“Oakes?” Frobisher felt more disappointment at Oakes’s perfidy than that of Maddox. He had trusted Oakes. He had called him “a safe pair of hands.”
Maddox was the gamekeeper-turned-poacher. He took girls “who no one would miss, I suppose,” Edith Coker said. “Supply and demand, Chief Inspector, the oldest trade in the book.” Girls who had run away from home, girls from orphanages, girls from the street, girls from dance schools, girls lured with promises of a clean bed and a square meal or a transformation in their fortunes. Girls were sometimes transported by Oakes in Maddox’s car to the better parts of town, Edith said.
“And brought home afterwards?” Frobisher asked. A feeling of dread descended on him.
“Not always.”
“And you knew?” She knew that the man she shared a bed with was running a prostitution racket all over London? She was a party to these vile schemes?
“I didn’t know,” she said carefully. “But I suppose I never asked. Mea culpa, Chief Inspector, I was a fool. A sin of omission,” she added, “rather than commission.” It was what he had said to Gwendolen when he divulged the existence of Lottie to her. （Pah. Sophistry.） Gwendolen had been right, it was a weak defence at best, although really it was no defence at all. “I was hoodwinked. I thought I loved him. Trust me, Chief Inspector, I have paid the price of my folly.”
“Those girls were missed,” Frobisher said. By the Mrs. Taylors, the Mr. and Mrs. Ingrams. They hadn’t forgotten their girls. They wanted them back.
And there was more, of course. Tisbury Court and Dame Wyburn—who sounded like a jolly character in a pantomime but was a bawd of the worst kind. And a Mrs. Darling in Henrietta Street—he had sent the inept Cobb there to mollify Gwendolen. She had urged him to go there himself but he had laughingly dismissed her concerns. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Mrs. Darling, according to Edith, was a procuress but also, worse, dear God, an abortionist. He thought of the damaged body of the owner of the crucifix, alive when she went in the water. Did she have any proof against this woman? Edith laughed, a hollow, mirthless kind of laugh, and said, “Only what you see standing before you, Inspector.” Oh, Frobisher thought, that was why she had been so ill.
He had thought that Edith would hand over hard evidence, perhaps even stand up in court and denounce Maddox and he would be put away for his malfeasance, but she shrank from the idea. She would not testify in court. “Not in a million years.”
“Then why tell me?”
“So that you know everything, of course. You’re the detective, it’s up to you to find the evidence. Maddox is about to seize our clubs, Chief Inspector. More power, more money, more girls.”
Was that her motivation?, Frobisher wondered. Not to atone, but to safeguard the family business?
“You can interpret it how you want, Chief Inspector.” She gave a helpless shrug. It might have been misinterpreted as callousness but Frobisher recognized the look in her eyes. She was past caring about life, he had seen the same thing in Lottie.
He escorted her out of the park, worried that she was too fragile to make her own way. The dog had long since tired of Edith’s litany of depravity and had to be roused from sleep.
* * *
—
“No rest for the wicked,” the desk sergeant said merrily when Frobisher returned. “Another body, sir. Someone phoned while you were out. Anonymously.” He had trouble pronouncing the word.
“At Tower Bridge?” Frobisher hazarded. It seemed to be his fate. He felt a kinship with Sisyphus.
“No. A murder. You’ll never guess where. You’re going to like this one, Inspector.”
I doubt it very much, Frobisher thought gloomily.
The Riddle of the Sphinx
Even though she was very late to her bed most nights, Freda still was up long before Vanda. On waking, the first thing she did was to fill the kettle before placing it on the single gas ring, a dangerous affair that perched precariously on the wooden draining-board of the sink. Then Freda cut a thick slice from a loaf of bread, buttered it and ate it while she was waiting for the kettle to boil. There was always bread and butter in Vanda’s flat, but unfortunately that was all there ever was. Vanda didn’t shop for food or cook it, something that had contributed to her hasty departure from Grantham apparently.
“What about the baby?” Freda had dared to ask eventually and Vanda said, “Had to leave the little tickler behind. Believe me, it’s the best thing for him, Freda. Walter’s got an army of sisters and cousins that couldn’t wait to get their hands on him. I did my best, but…no regrets,” she had added cheerfully.