Maggie ran her gloved finger down the entries, not caring about ink stains. “Here’s Joanna Metcalf, who signed in but not out. Same with Doreen Leighton.” When she reached a particular line, she shivered with dread. “Brynn Parry also checked in on the twenty-eighth, but according to this, she never checked out.”
“I must say,” the doctor confided, leaning toward them, “I’m awfully glad you’re here and asking about these matters. I can’t tell you how many letters from parents I’ve received since this awful war started, asking if I know the whereabouts of their daughters. And every once in a while, a private investigator shows up.” His fingers plucked at his tie, as if it were suddenly too tight. “Of course I’m happy to help them as best I can.”
“Of course,” Maggie agreed, although still shaken. “What sorts of questions do they ask?”
“They want information—the names of friends, forwarding addresses, suggestions on where to look next, that sort of thing. Sometimes May can tell them a little something about the girls.”
“We’ll need to cross-reference your guestbook with our missing persons list and list of the dead.”
“Of course, of course, Miss Hope.” Dr. Frank dipped his head. “It’s grieves me, truly grieves me, to hear these young women have gone missing. I often think of the parents and say a little prayer they’ve found their girls safe and sound. Maybe they’ve simply eloped. Or joined the women’s services?”
Neither Maggie nor Mark responded; instead, Mark passed Frank his card. “If anything else should come to light, call us. We may need to bring you in for additional questioning.”
“If I hear anything, anything at all, of course I’ll let you know at once.”
Maggie rose and went to look at his desk. There was a silver-framed photo of a woman in a smart hat with a young man—slight, with mousey hair and eyes. “Oh, that’s my daughter, May, and her fiancé, Nicholas Reitter,” Dr. Frank told her proudly. “He recently graduated with degrees in engineering and architecture. He’s going to be surveying and making maps in the Middle East soon. We’re lucky to have him—Nick’s helped us out with a few repairs and some remodeling. He’s fantastic not just with architecture, but the real mechanics of running a building as well, including the water and gas lines.”
With the word gas, Maggie made the connection. “You’re the man who also owned the building in Pimlico—the one that blew up due to a problem with the gas line.”
Frank blanched. “It wasn’t my fault….”
Mark interjected, “The Met police are on it,” he said, shooting Maggie a significant look. “We need to focus on our case.”
Maggie nodded and looked down at the book. “It says here that Brynn Parry is staying in 745. May we see her room?”
“It’s been cleaned any number of times….”
“Why would it have been cleaned if Brynn Parry never checked out?” Maggie asked.
“We’re not the most organized around here, as you may have guessed….”
“We’d still like to see the room,” Maggie insisted.
“Of course,” Dr. Frank agreed, rising. “Please, follow me.”
—
The doctor procured an enormous brass ring bristling with different-shaped keys from his desk drawer and set off. Maggie and Mark followed him into the rickety elevator, then through the hotel’s winding passages.
Frank unlocked the door to room 745. The narrow bed was neatly made with a faded quilted coverlet.
Maggie and Mark examined the room and adjoining bath but found nothing. Maggie stopped at the windowsill. Down below, a horse-drawn cart proclaimed: MIKE’S GRINDING SERVICE—KNIVES, SCISSORS, GARDEN TOOLS—SHARPENED.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing across the way to a matching shabby red-brick building set off the street.
“Ah,” Dr. Frank said, his round face creasing. “Our sister property. Brother property, really, as it’s an all-male residence hotel. I own it as well.”
Directly across was a window with the curtains open, a telescope pointed toward the room. A voyeur. A Peeping Tom. Maggie gestured to Mark. “Look,” she urged, pointing at the telescope.
“Do you know who that particular room belongs to?” Mark asked the doctor.
“Yes, it belongs to one of our long-term residents, Mr. Leonard Roth.” Frank lowered his voice. “He’s a Jew, you know,” he confided. “Not one of those Zionist ones, of course—a German Jew, one of the good ones. His family’s lived a few generations in England—you can be sure I checked.”
“We’d like to see his room,” Maggie declared. “Now.”
—
Across the street, in Leonard Roth’s room, they found not only a telescope, its gaze fixed on the women’s rooms across the way, but several charcoal drawings of women in various states of undress.
“Oh, dear,” Frank murmured in distress. “You don’t think—”
“We’ll need to speak with Mr. Roth.” Maggie handed the drawings to Mark to place in his briefcase. By the bed, they found a stack of writings by Jean Genet, Lawrence Durrell, and the Marquis de Sade.
“Look,” Maggie said, picking up a book on the dresser: The Fantasies of Mr. Seabrook, with photographs by Man Ray. The cover showed a naked young woman bound in black leather and ropes, her mouth gagged.
In the nightstand, Mark found French pornographic magazines featuring women in collars and restraints. Maggie opened one of the dresser drawers: hoods, gags, several paddles, and a cat-o’-nine-tails. “Well, it seems our Mr. Roth is quite the libertine.”
“I’m sorry you had to see this, Maggie.” Mark’s face was grave. “No lady should even know about this sort of thing.”
Oh, please. “I’ve read Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill, you know—I’m not a child.” Then, of Frank, she asked, “Where does Roth work?”
“The BBC,” the doctor answered, unable to tear his horrified gaze from their discoveries. “He’s a wireless announcer.”
“I’ll make a call,” Mark told Maggie. “Have him picked up.”
She nodded. “And please ring Durgin to say we’ll meet him at MI-Five.”
Chapter Ten
Two undercover MI-5 officers were dispatched to the Broadcasting House, the home of the BBC on Langham Place, and brought back Leonard Roth. He was tall and slim and somewhere in his forties. He was a handsome man, in a slick, unctuous way, with too much sandalwood cologne and hair crème.
“All right, same as before,” Durgin warned Maggie, eyes narrowing. “Mr. Standish and I will do the questioning—and you may watch through the mirrored glass.”
“And, as before,” Maggie countered, “I’d prefer to be in the room and contribute to the interrogation.”
“Sorry, Miss Tiger,” Durgin told her, not unkindly. “And I’m sorry you had to see the sorts of things you found in his apartment.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “So, let me get this straight—you’re not worried about my seeing the corpses of murdered women, but you are worried about my seeing writings and photographs about sex? Sex trumps death? I’d say that’s rather puritanical, Detective. And here I thought we Yanks had cornered the market on that.”
“If Roth’s our Blackout Beast, there will be stories disclosed you might not have the stomach for, Miss Tiger.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, Detective, I don’t scare easily.”
“And, as I’ve said before, there are facts he might not disclose in the presence of a young woman.”
There were bigger battles to fight. “Fine.”
—
In the interrogation room, Leonard Roth sat at a wooden table, drumming his fingers.
“I’d like to lodge a complaint against the agents who came for me at the BBC,” he began in plummy tones. “Not only did they manhandle me, but they caused me undue embarrassment. How I’m going to explain this to my producer—”
“Looks like you enjoy a bit of manhandling,” Durgin interrupted. He took the seat across from Roth. “Or is it that you like to do the manhandling yourself?”
“What the devil?” Roth exclaimed.
Mark took the charcoal sketches of the girls in various stages of undress from his briefcase. He set them on the table, fanning the papers out like a deck of cards. “How well did you know these women?”
Roth looked down at the drawings, then gave a short, strangled laugh. “This is a simple misunderstanding—I don’t know them at all.”