IN THE HACKNEY on the way to the second Widow Pepper’s house, Hale mused incessantly. “There’s something amiss here,” he said, with a low growl. He sounded like a dog perceiving footsteps on the outer boundary of its hearing. “There’s never been a more heartless or penny-pinching bunch of thieves in all the world than the East India Company. They are for nothing but their own profit, and if they are paying this alleged Pepper widow money, it is to buy her silence. They have done something despicable. Indeed, they have taken his life, you may depend upon it. How much do they pay her?”

Against my better judgment, I informed him of the sum.

“By Christ,” he swore, “that’s blood money if I ever heard of it. It’s absurd that they should pay so much, and its absurd that she should believe the money comes from us. It makes no sense, Weaver.”

He was right, of course. Elias and I had already arrived at the same conclusion. The sum drew attention to itself, and it was no sound part of an effort to conceal a crime.

“The lady I spoke to told us that Pepper was always taking notes upon things. Did he leave any of his writings about with you?”

“I have other things to concern me than idle scribblings.”

“Did you ever chance to observe what he wrote?”

“As a matter of fact, I did, but it didn’t much answer, as I never learned my letters.” Seeing my eyes widen and then a crestfallen expression overtake me, Hale hurried to add a further detail. “I can’t read, it’s true, but I know what letters look like, at least, and Pepper’s writings were not made of them entire.”

“Not made of letters?”

“Well, there were some, but there were drawings too. Pictures of things.”

“What sort of things?”

“It was hard to say, given that I only caught a glimpse. When Pepper saw me gazing at his papers, he snatched them away and glared at me something fierce. I tried to laugh it off, pointing out I could no more read what he’d written than the newspaper, but his mood didn’t lighten none. Said I was trying to steal from him. I told him I had no interest in stealing his papers and no notion of who should want them.”

“But what did the drawings contain?” I asked again.

“From the quick look he afforded me,” Hale said, “it looked like he was drawing pictures of us.”

“The silk weavers?”

“Not the men themselves, but the room and the equipment, the looms. Like I told you, it was only a quick glance, but that was the impression I got. Though I couldn’t guess why someone should care to steal a picture of a bunch of silk workers and their things. Who could care to look at something of so little import?”

The only answer that came to my mind was an organization that had been harmed by the will of the silk weavers: the East India Company.

Hale told the hackney man where to stop. I jumped out and offered my ill friend a hand, but he shook his head. “I took you here, Weaver, but that’s as far as I go. I knew poor Jane Pepper when she was a girl, and I’ve no heart to see her as she is now. Her father, rest his soul, was a friend of mine, and it burns me up to think he saved his whole life to put together twenty pounds dowry on his little girl. At the time I thought he was throwing away the money, letting her marry Pepper, and now I know it.” He shook his head again. “There’s some things I cannot choose to see.”

I understood this reluctance only too well. I never wanted to be in St. Giles after dark, and after Hale’s ominous warning I wanted it even less. Nevertheless, I followed his directions and soon found the house to which he had directed me. My knock was answered by a very old woman wearing a dress in a very poor state of repair. When I told her I wished to speak with Mrs. Jane Pepper, she let out a sigh of exasperation, or perhaps sadness, and directed me up the stairs.

Mrs. Pepper met me at the door in such a state of undress that it was no longer possible to pretend I did not suspect that her place in the world had fallen considerably since her husband’s death. She wore her hair and her gown loose, with the better part of her ample bosoms exposed. And she smelled of gin. Indeed, I could see, in the hard lines around her eyes and the way in which her cheekbones jutted out against the tight skin of her face, that in defiance of natural order it was the drink that owned the drinker. And yet, under the hard crust of misery and desperation, I could see the remnants of a lovely creature. There could be no doubt that Absalom Pepper had an eye for beauty.

“Hello, my dear,” she said to me. “Please come in.”

I accepted her invitation and took a seat, without waiting to be asked, in the room’s only chair. She sat across from me on her bed. “What’s it to be tonight, then, dearie?”

I reached into my purse and retrieved a shilling, which I handed her. “Some questions, only. That’s for your time.”

She snatched up the coin the way I’ve seen monkeys snatch at sugar plums meted out by their masters. “My time,” she told me in a steady voice, “is worth three shillings.”

I could little credit that she had ever been paid so well for any favor, let alone one as gentle as that I sought, but I hadn’t the spirit to argue with the poor creature, and I provided the coin she required.

“I wish to ask you of your late husband.”

“Oh, my Absalom,” she said. Her eyes became moist, and some of her icy hardness appeared to melt. “Was there ever a dearer man?”

I was struck at once by such similarity of devotion in the two Mrs. Peppers. I knew not how the late Mr. Pepper had so charmed the ladies, but I could only wish I knew a small fraction of his secrets.

“He was a good husband, then?”

“He was a good man, sir. The best of men. And it is often true that a good man does not always have the leisure to be a good husband.”

Particularly if he is busy being someone else’s good husband, I thought, though I would not dream of giving voice to such a comment. “What can you tell me of him?”

“Oh, he was good to me, sir, very good to me. When he was with me, I should have never suspected there were even other women in the world, for he only thought of me, only saw me when we walked down the street together. We could be in St. James’s with the fanciest folk in the metropolis, and he would not notice a one of them. And he would-” She stopped herself now and gave me a critical glance. “Why is it you wish to know? Who are you?”

“I do beg your pardon, madam. My name is Benjamin Weaver, and I have been charged to inquire into the affairs of your husband in order to determine if he may have been owed some money prior to his death.”

It was a cruel trick and I knew it, but there was little I could do to aid this Mrs. Pepper, and much I would have to do to aid those who depended upon my labors. Besides, a little hope might, in her case, be more of a kindness than a cruelty.

“Money? Who from? How much?”

I held up my hands, as if to say, How can such powerless people as ourselves fathom the ways of the great? “Indeed, I cannot say how much, nor exactly who from. I have been hired by a group of men inclined to invest in projects, and they have asked me to inquire into Mr. Pepper’s affairs. I know nothing beyond that.”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “he had more going on than silk weaving, I can tell you that. He always had money in his pocket, which none of the other silk weavers did. And I wasn’t to say anything to Hale and the others about it neither, because they wasn’t to know about it. On account they would be jealous of Absalom, what with his being so very clever and handsome.”

“And what did he have going on, other than silk work?”

She shook her head. “He would never tell me. Said I shouldn’t concern myself with such dry matters as that. But he swore we would be rich one day soon. And then he died, all tragic like, falling into the river. It was a cruel thing for fate to leave me so, alone and penniless.”