There were complicated stories of arrests, dozens of rabbit holes, but none of them shed any light about what happened to the missing girls, or the truth of how they had been caught in the first place.
Perhaps word of her inquiries had trickled back to the Director. She was a private citizen now, she thought. What right did they have to forbid her?
But there would be no fooling the Director. Eleanor set down her tea and pulled the file that she always carried with her from her messenger bag and studied it. She handed over the folder containing all the information she was not supposed to have—and that she knew he would want to see.
The Director thumbed through her notes and she could tell from his expression that they did not contain anything he didn’t already know. “Like I’ve always said, it’s a bloody shame about these girls.” The Director handed back her file and Eleanor clutched it tightly, the sharp edge cutting into the scarred pads of her fingertips. “I’m prepared to send you.”
She could not believe her own ears. “Sir?”
“If you’re still keen to go, of course. To find out what became of the missing girls—and how they were all caught in the first place.” He knew that she’d been more than keen to go. Those girls had consumed her, and she was desperate to find out about them.
A dozen questions circled in her mind. “Why now?” Eleanor managed finally. After the months of rejection and pain, she needed to understand.
“I’d been thinking about calling you for some time. For one thing, someone’s been asking questions.”
“Who?”
“Thogden Barnett.” Violet’s father. Eleanor had spoken with Barnett not two weeks earlier and had sensed among all of the parents that he was the angriest, the least likely to let it go. So she had fed him ever so subtly her doubts and questions about what had happened to the girls, let the ideas fester in his brain. An outsider, he could take it to his member of parliament and press the matter in a way that she could not. Apparently the gamble had paid off. “Most of the families have, as you know, tried to put the past behind them,” the Director continued. “But Mr. Barnett has been asking questions about what happened to his daughter and how she died. When no one answered to his satisfaction, he brought the matter to his MP. They’re threatening a parliamentary investigation. I need to be able to tell them how the girls died—or at least all of the ways we tried to find out.”
But questions from a grieving parent would not have been enough reason for the Director to take the drastic step of sending her. “You said ‘for one thing.’ Is there another reason?”
“Yes, this business with the fire.”
“I don’t understand the connection.”
“And maybe there isn’t one. You remember how you were asked to leave the files?” he asked. Eleanor nodded. The orders had been clear: touch nothing. “They’d said the files would be packed up and taken. Well, for months, the files sat. No one came for them. It was almost as though they had been forgotten. Then a few days ago, I received a message that the files would be picked up this morning for the parliamentary investigation. And then this happened.” He gestured in the direction of Norgeby House.
“You think someone set the fire deliberately to destroy the files?”
He grunted in tacit agreement. “The police say it was too many old papers in a tight space. But our inspectors found this.” He held up a charred piece of metal. She recognized it as one of the timed incendiary devices they trained the field agents how to use.
“It wasn’t just an ordinary fire,” the Director continued. “It was planned. I want to know who did it and why.” She understood then his sudden interest in having her go abroad. He thought that the fire, which went up just before her records were to be taken, might have something to do with the agents who had disappeared. Particularly the girls. Sending her to find answers about that might bring him answers as well.
“You think it has something to do with my girls?”
“I don’t know. The fire happened right before we were to turn the files over to Parliament. I’ve got people investigating that here.”
But the only way to find that out, Eleanor concluded silently, was in France, where the network had collapsed and the girls were arrested. “We need to know