Julia dug into her doctor’s bag. “Nothing much beyond the summary I gave you yesterday. I also have that invitation from my grandfather.” She handed over his note. “Tomorrow, if you are free.”
“Delighted.”
“He scribbled seven thirty, but his handwriting is execrable, like most doctors.” She snapped her case and stood. “Margot Miller, a procuress . . . another card in the mysterious deck. I’ll leave you gentlemen to sort out the complicated hand.”
After the door closed, O’Malley grunted. “Complicated. That’s one way of putting it. What was the chief wanting with you? Only to give us a tongue-lashing?”
“That, of course. Also, Sir Francis Grant wants a meeting at the beginning of next week.”
“And who is he when he’s at home?”
“Sir Francis is President of the Royal Academy of Art. The Annual Exhibition opens on the sixth of April, just over two weeks from now. He wants to discuss police protection for the event, given the recent events at art galleries.”
“Manpower being no problem when the likes of Sir Francis come calling. The budget be damned, then.”
“It’s the way of the world, Paddy. And the Yard, I’m afraid.”
O’Malley waved Mr. Lloyd’s note. “This puts the peacock lady and a ‘yellow-haired’ seaman together. Miller and Arnie Stackpole. I’d be betting money on it.”
“He’s the likely candidate. Annie described him as fair-haired. What was the name of his ship?”
“The Flying something or other.” O’Malley pulled out his notebook and flipped through his interviews. “TheFlying Spur.”
“Go down to the docks and dig up the name of the company that owns her and find out how long she’s been trading between London and China. Ask if they take passengers.”
“You’re wanting me to go to the Billingsgate for the Chinese girl’s identification?”
“No. I’ll see to it. And there’s something else . . . another possibility.”
“What are you thinking?”
“When Stackpole threatened Annie O’Neill, he said Margot Miller owed him money ‘for them.’ We thought he was trading in goods.”
“’Tis women he’s buying and selling, you’re thinking?”
“Might he have another pair of girls like Jin and the girl who sailed with her? According to Annie, Stackpole was waiting for payment before he ‘delivered the goods.’”
“Where is he keeping them now that he’s in the nick?”
Tennant looked at the calendar and consulted his watch. “Stackpole is two weeks into his thirty-day stretch. Time to pay him a visit. I’ll let him think we know more than we do—it may loosen his tongue.”
* * *
Tennant’s cab left Westminster and crossed the river into Southwark by London Bridge. It stopped in front of a brick-and-stone prison that was a place of incarceration and public execution with space for a gallows on its roof. A convict either walked out when he’d finished his sentence or swung for the entertainment of a gaping, hooting audience, leaving in a box.
Tennant raised the entry’s clapper and dropped it with an iron bang. A slotted window scraped across metal, and the gatekeeper’s face appeared in the void.
“Detective Inspector Tennant to see the warden.”
Keys jangled, the door swung open, and the keeper directed Tennant to his chief’s office. Twenty minutes later, a jailer escorted the gangly, shackled Arnie Stackpole into the waiting room. The yellow-haired sailorman needed a wash, but fair-haired fit the bill.
Stackpole’s leg chains dragged along the stone floor, the sound rising to the rafters of the vaulted ceiling and echoing down again. His clanging journey ended at an oak bench, where the guard shoved him down by his shoulder. The jailor retreated a few yards and waited, tapping his truncheon against his palm.
Tennant took Will Quain’s sketch of Margot Miller from its folder and held it up. “I assume you know she’s dead,” Tennant said.
Stackpole dug around the back of his ruined mouth with a grubby finger, dislodged a bit of breakfast from his broken teeth, and spat it on the floor. “Heard that rumor.”
“Word on the docks says she owed you money, and you were looking for her.”
