“Yes, a dog, Sergeant,” Frobisher said, without elaboration. In the docks in the north, the railway police trained Alsatians for protection. Frobisher was attracted by the idea of patrolling the streets of London with a dog by his side. Obviously not this dog. It had long since been stripped of its Pierrot costume, but it was still a small dog, inclined to perform tricks without warning.
Another body had been harvested from the Thames, he was told, and awaited him in the Dead Man’s Hole. There had been no other information and Frobisher, fearing another mermaid had been netted, had taken it upon himself to investigate.
When he arrived at Tower Bridge, the morgue attendant was on the small stone platform on which the drowned were landed. Frobisher began to descend the wet, slippery steps—there had been a particularly high tide and the swollen river was in flood. “Only just managed to catch him,” the morgue attendant laughed, drawing on the cigarette that seemed to be permanently attached to his lower lip. “He was going past like a clipper. Haven’t moved him down into the morgue yet,” he added. His long grappling pole was still in his hand, as if he were ready to grab the next unfortunate as they sailed past.
“Him? Not a girl, then?”
“A girl? No, some bloke in fancy dress.”
Oh, dear God, not another bloody Pierrot, Frobisher thought. “A Pierrot?” he asked, still picking his way down the steps. The dog pricked up its ears. It surely hadn’t learnt its name already?
“A Pierrot?” the attendant said as Frobisher reached him in the wake of the dog. “No—see for yourself, guv.”
The dog sniffed the air, excited by the stench of river water and death. Frobisher held it back from investigating the body that was flopped, limp as a lifeless fish, on the stone.
Not a fish, nor a mermaid. Not a girl either. Not a Pierrot. A matador.
“Well, that’s a first,” Frobisher said.
* * *
—
On his return to Bow Street, he was informed that there was a woman waiting for him. “Put her in your office, sir,” the desk sergeant said. “She was having a bit of a turn.”
“Does the woman have a name?”
“Mrs. Taylor.”
Frobisher left the dog in the desk sergeant’s willing custody. He liked dogs, he said. Frobisher wondered if the desk sergeant would be willing to take the dog on permanently and was surprised by the little pang in his heart at the thought of giving him up.
Opening the door to his office, Frobisher looked in cautiously—a woman “having a bit of a turn” could be interpreted any number of ways. In this case it meant a weary-looking one who seemed wedded to the handkerchief with which she was dabbing quiet tears away.
He ducked back out and said to the desk sergeant, “Make Mrs. Taylor a cup of tea, will you, Sergeant?” The sergeant sighed at being reduced to the role of tea-boy. “Quick as you can,” Frobisher added, with no sympathy. “Is Maddox in?”
“No, sir.”
* * *
—
A pot of tea was duly delivered, no cup provided for himself, Frobisher noticed.
Mrs. Taylor was from Colchester, she said, and her daughter, Minnie—Wilhelmina—had run away from home three weeks ago. Mrs. Taylor had remarried recently, and “my Harold” and Minnie did not get along. Frobisher thought of Manon. Would he have got along with her if she had lived?, he wondered. Mrs. Taylor was sure that Minnie had been seduced by the bright lights of London. Minnie would be fifteen next month and wanted to be “on the stage.”
Frobisher sighed inwardly. Why did these girls all want to be famous? It was almost impossible for them to achieve their ambitions. Why not set their sights on something more worthwhile (if equally difficult to attain)—becoming a doctor or a lawyer, for example? Frobisher was not at all averse to women taking on masculine roles, he suspected they would be rather good at them. They had managed well in the war, after all. He thought of Gwendolen. He could imagine her in the police, giving crisp orders to all and sundry. She would sort Bow Street out better than he appeared to be managing to at the moment. And look at Nellie Coker, she could probably run the country, although not necessarily for its own good.
He wrote down “Wilhelmina Taylor, known as Minnie” but Mrs. Taylor, monitoring his note-taking, corrected him. “Taylor’s my new name, my married name,” she said. “Minnie has her dad’s name—Carter, he died at Amiens. He was a good man. Harold is, too,” she added hastily, as if her second husband’s failure to die in the were was a flaw in his character.
“I don’t doubt it, Mrs. Taylor,” Frobisher said, crossing out “Taylor” and writing “Carter” in its place.
“It’s just that Minnie’s got used to a bit too much freedom and Harold doesn’t think it’s right.”
“Of course,” Frobisher soothed. “Tell me, Mrs. Taylor, does Minnie wear any jewellery? A crucifix, for example, or a locket?” He was relieved that Mrs. Taylor did not see the implication of the question.
“She has a locket, a silver one. Given to her by her godmother, my sister.”
“Anything in the locket?” Frobisher asked. He closed his eyes for a second. He didn’t want to know. The woman’s tears were noisier now. “A photograph of me,” she said. “We’re close. Just because she’s run away doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me, you know.”
“Of course not. And…just you, Mrs. Taylor—no other photograph in the locket?”
She gave a little laugh that prompted more tears. “Our old dog, Sammy. Died a few months ago. Minnie loved that dog.”
“A terrier?” Frobisher asked, his voice barely above a murmur. He was relieved he had left the dog with the desk sergeant. He realized that it bore a remarkable resemblance to the dog in the photograph in the locket.
“Yes, Sammy was a terrier,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Why do you ask?”
* * *
—
The locket, the crucifix, the spectacles and the solitary silver shoe now all lay in cardboard boxes in a cabinet in the evidence room. It was fast becoming a reliquary. Frobisher retrieved the box that contained the locket. He braced himself for maternal grief and opened it. “Is this Minnie’s locket?” he asked gently as he showed the contents of the box to Mrs. Taylor.
She surprised him by snatching the locket eagerly from the box and cradling it in her hand. “Oh, you’ve found her!” she said. “Thank you, thank you. Where is she? Is she here? Oh, she’ll be ever so glad to see me.”
Minnie had probably been sent to a cold pauper’s grave by now, Frobisher thought, but he delayed telling her mother that, it would be too much to bear in one day. He would make enquiries, he told her. Frobisher wished the locket had been buried with the girl. Minnie. She had a name now. It made it worse, rather than better. It would have been preferable if she had remained missing for ever, stranded somewhere between two worlds, rather than being committed to the endless night without any hope of recall.
“What happened to her?” Mrs. Taylor asked between retching tears.
Frobisher hesitated before eventually saying, “The river took her.” It was not entirely untrue. He poured more tea in her cup. His own hand was trembling slightly, he noticed.
* * *
—
He saw Mrs. Taylor out and into the street. He could think of no words of comfort to send her on her way. He came back inside feeling desolate. The world he traversed every day was a barren desert.
A woman was talking to the desk sergeant. Respectable, well dressed, out of place in this den.
“Who was that?” he asked after she’d left.
“A Mrs. Ames, sir. She came in last week to report her daughter Cherry missing.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Dear God, what did he have to do to make them understand there was a problem that had to be tackled?
“You want to be told about all the missing persons?” The sergeant looked bewildered. “There’s quite a few, sir.”
“No, of course not all of them. Just the girls.”
“Well, not to worry then, sir. Mrs. Ames came in to say she’d found her daughter.”
“Alive?”
The sergeant regarded him as if he were mad. “Yes, sir, alive. She’s in a thing at the Palace. It’s a theatre,” he added, in case Frobisher misconstrued and concluded royalty. He wouldn’t have been surprised.