Tennant stood. “I’d like to see her bedroom, if I may.”
Mrs. Murphy led them to a bright, comfortable chamber. If the room knew Franny’s secrets, it kept them close. Tennant found only two things of interest: a drawing and some letters. The girl had pinned a pencil sketch of herself to the wall above her dressing table. Someone had signed it with the initials WQ.
“It’s a good likeness of Franny,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“May I borrow it?”
Mrs. Murphy unpinned it and smiled at the picture. “An artist in Hyde Park drew it.”
“And we need to read the letters from her friend in Canada,” Tennant said. “I will return them, of course.”
At the door, Mrs. Murphy said, “Franny’s best dress was missing from her wardrobe, but I wasn’t telling the other sergeant that.”
* * *
The interview with the Callahan girls was as unproductive as the landlady predicted.
Tennant pulled out his watch. “I think we can make it to Harvey Nicols before its doors close.” He flagged a cab and directed the driver to Knightsbridge and Sloan Street. Theysettled in, and he shuffled through the letters, handing half to O’Malley.
“Let’s start with late spring before Franny begins to work longer hours.”
They rattled along reading until O’Malley broke the silence. “Here’s something, now. Listen to this from June of last year.‘He sounds like a charmer—and the money is almost too good to be true. That should make you think twice.’”
“The offensive sergeant may have been right,” Tennant said. “There was a man in the picture. A charmer with money to throw around.”
Several letters from the summer included tantalizing references. “I’m glad I turned out to be a nervous Nelly,” Tennant read. “And this one:It seems to be going well.”
“If only the girl would say what ‘it’ is all about,” O’Malley grumbled.
“I’ll cable the Toronto Police tomorrow and have them track the friend down.”
The cab pulled up to Harvey Nicols thirty minutes before closing time. Tennant passed Franny’s picture to his sergeant. “Show it to the man behind that newspaper kiosk and chat up the doorman. I’ll see what they can tell me inside.”
The store manager and the ladies’ dress department supervisor were cooperative and polite, but they had little to say about Franny aside from her skill as a needlewoman. Tennant’s question about her working hours puzzled them. They hadn’t asked her to stay late and never sent their help home by cab. When the inspector asked to see the recently employed girl who worked with Franny, they looked blank.
“A new girl?” the store manager said. “We haven’t added to our female staff in over a year, Inspector.”
“Was Miss Riley friendly with any of the gentlemen who work here?”
The manager turned frosty. “We at Harvey Nicols discourage fraternizing among the staff.”
“May I speak to the other seamstresses you employ?”
“Of course, Inspector.”
Tennant sighed when the supervisor led him to a pair of ladies thirty years Franny’s senior. He guessed they were unlikely confidants, and he was right.
* * *
Outside, O’Malley waited while the doorman helped a lady into a carriage. The man pocketed a coin and whistled his way back to the sergeant. The doorman remembered the Saturday evening Franny left the store and never returned. She usually caught an omnibus heading east on Knightsbridge. That afternoon, she turned west and walked down Brompton Road.
“She was easy on the eyes,” he said, “and a pleasant, well-spoken young lady.” He scratched his head under the sweatband of the hat. “Now that I think about it . . . when I turned back from a customer to look for her, she was gone. I remember thinking she must have hailed a cab or gotten into a carriage.”
Tennant joined O’Malley on the pavement.
“‘Discourages fraternizing,’ does he?” The sergeant snorted on hearing the manager’s remarks. “The law discourages many a thing, and here we are, chasing down criminals every day.”
“Nothing from the doorman?”
