Page 25 of Their Master

Smith stared at the filthy item for a moment before gritting his teeth and flipping it open with the tip of his fingernail.

“What you’ll see is—”

Smith held up a hand, cutting off the verbal flow. “Let me read it and I will ask questions.”

Sheffle made an irritable burbling sound in his throat but sat back and shut his mouth.

Catherine Duvalle, also known as Moira Dunsmuir.

Age: twenty-five, arrived in London, unattended, eleven months ago onThe Petrelfrom Marseilles.

Smith looked up. “How did you find out what ship she arrived on?”

“I was followin’ her work history when I hit a dead end after goin’ back eleven months.” He gave Smith a sly look. “Since you said money wasn’t an object, the first thing I did was go around to some of the better whorehouses.”

Smith snorted at Sheffle’s notion ofresearch.

“Go on,” he said.

“I found she’d looked for work at the Birch Palace but hadn’t been hired. I went through a few others before I got to Tosca’s, which looks to be the only place she worked before she got hired at Bernina’s. I found the girl she shared a room with and gave her a few bob to loosen her lips.”

When Smith didn’t praise him for his cleverness, he went on. “She didn’t know much,” Sheffle admitted. “But shedidknow that Dunsmuir had mentioned where she’d lived before moving into her room at the brothel. A right narsty pit of a place called Pigeon Court. I went there and found the landlady. She said Dunsmuir never caused trouble, never had guests, and paid on time before she buggered off.” Sheffle grinned, and it was a gruesome sight. “I thought I’d found nothin’. But then, just as I was about to go, the old lass let it fall that Dunsmuir came to her from a fellow down at the docks. The old crone has an arrangement where—”

“The man refers potential renters to the landlady and receives some sort of finder’s fee,” Smith finished for him.

Sheffle nodded. “Aye. Anyhow, I went and found the bloke. With enough persuasion, he remembered the girl and looked her up in his book. There she was: not Moira Dunsmuir but Catherine Duvalle, traveling without a berth from Marseilles.”

That meant steerage, which meant Moira had had a grim journey, as Smith knew all too well.

“The whore at Tosca’s said she saw Duvalle writing a letter in a foreign language and asked her what it was. Duvalle got flustered and hid whatever she was writin’. Told her that she’d grown up in Marseilles but begged her not to tell anyone she was part French. She said Englishmen didn’t like foreign whores, especially not French ones. Said the reason she could talk such good English was because her Ma had been Scottish.”

Smith looked down at the single piece of paper and turned it over; it was blank on the back. He looked up. “And?”

Sheffle shrugged. “And what? That was it. That’s where the trail led.” He hesitated and then added, “Er, unless you want me to go over to France?”

“Do you speak French?”

“Not a word.” Sheffle sounded very proud of his ignorance.

“Then I don’t need you to go to Marseilles,” Smith said. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t send somebody whodidspeak French.

“Probably ain’t nothin’ to find over there, anyhow,” Sheffle said.

Maybe. Maybe not. But Smith was nothing if not thorough.

In the meantime, however, Sheffle’s investigation would suffice.

Now Smith just had to pay a visit to Moira and make his offer.

∞∞∞

Smith stared at Madam Cecile. “Gone?”

“Yes, she left a week ago.”

“Why?”

“She became ill and couldn’t work. And before you look at me that way,no, I didn’t give her the boot.”

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