Mac pointed to my plate. There was a spongy looking mass there, yellow speckled with black.
“An omelet?” I asked, looking at it dubiously.
“Yes, sir. It is the very one he made for you this morning, the one you left behind. Mr. Dummolard took it very hard, I’m afraid. He brought in the truffle specially. In fact, he made a great show of apologizing to it that it gave its life for such an undeserving wastrel. That’s close to what he said. My French isn’t good, and he was shouting most of it.”
I was appalled, of course, but my employer merely sat down and began to help himself to the potted meat. Barker’s ward had come into the garden while Dummolard was preparing the omelet that morning, but I daren’t bring it up to him now. I wasn’t about to get involved in an argument between my employer and his cook. “Oh, do take this away, Mac. It’s disgusting.”
“Etienne was long overdue for a blowup,” Barker said. “In fact, it was your fondness for his cooking that has kept him mollified all this time. He shall return eventually and act as if nothing happened.”
“I could go to his restaurant to apologize,” I offered.
“It would only make matters worse. He must explode every now and then. You merely gave him an excuse.”
Mac cleared his throat discreetly. “Mr. Dummolard was also put out by the cavalier manner in which you consumed the rashers and eggs he made this morning, sir.”
“Confound it,” Barker exclaimed. “I’m not going to be dictated to by my cook. I didn’t as captain of the Osprey and I don’t intend to now. Sit down and eat, Thomas. There’ll be no fancy Parisian cooking for you tonight.”
We ate in silence with only the clinking of cutlery on china for company. In the middle of the meal, Barker evinced a hope that Harm was “getting on” up in Yorkshire. I took it for a rhetorical question and did not answer. Then a question occurred to me and I broke the silence again.
“Shall you tell the DeVeres about Mr. Miacca?”
Barker finished worrying a piece of ham and spoke. “There’s no point. I have no real proof of a connection between Miss DeVere and Miacca, only a suspicion. There are still white slavers in England and one may have her for all I know.”
He took up his tankard of stout and drained it. Then he pushed himself up out of his chair.
“I had been preparing for a case of child slavery. Now I must prepare to hunt for an archfiend. Mac, I shall need a pot of tea in my room. Thomas, I leave you to your own devices.”
He was almost out of the room when he stopped and turned to me. “Perhaps Etienne’s absence can be used to our advantage,” he said.
Whatever that meant, I didn’t like the sound of it.
8
Cyrus Barker is loath to miss Sunday morning service at the Baptist Tabernacle, but there was a young girl still missing in Bethnal Green and some things take priority. We had no sooner alighted from the cab in Green Street than we were accosted. The first thing I knew, someone had seized my arm and begun shaking it violently. Automatically, I went into one of the defensive postures Barker taught me, but it was only one of the mudlarks we had spoken to earlier, the woman known as Mum Alice. She was shouting something at us I couldn’t make out.
“Slow down, Alice,” Barker counseled. “Take a deep breath and speak slowly.”
“Ah found ’em,” she pronounced slowly. Despite her name, she was not mum. A harelip coupled with a thick Cockney accent and an excitable manner made her difficult to understand, unless one took the time to listen. “Found ’er cwothes.”
“You found Miss DeVere’s clothes? Where are they?”
“Pe’icoat Wane. Bu’ ’e go’ Annie!”
“Who’s got Annie?”
“Swanson! I wan away ’fore ’e could ge’ me.”
The next I knew we were climbing back into the hansom, Barker, myself, and Alice, all bound for Petticoat Lane. She was bouncing on her seat in excitement. It may have been her first cab ride. As for me, I found the conditions, squeezed between Barker’s hard shoulder and Alice’s soft one, like an immense, unwashed pillow, less than ideal.
Once one passes beyond Aldgate pump, Petticoat Lane is the first street one finds on the right. I paid the cabbie. On Sunday it is sheer madness, but the rest of the week the street vendors are gone and only the permanent shops remain. Barker did not object when Alice took his arm and led him down the street. We penetrated farther into the lane than we’d ever gone before. After several hundred yards, the street breaks up into narrow alleyways, with smaller and meaner looking shops. Alice pulled the Guv down one of the alleys. The shallow open booths there were split horizontally, so that while one vendor sat with his legs crossed an inch above the pavement, displaying secondhand collars, his upstairs neighbor sat a few inches above his head, offering ties, handkerchiefs, and suspenders. Inspector Swanson was standing and talking with Dirty Annie, as solid looking as a lamppost.
“Donald,” Barker said casually, as if he just happened to be doing a bit of shopping in the area and stumbled across him.
“Cyrus,” Swanson responded, affecting the same casual tone.
“It’s ’ere, yer worship!” Mum Alice burst out.
Barker followed her to a booth, and she pointed a warty finger at a square of folded clothing arranged among several others. It was blue and white, with an open collar, and a neckerchief with an anchor design embroidered upon it. A sailor suit. My employer crouched down and lifted one end of the fabric, scrutinizing the label sewn in the collar. He nodded once. It was Rowes of Bond Street. The proprietor of the shop, if indeed one could call the small square of paved space a shop, was sitting so close the Guv might have reached out and shaken him, but he ignored him totally for the moment.
“How’d you find this booth?” he asked Swanson over his shoulder.
“I do this for a living, you know,” Swanson replied. “You’re not the only one who has informants.”
“Has he told you from whence the togs came?” Barker continued, this time referring to the proprietor directly. He finally turned the black quartz lens of his spectacles upon him. The vendor was a jowly fellow with a pendulous, unshaven neck, and a bowler too small for his hoary head.
“He’s nae said a word,” the inspector replied.
“What have you threatened him with?” Barker asked.
“The usual-a hard questioning down at A Division.”
“Take a walk, Donald.”
“No, Cyrus. There’ll be no tossin’ suspects about while I’m in the area.”
Barker nodded, still squatting there, deep in thought. Then he reached out, plucked the man’s greasy tie from inside his moth-eaten waistcoat and slowly pulled the man toward him. He spoke to him in one ear, so low we could not catch a word. Then slowly, he loosed the tie and the man settled down back on the pavement.
“Ask your question again.”
“Your name, sir. State your full name and address,” the inspector demanded.
“Joseph Perkins, three eleven Flower and Dean Street,” the slovenly man muttered.
“Who sold you these clothes?”
“Didn’t give their names and I didn’t ask ’em.”
“Isn’t it customary to ask for names and addresses when purchasing clothing?”
“It may be down near Aldgate High Street, in the prime sites. We ain’t so p’ticular back here where the sunlight don’t get through.”
“Were you aware a girl was missing wearing just such clothing?” Swanson demanded.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Girls go missing every day.”
“There is not an epidemic of missing girls in the East End of London,” Swanson stated, as if he were giving evidence in court.
“Suit yourself, then,” Perkins said with a shrug. “Don’t know nothing, didn’t see nothing.”
“You saw something, all right,” Barker growled. “Describe who sold you this sailor suit.”