“The local photographer went out with the search,” Stephen Reed said, turning the box around and squinting to read the maker’s plate in the poor light. “I’ll have him look at this first thing in the morning.”

Carefully, he set the box back in its place. Sebastian was looking at the two bloodstained bags. The blood had dried and the print was difficult to read, but they appeared to be flour bags.

“Those were lying close to the bodies,” Stephen Reed said.

“Not covering the faces?”

“I think they probably were. They may have been pulled from the heads of the children as they were dragged out into the open. But I can’t get the soldiers to say.”

“Why did the soldiers move them at all?”

“Because they thought it was required of them. Like corpses from the field of battle. They’d have put the bodies on a cart and brought them back into town if they’d had one.”

“This is not a consequence of child-stripping,” Sebastian said. “You surely can’t think so.”

“I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, you and I. But I suggest that now it’s time to share your knowledge.”

“That is awkward,” Sebastian said, “given that it involves both Sir Owain and your own superiors to some degree.”

“In what way, exactly?”

“Come to the inn when your business here is done,” Sebastian said, “and I can show you what I mean.”

AS SEBASTIAN BECKER WAS LEAVING THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS IN Arnmouth, back in South London his wife was locking away the ledgers that she’d been studying for the past two hours. The heavy books with their pages of close writing went into a cupboard in the receiving office of the Evelina Hospital on Southwark Bridge Road.

Elisabeth Becker had been working late, getting the August report for the Committee of Management into order. Elisabeth was the clerk to the hospital’s receiving officer, whose role it was to assess each patient’s family for their ability to pay. Treatment was free to children whose parents were without means. The Evelina was a charity hospital, and most of its patients were the children of the poor.

The office was on the ground floor, close to the house surgeon’s rooms. This was an odd-shaped building, designed to fit a donated site in a crowded and busy part of Southwark. It was tall, with long curving sides and a flattened front end. Seen from the appropriate angle, its lines could remind a visitor of the rear view of an old-fashioned galleon towering overhead.

On her way out Elisabeth bade a good evening to Mr. Briggs, who supervised the porters and kept order in the public areas. A onetime military man with no family, he lived in sparse quarters behind the postmortem room but was rarely to be found there. By day he stood in the hallway and directed visitors to their various destinations. By night he patrolled the stairwells and corridors. He had a straight back and a stern eye, but a bout of pneumonia last winter had left him perceptibly frail. Now he patrolled with the aid of a stick, and had been discouraged from passing through the wards after his shadowy figure and the steady thump of his staff had raised nightmares in some of the children.

“Good night, Mister Briggs,” she said.

“A good night to you, Mrs. Becker,” he said, with a slight bow of his head.

It was a pity about the nightmares. They were understandable, but undeserved. Mr. Briggs always had a kind word for the children. It was their guardians who sometimes needed a reminder of authority. Most were respectful of being in a hospital, but some showed behavior that was affected by guilt, grief, drink, or any other of those factors that can render the human personality unpredictable under pressure.

At the door, she passed two of the nurses coming in. They wore blue uniforms with white caps and aprons. They’d probably been over to Guy’s; Guy’s Hospital was only a few streets away, and staff often had cause to pass between the two.

She stepped onto the street. Her head buzzed with figures, and her eyes ached from the strain of close work. It was already dark outside. But at least she was in the open now, if this busy and noisy road could be called such. Despite the racket of a passing tram, she felt a little of the tension lift.

Her eyes hadn’t always ached so. Elisabeth’s last birthday had been her fortieth. She’d approached her forty-first year without any special apprehension, but now she didn’t know what to make of it. Every Englishwoman of forty or over seemed to regard herself as old, and to behave accordingly; but Elisabeth was a Philadelphian American, and didn’t care to consider herself among them.

Was this reasonable? Or did she fool herself? The mirror showed lines, but not so many. Her mind was sharp, and she was still trim. But on the inside, there was a kind of dismay.

She regretted none of the choices she’d made in her life. She might, however, have appreciated some advance warning about the speed with which life’s options would narrow.

Heading up Southwark Bridge Road, she breathed in the air. South London air, a chilled brew of river and coal smoke and horses and fog. Ahead of her, several lines of railway track passed above the road on a mighty iron viaduct that roofed over the world as she entered the space beneath. For the next hundred yards ran a low riveted sky. Here in its shelter stood the all-night pie stand where cabbies stopped to refresh themselves and where Sebastian, when he was around, had an arrangement to pick up his messages.

Once she’d had a goal, which was to find some excuse to bring their troubled son to London. A bad turn in her husband’s career had provided it. Now they were here, and she was finding it hard to settle on any further purpose to her life beyond the day-to-day.

She often wished she could discuss these matters with Sebastian. But whenever she felt able to speak of them, Sebastian was always away on Lunacy business; and when he spent a few days at home, it was as if all the wrong feelings came rising to the fore.

And she knew how he would respond. He would make suggestions. Tell your troubles to a man, and to the best of his ability he’d advise you how to fix them. Complain at that, and you’d bewilder him. Why seek advice, only in order to reject it? What, otherwise, could have been the point of the conversation?

The evening fog put a hazy ring of light around every streetlamp. Five minutes’ walk ahead was the river. Beyond the river, the great shining capital, while behind her spread Southwark’s unhealthy warren of tenements, warehouses, and overcrowded dwellings, along with its churches, workshops, and gilded public houses.

She rarely crossed the river. When she reached Southwark Street, she turned right. These days her journeys were always the same; from home to the Evelina, from the Evelina to her home.

Such as it was. Four rooms and an attic above a wardrobe maker’s, reached by a stairway between two shops. It was her second home in London, and their sixth or seventh in the past nine years. Back when Sebastian had been the rising British Pinkerton man in the Philadelphia office, they’d rented a neat row house in a nice part of town.

Life was different now. And in at least one respect, it surely was better. It was for Robert’s sake that she’d sold her mother’s emeralds to get them here, and there could be no question that he’d gained by the move.

She was passing the chocolate factory, a Victorian building that was straining to be something more French and fancy. Its windows were busy with flutes and fruit and columns and added detail. She was close to home now. Her last turn would be into a side street after the next railway bridge, across from the Borough Market.