Page 17 of The Marriage Method

Miles carefully dusted off the ashes before removing the small, leather-bound book from the stove and opening it. The pages were filled with Cowgill’s characteristic scrawl. Satisfaction coursed through him. “I’ve found it,” he said.

Higgins came to join him. “His notebook?”

“It appears to be.” Miles thumbed through the pages. “The dates go back some time.”

“The earlier notes must be in reference to his previous columns,” Higgins mused, peering over Miles’s shoulder. “Is there nothing more recent?”

Miles turned toward the end. “This is dated last week,” he said. “The last entry before he disappeared.”

The ink-splotched notes beneath the date were sparse and not readily understandable. Only random names, broken phrases, and a few seemingly unrelated scraps of information.

Fawn-Purvis, Innes

From Hertfordshire to Brothe4

Depot

Sleep/Tea

5000 pounds.

Higgins beetled his brows. “What does it mean?” he asked. “Hertfordshire to brother?”

Miles examined Cowgill’s notes with an editor’s eye. He didn’t understand what they meant yet, not in totality, but he did know one thing. “That word isn’t brother,” he replied. “It’s brothel.”

• • • • •

The bell over the door rang as Nell entered the dilapidated little rag-and-bottle shop. Located at the end of one of the narrow, intersecting alleyways that branched off of Commercial Street, it stood at the entrance to the slum—a fact announced by the refuse that littered the ground and the putrid air that rolled in from the docks.

An old woman poked her head out from behind a pile of discolored garments she was sorting. “Who’s that?” she demanded, looking from Nell’s face to her cane and back again. “Have something to sell?”

“I’ve come to visit the seamstress, Miss Jean,” Nell said. “I understand she resides at this address.”

Immediately losing interest in Nell as a potential customer, the old woman jerked her chin toward a curtained doorway behind her. “Second room on the right.”

Nell inclined her head to the woman before passing through the curtain into a dimly lit passageway. She had remained in her room at the ladies’ hotel only long enough to calm the pain in her aching leg before setting forth on her commission for the Academy. There was little enough time for it. According to her railway guide, the next train was departing at two o’clock. Nell intended to be on it.

If Miles was back before then, she might consent to speak with him. But she wasn’t waiting around for hours merely to rebuff some misguided masculine attempt at redeeming her honor. She’d already made up her mind.

In any event, she doubted whether Miles would return. The man had been sent a severed tongue, for heaven’s sake. She must be the last thing on his mind at the moment. Indeed, he’d scarcely managed a bow before abruptly taking his leave from her.

Not that Nell blamed him. One of his reporters had been killed. That obviously took precedence over her own ruination.

As for the state of her honor, Nell sincerely hoped that her present errand might go some small way toward repairing it. At least, that is, in Miss Corvus’s eyes.

Reaching the second door on the right, Nell rapped on it firmly.

“Come in!” a woman called.

Nell opened the door, entering a room that was even tinier than her own small chamber at the Academy. It contained a narrow, neatly made bed, a dainty table with a chipped vase of violets upon it, and two faded chairs on either side of a window. A handsome woman in a printed floral dress sat in one of them busily stitching the hem of a linen dress. Her skin was as dark as rich mahogany, her black curly hair twisted back under a muslin cap.

“Miss Jean?” Nell inquired.

“Aye, that’s me,” the woman replied, a cockney accent edging her words. She appeared to be in her middle thirties. Poised and self-confident, her back not yet bent by a life of hardship. “I’ve got no time for any more mending if that’s why you’ve come. Not ’til next week. I’ve dresses to make, as you see.”

Nell shut the door behind her. “I haven’t come to hire you. I’ve come to speak with you.”

“You what?” Miss Jean looked up from her sewing to examine her unexpected guest. “And who might you be, milady?”