Chapter 8
Henry was silent for a moment as the awful possibility sank in. With so many children still missing, they’d known the operation extended far beyond the orphanage on Winner Street, but if there were more in the Bay…
‘If nothing else, Muriel Pemberton's connection indicates that this might well be a similar setup to the one on Winner Street,’ he murmured. ‘It’s probable that the orphanage provided many of the servants placed by Pembroke.’ Laying the papers he’d gathered on the desk, he sat down heavily in the chair.
‘My guess is that any incriminating records have been removed. Clearly, whatever’s still here was deemed to be of no importance, so we’re unlikely to find much. ’
‘But we know that despite her siblings’ deaths, Muriel Pemberton has continued to be somehow involved,’ Charlotte suggested. ‘Is it fear that’s motivating her, or greed?’
‘Well, I can’t imagine she’s the one who’s been running the Pembroke Agency,’ Henry countered. ‘She must have known the police were looking for her.’
‘The logical assumption is that our murdered woman was the one running this agency…’ He paused before continuing grimly, ‘Since she came to the same unfortunate ending as both Lionel and Violet, did she become a threat? Did she say or do something that necessitated removing her?’
‘Well, she had to have fallen foul of the powerful people behind all this,’ Charlotte insisted, ‘and whatever her crime was, it must have been incriminating for them to shut down the deuced agency.’
‘But we still don’t know who they are,’ Henry grated in frustration. ‘I can’t believe for one second that Muriel Pemberton is a big fish in this cesspit.’
‘What about the man Billy saw her with?’ Charlotte conjectured.
‘Possible,’ Henry answered. ‘Perhaps we can find out a little more about him from the Gerston hotel. It could be that someone in the tearoom remembers him.’ He picked up the document laying on top of the pile.
‘Right now, though, we need to see if we can find out who our victim was. If there’s a name here somewhere, it would be useful. ’
‘She must have been known to at least some of the servants placed in the four households,’ Charlotte commented, sitting down in the other chair.
Plonking the papers she’d gathered down on the desk, she squinted at the one in her hand, finally putting it down with a sigh.
She didn’t dare ask Henry to borrow his spectacles.
Muttering to herself, she began yanking open the drawers, starting at the top.
The first two were empty, but much to her delight, the third one contained a magnifying glass.
‘These are simply a list of servants provided over a period of years,’ Henry declared after about ten minutes. ‘It seems that an awful lot of them were orphans.’
Charlotte looked up. ‘Did the agency get money for providing each one?’ Henry nodded.
‘It looks like they received a couple of shillings for most of them on here.’
Charlotte pulled open another drawer, dragging it further than she’d intended until it fell out onto the floor.
‘Damnation,’ she muttered, bending down to pick the drawer back up.
As she did so, she noticed a small triangle of paper wedged down the crack at the very back.
Pursing her lips, she turned the drawer over and saw the rest of a screwed-up piece of paper.
Intrigued, she pulled it free and laid it on the desk before sliding the drawer back where it belonged.
Then, taking hold of the magnifying glass, she smoothed the sheet of paper. It was a letter.
Moments later, Charlotte looked over at Henry.
‘I think our corpse’s name was Margaret Finch and, by the looks of things, she was indeed running the agency – or at least she appeared to be.
’ She held up the letter. ‘I think this is a draft of a letter she intended to send to a man named John Thorpe.’
‘What does it say?’ Henry climbed to his feet and walked round the desk to look over her shoulder.
‘She's asking for information about someone named Fanny,’ Charlotte told him.
‘She goes on to describe — I think it’s almost certainly a child.
In fact, look, there's quite a detailed description.’ They read in silence for a second.
‘The tone of the letter indicates concern,’ Henry commented at length. ‘Was this Fanny one of the orphans? Could she have been taken away without Margaret's knowledge or despite her protests?’
‘It looks to have been written last February,’ Charlotte went on. ‘I think your guess might be right, Henry — whoever this Fanny was, she was taken against her will, or at least against Margaret's.’
‘If she protested too much, that could well be the reason that she’s sitting upstairs with her throat slit from ear to ear,’ Henry hazarded.
‘It certainly seems to suggest that Margaret wasn't a willing accomplice, at least not after February.’
Henry frowned, going back around to his side of the desk.
‘We need more information about the agency itself. At the moment, all we know is that there’s a definite connection to the Pembertons.
We don't know how much Lionel was involved. What we do have is a dead body and a good idea that Muriel Pemberton at least came here or intends to come here.’
Charlotte looked out through the window, suddenly realising the light was almost gone.
‘I'll fetch the lanterns,’ Henry said, following her gaze. ‘I’d have thought Albert has reached Simla House by now. I can't help but hope that Chief Inspector Hartley is still there.’
He headed out of the room, leaving Charlotte to regard the letter thoughtfully.
Whether Margaret Finch was a willing or unwilling accomplice, she had clearly developed an affection for this Fanny.
Was that when the problem started? Lionel Pemberton was still alive at the time, and the Winner Street orphanage was still in business.
Were the two agencies working together? They’d never found any information about Pembroke and Associates in the orphanage, but then they hadn’t had a lot of time before the entire building burned down.
Henry came back with the lanterns, standing them on the desk next to their piles of papers. She shared her thoughts with Henry, who nodded thoughtfully.
‘It makes sense that the orphanage was supplying many of the children to a domestic service agency, but underneath the legitimate providing of servants for wealthy households across the Bay, they were also supplying children for God knows what. The pages we’ve found look to be from ten years ago and any children sold then will now be adults – if they survived that long,’ Henry commented darkly.
‘Whoever cleared out this office must have taken the rest of the records with them,’ Charlotte guessed. ‘Did they miss these, or drop them?’
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Henry answered with a weary shrug. ‘The police aren’t going to be interested in what happened ten years ago.’
Charlotte muttered an expletive under her breath, going back to the pile of paper in front of her. ‘Wait a deuced minute,’ she announced abruptly after a couple of minutes. ‘This sheet’s dated nine months ago.’ She peered through the magnifying glass while Henry ground his teeth impatiently.
‘It’s a list of names the same as the others, but the last entry at the bottom is eight months ago.’ Charlotte looked up excitedly. ‘They must have dropped this one by mistake.’
‘We need to go through them all again,’ Henry directed. ‘It might be they dropped a few more.’
Within ten minutes, they’d discovered four more pages relating to the last twelve months.
When he’d finished going through them a second time, Henry leaned back in his chair and groaned.
Every part of his body was now hurting, and he was finding it harder and harder to see clearly, even with his spectacles.
‘We need to keep hold of these whatever happens,’ he declared tiredly. ‘We can't let the police have them, not yet anyway.’
Though privately delighted that her brother finally appeared to be developing a backbone, Charlotte wisely refrained from saying so out loud.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have hesitated, but it had to be said he was looking increasingly worse for wear as the evening wore on, and to her concern, now bore a distinct resemblance to the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
.. ‘Will you tell Chief Inspector Hartley what we’ve found? ’ she asked instead.
‘I don’t think we have a choice.’
‘But that will mean we have to come clean about what we already know.’ Charlotte frowned, unconvinced.
‘We have to speak out, Lottie. We have to tell the Chief Inspector exactly what happened at Winner Street. This is getting bigger than us.’ He picked up the pile of papers.
‘Many of the names listed in these pages are children. God only knows where they are now. The chances are that most of them are no longer in Torbay, and if we're to stand any chance of helping them, we need the law on our side. Someone who’s at least prepared to listen at any rate.’
‘Do you think Muriel Pemberton could've killed Margaret Finch? Was she sent here for that purpose?’
The timeline fits,’ Henry answered. ‘Billy saw Muriel Pemberton three days ago. Margaret Finch has been dead for about that amount of time. It could be that our rogue clairvoyant was sent down here to find out exactly what the person supposedly running things was up to.’
‘Do you think Muriel’s still here?’
Henry shrugged. ‘If she was the one responsible for clearing out all of the paperwork and sending Margaret Finch to her maker, it’s very unlikely she's still in Torbay.’
‘Perhaps we made a grave error not telling the police as soon as she was spotted,’ Charlotte grimaced. Henry nodded. He couldn't argue with her logic.