When Guy returned, he found a message on his desk: ‘Miss Rose Morgan came to the station asking after you. She says you’ll know what it’s about. You can find her in the Regency on the King’s Road until her shift ends at six.’
Rose Morgan? Guy had to think twice. There was only one Rose Morgan he knew, the maid who had been missing since 1928. He’d stopped looking for her when it seemed that she was alive but didn’t want to be found. Now she was back in London and working, it seemed. He hoped she’d told her parents; he’d liked what he knew of Albert Morgan and had felt pity for his bewildered grief. Without even unbuttoning his coat, Guy hastened back out of the station and walked to the Regency restaurant, an establishment he knew of for its reputation of good but inexpensive food, popular with the artists who lived in Chelsea. When he arrived, he took a table and asked the waitress to let Miss Morgan know that he was there. She came so quickly, Guy was still reading the menu when she spoke.
‘DS Sullivan?’
Guy looked up and saw the girl from the photo he had kept in his desk for all this time. She was a little older, of course, and her hair was now blonde and short but her smile was as shy and pretty as he remembered.
‘That’s me. And I take it you’re Rose Morgan, no longer a missing person,’ said Guy.
Rose looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused.’
‘Don’t be. I’m glad you’re here. It’s good news for your family.’ He regarded her carefully. ‘You have let them know, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I have.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Would you mind if it looked as if I was taking an order? The boss might have a word otherwise.’
Guy propped up the menu in front of him and pretended to study it carefully, while Rose pulled out a notebook and pencil from her apron.
‘Can you let me know where you’ve been for all these years?’
Still looking at the menu, there was silence and Guy wondered if she’d heard him but then she started to reply.
‘I was in Paris for a long time. I had to leave London, I got caught up in bad things.’
‘Bad things or bad people?’
‘Both. I was working for the Delaneys, and they were nice, I liked the daughter but they didn’t pay much. I wanted to send money back home, prove that I had done well moving up to London. Mam hadn’t wanted me to leave, you see.’
‘I understand.’
‘I started doing a bit of extra maid work on my nights off, at other houses. Lady Delaney knew someone who worked at grand parties and she would hire me. The money really helped, I had enough to send some home and even keep a bit back for myself. Then I met this man, he stopped me one night going into a house, and said I could make a lot more, if I just helped him out a bit.’
Guy knew he had to tread carefully here. If he did it right, she might lead him to something significant. ‘What did he ask you to do?’
‘He sold drugs. He’d do the deal with some regulars, he said they were all posh people, nothing dangerous. They’d telephone him or get a message to him, tell him where they were going to be. All I had to do was hand over the package he gave me. It were only small, no one’d ever notice. That’s what he said. And he were right for a while.’
‘I see,’ said Guy. A clever scheme, and perfect for an innocent maid. ‘What went wrong?’
‘I told him I didn’t want to do it any more. I got seen by a footman once and he threatened to grass on me if I didn’t give him some of the money. But when I told Ronan he got nasty.’
Ronan. Guy repeated the name to himself so as not to forget it.
‘And then, there was that party. I saw Dot collapse, that’s why she fell, it were horrible. I panicked. I was frightened of what I’d seen, that I’d get the blame. It seemed easier to leave. I’d been paid for that night’s work, I had enough to get to Paris and Muriel had told me about Mr Molyneux. We’d planned to go away together so I had a passport too.’ There was a sob, the sound of someone finally telling the truth. ‘I knew it were wrong, I knew my family’d worry but I thought if they knew what I’d been doing they’d cut me off. Somehow, once I was in Paris I felt far away from it all, safe. As if it weren’t real. Then, the longer I were away, the harder it became to get in touch.’
‘Why now? Why have you come back, why are you telling me this?
‘I missed me mam. Truth be told, I was engaged to be married and he broke it off. I couldn’t stand another minute in Paris then. It was Dad who said I was to let you know I wasn’t missing any more. Dad told me you were good to him, always telling him if you’d made any progress trying to find me. It were only fair.’ She wrote something on her notebook and put it back in her pocket. ‘That’s it. I’d better go now.’
‘Wait,’ said Guy. ‘Who took the drugs from you at the parties? Did you know their names?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Guy took a deep breath. ‘Please, Rose. This could be important. You won’t get into any trouble for it but it might help with something else I’m working on. Anything you can remember about them at all? What they looked like even?’
She hesitated but then she told him. ‘The most regular was an American woman, pretty, I think she said she was an actress. There were two or three men I always seemed to see but I can’t remember much about them. And there was a married couple, posh. He had blue eyes and she had black hair. I think their name was Milliney, or Mollony or something like that.’
‘Mulloney? Kate and Shaun Mulloney?’
‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘That was it.’
‘And Clara Fischer, was that the actress?’
‘Aye, it was.’
Guy thought quickly.
‘Rose, did you come back to London from Paris at any point since you left in 1928?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Listen carefully, I don’t want to alarm you with these questions. I only need to eliminate you from another inquiry. But can you prove you stayed in Paris for all that time?’
‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I shared an apartment there with several other girls, and I worked at Les Chats. Besides, I didn’t want to come back then. I was safer in Paris.’
‘Did you meet Mrs Mulloney in Paris or London after 1928?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you ever go to Venice?’
‘No, sir. Sorry. I’ve got to go now. Thank you for coming here to meet me. Thank you for what you’ve done for me and my mam and dad.’
She walked off through the doors to the kitchen and Guy picked his hat up and left too.