"I-" Hester began, chill turning to hot panic. There was no one else within hearing. The deep stairwell was only two feet away. A quick lift by those huge shoulders and she would be over it, to fall twenty or thirty feet down onto the stone floor of the laundry room. Was that how it had been for Prudence? A few moments of throat-closing terror and then death? Was the whole answer as simple as this-a huge, ugly, stolid nurse with a personal hatred of women who were a threat to her livelihood with their new ideas and standards?

"Yeah?" Dora demanded. "What? Cat got your tongue? Not so smart now, are we?" She shook Hester roughly, like a rat. "What were you doing there? What were you waiting for, eh?"

There was no believable lie. She might as well die, if she were going to, telling the truth. It did occur to her to scream, but that might well panic Dora into killing her instantly.

"I was…" Her mouth was so dry she had to gulp and swallow before she could form the words. "I was…" she began again, "trying to see how deserted the-the corridor was at this time of day. Who usually passed." She swallowed again. Dora's huge hands were gripping her arms so tightly she was going to have purple bruises there tomorrow-if there was a tomorrow.

Dora moved her face a fraction closer till Hester could see the open pores of her skin and the separate short black eyelashes.

"O' course you were," Dora hissed softly. "Just 'cos I ain't bin to school don't mean I'm stupid! 'Oo did yer see? An' why do you care? You weren't even 'ere when that bitch were done. What's it to you? That's wot I wanna know." She looked her up and down. "You just a nosy cow, 'r yer got some reason?"

Hester had a strong belief that merely being nosy would not excuse her in Dora's eyes. And a reason would be more believable.

"A-a reason," she gasped.

"Yeah? So what is it then?"

They were only a foot from the banister now, and the drop down the stairwell. A quick turn of those great shoulders and Hester would be over.

What would she believe? And what would she not hate her for? At this point truth was irrelevant.

"I-I want to make sure they don't blame Dr. Beck just because he's foreign," she gasped.

"Why?" Dora's eyes narrowed. "Wot's it ter you if they do?" she demanded. "You only just got here. Why do you care if they 'ang 'im?"

"I knew him before." Hester was warming to the lie now. It sounded good.

"Did yer, now? And where was that then? 'E didn't work in your 'ospital in the war! 'E were 'ere."

"I know that," Hester answered. "The war only lasted two years."

"Got a thing for 'im, 'ave yer?" Dora's grip relaxed a little. "Won't do yer no good. 'E's married. Cold bitch with a face like a dead 'addock and a body to match. Still, that's your trouble, not mine. I daresay as yer wouldn't be the first fine lady to take 'er pleasures wrong side of the blanket." She squinted at Hester narrowly, a new expression in her face, not entirely unkind. "Mind, you be careful as yer don't get yerself inter no trouble." Her grasp loosened even more. "Wot you learn, then?"

Hester took a deep breath.

"That hardly anyone comes along there, and those who do aren't looking right or left, and probably wouldn't recognize anyone in the shadows even if they noticed them. There's plenty of time to kill someone and stuff them into me chute."

Dora grinned suddenly and startlingly, showing several blackened teeth.

"That's right. So you watch yourself, miss! Or you could end up the same." And without warning she let go, pushing Hester away with a little shove, and turned on her heel to march away.

Hester's knees were so weak they nearly buckled underneath her and she sank to the floor, feeling it hard and cold below her, her back to the wall. She must look ridiculous. Then, on second thought, everyone passing would only think she was drunk-not collapsed with relief. She sat there for several more moments before climbing up, holding the railing and swallowing hard before setting out again along the passage.

Monk exploded with anger when he heard about it in his lodgings. His face was white and his eyes narrow and lips drawn back.

"You stupid creature," he said in a hard low voice. "You fatuous, dangerous, sheep-brained idiot! Callandra said you were tired, but she didn't say you'd taken leave of what little sense you have." He glared at her. "There's no point in asking you what you thought you were doing! Quite obviously you didn't think! Now I've got to go and look after you as if you were a child-a little child, not even a sensible one."

She had been profoundly frightened, but now she was sufficiently safe, she could give rein to anger also.

"Nothing happened to me," she said icily. "You asked me to go there-"

"Callandra asked you," he interrupted with a curl of his lip.

"If you like," she said equally quickly, and with a tight hard smile to match his. "Callandra asked me in order to assist you in getting the information that you could not have found yourself."

"That she thought I could not have found," he corrected again.

She raised her eyebrows very high. "Oh-was she mistaken? I cannot understand how. I have not seen you around the corridors or in the wards and operating rooms. Or was that dresser who fell over the slop pail yesterday you in heavy disguise?"

A flash of amusement crossed his eyes but he refused to give way to it.

"I do not risk my life in idiotic ways to get information!" he said coldly.

"Of course not," she agreed, aching to hit him, to feel the release of physical action and reaction, to contact him more immediately than with words, however stinging the sarcasm. But self-preservation restrained her hand. "You always play very safe, no risk at all," she went on. "No danger to yourself. To hell with the results. How unfortunate if the wrong man is hanged-at least we are all safe. I have noticed that is your philosophy."

In a cooler temper he would not have responded to that, but his anger was still boiling.

"I take risks when it is necessary. Not when it is merely stupid. And I think what I'm doing first!"

This time she did laugh, loudly, uproariously, and in a most undignified and unladylike fashion. It felt wonderful. All the tensions and fears fled out of her, the fury and the loneliness, and she laughed even harder. She could not have stopped even if she had tried and she did not try.

"Stupid woman," he said between his teeth, his face coloring. "God preserve me from the half-witted!" He turned away because he was about to laugh as well, and she knew it as surely as if he had.

Eventually, with tears streaming down her face, she regained control of herself and fished for a handkerchief to blow her nose.

"If you have composed yourself?" he said, still trying to maintain a frigid expression. "Then perhaps you will tell me if you have learned anything useful, either in this operation or in any other?"

"Of course," she said cheerfully. "That is what I came for." She had already decided, without even having to consider it, that she would not tell him about Callandra's feelings for Kristian Beck. It was a totally private matter. To mention it would be a kind of betrayal. "The corridor is almost deserted at that time of day, and the few who do pass along it are either rushed or too tired to remark anything, or both. They didn't notice me, and I don't think they would have noticed anyone else either."

"Not even a man?" he pressed, his attention fully back on the case again. "In trousers and jacket, rather than a dresser's clothes?"

"It's very dim. I don't think they would have," she said thoughtfully. "One would simply have to have turned one's back and pretended to be putting something down the chute. At that time in the morning people have been on duty all night and are too exhausted to mind anyone else's business. Their own is more than enough. They are thinking of lying down somewhere and going to sleep. That's about all that matters."