A girl dropped heavily on to the bench next to Gwendolen and said, “Gotta fag?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t smoke,” Gwendolen said, trying not to sound pious. Bow Street didn’t seem the place for piety. The girl crossed her legs, her foot jiggling nervously. One of her eyelids kept twitching.
“Where are you from?” she asked Gwendolen, her cockney accent so strong that it took Gwendolen a second of delay before she could translate it. “Not around here, by the sound of it.”
“No,” Gwendolen agreed, not from round here. “Yorkshire.”
“Christ,” the girl said with a little shudder. Gwendolen might as well have said the Mongolian steppes or the Arctic tundra as far as the girl was concerned. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I am,” Gwendolen agreed.
“Gertie,” the woman said, extending a hand in an unexpected display of manners. “Gertie Bridges.”
“Gwendolen Kelling,” Gwendolen reciprocated, shaking the proffered hand. It was grimy but warm and Gwendolen felt a sudden affection for the girl. Beneath her tired, coarse make-up she was pretty and younger than Gwendolen had first thought. She bore a passing resemblance to Freda, or Freda as she might look nowadays. She was a curious little thing, a bright spark of interest on her features. She had dirty blond curls, the kind of ringlets you got if you belaboured over tying your hair in rags at bedtime. Freda had the same.
“What are you here for?” Gertie asked.
Gwendolen considered her answer for a moment before saying, “Deception.”
“Like fraud?”
“Something like that.” She was struck by a thought and said, “I’m actually looking for someone—well, two people, two girls. Their names are Freda Murgatroyd and Florence Ingram.”
“Run away from home, have they?”
“Yes.”
“What are you, the ma of one of them?” She looked suddenly suspicious. “It’s not always good, being made to go home, you know.” A lot more nervous foot-tapping. “I got taken back once. It was worse than before.”
“I’m sorry. They wanted to be on the stage.”
Gertie laughed. “Don’t we all, miss?”
“But where would you go, if you came to London?” Gwendolen persisted.
“London’s a big place, you know. There’s all sorts of places, isn’t there? You can’t keep track of girls in London. They pop up one minute and—poof!—they’re gone the next.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
Gertie started to say something when she was suddenly yanked away by a police constable with an “Ow!” worthy of Eliza Doolittle and propelled to the desk, where the police constable said to the sergeant on duty, “Solicitation, dope, thieving.”
“Take her away and charge her.”
Gertie was led away. She looked over her shoulder at Gwendolen and said, “Good luck,” and Gwendolen said, “You too.”
Was this where Freda was heading?, Gwendolen wondered. Solicitation, dope, thieving. How easy it was to fall in London. And how far it was possible to fall.
She glanced at the large clock on the wall. She suspected that she was being kept waiting on purpose, perhaps not by Frobisher but by the desk sergeant, as without consulting either Frobisher or the clock he looked up from whatever he was doing and said, “The Detective Chief Inspector will see you now, miss.” Despite her irritation at the sergeant, Gwendolen’s heart rose a little at the thought of seeing Frobisher. It took her by surprise.
* * *
—
Hopes of having lunch with him had been dashed and, regretfully, they had parted on rather frosty terms. He had been rather cantankerous with her and she had been increasingly cross with him. Gwendolen wasn’t even entirely sure what the subject of the argument was. Her independence of him, perhaps.
* * *
—
Nellie sent her driver, Hawker, to pick Gwendolen up and take her to the Crystal Cup. He loaded her bags into the boot, overseen by a disapproving Mrs. Bodley, for whom chauffeured cars seemed to indicate loose morals. Perhaps she was right.
When they arrived at the Crystal Cup, Hawker carried Gwendolen’s bags up the stairs and handed over a set of keys for both flat and club.
“Will there be anything else, miss?” he asked when he deposited the bags in the hallway. She declined his offer of help and tried to give him a threepenny bit but he backed away from it, putting his hands up and grinning, saying, “No, no, miss, Mrs. Coker would have my guts for garters if she thought I was taking a tip off you. You’re one of us now.” （What would Frobisher make of that?, she wondered.）