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while you…”
    “Part my coat? Unbutton my waistcoat? Constable, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you intended to search me. I belong to the same club that Police Commissioner Mayne does, and if you wish to continue being a…”
    “What did I notice? That unspeakably dressed woman with trousers under her skirt, and those two poorly dressed men whom I now discover are police detectives, and that little man over there with the frayed cuffs who, I’ve been told, is the Opium-Eater. Here in St. James’s! That’s what I noticed! The Opium-Eater is the one you should question!”
    As Ryan walked up and down the aisles, listening to the conversations, similar details were repeated again and again with the same impatience about being questioned and the same indignation about being detained.
    The reaction to being questioned was by no means a sign of callousness. The rich and powerful inhabitants of Mayfair were indeed shocked by Lady Cosgrove’s murder, which was even more alarming because it had happened in St. James’s. But London’s upper class felt an intense suspicion about intrusion into their personal affairs. Respectable people didn’t commit violent crimes. That was a lower-class phenomenon. If commoners attacked one another in taverns or lurked in alleyways to stab passersby for their purses, how did that concern the inhabitants of Mayfair? Surely these laborers who called themselves constables—for the police were members of the working class—didn’t actually believe that anyone who belonged to St. James’s could have been responsible for Lady Cosgrove’s murder. A rapid search of the streets would soon reveal someone who didn’t belong in Mayfair. That’s how the police should be spending their time, not preventing decent people from traveling to their country houses or visiting family members at Sunday dinners that had been scheduled weeks earlier.
    Ignoring these complaints, Ryan glanced toward the church’s entrance, where an unshaven man in rumpled clothes appeared, carrying a satchel.
    The man nodded to Ryan and approached through all the activity.
    “Perhaps you’re up and about too soon,” the man said, a trace of alcohol wafting from his breath. “The way your hand’s pressed against your stomach.”
    “Just a stitch in my side,” Ryan told him.
    “Literally several stitches to hold you together. Maybe you should sit down.”
    “In a while.”
    “I know I ought to attend Sunday church more often, but I never expected to go to church for this reason.” The man held up his satchel. “The constable you sent told me some of the details. I assume you want plenty of sketches, just like the last time.”
    “Not exactly like the last time,” Ryan informed him.
    “What do you mean?”
    Another man joined them. His overcoat hung open, revealing that he didn’t wear a waistcoat, a condition of semidress hardly ever seen in Mayfair. Pale, he carried a tripod under one arm and a large equipment case in each hand, burdens that seemed almost too much for his thin frame.
    “Thanks for coming,” Ryan told him.
    “Where do you want me?”
    “At the front. I need photographs from several angles. Don’t step in the blood.”
    “Blood?”
    “This’ll be harsh to look at, but at least you won’t need to worry that the person you’re photographing will move and blur the result,” Ryan explained.
    “I’ve photographed dead people before. Families of the deceased hire me.”
    “Then half of this won’t be unusual for you. If this succeeds, I guarantee steady employment.”
    “I can use it.”
    As the man carried his equipment up the aisle, the sketch artist objected. “You’re putting me out of business by hiring a blasted photographer. ”
    “I need to keep up with the times.”
    “Then why did you send for me?”
    “To make drawings of a man who isn’t here.”
    “What?”
    Ryan escorted him to where Agnes, the other pew-openers, and the churchwardens were gathered.
    “This