Page 86 of The Hollow of Fear
“They were taken this year. She’s twenty-five. Twenty-six January next.”
Which made her close in age to Lady Ingram. “And you said she has been missing a little more than three weeks?”
“I last saw her almost a month ago. She told me she’d be out of London for a day or two, but that she’d be back in time for my daughter’s birthday. I didn’t want her to go. Sometimes, postcard girls are invited to stag parties in the country—and those parties don’t always go well for the girls.
“She said it would be nothing of the sort, that she’d already helped this gentleman before. She said he thought well of her ideas—which worried me even more.
“She was tired of depending on men to photograph her, you see. They don’t pay much and some of them want favors besides. She was going to buy her own equipment and learn how to do everything herself, from pulling the shutter to developing the negatives. She wanted to have a stable of the best girls in the business. And someday she wanted to own a printing press, too.”
Mrs. Watson looked uncomfortable. Charlotte felt no particular dismay. Pornography would exist as long as the human race did. If a woman didn’t mind appearing on a risqué postcard, she might as well maximize her control over—and profit from—the entire process.
“I see,” she said. “Commendable entrepreneurial spirit on her part.”
Mrs. Farr had looked defiant as she narrated her sister’s plans. But Charlotte’s comment seemed to have rattled her, as if she’d expected anything except a compliment. “I—I thought so, but I didn’t believe her gentleman thought the same. When a man first claps eyes on a girl on a postcard, the chances of him ever seeing her as anything other than flesh—” She shook her head. “Anyway, we had words. I told her she oughtn’t go. And she told me that she looked after herself just fine and didn’t need an one-eyed old woman ordering her about.
“When she didn’t come for my daughter’s birthday I thought maybe she was still angry with me. But the next day I thought, no, that’s not my Mimi. She doesn’t hold a grudge. And she loves her niece and thinks the world of her. I went ’round to her room, but her landlady already let the room to someone else because she’d been gone more than a week and hadn’t settled her account.
“Her friends didn’t know what to think. She promised them that she’d start her own studio as soon as she returned, and she wasn’t some flighty girl who made promises she didn’t keep. I went to Scotland Yard and begged to speak to somebody. And this hoity-toity inspector told me that it was hardly unheard of for girls like Mimi to hole up with a man and not be seen for a while.
“I told him that maybe he knew nothing about girls like her. Because girls like her have family and friends they see on the regular, and rooms and appointments to keep. Girls like her have mementoes that mean something to them—she knew her landlady would sell her belongings wholesale to some rag dealer, if she left them behind. And what kind of arrangement with a man wouldn’t give her half a day to come back to see to her things and tell her family and friends that she now had an arrangement?
“But I might as well have talked to a statue—men like that have ears but nothing goes in. I kept going back, but it was no use. There was one nice sergeant who told me I ought to write to Sherlock Holmes. I did but he was out of town and I still don’t know anything more about Mimi.”
“Sherlock is my brother and I’m here on his behalf. For the past few days I have been occupied with a difficult case, but it would seem that you and I are fated to meet after all.”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Farr sounded doubtful.
“That is so. Have you or any of your sister’s friends seen this gentleman of hers in person?”
Mrs. Farr shook her head. “None of them. And not me either.”
Charlotte asked a few more questions, but Mrs. Farr could tell her nothing else about the man. And she was becoming impatient. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now what canyoutellme?”
Her question was a near growl. Surprising how much authority a woman who begged on the streets at least some of the time could pack into a few words. Then again, Mrs. Farr was not an ordinary down-on-her-luck mendicant—Charlotte had already deduced that after their first meeting. She might exist on London’s underbelly, but she was not lost in it. In fact, she might have carved out her own small fiefdom there.
Charlotte did not recoil this time. “I’m afraid all I have concerning your sister is bad news.”
“I’ll take bad news. I’ll take any news.”
Since she’d become Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, Charlotte had made her share of unwelcome announcements, but this might be the most brutal one yet. As hungry as Mrs. Farr was for news—any news—hers was a despair still shot through with strands of hope. Now Charlotte would snip every last filament of that hope.
“Unless there are more than one young brunette with a beauty mark who’s been missing for exactly as long as she has, your sister is most likely dead.”
On an otherwise blandly pretty face, the beauty mark had served as a punctuating feature, bringing focus to Mimi Duffin’s pert chin and bow-shaped mouth. And it had been the cause of her misfortune. Mrs. Farr was right; the gentleman hadn’t been in the least interested in Mimi Duffin’s ideas or ambitions.
Mrs. Farr clamped her fingers over the arms of her chair. The veins on the backs of her hands rose in sharp relief. “What happened? Where is she?”
“Her body hasn’t been found yet. It might take some time to surface, as there was incentive to move it some distance from the site of the crime. As for what happened, she bore a resemblance to someone else, someone the gentleman wanted others to think of as having been murdered.
“He probably saw her face on a postcard and realized she could make for a fairly decent approximation to the body he wanted. He found her, cultivated her, and then had her transport herself to where he intended to kill her.”
“And where is that?” Mrs. Farr’s voice turned harsh.
“At the moment I’m not at liberty to divulge that. I apologize, but the man who did this is wily and dangerous and I have put everyone here at risk in seeking Miss Duffin’s identity. The less you know, the better. But I promise you that as soon as possible, I will tell you more. And I will not consider the matter finished until your sister’s body has been found and returned to you.”
Mrs. Farr sat still and silent. Mrs. Watson brought her a glass of brandy. Mrs. Farr drank with shaking hands. When she was done, she set down the empty glass, rose, and walked out.
Mr. Marbleton got to his feet. “I’ll see that she reaches home safely.”
