“When I arrived at the teahouse where we were to meet, he was absent. I grew uneasy after a few minutes and left, thinking it was better, that I knew nothing of this man or his promises. It was then that they took me—several very rough people, it was instantaneous, there wasn’t time even to cry out. They pushed me into a carriage, and before anybody on the streets could notice, or help, we were gone. I had nothing with me—not my gowns, not my family’s letters, nothing of my old life except the clothes on my back. From there I was taken to a ship. The room aboard was dark, and windowless. There were four other girls in it. It was a small space, we barely fit if all of us stood at the same time. There was a bucket in the corner, but nowhere to empty it. Twice a day they took the bucket, and we were given food. We spent a great deal of time sleeping.”

Lenox asked, through the translator, “And how did you sleep?”

“I do not know the word,” said the young woman, looking directly at him. “In a kind of netting that hanged from the ceiling.”

Lenox nodded and said, “Give her my thanks. Tell her to go on.”

As she went on, though, he was preoccupied by the pile of hammocks they had found next to the trunk that held Wakefield’s body, feeling certain that these were the same hammocks that these women had been transported in Wakefield’s hold. Or at the very least, a similar one.

It was easy to imagine the ruse. The Gunner picked up and dropped off mail from several ports between England and India, and while they were in dock they could have taken the women. Any of the officers might have played the grandee in love with the courtesan, or indeed Wakefield himself could have done it. And a man of Wakefield’s type would have known the most expensive houses of that type in every city, or could have learned their names easily enough.

He thought of what Dyer had told them, with perhaps more honesty than he had intended: All of us are here for the money. Anything that gets in the way of it is a nuisance.

“We were all terribly ill during the voyage,” the woman went on. “When we arrived I knew we were in England, because of the voices. We were pushed into crates. These must have been loaded onto carriages, because I could feel that horses took us across the city. I feared then that we would be killed. But we were only taken to the house, the house where we lived.

“The women rotate very quickly,” she said. “Always new ones. I myself have marked the days in my head—it has been just forty. I think that they cannot risk that we begin to learn English. I am anxious when I contemplate where the other women have gone, the ones who preceded me. I am thankful now that it is over.”

Lenox nodded at her. She was very composed—some of the other girls were in tears—but somehow it made her tale worse.

As the translators continued to gather the women’s stories, Nicholson murmured to Lenox, “I wish they would come back and tell us about the Gunner.”

Lenox looked at his pocket watch. Almost from the first words the young women had spoken, he had advised Nicholson and his superior to send a team of constables down to the docks to arrest Dyer and the men of his ship. “I hope they haven’t resisted arrest. They’re a bloody-minded crew, from the sound of it.”

“Do you think these women can somehow verify that it was the Gunner they were stolen onto? They must have seen a face, scratched their names into the walls—something. I feel sure Dyer is involved with all this.”

“Yes,” said Lenox.

Even so, he and Nicholson both knew they were still missing the whole picture. The difficulty was that Dyer and his men had a cast-iron alibi for the night of Jenkins’s murder: They had been at sea, their ship coming in about an hour after his body was found. A hundred different objective observers had confirmed as much.

And then the next morning, somehow, Wakefield’s body had come to rest in a trunk in the ship’s hold.

“There’s been a question rattling around in my brain for a few days now,” Lenox said to Nicholson. “How did Jenkins come to have Wakefield’s claim ticket for the Gunner?”

“I don’t know, but he must have felt it was important—he left it in his note for you,” said the inspector. “He could have kept it with his notes.”

“Or else he had just gotten it when he was murdered.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wonder if he had just seen Wakefield when he was murdered. I wonder if Wakefield was—though it’s difficult to imagine—helping him.”

“Can you explain?”

“It has seemed singular to me all along that Jenkins and Wakefield were closeted together at Portland Place in the past few weeks. As Wakefield’s butler described it, too, their conversations were at least friendly, if sardonic. All that business about ‘the very profound honor of a visit from Scotland Yard,’ if you recall.”

“Mm.”

“That doesn’t sound like an interrogation, an accusation. Is it possible they were working in alliance? What if he gave him that claim ticket so that Jenkins could stop the Gunner when she came into dock?”

Nicholson was staring intently over his fingertips, thinking. “So then Wakefield was giving up Francis—Hartley—and Dyer, to save his own skin. Yes, it seems possible. All the more so because of the primary thing that he and Jenkins have in common.”

“What’s that?” said Lenox.

“That they were both murdered.”

Just then a constable appeared at the door. He came over to Nicholson. “It’s the Gunner, sir,” he said, out of breath.

“Well? What about her?”

“She’s gone, sir. Shipped out of London early this morning for Calcutta.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It was one of the most maddening cases Lenox had ever negotiated. On the one hand, he had uncovered so much of the truth, he felt—Armbruster’s involvement, the dark reality of St. Anselm’s, the role of the Gunner. On the other hand, they had nothing. Armbruster was comfortably entrenched behind his denials. They had scoured London—even now two of Nicholson’s constables were still searching—and found nobody called Andrew Hartley Francis.

And now the Gunner was gone.

They were at the very beginning again, without anything more than a few educated guesses about who might have killed either Inspector Jenkins or the 15th Marquess of Wakefield.

Dallington had spent the morning at Scotland Yard; he and Lenox reconvened at the offices at Chancery Lane just after noon. It felt empty without Polly or her silently hulking assistant, Anixter, nearby, though Pointilleux was full of effusive greetings for them, and thousands of questions, which they did their best to answer. In fact, Polly was still in some evidence—on Lenox’s desk was an envelope with his name on it in her handwriting. Inside was a note that said:

Whether or not we are partners tomorrow, we are still partners today, so I will give you a piece of advice. Every paper in the country ought to know that you and John were with Inspector Nicholson last night. PB.

She was—as usual—quite right. As quickly as they could, hoping to slip into the evening papers, Lenox and Dallington drew up a list of fairly reliable journalists and charged Pointilleux with circulating among their offices at Fleet Street to spread the word.

“Make sure you tell them that the Yard is paying us for our consultation on the case,” Dallington said, “and that we’re available for interviews about our heroic actions—off the record.”

“Are we?” asked Lenox, uncertain.

Dallington nodded grimly. “Yes. I’ll be damned if LeMaire gets to win, after all of this. No offense, Marseille.”

“Only this false name is offense of me.”

Both Lenox and Dallington were tired, but they sat in the conference room drinking tea together all afternoon, piecing together every last detail they knew about the case. At some stage Pointilleux returned. He was cross. Among other things, it was an overcast day, and evidently it had drizzled on him as he attempted to get the omnibus back to the office. “I am soak,” he reported angrily. “The sky of this country is too wet.”