“The surgeon thought something,” I said. “He saw enough to record what he did. He chose his words with care. But without a knife in the chest or a rope around the neck, the coroner would not pronounce murder. And without that pronouncement, the Yard would not look beyond the surface.”
She lowered the page slowly. “They looked at rope marks. At bruises. At a girl half-starved. And decided that she drowned of her own foolishness.”
“They decided it would cost them less to believe that than to consider the alternative.”
Her jaw worked as if she bit back words no lady would utter. When she spoke, her voice had gone quieter, not louder.
“She was not a loose thread to be cut away. She was somebody’s daughter. Sister. Friend.” Her fingers tightened onthe edge of the report. “They have consigned her to a line in a ledger.”
I reached for the mortuary entry and handed it across. “Speaking of ledgers.”
She read the single, blunt notation. It took less than a breath.
“Female. Unknown. Taken from river. Transferred for burial. No claimant.” The paper shook once between her fingers, then stilled. “That is all she rates.”
“For the Yard, yes.” I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on the table. “For us, she is more. She is proof that these girls are not running of their own accord.” I drew the map toward us, the one I had marked earlier with the dots of their last known whereabouts. “See here. Lambeth. New Bond Street. Bloomsbury. St Agnes. All within reach of a road to the river. All in places where a woman might be sent on an errand or lured with a promise.”
She bent closer. The scent of her, tea and lavender and something warmer beneath, slipped under my guard.
“When did each vanish?” she asked.
I pointed to the dates I had written beside each mark.
“Three in late February. Two in early March. One just before the body was found. Another group fell away in early April. Two more last week. There are others, but these belong to Sister Margaret’s list and the reports the Commissioner was willing to part with.”
A small line had formed between her brows. “They disappear in clusters.”
“Yes. Roughly every four to six weeks, a group of girls vanishes. Some from homes. Some from business establishments. None with enough rank to force the Yard to take notice.”
“And Anna Price’s body was found in late March.”
“Just after the first cluster disappeared. The coroner places her death within days of discovery.”
Rosalynd went very still. Her hand hovered above the map.
“So they take a group of girls,” she said. “Use them for whatever depravity they have conceived. Some survive. Some do not. Those who die are given to the river. Those who live are kept, or passed on.”
“That is my reading,” I said. “It fits what we heard at the Marwoods’ garden. It fits what the serving woman in Chelsea feared to say outright. It fits Riversgate, where you went today.”
Her eyes flashed at that reminder, though not in apology. She tapped a finger against the map, near where I had marked Chelsea.
“Riversgate is here. And Anna Price was found at Stangate Wharf on the Lambeth shore.” Her finger slid downriver. “Whatever lies between the two has not yet shown its face. But it must be there.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
She looked up sharply.
I reached across the table and turned the paper so the river’s curve sat properly between us. “You are thinking of the Thames as though she were a road,” I said. “A body goes in at one point and emerges at the next, neatly downstream.”
“Is that not what happened?”
“Not on this river.” I tapped the line of water with my fingertip. “The Thames is tidal through London. Twice a day, she reverses herself. Flood tide runs upriver. Ebb tide carries everything back down again. A body can drift east, then be drawn west, then snag on a stair or a wharf until it is freed hours later.”
Her brows drew together as she stared at the map.
“Anna Price may have entered the water well east of Stangate,” I continued, “and still been found there. Whichmeans our house need not sit obediently between Chelsea and the Lambeth shore at all.”
Rosalynd’s mouth tightened. “Then it could be anywhere.”
