“I’ll leave you to your work, Lady Forsythe.” He paused. “I ask your pardon for my comments before. It’s just that no one has been willing to help, and you being a lady and all.”
“It’s quite all right,” I assured him.
Gwen Tavers’s room was simply furnished as I had expected, with a neatly made narrow bed, a simple wood chest of drawers with a few nicks and scuffs, and a piece of lace atop along with two jars.
And oddly, a brush and comb, along with a round tin with a picture of a woman on the lid.
Left behind, as if she intended to return?
I opened the tin and immediately smelled lavender.
It was powder with a small pad. It seemed that Gwen Tavers was a very discerning young woman, careful of her appearance, who had left behind comb and brush, and that tin of powder?
There was no closet, however a skirt in dark-blue cambric and a shirtwaist, along with a coat, hung at hooks along the wall beside the chest of drawers.
The one window was hung with lace curtains, and the bed was covered with a woolen blanket with a lace-edged coverlet. A narrow table and chair stood against the wall beside the bed.
A ceramic pitcher filled with lilacs stood atop the table, the blooms faded and badly wilted, and beside them a small, framed photograph.
It was a picture of two young women, expressions unusual. Most photographs were usually quite serious. However, both young women were smiling.
According to the description Mr. Cavendish had provided, Gwen was the one with darker hair in the photograph. And the other young woman? Who was she? And what did that room tell me about Gwen Tavers?
I sat in the straight-backed chair at that table and let my thoughts take in everything, as I slowly looked about the room with what Brodie called my ‘woman’s feelings’ about such things.
I had once attempted to explain it to Brodie, that sense of something from a woman’s perspective, a feeling when entering a room that my friend Templeton called the little tap on the shoulder from her muse, Sir William—the spirit of William Shakespeare.
She claimed to have a spiritual connection with him. Not that I doubted her ...
I had not shared with Brodie that the voice often whispered at the most unexpected moments, preferring to simply call it ‘instinct’ about certain things I had observed.
“Ah,” he said at the time, quite cynical. “Like the spirits the Scots believe in.”
He did have a somewhat cynical opinion regarding Templeton and Sir William.
Yet, who was I to argue?
I had experienced many interesting and peculiar things in my travels, and my great-aunt often conducted seances at Sussex Square with her lady friends and claimed to have spoken with those from ‘ behind the veil .’
What I instinctively felt now was that while Gwen Tavers was quite spirited, as her father had described her—from the orderliness of the room with everything in its place, including very personal things—I also sensed that she was neither foolish nor rash.
I was certain she would not have taken herself off on an adventure without extra clothes or personal items, such as comb and brush.
That could only mean that she had intended to return.
I continued to look about the room for anything else that might tell me something about the girl. A book, perhaps a flyer from one of the travel companies that had first sparked her appetite for adventure.
Or perhaps, a wadded piece of paper, something tossed away in the small rubbish can beside the table? A note perhaps?
What might that tell me?
Possibly nothing more than a receipt for something purchased, or a shopping list. But the paper I found was neither. It was the front page torn from The Times newspaper three weeks earlier.
I had no way of knowing what that might mean, other than it was something that had caught the girl’s interest. Still, I folded it and put it in my bag. I then crossed the room and retrieved that photograph. With a last glance about the room, I returned to the shop below.
Mr. Tavers had finished with another customer and looked up.
I showed him the photograph. “Might I borrow it? I assume the young woman on the left is your daughter.”
He nodded. “That’s me Gwen and a friend.”
“What can you tell me about the other young woman?”
“Do you think she might know something about my Gwen?”
“It would help if I knew where to find her and perhaps ask her some questions.”
“The other girl sells flowers over at the Garden. They struck up an acquaintance some time back. Gwen always went to her for fresh flowers. Her mother liked fresh flowers, said it made the shop look nice.”
I thought of the lilacs.
“Do you know the girl’s name?”
He shook his head. “Gwen might have mentioned it, but I paid no mind.”
No name, but a photograph that might be helpful in finding the girl.
“Might I keep this for now?” I inquired. “I will return it.”
He nodded. “If it will help find me girl.”
I tucked the photograph in my bag. I didn’t bother to mention the page torn from The Times newspaper. It might mean nothing.
If Gwen purchased flowers at Covent Garden, it was very possible they had been wrapped in that piece of newspaper, and she had then simply discarded it. Or did it mean something else?
“I won’t take any more of your time,” I told him.
“You’ll tell me straight away if you learn somethin’?”
I explained that this sort of thing, finding someone who perhaps didn’t want to be found, took time. Yet, I also assured him that I would let him know anything we learned.
He nodded again. “It’s more than the police have done.”
I had the name of the officer who had taken the report. I also knew of someone who might assist me with information about that report.
I found a cab after leaving his shop and asked the driver to take me to the Vine Street Police Station.
As expected, the constable who made the report was not present. However, I was able to speak with the desk sergeant.
“That is confidential information, miss,” he informed me when I inquired about the report.
“You will need to submit a request to the main station at the New Scotland Yard. Once your request is approved by Mr. Abberline, you can see the report.”
Abberline.
He had been the Chief Inspector of Police at the time of my sister’s disappearance, an incompetent but ambitious man Brodie also had some experience with, that led to Brodie leaving the MET.
Mr. Abberline had been put on suspension after a previous inquiry case due to his incompetence and overreaching in matters, and had Brodie imprisoned. No doubt in part due to their difficult history. To say that I was not fond of the man was an understatement.
He was a loathsome, vile person, and I considered it an insult that he even breathed air. There was a time when I had seriously considered ridding mankind of his very existence. And now, he had returned. Past transgressions forgiven?
I knew perfectly well what the result would be of any request for information put before him. If I wanted to see that report, I would have to gain access to it by other means.
With traffic congestion as the afternoon approached, I walked several blocks before I was able to find a driver.
Although the hour was late in the day, I took a chance that someone at the Garden might be able to identify the young woman in that photograph with Gwen Tavers.
I was familiar with Covent Garden from visiting the market with my housekeeper to purchase flowers for one of my great-aunt’s parties. She could be quite extravagant when it came to such things. Others might have called it eccentric .
Such as the Egyptian sailboat she had installed in the great hall, complete with water to create an illusion for a party she gave at the time. And then there was the Viking longboat she was determined to be sent off in, a fiery celebration when she passed on.
Eccentric was perhaps an understatement.
Yet, who was I to argue with a woman descended from William the Conqueror, who had a number of lovers, no husband, counted members of the Royal family among personal acquaintances, along with a notorious highwayman and a smuggler or two, and had lived her life exactly as she pleased.
There would undoubtedly be a need for hundreds of flowers for sending her off in that long boat. But not for several more years, I hoped.
As expected, there were only a dozen or so vendors still at the Garden when I arrived, sweeping and cleaning up after the day’s sales. Other stalls had been closed and covered for the night, those vendors gone at the end of the day that began well before first light.
I drew curious stares, a brief nod or two, and then an inquiry from a rosy-cheeked woman who sat before her stall counting off bundles of roses.
“Wot can I do for you, miss? I’ve got several colors in roses, fresh from the man who grows them. If it’s a special one yer after, it might take me a while to find with all these crates to sort.”
In spite of the fact that many of her roses had not yet opened, the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of others. I pointed to a box of deep red ones.
“Ah, good choice, miss. Those is hearty and will be good for days if you get them into water straight away.” She sorted through the paper-wrapped bundles and found what she was looking for.
“These is perfect, miss, and they match yer gown. How many can I wrap for you?”
I purchased a full dozen. “I would appreciate some information as well. I’m looking for a young woman who works here. A friend purchased flowers from her.”
“There’s a good many girls who work here. I know most of ‘em.”
I retrieved the photograph I’d taken from Gwen’s room and showed it to her.
“It would be the young woman on the right in this photograph.”
“That would be Lizzie. She usually works the street after collecting the flowers here. Most usually over at the Circus where the men purchase them for their wives, and others, if you get my meanin’.”
Lizzie. In the very least, I now had a name.