their abductors.
“What about the children who have gone?” I asked. “Were they her charges?”
Mrs. Compton snapped her head around and stared at me as though I’d gone mad. “What do you mean? What children?”
“Sam Howes, Joshua Tarr, Margaret Penny.”
Her brows went up. “Someone’s been telling you tales, Mrs. Holloway. They ain’t missing. Adopted, weren’t they?”
“Adopted?” I asked in surprise.
“Put into good homes, in any case. Not missing at all.”
“Oh.” Mr. Fielding had said the director claimed the children had been fostered. Now Mrs. Compton was telling a similar tale. “Never mind then,” I said, reserving judgment. “I must have heard wrong.”
“You certainly did. Children don’t go missing from our Hospital, Mrs. Holloway,” Mrs. Compton said sternly. “They are well looked after . . . if a little harshly, in my opinion. Not allowed out of the matrons’ or nurses’ sights. They’re trained up and either taken in by a family or are hired out in service. Or they remain and work at the Hospital. Like Bessie.”
I started. “Bessie? The one who shouted at me several times?”
“Mustn’t mind her.” Mrs. Compton almost smiled. “Her young man was arrested for theft and is currently banged up in Coldbath Fields. Makes her angry, but it’s what happens when a young woman takes up with a bad man.” Mrs. Compton spoke as though she would never make such a disastrous choice.
“Not the case with Nurse Betts?” I asked.
“Gracious, no.” Mrs. Compton looked amazed I’d ever think so. “Nurse Betts warned Bessie—we all did. No, the only young man to catch Nurse Betts’s interest, and that’s been recently, is a highly respectable gent. I’ve never met him, but I’ve seen him walking the grounds with her, and I know he’s taken her for tea. He’s one of the governors—they visit us sometimes. Mrs. Shaw, in fact, is sweet on a governor herself, the daft woman. As though such a highborn fellow will have anything to do with a housekeeper.”
“Is he the same governor who took Nurse Betts to tea?” I asked.
“No, no. The fellow Nurse Betts fancies hasn’t been on the board long, a year perhaps. Wears a dog collar—you know what I mean. A parson of some sort.”
“A parson.” I repeated the word slowly, and the van gave a particularly hard jolt.
“A clergyman anyway. As I said, I’ve not met him, but I asked her about him. She says he’s at a parish in the East End. Probably a curate too poor to marry the girl, I’m thinking, but a fine-looking bloke. Dark-haired, with a nice beard, lovely smile. If he knew where she was, I have no doubt he’d say.”
* * *
* * *
Daniel made a delivery to a restaurant in King’s Cross Road, then obligingly drove Mrs. Compton back to the Foundling Hospital.
I alighted there with her, but Daniel, remaining in his breezy persona, offered to take me to the nearest Metropolitan station. Mrs. Compton, with a whispered warning to me to have a care of him and go straight into the station, left us.
Daniel went sober as I returned from seeing Mrs. Compton inside. “I’ll drive you all the way to Mayfair, Kat. Too nasty a night for you to be running home from the trains.”
“There is always an omnibus, or a hansom,” I said in a cool tone.
“Difficult to find a hansom in this mess.” His grin flashed. “Save you the fare.”
“What about your other deliveries? There is still produce in the back.”
“Can wait.” His chipper manner did not hide the dark glint in his eyes. “I’d rather see you safely home, and you know this. Then I will go visit my brother.”
“You heard Mrs. Compton then?” I asked.
“Indeed I did. Another reason I wished to drive you, Kat. To eavesdrop.”
So I had gathered. “I’d like to visit Mr. Fielding with you,” I said grimly. “He omitted the fact that he and Nurse Betts have been friendly, didn’t he? Monday, I will take my half day and go.”
“I plan to wring his neck sooner than that. But if he is still alive by Monday, certainly, you may speak to him.”
Daniel ended the conversation by helping me once more into the back of the van, which, true, would be warmer and drier than sitting up front with him. He settled me in and closed the door against the wind and rain.
As he drove along Lamb’s Conduit Street to Red Lion and so to High Holborn, I had plenty of time to ruminate over the fact that Mr. Fielding had known Nurse