“You can tell simply by looking? What an extraordinary gift, Inspector! I imagine the Inquisition would have made wonderful use of you.”
He wished she wouldn’t tease. “I think you said she went to a convent school.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.” She paused and then more soberly said, “You sent me a note about a locket. It implies you have a body, Inspector.”
Frobisher flinched inwardly at her bluntness. She seemed lacking the usual boundaries. Again, the war, he supposed. He wished now that he had gone out and not been in a reserved occupation—he had tried to go but had been ordered to stay. He felt a lesser man for it. Alive, though. That was something, he supposed.
“A body?” he said. “No, not at all. It’s just one of the questions we ask.”
“Well, the good news is that the Ingrams say no, Florence did not wear a locket. So that’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“She wore a crucifix, apparently.”
* * *
—
After she had left, he sat at his desk and took some moments to gather his thoughts. He wished he smoked. Nothing to stop him starting, he supposed.
Lunch with Miss Kelling being off the menu now, he ate the table d’h?te menu at the Charing Cross hotel—a plate of liver and onions that sat heavily in his stomach so that yet again his thoughts drifted uninvited back to Shropshire, and, for some reason, the crumbly white cheese produced by the farm dairy. At fifteen he had been very keen on one of the dairymaids. She had the same clean, sour smell as the cheese that she made. Gwendolen Kelling reminded him a little of that dairymaid—not that she smelt of cheese, he had caught a hint of lily of the valley when she had bent over his desk to pass him the photographs of the two girls. But the dairymaid had had the same strength, the same…he searched for the word. Transparency, he eventually came up with. No—translucency. She was who she was, no dissembling. So few people were like that, in Frobisher’s experience.
He couldn’t remember the dairymaid’s name. It was strange how something that had once been so important could just slip away down the stream of memory, the waters muddied by time. He could have followed the metaphor further （drowning in nostalgia, and so on） but thankfully his thoughts were interrupted by the waiter from the Charing Cross hotel, who had chased him down halfway along the Strand. Frobisher had been so carried away by his reverie that he had forgotten to pay for his liver and onions. “I was about to call the police,” the breathless waiter gasped when he caught up with him.
“Wouldn’t have done you much good,” Frobisher said, tipping him a shilling for his athletic efforts. He had achieved drollery but with the wrong person.
On his return to Bow Street, he took the photographs of Freda and Florence down to the mortuary to make a comparison, but the girl had moved on.
“Southwark,” Webb said, lighting his pipe.
Frobisher sighed. There was to be no escape from this endless chase, was there?
* * *
—
He set off from Bow Street once more. Life was all just coming and going, wasn’t it? And then eventually it was just going.
Oakes was out front, smoking a cigarette, pretending he wasn’t. There was to be no smoking in uniform, Frobisher was insistent on the rule being followed and here was Oakes, a man he trusted, letting the side down.
There was a girl, skinny and young, talking to him—Oakes claimed that she was “a tart” parading her wares. Frobisher gave the girl a half-crown and told her to get a hot meal. She reminded him a little of the missing girl, Freda. If you removed the heavy mask of stage make-up that Freda wore in her photograph they might have looked like sisters.
* * *
—
Eliza! he remembered as he reached Southwark. Eliza had been the dairymaid’s name.
A Change of Scene
When Gwendolen arrived in Bow Street, she was informed by the desk sergeant that Detective Chief Inspector Frobisher was “currently engaged” and would see her shortly. Did she have an appointment?
“Well, no, but I think he’s expecting me.” And the nature of her business? “I’d rather not say,” she said. This enigmatic statement, coming as it did from a woman, seemed to make her an object of curiosity. Presumably not many women had appointments with Frobisher.
She was directed to a seat opposite the desk—an uncomfortable wooden bench, its back to the wall. She felt unaccountably guilty.
Would she see Constable Cobb while she was here?, she wondered. If she did, she might chastise him for his abrupt exit from the Amethyst on Saturday night. The morning was moving rapidly towards lunchtime, perhaps she could ask Frobisher if he would like to eat with her. You couldn’t move in this part of London for restaurants.