stone parapet that served as viewing box for every urchin in Southampton with a lust for the sea. I directed her to a seat, and sank down beside her.
“Dad said as you were a real lady,” she muttered. “I'm that ashamed—”
“Mr. Hawkins is your father?” I looked up at Jenny, whose expression was aghast. “I think perhaps you should tell me what you know.”
Nell glanced at me sidelong and shook her head. “It's as much as my life is worth to speak. I daren't.”
“Am I right in thinking you know something of an officer whose body was found in the Ditches—Mr. Chessyre, lately first lieutenant of the Stella Maris?”
She gasped, and pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Are you going to be sick?”
“No. It's just that dreadful—the thought of poor Eustace.”
“You were acquainted with him?”
Her head bobbed. It was sunk so low into her bosom that I could not read her countenance. “Four year or more. We was mates.”
“I see.”
She fell silent, and I feared she might dissolve into weeping; but a second furtive glance informed me that she merely awaited initiative on my part. I reached for my reticule and extracted a shilling. Nell's head lifted and her eyes widened. I pressed the coin into her palm, and her fingers closed.
“Eustace was with me the night he died.” Her eyes were swimming with tears. “He was that afraid. That's why he left the Dolphin, and come to set up with me. He'd done some dishonour, he said, and to try to put it right would only make things worse. He'd have to run for it, he said, only he needed some blunt. I said I'd help.”
My opinion of Eustace Chessyre—already low— sank even further at this. Having failed to win his fortune from crime, the scoundrel thought to earn it off a woman's back.
“I'd never seen pore Eustace so jumpy in his skin. He wouldn't go out, but must hide in my room; he'd start at every sound, allus looking over his shoulder. Fair gave me the shudders, so it did.” Nell shuddered now, in recollection.
“He told you nothing of what he'd done?”
“Not a particle. When I tried to wheedle it outta him—so as to make him easier in his mind, like—he give me this.” She pointed to her blackened eye.
“Nothing? Not a word, not a hint of what his dishonour entailed? No … names … of anyone who might have been involved?”
Again she shook her head.
“Well,” I said, attempting to hide my disappointment, “at least we know where he was the night he died. Have you thought of telling the magistrate this?”
She looked suddenly wild, and half rose as if to spring. “I’ll be clapped in gaol!” she cried. “They've no love for a whore, them judges, and they'll lock me away.”
“Calm yourself,” I said. “I did not intend to throw you into alarm.”
“I only asked for the Cap'n because Mrs. Bidgeon— she runs the Mermaid's Tail, where I work sometimes— said he was combing the quayside for news of Eustace. I told Eustace as much, thinking maybe it was Austen he'd dishonoured, and that he ought to lie low; but he just laughed. ‘It's too late,' he said. T can't help him, nor him me. I've told off the Devil, and the Devil will have my neck for it! We'll all go to the Devil together!' “
Nell dashed away her tears with one worn hand. “I'd never seen him like that—down and beaten. Like he'd been trod on by a pack o' dogs. It scared me to death, and scares me still. When I heard they found his corpus—”
“Had he left you? Left your house, I mean, before he died?”
She gaped at me as though I were simple. “But that's what I wanted to tell the Cap'n,” she said. “About the night he were murdered, and the coach.”
“The coach?” I repeated.
“The one that come for Eustace in the middle of the night. I watched him get in, and that was the last I ever saw of him, living or dead.”
I felt a cold thrill travel up my spine. “He went into a coach of his own accord? Though he was afraid for his life?”
“He looked like he thought it was the saving of him. There,' I thought. 'Eustace will be safe as houses. He's got a friend or two more powerful than mine.' ”
“What time was this?”
“Middle o' the night. I don't properly remember. Maybe four or five bells.”1