“We don’t know anything,” I said. “We went to Rebecca Hooke’s today, and they said she had been dismissed from service. We came here to see if she’d come home.”
“Rebecca Hooke is a lying whore if she says she dismissed Anne. She would have come straight here, and she hasn’t even sent a message. She is still in that house, and they’ll keep her there as long as they can. Until the baby is born if it hasn’t been already.”
“That seems likely,” I replied. I couldn’t tell her that her grandson had probably died earlier in the day after being cast into a privy, not until I knew it to be true.
“Well, I’d better get back to my work. My husband needs me.” She turned and walked back into the shop. From behind, her gait resembled that of a woman twice her age. The loss of a child carries a terrible weight.
Martha and I walked back to my house, talking over the facts of the case and in the process becoming increasingly dispirited. An infant had been murdered, his mother had vanished. While Rebecca Hooke seemed the most likely suspect, we had no evidence to bring before the Justice of the Peace.
“Perhaps one of the servants knows something,” Martha said. “We could question one of them the way we did Anne.”
“You saw the footman and that witch who snatched Anne from under our noses. They’ve already joined in Rebecca’s black-hearted ways.”
“I could use a drink,” she said, and without waiting for a response she turned in to an alehouse. I followed her and we sat at a rough wooden table. Neither of us spoke until the barmaid brought us cups of ale.
Martha drank most of hers in one gulp. “I would say we’re back where we started,” she said, staring into her drink. “Except that yesterday the child was alive and we knew where Anne was. Now we have a child’s body and no idea where to find Anne.” She paused. “My lady, do you think we will find justice for that child?”
“Under the best of circumstances, most crimes such as this one go unsolved, especially here in the city,” I said. “There are simply too many people to be sure who the child belonged to. And in this case, if Rebecca is behind the murder, our chances are far worse.”
“So you’ve done this before?” she asked. “Investigated a child’s murder?”
“A few times. The death of the child is horrible, but oftentimes finding the killer is worse. In your heart you want the murderer to be someone you can hate, someone you can rejoice to see hanged. But in most cases it’s a poor serving-maid, who was scared out of her senses.” I shuddered involuntarily. “If a child dies after being born in secret, the mother must prove her innocence or be hanged for murder. Even if we found Anne, she would face a trial for killing her son. And unless she could prove that someone else threw the child in the privy, she would be executed.” Martha grew visibly pale, and I realized that I had very nearly described what had happened to her. If someone had discovered her son’s body and traced the child to her, Martha would have been hanged for his murder. We finished our drinks and went home.
When we arrived, I sent her to her quarters, and I retired to my chamber, intending to write to friends in the city who might be willing to hire Ellen as a maidservant. When I reached my desk I found my valise where I had left it—in all our running about, I had forgotten that I had a bag full of letters that might tell us who had murdered Stephen Cooper. I put aside my plan to write for Ellen and sat down to read. While I did not envy Esther’s marriage to so exacting a husband, I do admit that his precise ways made reading his correspondence much easier. The first packet included copies of letters to and from his various business associates, as he bargained with merchants in London and Hull, with the shipowners responsible for transporting goods, and even with overseas contacts as far away as Venice. From these I learned much about Stephen’s business practice—he drove a hard bargain and sought any opportunity to reduce his payment due to delays—but I gained no insight into his murder. While some of his partners complained about his hard dealings with them, nothing pointed to violence.
I opened the second packet of Stephen’s letters and found that it concerned his lawsuit with Richard Hooke. Stephen’s letters to his representatives at court confirmed what Charles Yeoman had said about the financial stakes. Over ten thousand pounds were at risk—whoever lost the suit would be destroyed. As I read, however, the picture became less clear. Yeoman had said that Stephen had nearly beaten the Hookes in court, but Stephen’s letters painted a rather different picture. While the suit seemed to be running in Stephen’s favor, in no way had the Hookes been defeated. Either Stephen had lied to Charles Yeoman about the suit, or Charles Yeoman had lied to me. But why would he want to implicate the Hookes in Stephen’s murder?