Chapter 15
CHAPTER
WE STEPPED OFF the tram outside Westminster.
The stones were slick from last night’s rain, and I nearly lost my footing on the curb. John caught my elbow before I fell.
Scotland Yard rose from the mist ahead. Gray stone. Gray windows. Everything about it looked muted and drained of color.
“What if someone recognizes us?” I asked.
“That’s not going to happen,” Michael reassured us.
John, who thought of all possibilities, just gave me a weak smile as he held the door.
Inside, John squared his shoulders. I watched the shift as it happened.
Him transforming from brother to something else.
The barrister. The professional. Spine straight.
Jaw set. Eyes flat but purposeful. He had done this a thousand times in courtrooms, I realized.
Put on a mask and become the person the situation demanded.
We all wore of masks of sorts. Peter had taught us, whether we wanted to learn about that or not.
The air was thick with tobacco smoke and damp wool. But there were more smells, that institutional smell of too many bodies in too small a space. Of ink and paper, and a particular staleness of rooms where bad news was delivered daily.
Men in uniform filled the lobby. Talking.
Huddling. Consulting clipboards and shuffling papers.
They moved with the sort of stern efficiency of people who had seen too much and learned to stop feeling altogether.
So far, Michael was right. No one really looked at us.
We were invisible here, just three more citizens with just another problem.
A clerk sat behind a high wooden counter.
A fortress of ledgers and inkwells separated him from the public.
He was older than I expected, sixties, maybe, with wire-rimmed spectacles perched on a nose that appeared to have been broken at least once.
His hair was gray and thinning and combed carefully across a spotted scalp.
When he looked up at our approach, his eyes were a washed-out blue.
“Help you?” His voice was flat. Practiced. The voice of a man who repeated these two words ten thousand times a day with nothing much interesting that followed.
John stepped forward. I hung back with Michael, letting him take the lead. This was his world. His language.
“We’d like access to missing children’s cases,” John said. “Approximately ten years back. Perhaps earlier.”
The clerk’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A flicker of interest. Or suspicion. Hard to tell.
“We don’t share files with the public.” He picked up a pen. Put it down again. “You’re going to need authorization. Proof of legal standing. A formal request submitted through—”
John placed his identification on the counter.
The card sat there between them. Cream-colored. Embossed. The weight of it somehow visible.
“John Darling,” he said. “Barrister of the King’s Bench. Historical inquiries fall within my purview.”
The clerk studied the card for a long moment. Then he set it down and slid it back across the counter.
“No.”
John blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said no, Mr. Darling.” The clerk’s voice was cold. Dismissive. “Missing children’s cases are not entertainment for bored barristers. They’re not research material. Not fodder for whatever book or article or morbid curiosity brought you here today.”
“This isn’t morbid curiosity.”
“Isn’t it?” The clerk cut him off. “I’ve worked this desk for thirty-two years.
I’ve seen every type walk through those doors.
Journalists wanting a scandal. Writers wanting inspiration.
Mediums claiming they can speak to the dead children if only we’d let them see the files.
” His lip curled. “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. The answer is no. ”
John’s composure cracked. “Sir, if you would simply—”
“The answer is no.” The clerk picked up his pen, already turning his attention elsewhere. “Good day, Mr. Darling.”
Michael stepped forward, his hands balling into fists. I caught his arm before he could say anything that would make this all worse.
The clerk didn’t look up. We had been dismissed.
I thought of Willie, the great pain he must have felt throughout his body. Of Agnes, and how scared she must be, wherever she was.
I thought of all the children at Marigold House, not knowing how much longer I could protect them.
“Children will go missing again.” My voice came out harsher than I intended. Louder. The clerk’s pen stopped moving.
“Right now,” I said. “While you sit behind your counter and your ledgers and your thirty-two years of saying no. Children will be killed if you do not help us.”
I leaned forward. My palms flat on the counter.
My eyes locked on his. “I will make sure all of London knows your name. I will make sure everyone knows that we came here today begging for help, and you turned us away because you couldn’t be bothered.
Because we weren’t important enough. Because children weren’t worth your time. ”
The clerk’s face had gone pale.
“Every child who dies after today,” I said quietly, “will be on your head. Every single one. And you will carry that. For the rest of your life.”
The ward had gone silent around us. I could feel the uniformed men staring. Could feel John and Michael holding their breath behind me.
The clerk’s eyes flicked to the constables watching. He shook his head once and then returned his focus to me.
“You’re the Darling girl,” he said. His voice lost its edge. “The one who …”
“Yes.” I didn’t look away. “I’m that Wendy Darling.” I straightened. “And we need your help.”
The silence stretched.
Then the clerk reached beneath the counter. When his hand came back up, it was holding a binder. Thick. Heavy. The kind of weight that could only mean years of accumulated tragedy.
CHILDREN—MISSING/UNSOLVED, 1902–1905
“God forgive me if you’re lying,” he muttered. “And God forgive me if you’re not.”
He turned the binder to face us. John leaned in first. Then Michael. Then me, though part of me didn’t want to look. Part of me already knew what I would see.
Faces stared back at us from the pages. Charcoal sketches, mostly.
Photography was expensive, and these missing children did not come from wealthy families.
The drawings had a rushed quality to them, the kind of work done by police artists trying to capture a likeness from a weeping mother’s description.
Eyes too large. Mouths too small.
Features blurred at the edges, as if the children were already fading from memory even as they were being recorded.
Some of them I recognized. I avoided making eye contact with John or Michael, because I knew they spotted some of the boys too.
Nibs. His name here was Ernest. But that was him, with his cocky grin translated into gray strokes on yellowed paper. Age eight, the notation read. Last seen Kensington Gardens, near Round Pond. Never recovered.
The twins, and that’s what we called them over there, but here, their names were listed Archibald and Ambrose. In the sketch they appeared side by side, mirror images, even in death. Ages six and six. Last seen Kensington Gardens.
Curly. But his name wasn’t Curly in the document. It was Stanley.
My fists clenched at my side.
His face looked up at me from a decade-old sketch, gap-toothed and trusting, and for a moment I was back in the treehouse, back in the clearing, back in that last terrible second before I left him behind.
Age seven. Last seen playing near Kensington Gardens.
“You know any of them?” the clerk asked. Not accusing. Just observing. “These children. You recognize them?”
I shook my head no, and Michael followed.
John’s voice was tight: “Earlier. We need earlier than these.”
The clerk studied us for a long moment. Whatever he saw in our faces must have convinced him, because he turned without another word and pulled a second volume from the shelf behind him.
CHILDREN—MISSING, 1898–1901
This binder was older. The leather was cracked and the pages brittle. John flipped through carefully. But even so, small flakes broke off at the corners and drifted down like dead leaves.
More faces. More children. So many interrupted and stolen lives.
I watched John’s hands as he turned the pages. They were steady. Barrister’s hands. But I could see the tension in his jaw, the way he kept swallowing like he was trying not to be sick. Knowing that there were many boys who’d gone missing over the years. Not just the ones we knew.
“No,” Michael said. He was looking over John’s shoulder, his face pale in the dim light. “Further back. We need to go further.”
The clerk reached for a lower shelf. This binder was ever older than the last. Crumbling to the touch. Pieces of it came off on his fingers, and he wiped them absently on his trousers before setting the volume on the counter.
FOUNDLINGS & INFANT ABDUCTIONS—1890–1898
John opened the cover. The pages inside were brown with age, the ink fading to rust. Some of the entries were barely legible. Damaged by water or time, sometimes both. Face blurred and smudged, as if time itself were conspiring to erase these children from history entirely.
“What exactly are you looking for?” the clerk asked. “If you could narrow it down …”
“A boy,” John said. “Infant. Very young. Perhaps days old. Taken from his pram in Kensington Gardens.”
The clerk’s fingers trembled slightly as he took over the page-turning.
“There were several,” he said quietly. “More than people like to remember. Kensington Gardens was … there were stories, back then. Nurses afraid to take their charges there after dark. Rumors of someone snatching babies and little ones and dragging them into the trees.”
Something in the trees.
He flipped through them slowly. One page. Then another. Names fading. Dates smudged. Some entries so damaged they were nothing but fragments: Male. Infant. Last seen. Never.
“Maybe he’s older than we think,” I whispered. “Can we go further back?”