Pomeroy had known my wife and about her desertion. I wanted to ask him to find out in what house in King Street Carlotta had taken rooms and to have one of his foot patrollers watch her. I did not trust her not to run away again, taking Gabriella with her.

"Good morning, Captain," Thompson said. His countenance, as usual, was smooth and bland, but he had a definite spark in his eyes. Something had happened.

"Was going to come round to see you later today," Pomeroy said. He got up from his writing table and saluted me, just as he'd done when he'd been my sergeant in the army. Milton Pomeroy was thick-bodied, tall, and athletic, had a shock of blond hair that he kept slicked down with pomade, and blue eyes that eyes were twinkling, eager, and good-humored.

"Why?" I asked. I wondered whether he already knew that Carlotta had returned to England.

"Crime, of course," Pomeroy said cheerfully. "A missing gel, specifically."

"Oh?" I had looked for missing girls before, because unfortunately, girls and young women disappeared in London all the time. Procuresses met country coaches and lured girls to bawdy houses where they were forced to work. Sadly, some parents sold their daughters to these same houses for needed money. Reformers strove to put an end to this trafficking, and they had some success but not enough.

"Yes, Captain," Pomeroy went on. "No respectable man's daughter this time, just a game girl. Her young man is worried about her because she hasn't come home. Went out to Covent Garden one night, he says, then vanished."

"How long ago?" I asked, growing curious.

"Week," Pomeroy said. "I thought at first she'd simply found herself a softer bed and a richer man. But the young man is worried she's been hurt by one of her customers or kept with him against her will. He's been round to all the workhouses and reforming houses, and asked all her pals, but he's not found her."