An image of Frobisher, sober and upright at his desk, came into Gwendolen’s mind. What kind of husband would he make? She couldn’t imagine him mucking in with nappy-changing and potato-peeling the way that Wilfred did. The idea made her laugh. He was on a mission, of course, and men on missions had little time for fripperies. He had been sent to Bow Street to “clean the house.” Corruption. It was everywhere, even Miss Shaw at the Library could be bribed out of issuing a fine for an overdue book with a boiled sweet.
* * *
—
At Cissy’s suggestion, she had gone to see Florence’s parents before leaving for London. Mrs. Ingram had fussed about, laying out coffee and biscuits in the drawing room. She was the tremulous sort, the cups and saucers rattled, the coffee-pot wobbled in her hand until Mr. Ingram said gently, “Sit down, Ruthie, let me do that.”
“We tried,” Mr. Ingram told Gwendolen. “We contacted Scotland Yard, they gave us the name of a detective—Frobisher—they said he was the person to talk to—but he never got in touch with us. We’ve tried many times.”
“She was led astray by that minx,” Mrs. Ingram interjected.
“Freda?”
“Her mother’s a slattern.” It was an unexpected word on the lips of someone so genteel. Mrs. Ingram kept putting her hand to her throat as if feeling for an invisible rope of pearls. “And a thief, too.”
“Freda?”
“We welcomed a serpent into the bosom of our family and now Florence is probably lying dead in an alleyway somewhere,” she moaned.
“Now, now, Ruthie, we know that she’s alive,” Mr. Ingram said.
How was he so sure?, Gwendolen wondered. In answer, Mr. Ingram had pulled open a drawer in the dresser and taken out a little stack of picture postcards that he passed to Gwendolen. “She writes,” he said, “as if she were on her holidays.” Mrs. Ingram groaned and was afforded another “Now, now, Ruthie.”
Gwendolen studied the postcards. None of them had a helpful return address written on the back. The postcards looked as though they had been torn off a larger strip and indeed they were all marked “The Sights of London”—St. Paul’s, Big Ben and so on. “Dear Mummy and Daddy,” Gwendolen read aloud, “I’m having a lovely time in London. Miss you!” Mrs. Ingram looked as though she was going to be sick.
“You see,” Mr. Ingram said, “the last postmark is only two days ago. She’s fine.”
“She’s backward, Alistair,” Mrs. Ingram wailed. “Retarded! She can’t look after herself.” Mr. Ingram heaved a great sigh and said, “Just ‘slow,’ Ruthie, that’s all. Florrie’s a little slow.” He sighed heavily again. “The policeman I spoke to in Scotland Yard said that girls go missing all the time in London.” Mrs. Ingram howled. “I would have gone down to look for her myself,” Mr. Ingram said, “but I couldn’t leave poor Ruthie—her nerves have always been very frayed, you know.”
Gwendolen had known men in the war whose nerves had not just been frayed but shredded by the abominations they had witnessed. Mrs. Ingram could not compete in those stakes, yet her sobs were awful and Gwendolen berated herself for the flint in her soul; the woman deserved compassion.
“We thought about perhaps employing a private detective,” Mr. Ingram said.
“Gladys Murgatroyd is useless,” Mrs. Ingram said bitterly. “I do believe she doesn’t care if she never sees her daughter again.”
“I’m going to London,” Gwendolen reassured Mrs. Ingram. “I’m going to look for them. I’m going to find them.” A shepherdess, she thought, looking for the lost lambs. Although you wouldn’t really call Freda a lamb, more of a black sheep if anything.
As she walked back down the drive of the Ingrams’ house, Gwendolen thought she could hear Mrs. Ingram’s lamentations still ululating in the air.
“I promise,” she had said, “that I’ll bring Florence home to you.” She had created a hostage to fortune, hadn’t she? Beware of promises, she thought. What if the daughter she returned to the Ingrams was no longer living? It didn’t bear thinking about.
* * *
—
There was notepaper and writing material on a desk in the residents’ lounge, and after dinner Gwendolen sidestepped a game of Bridge with the Distressed, took up the pen provided and wrote a short note for Cissy, saying, “Did Freda wear a locket? Can you ask the Ingrams if Florence did?” Perhaps it was best not to elucidate further, although Cissy must also have read those red and green tags around the necks of the war dead.