The thinking had led him back to Shropshire. What he wouldn’t give to be walking through a meadow at the height of summer or listening to the dawn chorus rising from the wood. He sighed. This had to stop. He was drowning again in nostalgia. An unfortunate phrase.
He slipped the dead girl’s locket into his pocket. “I’ll get someone to ask around the London jewellers, you never know.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Webb said dismissively. “Virgo intacta, by the way,” he added. “In case you were wondering.”
Frobisher took one last look at the girl. Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young.
“Put a sheet over her, for God’s sake, man,” he said brusquely to Webb.
* * *
—
“Back again, sir?” the desk sergeant said affably. Ah, thought Frobisher, he has had his revenge on me for the burnt bacon by sending me on a wild goose chase. Frobisher did not give the sergeant the satisfaction of seeing his frustration at the morning’s futility; instead he said, rather sharply, “Get someone to fetch me Constable Cobb, will you, Sergeant? I have a special task for him.”
In Haste
“A note came for you,” Mrs. Bodley said, approaching Gwendolen in full sail as she took her seat for dinner.
“A note? Delivered by a good-looking man?” she hazarded.
“No. A policeman, in uniform,” Mrs. Bodley said disapprovingly as she handed it over. “Miss G. Kelling” was written in a bold hand on the envelope. Gwendolen waited until a lingering Mrs. Bodley, overcome with intrigue, left before opening the envelope. Dear Miss Kelling, could you please ask your friend to find out if either of your girls wore a locket? Thank you. Yours sincerely, John Frobisher.
So his name was John.
She knew nothing of his circumstances. Perhaps he was married, although he didn’t seem the uxorious sort, he seemed so very wifeless. Of course, he knew nothing about her circumstances either, nothing of her unexpected wealth. She hadn’t disabused him of the Library. It seemed to be a source of comfort for him. She supposed librarians rarely disturbed the status quo of a man’s heart.
It took a moment or two to digest Frobisher’s request, she had been waylaid by the revelation of the “John.” Her heart sank when she realized the implication. She knew what it meant. He had found a body. A soldier from the battlefield could be identified by his dog tags. A girl found in London could be identified by a locket.
She had, of course, presumed that Freda and Florence were alive and well somewhere. It had never even crossed her mind that it might be otherwise, but Frobisher’s query about the locket hinted at a dreadful fate. And if not for Freda and Florence, then for some other poor girl. She felt horribly contrite, she had been treating London as a jaunt while the sober-minded Frobisher had his mind on corpses. How dreadful it would be if either Freda or Florence turned up dead. She could not imagine passing that news on to Freda’s sister.
Cissy Murgatroyd had been Gwendolen’s closest friend, they had travelled through their girlhood together and volunteered to nurse at the Front together, signing up for Red Cross training when they were barely out of school uniform and shipped out to the Front in 1915. The Armistice had parted them. Cissy returned home when peace was declared, but Gwendolen carried on the fight until she was discharged in 1919. When Gwendolen came home, it was to find Cissy married to a civil engineer and already embarked on her first baby.
The man she married was called Wilfred and he was a good sort, with a cheerful, affectionate disposition. If a woman must wed, then she could do worse than Wilfred. （“Oh, Gwen, do marry him yourself if I die before my time!” Cissy said, absurdly delighted by this idea.） But Gwendolen was looking for neither husband nor child, and the one seemed to be the inevitable consequence of the other. （Must loving a man necessitate motherhood? Could you not have one without the other? “Tricky,” Cissy laughed.） It was hardly a problem anyway as there were no men to be found, even if she wanted one—the war had seen to that. If she wished to be loved, she could get a dog. If she craved a child, she could adopt an orphan, Lord knows, there were plenty of them to be had, although she doubted that she had the nerve for motherhood.
“I think you have the nerve for anything, Gwen,” Cissy said. “Even love.”
“Pah,” Gwendolen said eloquently. She would not be beguiled by romantic notions, no matter how well intentioned. Nor would she be constrained by marriage, no matter how cheerful and affectionate the man by her side.