That morning Sarah and Margaret had started off to work early for no one could hurry in the fog and Miss Grey liked lessons to begin punctually. Mrs Wallow had come to the door to see them off.
‘Oh, it’s worse than ever,’ she said in dismay when she saw the fog. ‘What we need is a good gale to blow it away. I wish you needn’t go out in it.’
‘Better we go now than later,’ said Sarah. ‘It seems to get thicker as the day goes on.’
Margaret put an arm round Sarah. ‘Come on. I’ll look after you but I won’t let you go and see Lou, you’ll go and sit with Mrs Melly, you know she likes it when you do.’
Fumbling, Margaret and Sarah moved towards the gate when they heard a sound; they both stood still straining their ears.
‘It can’t be,’ said Mrs Wallow.
‘If it is, it’s a miracle,’ murmured Sarah.
Margaret moved towards the gate. ‘Hi!’ she called. ‘Hi! Are you a cab?’
Out of the murkiness came a fruity voice. ‘I am. Where was you wanting to go?’
Margaret told him. ‘Oh, please take us.’
The cabby climbed down from his box. ‘All right then, in you go.’
He opened the cab door, shoved Margaret inside and slammed the door.
‘I’m going too,’ Sarah called out.
The cabman gave her a push which sent her sprawling back across the pavement, then he climbed up to his seat and, disregarding the row going on in his cab, he drove off.
Margaret did her best to scream but something was shoved into her mouth. She fought like a savage to open the cab door but she could not release her hands from an iron grip.
Then a voice spoke – a voice she had never forgotten.
‘No good fighting, Margaret Thursday. I still have my strength but I’ve you to thank for losing me everything else, so now you’re going to pay for it.’
After they were well clear of the square the driver pulled up his cab and opened the cab door. Then he tied Margaret up. He put strong rope round her legs and wrists and the small gag was taken from her mouth and a larger evil-tasting one shoved in its place and then securely bandaged into position.
‘Throw her on the floor,’ said the voice Margaret now knew as being Matron’s. ‘She won’t be seen there and I can keep my feet on her and give her a kick if she moves.’
Back at the theatre, anxious consultations were taking place. The police were told, and came round at once to learn what they could from Sarah, but Sarah had not always listened to what she called Margaret’s tales.
‘I don’t know where the orphanage is where Margaret was, though she told me often enough. Do you remember, Miss Katie? She must have told you.’
‘She did,’ Katie agreed, ‘but I am afraid it won’t help. It was called St Luke’s and was a home for one hundred boys and girls of Christian background.’
‘She never mentioned a town, Miss?’ the constable asked.
Katie tried to remember. ‘I don’t think she knew a place. The orphans were marched to school so I suppose there was a village, but she never said what it was called.’
‘What she did talk of was where Lord and Lady Corkberry lived,’ Sarah remembered. ‘She had some tale about Miss Lavinia – Lord Delaware’s granddaughter, that is – being a scullery maid there, but I always thought it was just one of Margaret’s tales.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Katie. ‘It was true, Lavinia told me herself and she told me about the wicked Matron and—’
The constable stopped her. ‘It’s that Matron we are anxious to interview. If we knew where that orphanage is we might find it’s there she has taken the little girl.’
‘We know it’s by a canal,’ Katie said. ‘You see, when Margaret and the boys escaped from the orphanage it was at night and so they followed the canal.’
‘Come to that,’ said Sarah, ‘they lived later on a canal boat. They used to lead the horse, Margaret said.’
Tommy Smith could see the constable was getting confused.
‘I think you will get the information you want from Lord and Lady Corkberry. There seems no doubt that Lord Delaware’s granddaughter did work for them, so they would know the address of the orphanage for she probably came from there.’
‘Meanwhile,’ said the constable, ‘we are carrying out a wide search in London. The man we want is the cab driver who drove the child away.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘You’re sure you don’t remember anything about him, how did he speak?’
This was something Sarah could answer with certainty.
‘He was a Cockney, rough-speaking he was.’
‘But you never got a look at him?’
Sarah was scornful. ‘In this fog! Anyway, when I moved to get into the cab, he gave me a push which sent me sprawling and, by the time I was up, the cab was gone. Me and Mrs Wallow listened but we couldn’t hear a sound; she wanted me to come back into the house and have a drop of brandy but I said no, we must start a search right away, so I came here just as fast as I could.’
‘We have sent a constable to interview Mrs Wallow,’ the policeman told Tommy Smith. Then he closed his book. ‘There’s no more I can do here for the present. You’ll be hearing, sir, the moment we know anything.’
Margaret, lying on the cab floor, was not frightened, but blazingly angry. How dare Matron put her dirty boots on her, Margaret Thursday! How dare she kidnap her! She was not in the orphanage now. She was an actress earning her own living. Then, as the cab turned into a busy street, Margaret stopped thinking how angry she was and attended to the traffic. If she listened could she tell where about she was? At first the sounds were confusing: the clop of horses’ feet mixed with shouts from drivers who could not see clearly and needed a passageway through the fog. But presently she heard new sounds: men shouting, the banging of boxes, the rumble of heavy carts. For a few moments she could not remember why the sounds were familiar, then it came back to her, they were somewhere near where Lou lived. They were in Covent Garden.
‘If only I could turn over and get a look outside,’ she thought, ‘even in the fog I’d get an idea which road I was in. Besides, if I could turn over, I could bite Matron’s leg …’
That was the moment when, in answer to a shouted ‘Whoa!’ from the driver, the horse stopped.