linoleum walk. The ceiling was a full fourteen feet high. In that great space, the hard leather of his boot heels made a sound like pegs being driven into wood.

Joseph Hewlett watched him approaching, sharp-eyed as a squirrel and tense as a watch spring.

“And who’ve they sent me now?” he said as Sebastian drew near.

Sebastian stopped, not so close as to offer a threat. He could see the scalpel better from here. Not so long an instrument as the tannery blade the man had used on Elisabeth, but at least as sharp. And the girl under his control was a much smaller subject. Around five or six years old, she was big-eyed and as thin as a sparrow.

Keeping his voice even, Sebastian said, “Are you prepared to hurt that child?”

“The child is on my knee and this butcher’s knife is in my hand,” Hewlett said, “so I suppose the proposition is on the table.”

“I don’t believe that,” Sebastian said. “From a father of children.”

“Am I? The father of a child like this one? Then have those doctors bring her to me.”

Sebastian risked moving to another of the beds and lowered himself to sit. There was one complete bed’s width between the two of them, and by seating himself he immediately reduced the tension just a little. At this distance, Sebastian would be unlikely to spring for the knife.

He could smell the gin on the carter, hours old and leaking from his pores, sweet and pungent like a cheap perfume. In response to the man’s attempt at irony, Sebastian said, “You know they can’t bring her to you. You know she died.”

“Ay,” Hewlett said. “And I know who to blame.”

“Who would that be?”

“Doctors.” He spat the word with contempt.

“No doctor killed your daughter. They fought for her life and lost the battle.”

“I would have fought harder than any of them. But for my want of a rich man’s learning.”

“We can all say what we’d do in another’s shoes. When we’ve no fear of ever being tested.”

You could of said something abt. the sky and then taken the gun off the shooter when he was looking up and turned it onto him. That is surely what I would of done in yr place.

Sebastian looked at the floor for a moment.

Then he said, “I can help you.”

“No one can help me.”

“You don’t even know who I am.”

“I know a bobby when I see one. Come to charm me out so they can hang me.”

“I’m not a policeman. I’m an investigator attached to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitors in Lunacy. And listen to this, Hewlett. We do not hang those we find to be of unsound mind.”

“You’d have me play the madman? I will not. I’ll keep what dignity I have.”

“I can tell you there’s no dignity at the end of a rope. The bowels empty. And in death the male parts become aroused for all to see.”

This was something that Hewlett did not like to hear. It seemed to dismay him more than the prospect of death itself. Death was an experience for which his imagination had no precedent; whereas humiliation had a reality for him, being something that he probably experienced daily.

“You’ve seen this?”

“I have.”

He said, “Then what am I to do?”

“The child is afraid,” Sebastian said. “Will you let her go?”

“She’s not afraid,” Hewlett said, and he looked down at the girl. “We’re friends, you and I,” he said. “Are we not?” And he clumsily chucked her under the chin with the same hand that held the surgeon’s knife. His nails were black with grime and chewed ragged.

Sebastian said, “If you speak of hanging, then you must know the nurse is dead.”

“They tried to tell me she was not. So I said, produce her, then. Because I know what’s what. And the other? The receiving officer I cut?”

“You cut the receiving officer’s clerk.”

Hewlett gave a shrug.

“ ’Tis all the same to me,” he said, and Sebastian fought with the urge to reach for his pistol and end their conversation there and then.