Belle - Lesley Pearse [107]
Noah had a sheet of paper in front of him on which he’d written out the names and addresses from the list found in Colm’s office and next to each he’d made notes of what he’d found out.
‘Amy Stewart,’ Noah read. ‘Disappeared two years ago, age thirteen. Nora Toff, fourteen, disappeared six months ago. Flora Readon, sixteen, disappeared eleven months ago. May Jenkins, disappeared fourteen months ago.’
Noah paused and looked around the table. ‘There’s no need to go right through all the twenty names on this list. All but three of them have gone missing in the last four years. They were mostly between fourteen and sixteen. Amy Stewart was the youngest of all at thirteen. Every one of them was said to be pretty; in most cases I was shown a photograph which confirmed this. As for the remaining three names I can’t be sure what happened to them as their families no longer live at the addresses on the list. But a neighbour of Helen Arboury said the girl had “gone off”. She couldn’t or wouldn’t say if she thought there was anything suspicious about this, but she did say that Helen’s mother was a widow and she took her other two children and went to stay with relatives.’
‘So shall we go to the police now?’ Mog asked. ‘I mean, that’s all the proof we need that Kent and the man Colm in Maiden Street are grabbing young girls and doing heaven knows what to them.’
Noah looked at Garth, who shook his head. ‘We could go to the police, Mog – I’d say for any man to have a list of missing girls in his office makes it fairly certain he’s heavily involved. But I’m afraid there might be an informer at the police station. If these people find out we’re on to them they’ll shut down their operation and then we’ll never find any of the girls, or see those responsible put behind bars.’ He paused, looking thoughtful. ‘My plan is to stop wasting time and go to Paris immediately to check out Madame Sondheim.’
‘Even if she is involved, it was probably only as the person the girls were taken to initially,’ Mog said doubtfully. ‘They could be anywhere in the world now.’
‘Trust me to use my initiative,’ Noah said with a smile. ‘Obviously I’m not expecting all twenty girls to be locked up at that address. I have a friend who speaks French who’ll go with me. I think together we can find out something.’
‘I still think it would be more direct to find the man Sly and make him talk,’ Garth said stubbornly. ‘Besides, if you run into trouble in Paris you’ll have no one there to call on.’
‘We’ll cope,’ Noah said firmly. ‘I’ve got my editor on side. He’s really hoping for a sensational story, so he’s come up with false identities for us and he’ll pay all our expenses. We’re going to pose as a couple of wealthy businessmen having a fling in gay Paree. Girls will of course come into that!’
Mog nodded. She could see what Noah meant, and if his friend was as well bred and charming as he was, she doubted they would have any trouble gaining the confidence of a brothel owner, or the girls in her house. ‘But you must be careful,’ she warned them. ‘A great many brothels employ a thug to deal with difficult customers, and if they suspect you are investigating them, you are likely to find yourself dragged into a back alley and beaten up.’
‘Don’t worry, Mog.’ Noah smiled at her. ‘We’ll be passing on every last bit of information to my editor as we go. If anything should happen to us he’ll be poised to strike. He’s got a copy of the list of girls’ names too, and there’ll be huge headlines about the police doing nothing while young girls go missing.’
‘That won’t bring you back to us,’ Mog said reproachfully.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘I’m after a staff job on the paper.’
‘That’s it then,’ Noah said to his friend James, looking up at the tall, ugly house lying slightly back off the square in the Montmartre district of Paris. ‘It looks a bit forbidding, hardly a house of fun!’
‘We need to ask someone about it and Madame Sondheim,’ James replied. ‘We should pick on someone our own age. I mean, if she does run a brothel here the