Frances Doughty, Bayswater’s youngest and only lady detective, her morning newspaper unread, letters unopened, tea untasted, a breakfast egg congealing on its plate, was studying a marriage certificate. Her burly assistant Sarah Smith, not liking to say anything to interrupt such earnest thought, gave her a worried look, added a piece of bread and butter to the egg and pushed it closer. Frances ate them absent-mindedly.
It was only recently that Frances had learned that her mother Rosetta had not, as she had always been told, died in 1863, when Frances was three years old and her brother Frederick eight, but had, to the family’s great shame, run away with a man. In the following January her mother had been living with that man in a Chelsea lodging house where she gave birth to twins, a girl who had died in infancy and a son who still lived. Frances had confronted her mother’s brother, Cornelius Martin, with this discovery, and he had, after much soul-searching, revealed his suspicion that it was Rosetta’s mysterious paramour, and not her husband William Doughty, who was Frances’ natural father. Frances had long ago forgiven her uncle for hiding the unpalatable truth, something she knew he had done out of kindness, but her lost family were often in her thoughts, and sometimes she ached to find them. She did not even know if the younger brother she had never met, named Cornelius after her uncle, knew she existed. He had once been seen boarding a train at Paddington Station, and she could only hope that his destination was some good school where he was even now distinguishing himself.
It should have seemed obvious for Frances to use the skill and persistence that she brought to her detective work to try and locate her mother, but she had hesitated for a long time, afraid of what she might find. Every so often, overwhelmed by curiosity, she had dug a little further into the mystery, but had applied no concerted dedication to it. For most of the years of her mother’s absence, Rosetta Doughty had known exactly where Frances was to be found, helping William at his chemists shop on Westbourne Grove, and yet she had not so much as sent a message. If she had ever entered the shop to glimpse her daughter she had done so under a veil of anonymity. William had passed away in 1880 in circumstances that would have engaged the attention of anyone who perused the newspapers, and had his presence in the shop been the only factor that had kept Rosetta from visiting her daughter she would surely have contacted Frances after his death, yet she did not. The business was now under new management, and had been advertised as such in the newspapers, but had her mother truly wanted to find her, she would easily have been able to do so. The new proprietor, Mr Jacobs, knew where Frances lived, and often directed potential clients to her address. The only conclusion Frances could draw was that her mother did not wish to see her, the prospect of a meeting being more painful than not seeing her daughter at all. Perhaps she thought that Frances would reject her as a dishonest woman, and revile her for abandoning both her and Frederick at such tender years. The inevitable distress Frances had felt on learning that she had been des
