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couple of the girls and I – had shared a few drinks, whiled away an hour or so in the ballroom before dispersing to our separate bedrooms. I wondered if they would recognize me.
    I hoped so. I hoped that they would spot me and come across. They were at the centre of it all this evening, and I was curious to know what had happened since we saw Lippiatt’s body being dragged away down the street.
    ‘Dora!’ Inez whispered so loudly, my name echoed off the wooden floors. ‘He has blood in his sleeve ! Do you suppose—?’
    ‘Hush!’ I said.
    But he had already turned. They both had. They looked us up and down. We made an incongruous pair. The man without blood on his sleeve looked at me more closely. He turned to the other, muttered something … Yes , the other one nodded. Yes, indeed. It was me. The hooker from Plum Street. Both men raised a hand.
    ‘ What? Do they know you? ’ asked Inez, aghast. ‘Those terrifying-looking gentlemen?’
    I wasn’t sure how to answer. It happened I couldn’t remember either of their names. And, until they chose to acknowledge me, I was duty bound – honour bound – to deny it anyway.
    ‘Dora!’ shouted the dark one.
    And so it was decided.
    They picked up their glasses and crossed the room towards us. ‘A sight for sore eyes,’ he said. ‘May we join you? Are you working tonight?’ They glanced at Inez, uncertain where she quite fitted in.
    ‘ Working ?’ Inez cried out. ‘Does she look like she is working? She most certainly is not working. Thank you very much …’ She studied them more closely, through whiskey-glazed eyes, and seemed to like what she saw. ‘However,’ she added, looking pointedly at the blonder one, the man with the blood on his shirt, ‘whatever your names may be, if you would like to sit yourselves down here …’ She missed the seat, patted the air around it and then seemed to lose her nerve. She glanced at me.
    If I had sent the men away, how different things would be today! I didn’t do that. The excitement on her face – and the blood on his sleeve, and heck, they were two attractive men, and we were unaccompanied and a little drunk. I nodded, inviting the two of them to join us.
    As they pulled up their chairs, Inez muttered something soft and briefly sobering about, ‘Aunt Philippa being worried.’ I could have called a halt to it then, I suppose. Or she could. She could have said to the men – ‘I really ought to be going.’ I might have walked with her to her home, since by then she was already canned, and certainly not able to make the journey alone. But I was canned too. I was off duty. I was having a good time. I don’t believe the thought even crossed my mind. ‘You said yourself you wanted to meet some new men,’ I whispered, and winked at her.
    She swayed with laughter. ‘Oh, you’re shocking!’ she said gleefully. ‘I am in too deep now, for sure!’
    Lawrence O’Neill was the taller, blonder, handsomer of the two, and the one with blood on his sleeve. He was an Irishman from Missouri; an activist, employed by the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) to do his worst in Trinidad. Back then, of course, before the Great War and the revolution in Russia, the battle between labour and capital was mustering strength and fury in every corner of the globe. It happened that, for the time being, the UMWA had designated Trinidad its American centre. It was here, among the mines of Colorado, that the Union was concentrating its funds, its fight – and all its best people. Lawrence O’Neill from Missouri was among them, he told us. And, yes, it was Captain Lippiatt’s blood on his sleeve.
    We were all where we shouldn’t have been that night. I should have been working, of course. Inez should have been at home with her aunt, playing bezique. And, on the night their friend was murdered, you would have thought those two Union men had better things to do than while away the hours with a small-town librarian and a tired old