The Box Office Murders · Chapter 6 (2/2)

At last after immense labour he obtained the names and addresses of eleven girls, all of whom, according to the porters, seemed to be in trouble of some kind.

His next business was to find out the cause in each case. Here again the problem was horribly difficult. No doubt it could be done by scraping acquaintance with each and in time forcing a confidence. But French had not time for such methods. He had spent long enough on the case as it was, and Mitchell was beginning to hint that he would not stand for his remaining on it much longer.

He began by sending a man round the addresses. Five of them were boarding houses. Other things being equal, he believed the gang would select girls from boarding houses. They had done so before and the reason was not far to seek. Girls who were alone in the world were more defenceless and easier prey than those who had a family behind them. Therefore it would be wise to start with these five girls.

Calling at the boarding houses in turn when the girls would be on duty, he asked to see the landladies.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he began in each case, “but I am making some inquiries about Miss Dash, who, I understand, lives here and is employed in the Asterisk Cinema. I advertised recently for a cashier for my business and she has applied. She seems suitable except for one thing. She gives me the impression of being very depressed and melancholy, as if something were preying on her mind. Now I would not care for a girl of that kind. I called therefore to ask whether you could tell me if her depression is temperamental or whether it is caused by some passing trouble from which she is likely to recover.”

Like the porters, the landladies reacted differently to this stimulus. One accepted French’s statement without hesitation and replied volubly that Miss Dash was the best and brightest of girls, but that owing to the recent death of her young man she was temporarily below her usual form. Another was circumspect, but allowed French to understand that it was believed that the course of true love was not running as smoothly as it might be desirable. A third was even more discreet, regretting that she was not in the confidence of her young ladies, while the remaining two evidently assumed sinister designs on French’s part, and would give nothing away.

He realized that he had not gained much from his visits. Even the first two girls were not out of the running, as were they in the clutches of the gang, they might easily have invented the stories told by their landladies in order to prevent suspicion attaching to their manner. But this was not likely and French decided that he would first investigate the lives of the other three, those about whose depression their respective landladies would not talk. These were Miss Lillian Burgess of the Cosmopolitan Cinema in the Haymarket, Miss Molly Moran of the Panopticon in Leicester Square, and Miss Esther Isaacs of the Venetian in the Strand. It wasn’t perhaps very likely, but from one of these he might learn something.