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shoes on you and stood you ankle-deep in mud you might go as sluggishly as those two did in the early rounds. You could last an hour of that, couldn’t you?”
    Jago shuddered. It could have been from the cool of the evening.
    Cribb pulled the collar of the waterproof against his side whiskers and did not even look at Jago. “Three hours,” he said tersely.
    “Three hours, Sergeant?” asked Jago.
    “The time you should allow for a fist fight, lad. Plenty go to two hours and some have gone to four.”
    Jago did not pretend to be an expert on pugilism. He left that to Cribb. No right-minded bobby questioned his sergeant’s authority on any subject.
    “What happened to the beaten man?” asked Thackeray. He had been engrossed in pressing rainwater from his beard onto a large linen handkerchief.
    “A sharp-eyed detective would have seen,” replied Cribb, equally uncomfortable in the conditions. “If you can manage to bend your waist a fraction, you’ll see him lying where the other man put him.”
    “Still there? What’s happened to his attendants?”
    “Looking for browns. Some were tossed in after he went down. It’s the only purse Meanix gets tonight. The crowd’s thinning now. Let’s go closer.”
    They moved through churned mud where the ringsiders had been and across the fallen ropes to the protected greener square. Only the center patch was black and glutinous. On it lay the Stepney Ox, oblivious to the legs stepping across him. There, too, was one of his seconds, crouching, not to raise him, but to salvage a halfpenny from under his forearm.
    “He’s breathing,” observed Jago, with some relief.
    “One less for Waterloo Bridge, then,” murmured Thackeray.
    Cribb addressed the scavenging second. “When are you returning to London?”
    The face turned. It was scarred by years of fist fighting. One eye was sightless, stilled, perhaps, by an opponent’s thumb.
    “What’s it to you?”
    Cribb produced a coin and held it between finger and thumb above the expanse of Meanix’s back. It was a satisfactory answer.
    “Last train. We’ll bring ’im round at the Fox in Rainham. Time enough to spend what we’ve picked up ’ere. Too bloody tight-fisted, this lot are. Don’t give credit for a rousing scrap. Ah! I’m obliged to you, guv.”
    The spectators were by now steadily dispersing. Most headed in the direction of Rainham and the railway station. The referee, clearly determined for his own reasons to be first away, was already visible above a distant hedgerow, pedalling his fifty-inch Coventry Perfection dextrously through the rutted lanes towards the Fox and Grapes.
    “We’ll go the same way,” Cribb announced. “I’m ready for refreshment.”
    They joined the general trek, leaving Meanix and a small entourage. The beaten pugilist had managed to struggle to his feet, and was now wrapped in a horse blanket. The victor and his companion were evidently not joining the group at Rainham. They had already left, walking their horses slowly in the direction from which they had come.
    The Fox (no one found it necessary to mention the Grapes as well) was a small inn, conveniently close to Rainham station. Well before the detectives reached there, the influx from London had arrived and begun the process of obliterating their memory of the fight. Cribb edged a passage to the counter with difficulty and ordered three glasses of porter. Thackeray had found a single seat under a window, towards which Cribb moved with the tankards, ducking to avoid an oil lamp slung from a beam.
    “Doesn’t look as strong as it might,” he said, accepting the chair, “but any thing's welcome when you’ve got a thirst.”
    “Been to th’ fight, ’ave you?”
    The speaker was one of a group of eight firmly established around the three sides of the window seat. From the style and dry state of their dress they were the local clientele, alone among those present in not having been at Moat Farm.
    Cribb nodded. “You