Grenville's house, and he'd wanted to take England apart to find her. I had dissuaded him from this action only because I happened to know where Marianne had gone.
'I thought Grenville unwise, but I could not blame him. You tease him and plague him, and I am surprised he does not keep you on a tether.'
She made a face at me as I prepared to leave. 'Gentlemen always stand together,' she said. 'Especially those of your class. Rich and poor, if you went to the same school and came from the same sort of family, you band together against the downtrodden.'
I shot her an ironic look. 'I could never think of you as downtrodden, Marianne. You are the least downtrodden woman I know.'
Her answer was to put out her tongue, then I shut the door on her as she raised her goblet again.
I left the house and walked to Bow Street. I made this trip often, strolling out of Grimpen Lane to Russel Street and around the corner to the left to Bow Street. Today I made it under the June sun, which had at last chased away the drear of winter. I preferred warmer climes, having grown used to the stifling heat of India and the warm summers of Spain. Grenville had recently invited me to accompany him to Egypt when next he went.
I wondered, as I perfunctorily tipped my hat to a passing housewife, whether Grenville had told Marianne he wanted to leave England for several months, and what her reaction would be when he did. He believed Marianne cared not a fig for where he went, but I knew better. I hoped they settled things between them soon, because both were driving me mad.
I approached the Bow Street magistrate's house, a tall, narrow edifice that comprised numbers 3 and 4. The chief magistrate lived upstairs, and the unfortunates dragged in to appear before him in the large room downstairs spent the night in buildings behind the house as well as the cellar of the tavern opposite. These unfortunates consisted of pickpockets, prostitutes, the drunk and disorderly, thieves, illegal gamers, housebreakers, brawlers, and murderers. Those accused of more serious crimes, like murder or rape, generally saw the magistrate in isolation. The petty criminals tumbled together in a mass of unwashed and surprisingly good-humored humanity.
'Mornin,' Cap'n,' slurred a man who was brought in for drunkenness nearly every night. He did not simply drink himself into a stupor-many a man did that and went home and slept-but Bottle Bill, as he was called, could become quite frenzied when he was drunk.
In the light of day, Bill was a quiet creature, ashamed of himself, smiling gently and apologizing to those he might have hurt the night before. He could not help himself, he said. If he did not have drink, he became wretchedly ill, near to death. A few glasses of gin, and he was right as rain. But then he could not stop drinking the gin, and so he went round again to losing his senses, starting fights, breaking furniture, and ending up at Bow Street.
'Good morning, Bill,' I said as I stepped past him.
'How are you this fine day?' Bill asked. He leaned against the wall, his red eyes screwed shut against the bright sunshine without. 'I like it a bit gloomier, meself.'
'I'm well, Bill. What did you do this time?'
'No idea, Cap'n. They say I broke a fellow's arm, but I don't remember. I'm not very big, am I, to be breaking another man's arm?' He put a shaky, thin hand to his brow. 'Feel like the elephant at the 'Change is a-dancing on my head.'
'You'll likely go home soon,' I said. 'Is Pomeroy about?'
'Aye, that he is. Hupstairs. With one of those Thames River blokes.'
'Thank you.' I put a shilling in his hand that was not quite outstretched and made for the stairs.
Chapter Three
Mr. Thompson of the Thames River Police was a lanky man whose clothes hung on his bony shoulders. He belonged to the body of patrollers who moved up and down the river, protecting the huge cargo ships at the London docks and beyond. The organization of patrollers had been formed years ago by those appalled by the number of thefts they endured while their ships moored in London. Eventually, the Thames River Police, as we now knew it, had come under the same authority as the Bow Street Runners, foot patrollers, and runners from other magistrates' houses.
I liked Thompson, who had a sharp mind and quick intelligence. Usually, I enjoyed a chat with him, but today I wanted to talk to Pomeroy about my wife, not a conversation I wanted to share with Thompson. Therefore, I was a bit dismayed to not find Pomeroy in his room alone.
Pomeroy had known my wife and about her desertion. I wanted to ask him to find out in what house in King Street Carlotta had taken rooms and to have one of his foot patrollers watch her. I did not trust her not to run away again, taking Gabriella with her.
'Good morning, Captain,' Thompson said. His countenance, as usual, was smooth and bland, but he had a definite spark in his eyes. Something had happened.
'Was going to come round to see you later today,' Pomeroy said. He got up from his writing table and saluted me, just as he'd done when he'd been my sergeant in the army. Milton Pomeroy was thick-bodied, tall, and athletic, had a shock of blond hair that he kept slicked down with pomade, and blue eyes that eyes were twinkling, eager, and good-humored.
'Why?' I asked. I wondered whether he already knew that Carlotta had returned to England.
'Crime, of course,' Pomeroy said cheerfully. 'A missing gel, specifically.'
'Oh?' I had looked for missing girls before, because unfortunately, girls and young women disappeared in London all the time. Procuresses met country coaches and lured girls to bawdy houses where they were forced to work. Sadly, some parents sold their daughters to these same houses for needed money. Reformers strove to put an end to this trafficking, and they had some success but not enough.
'Yes, Captain,' Pomeroy went on. 'No respectable man's daughter this time, just a game girl. Her young man is worried about her because she hasn't come home. Went out to Covent Garden one night, he says, then vanished.'
'How long ago?' I asked, growing curious.
'Week,' Pomeroy said. 'I thought at first she'd simply found herself a softer bed and a richer man. But the young man is worried she's been hurt by one of her customers or kept with him against her will. He's been round to all the workhouses and reforming houses, and asked all her pals, but he's not found her.'
'Perhaps she left London altogether,' I said.
'Maybe so, maybe so. But Mr. Thompson, here, he read my report over in Wapping and came to see me. Seems he's heard of one or two game girls a'disappearing from his part of London as well.'
Thompson broke in. 'Two girls-neither knew each other as far as I can tell. One turned up in the river. She was with child, and so she might have done away with herself. The other was from Wapping. Lived with a sailor there when he was in port. He reported her missing after he'd gone to her usual haunts and heard from her friends that she hadn't been seen. She went to Covent Garden one night, to meet a chap, he claimed, and never returned. Her friends thought that perhaps she'd taken up with this fellow and become his ladybird, but they've not heard from her or seen her, and now they're worried as well.'
'None of these occurrences may mean something wrong,' I said. On the other hand, Thompson, a careful man and not likely to chase shadows, had thought enough of it to come to Bow Street and speak to Pomeroy. 'The girls could have gone to work in bawdy houses, although if they had protectors concerned enough to report them missing, I think it unlikely they did.' I looked at Thompson. 'What is your theory?'
He shook his head. 'No theories yet, Captain. Or rather, too many. The girls might be dead, by their hand or another's, they might be held against their will, they might have found new gents to take care of them, they might have returned to their mothers or fathers, they might have reformed and joined a crusade against prostitution. They might have done any number of things.'
He was right-too many possibilities as yet. I looked from Thompson to Pomeroy, both of whom watched me intently. 'What are you asking of me?'
'Well,' Pomeroy said, 'the girls I arrest and bring in here speak highly of you. Quite the gentleman, they think you. I told Thompson that if anyone could pry secrets from the game girls, it was my captain.'
