The Bedlam Detective by Stephen Gallagher

introduction to tell him the young woman’s name. With her hair pinned up, the resemblance to her mother was unmistakable.
    Sebastian straightened up and made an effort to look pleasant.
    “Mister Becker,” Stephen Reed said. “This is Evangeline Bancroft.”
    Sebastian briefly took her hand and felt almost as much at a loss as the young woman looked.
    “Evangeline heard the news and came up on the morning train,” Stephen Reed explained.
    “Heard it how?” Sebastian said. “I thought it hadn’t reached the papers yet.”
    “The murder of a barrister’s child,” the young woman said. “It’s all over the Inns of Court.”
    “You work in the Inns of Court? Are you in the legal profession, Miss Bancroft?”
    “I carry out clerical work for lawyers,” she said, and looked from one man to the other. “Forgive me. There seems to be something I don’t understand here. Are you also a policeman, Mister Becker?”
    “A servant of the Crown,” Sebastian said, “with an interest in this case. I’d intended to seek you out in London, but instead I find you here. You came because you see a parallel with your own history. Am I right?”
    “It’s a shocking crime, Mister Becker,” she protested.
    “I know,” he said. “And I know your own experience had a happier outcome. But there may be something we can learn from whatever you may remember.”
    Evangeline looked unsettled and uncertain. Then she looked back toward the library, as if half inclined to retreat to it.
    “A happier outcome,” she said, and there was no color at all in her tone.
    Stephen Reed spoke then.
    “Please, Evangeline,” he said. “Trust us.”
    “Walk me to my mother’s house,” she said.
    T HEY FOLLOWED the shore road away from the harbor, overlooking the dunes and the empty beach beyond them. In the dunes stood posts where cork life preservers hung on weathered boards. The cork in the rings was old and splitting, but appeared to have been freshly painted for the season.
    Stephen Reed continued to carry Evangeline’s weekend bag. Sebastian held back and let him do the talking.
    “Evangeline,” Stephen Reed began, “forgive me. But for a moment I have to be a professional man and not your childhood friend. This may cause you some personal distress. But strictly in that professional capacity, I’ve had sight of the case notes from the time that you and Grace Eccles went missing. They tell a different story from the one in the newspapers. I wish I could spare your blushes, but there it is.”
    “I’m not blushing,” she said, though she was. And so, for that matter, was he.
    “This is very awkward,” he said. “If you want me to stop, I will.”
    “No,” Evangeline said, betraying that she was aware of Sebastian without quite looking at him. He felt that his presence was that of part intruder, part chaperone. “Forget my embarrassment,” she said. “This is important.”
    “We need to know what you remember of that night.”
    The road made a steep and sandy turn and they began to climb away from the beach, toward a part of town where modest houses competed for hillside space.
    Evangeline said, “That’s very easy to answer. I remember nothing.”
    Stephen Reed said, “The doctor’s notes are in the file. Please be assured, I didn’t look at the medical details. But when he asked the two of you to explain what happened, he wrote that he saw a look pass between you. Evangeline, if there’s something you know that you have never spoken of, I urge you to tell it to us now.”
    “With all honesty,” she said, “I have no memory of anything that took place. Or even of the exchange of looks that he describes. I can’t imagine what it may have meant. If it happened at all. Stephen, I’m concealing nothing from you. I’ve written to Grace several times over the years. She wrote back to me only once, to tell me that she’d taken over her father’s business and to ask if I’d send her notices for London horse