Page 23 of The Missing Maid
‘Who came from Mrs Haverford’s Bureau of Excellence,’ Harry finished triumphantly. ‘I knew there was something fishy about that place. The girl I chatted to in the waiting room tried to tell me something about working in Mayfair. I wonder if this was what she meant.’
‘Impossible to know for sure. But if what you suspect is true and the agency is a front for something more sinister, it sounds as though you had a lucky escape,’ Oliver said as he pulled up at the entrance to Harry’s apartment. ‘Thank goodness you had the presence of mind to use a fake name.’
Harry thought guiltily of the story Mrs Honeywell had told about being contacted by the agency. ‘Mmmm,’ she said again,deciding it was probably better Oliver didn’t know about that. ‘So what do we do now? Should I warn Lady Finchem about Polly? What if she robs her for real next time?’
‘Absolutely not.’ He fixed her with a stern look. ‘Youare not going to do anything. Whoever is pulling Polly’s strings must be smart enough to know things are way too hot to try another robbery, so Lady Finchem should be safe enough. But I will think of a way to pass what you’ve told me over to the police, so that they can pursue further enquiries.’
‘But—’ Harry began, staring at him in consternation. ‘The police won’t do anything. As far as they’re concerned they’ve caught the culprit. Mildred will take the blame and the real criminals will get away scot-free.’
‘I think you underestimate the fine upstanding members of the Metropolitan Police,’ he disagreed. ‘They want to see justice done and they’ve been fighting these criminals a long time. They’re not in the business of prosecuting innocent people.’
Harry snorted. ‘Come on, Oliver, you’re a lawyer. That’s exactly what happens sometimes. The police don’t have the imagination to see past the ends of their noses.’
‘In books, perhaps,’ he said mildly. ‘But in real life, they’re a lot more diligent. We do try not to let the wrong person go to prison, on the whole.’
She had to admit she couldn’t imagine someone as conscientious as Oliver letting that happen. ‘You might not,’ she allowed. ‘But I’m not sure other people are so scrupulous.’
‘Either way, it doesn’t matter,’ he said firmly. ‘Your involvement ends here, Harry. No more undercover adventures and definitely no more trips to Elephant and Castle. You’ve taken too many risks already.’
‘But the Longstaffs—’ she objected.
‘I will contact them, let them know I’ve seen Mildred and she seems well, if understandably upset and confused,’ Oliver said. ‘Ican arrange a family visit, if you think that will set their minds at rest.’
Harry remembered the way the forbidding grey walls had loomed over her and shivered. ‘Maybe. It could make things worse.’
‘I’ll make the offer, at least,’ Oliver said. ‘But you’re going to have to trust me to handle this the right way, Harry. Can you do that?’
She looked at him then, with his serious dark eyes and stern expression, and tried to forget how many times she’d dreamed of sitting this close to him as a teenager, when he’d barely known she was there. She certainly had his attention now, although she could do with a little less severity; he wasn’t actually her employer. And now she had been staring at him so long that she struggled to remember what the question had been.
‘Um, yes. I trust you, Oliver.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Apart from anything else I’d hate to have to explain to Lawrence that I’d let something happen to his little sister.’
Just like that, the spell was broken. For a moment, she’d felt as though Oliver was seeing her as an equal – a partner in solving the crime. Now she realised he had only gone with her today out of a sense of responsibility to her brother. Even worse, he viewed her with the same maddening protectiveness as Lawrence, with no understanding of how stifling that could be. She was a grown woman, perfectly capable of looking after herself. She was not an ornament that needed to be wrapped in cotton wool and kept safe when it was not being admired. Disappointed in him, she reached for the door handle. ‘Thanks for taking me to see Mildred. I really appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said.
‘And I appreciate you feel a responsibility to Lawrence but I’d rather he didn’t know about what happened at the bank.’ She paused. ‘With Mr Pemberton, I mean.’
Oliver was quiet for a second or two. ‘I understand. Although I still think he got off lightly.’
‘Perhaps,’ Harry said as she got out of the car without waiting for him to come round and open the door. ‘But if there’s one thing I learned from growing up with three brothers, it’s where to place a knee to cause maximum pain.’
He winced. ‘I’ll let you know if there are any developments in Mildred’s case.’
‘Please do,’ she called over her shoulder, and thrust her key into the lock of the front door. ‘Goodbye, Oliver.’
She didn’t wait to watch him drive away – the adrenaline from the visit to Holloway was starting to fade and her irritation over Oliver’s overbearing attitude was prickling beneath her skin; she was suddenly very tired. It had been an eventful morning and she could still smell the stench of the prison hanging around her. What she wanted was a cup of coffee to pep her up and a long, hot shower, and she didn’t much care which order they came in.
Harry spent the rest of the weekend making notes and jotting down thoughts about possible connections in Mildred’s case. She might have promised Oliver she would not undertake any more physical detective work but that didn’t mean she had to stop thinking about it. The idea of an all-powerful female gang intrigued Harry, even as the extent of their crimes shocked her, and she wanted to know more.
Late on Monday afternoon, she detoured to the London Library and spent several hours scouring the newspaper archives for stories about the exploits of the Forty Elephants. There were plenty to be found, stretching back decades. At first they had concentrated on theft and blackmail, trading on society’s belief that women were the fairer sex and therefore incapable of such audacity. As their confidence grew, they took advantage of the more relaxed attitudes of the 1920s to expand their criminal activities and travel to cities other than London in search of fresh targets.
But Oliver had been right – their reign of terror had faded with the imprisonment of Alice Diamond in 1925. While they were undoubtedly still active, with a new queen stepping up to take Diamond’s crown, they no longer appeared to rule London’s underworld and Harry couldn’t help wondering whether another gang had stepped in to fill the vacuum they had left. One with even more sinister intent…
The second item on her to-do list was to find the advert Mildred had placed in thePositions Wantedcolumn of theMorning Heraldnewspaper. It wasn’t that she doubted the girl’s story, more that she wanted to see exactly how she had worded the advert. Domestic staff very often listed physical characteristics when seeking employment and that might have been the very thing that set Mildred on the path to disaster. Harry had to go back months to find it – the tiny print was blurring in front of her eyes when at last she saw Mildred’s name. Squinting at the paper, she forced herself to focus and saw with a whoosh of elation that her suspicions had been correct: Mildred had included her height and hair colour in the advert, as well as mentioning her diligence and ability to work hard, and her home address for contact.
Sitting back, Harry gave herself a mental pat on the back. This was how the criminals had selected their mark. And right inthe middle of the page, dwarfing the columns around it, was an advert for Mrs Haverford’s Bureau of Excellence. Harry knew it didn’t mean anything but the juxtaposition made her frown. She was sure there was more to the employment agency than met the eye. Perhaps they were simply involved in getting thieves past the front door of wealthy households in order to rob them, but if that was the case, they were very selective in their work. If what Harry suspected about the supposed theft at Lady Finchem’s was true, the gang was not averse to a complicated set-up to net a bigger haul at a later date. She could see why some people admired them.
