Read Hanover Square Affair, The for Free Online

interval. That spinster had given me a good-natured grin, and I’d bowed stiffly and left Louisa in her redoubtable care. I’d gone home and taken three glasses of gin before retiring.
    Despite my headache, the gin had successfully staved off the melancholia I’d sensed creeping over me. I’d suffered from the malady since my youth, and sometimes a dark depression would blanket me, depriving me of the strength even to rise from my bed. I’d learned to prevent the circumstance by immersing myself thoroughly in some interesting situation, but sometimes only gin and a night’s rest would keep the darkness from me.
    I made myself reflect carefully before answering Pomeroy’s question about Horne. The former sergeant had the tenacity of a cardsharp, though not the wit. I did not want to set him on Horne until I had proof the man had done something.
    “There was a riot before his house in Hanover Square, yesterday,” I said at last. “His windows were broken.”
    Pomeroy peered at me with wary curiosity. “I heard of the riot. Didn’t get there meself.”
    “What about the girl, Jane Thornton?”
    Pomeroy gave a firm nod. “Her family reported her missing, that they did. Around February, I believe it was. We never found her, and the family couldn’t offer much reward. Nasty business, but it goes on. Young ladies snatched off the streets. Can only be one trade for them after that, can’t there, poor beggars?”
    “She did not turn up as a suicide?”
    “No, sir. I looked when I got your letter this morning. No Jane Thorntons fished out of the river as far as I know.”
    I wondered how many anonymous girls had been recovered from it. Or whether Jane was still lying in the Thames, her young body being slowly torn apart by tides and fishes.
    I thanked Pomeroy, who agreed to notify me if he discovered anything. I pushed past the defiant or hopeless women and men waiting in the hall, and left the Bow Street house.
    I made my way to a printers in the Strand off Southampton Street, and told them to print notices of a five-pound reward for anyone with information regarding a girl called Jane Thornton, who had disappeared between the Strand and Hanover Square two months before. A notice had long odds of succeeding, but it was one of the few resources I had to hand.
    Louisa had given me money to fund this enterprise. I’d swallowed my pride and accepted, knowing she’d offered for the Thorntons’ sake, not mine.
    After I’d finished this business, I walked westward along the Strand to ask questions of the vendors who lingered near the lane I’d brought Thornton home to the day before. Most answered me with poor grace because I stood in the way of paying customers, but a few were willing to chat. An orange girl who worked there most days remembered the posh carriage that used to wait at the end of the lane for a young lady, but she could not swear to it standing there a certain day two months ago or to who got into it.
    Common practice was that the coachman would pull up and wait. The young lady would come with her maid, and one of the boys who waited about to sweep the street clean for nobs would assist her into the carriage, and then the carriage would roll on. The coachman never got down, or bought an orange, or had a chat, but the lady was always polite and sometimes bought something from her or the strawberry girl.
    I gave the young woman a few pennies, and walked home with an orange in my pocket.
    It was growing dark again when I approached the market at Covent Garden. The rain had slackened. Carts wound through the square, and housewives thronged the stalls, looking for last-minute bargains before the vendors shut down for the evening. Strawberry sellers, street performers, beggars, pickpockets, and prostitutes thronged among them. Cries of “Sweet strawberries, buy my ripe strawberries” vied with “Knives to grind, penny a blade.”
    A girl sidled up to me and tucked her hand through my arm. “Hallo,