Will’s mouth curved. “Can I get that engraved? Preferably on something small like a pen, so I can carry it around.”
She let out a dramatic sigh and tried not to smile. “Just hurry up.”
He nodded. “Pardon me,” Will called out as he stepped forward and the older man slowly lifted his head. His narrow shoulders were heavily stooped and his stiff movements betrayed the frailty of age, but he met Will’s gaze with a fierce directness that took him by surprise. “What’d you want?”
“I’m looking for your neighbor, Miss Alice Clarke.” Will smiled broadly but the man’s scowl only deepened.
“Why?”
Phoebe ducked around him and held out her hand. “I’m her teacher, Miss Atkinson.”
The older man eyed her hand for a moment before taking it. “Cartwright,” he replied.
“Mr. Cartwright,” Phoebe said with a smile. “A pleasure.”
The man seemed far more charmed by her than Will and his scowl nearly disappeared. “You work at that school for the young chits?”
Phoebe nodded graciously at the coarse description and Will felt a pang of jealousy. She had shown this man more cordiality in the last minute than she had toward him, well, ever. “Alice has been missing these last two weeks and I’m worried about her.”
Cartwright grunted in reply. “Just as well. Girls like her don’t need to be taught reading and the like. Gives them too many ideas.”
“On that I’m afraid we must disagree,” she said tactfully. “But I’d be so grateful if you could share the last time you saw her.”
The man grunted again. “Hard to say. She mostly kept to herself. Her and her ma. A good woman. God rest her soul.”
“Anything would be helpful,” Phoebe stressed.
Will was certain he would give them the brush-off but then Cartwright tilted his head in thought. “I haven’t seen Alice in a long while. But I did see another chit leaving her flat not long ago.”
Will glanced at Phoebe, who shot him a puzzled frown.
“Could you describe her?”
The scowl returned as Cartwright addressed Will. “She lookedfast. The sort that has no business coming up here. This is a respectable place, and she’s naught but trouble.”
“Then you know her.”
Cartwright hesitated. “She hangs about at the music hall round the corner. Goes by Maude, I think. Only a certain type is seen there. Not ladies,” he added with a nod to Phoebe.
Will gave him a skeptical look. Cartwright seemed to know a fair amount about a woman he claimed to disapprove of, but Will resisted the urge to challenge his assertion.
Phoebe still managed that congenial smile even in the face of the man’s hypocrisy. “Can you tell me when you last saw her, then?”
“More than a week gone now,” he said with a shrug.
She met Will’s eyes. That was around the time Alice disappeared. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Cartwright,” Phoebe said. “I appreciate it.”
“And we would appreciate it even more if you didn’t mention this conversation to anyone.” Will pulled out a banknote.
Cartwright took the money while grumbling something about “useless toffs” before he shuffled down the hall.
Once he was out of earshot, Will turned to Phoebe. “Charming man. Shall we explore the flat?”
She balked. “You mean to break in?”
“I mean to try. No promises though. I haven’t needed to pick a lock in nearly two decades. I had a penchant for roly-poly pudding as a boy and our poor cook couldn’t keep up with my stomach,” he said, smiling at the welcome memory. “She had to start locking the larder so I wouldn’t go looking for a jar of her raspberry preserves. Desperate times and all that.”
