"You say that with great confidence," he observed quietly, halfway between amusement and a desperate need to believe her.

"I have known him for some time and seen him solve cases the police could not." She searched his face, the anxiety in his eyes, the smile on his lips belying it. "He is a hard man, ruthless, and sometimes arrogant," she went on intently. "But he has imagination and brilliance, and he has absolute integrity. If anyone can find the truth, it will be Monk." She thought of the past cases through which she had known him and felt a surge of hope. She made herself smile and saw an answering flicker in Kristian's eyes.

"If he has your confidence to that degree, then I must rest my trust in him also," he replied.

She wanted to say something further, but nothing came to her mind that was not forced. Rather than appear foolish, she excused herself and walked away to look for Mrs. Flaherty, to discuss some charitable business.

Hester found returning to hospital duty after private nursing a severe strain on her temper. She had grown accustomed to being her own mistress since her dismissal roughly a year ago. The restrictions of English medical practice were almost beyond bearing after the urgency and freedom of the Crimea, where there had frequently been so few army surgeons that nurses such as herself had had to take matters into their own hands, and there had been little complaint. Back at home again it seemed that every pettifogging little rule was invoked, more to safeguard dignity than to ease pain or preserve life, and that reputation was more precious than discovery.

She had known Prudence Barrymore and she felt a sharply personal sense of both anger and loss at her death. She was determined to give Monk any assistance she could in learning who had killed her. Therefore she would govern her temper, however difficult that might prove; refrain from expressing her opinions, no matter how severely tempted; and not at any time exercise her own medical judgment.

So far she had succeeded, but Mrs. Flaherty tried her sorely. The woman was set in her ways. She refused to listen to anyone's instructions about opening windows, even on the warmest, mildest days. Twice she had told the nurses to put a cloth over buckets of slops as they were carrying them out, but when they had forgotten on all subsequent occasions she had said nothing further. Hester, as a disciple of Florence Nightingale, was passionately keen on fresh air to cleanse the atmosphere and carry away harmful effluvia and unpleasant odor. Mrs. Flaherty was terrified of chills and preferred to rely on fumigation. It was with the greatest of difficulty that Hester kept her own counsel.

Instinctively she liked Kristian Beck. There seemed to be both compassion and imagination in his face. His modesty and dry humor appealed to her and she felt he was greatly skilled at his profession. Sir Herbert Stanhope she liked less, but was obliged to concede he was a brilliant surgeon. He performed operations lesser men might not have dared, and he was not so careful of his reputation as to fear novelty or innovation. She admired him and felt she should have liked him better than she did. She thought she detected in him a dislike of nurses who had been in the Crimea. Perhaps she was reaping a legacy of Prudence Barrymore's abrasiveness and ambition.

The first death to occur after her arrival was that of a thin little woman, whom she judged to be about fifty and who had a growth in the breast. In spite of all that Sir Herbert could do, she died on the operating table.

It was late in the evening. They had been working all day and they had tried everything they knew to save her. It had all been futile. She had slipped away even as they struggled. Sir Herbert stood with his bloodstained hands in the air. Behind him were the bare walls of the theater, to the left the table with instruments and swabs and bandages, to the right the cylinders of anesthetic gases. A nurse stood by with a mop, brushing the hair out of her eyes with one hand.

There was no one in the gallery, only two students assisting.

Sir Herbert looked up, his face pale, skin drawn tight across his cheekbones.

"She's gone," he said flatly. "Poor creature. No strength left."

"Had she been ill long?" one of the two student doctors asked.

"Long?" Sir Herbert said with an abrupt jerky laugh. "Depends how you think of it. She's had fourteen children, and God knows how many miscarriages. Her body was exhausted."

"She must have stopped bearing some time ago," the younger one said with a squint down at her scrawny body. It was already looking bloodless, as if death had been hours since. "She must be at least fifty."

"Thirty-seven," Sir Herbert replied with a rasp to his voice as though he were angry and held this young man to blame, his ignorance causing the situation, not resulting from it.

The young man drew breath as if to speak, then looked more closely at Sir Herbert's tired face and changed his mind.

"All right, Miss Latterly," Sir Herbert said to Hester. "Inform the mortuary and have her taken there. I'll tell the husband."

Without thinking Hester spoke. "I'll tell him, if you wish, sir?"

He looked at her more closely, surprise wiping away the weariness for a moment.

"That's very good of you, but it is my job. I am used to it. God knows how many women I've seen die either in childbirth or after bearing one after another until they were exhausted, and prey to the first fever that came along."

"Why do they do it?" the young doctor asked, his confusion getting the better of his tact. "Surely they can see what it will do to them? Eight or ten children should be enough for anyone."

"Because they don't know any differently, of course!" Sir Herbert snapped at him. "Half of them have no idea how conception takes place, or why, let alone how to prevent it." He reached for a cloth and wiped his hands. "Most women come to marriage without the faintest idea what it will involve, and a good many never learn the connection between conjugal relations and innumerable pregnancies." He held out the soiled cloth. Hester took it and replaced it with a clean one. "They are taught it is their duty, and the will of God," he continued. "They believe in a God who has neither mercy nor common sense." His face was growing darker as he spoke and his narrow eyes were hard with anger.

"Do you tell them?" the young doctor asked.

'Tell them what?" he said between his teeth. 'Tell them to deny their husbands one of the few pleasures the poor devils have? And then what? Watch them leave and take someone else?"

"No of course not," the young man said irritably. "Tell them some way of…" He stopped, realizing the futility of what he said. He was speaking about women of whom the great majority could neither read nor count. The church sanctioned no means of birth control whatever. It was God's will that all women should bear as many children as nature would permit, and the pain, fear, and loss of life were all part of Eve's punishment, and should be borne with fortitude, and in silence.

"Don't stand there, woman!" Sir Herbert said, turning on Hester sharply. "Have the poor creature's remains taken to the mortuary."

Two days later, Hester was in Sir Herbert's office, having brought some papers for him from Mrs. Flaherty.

There was a knock at the door, and Sir Herbert gave permission for the person to enter. Hester was at the back of the room in a small alcove, and her first thought was that he had forgotten she was still present. Then as the two young women came in, she realized that perhaps he wished her to remain.