“But you do not believe they were,” I said, disquiet touching me. “Or you’d not have consulted Daniel. Why are you certain the children are missing?”

“I was more concerned than panicked.” Mr. Fielding sounded apologetic. “But then Nurse Betts disappeared herself. That I did report, but the police are useless—they tried to tell me she might simply have gone off on her own. But it is too much of a coincidence for my taste.”

“Why come to me?” I directed these words at Daniel, who’d rested a hip on the edge of a table and folded his arms, a most irreverent posture for a sacristy. “I do not like this tale and believe the police ought to search diligently for the nurse as well as the children, but what do you think I can do?”

“Ask questions,” Daniel said readily. “You are good at making people answer them. Speak to the servants at the Hospital. They likely know much about the comings and goings there.”

I threw him a look of exasperation. “I am flattered by your confidence, but I can hardly march into the kitchens of the Foundling Hospital and begin interviewing the cooks and maids. You’d find it a much easier task yourself, going to them in your delivery van. I have no doubt you could finagle your way into the firms who supply the Hospital.”

Mr. Fielding flashed me a very un-clerical grin. “Daniel has ever been skilled at finagling.”

Daniel pretended to ignore him. “I could and possibly will. But people open up to you, Kat. Besides, you have a foundling in your own kitchen, another reason I suggested that Errol speak to you.”

“Do I?” I blinked. The kitchen staff had been there before I’d come, except Tess, and I knew she wasn’t a foundling. She’d been raised by parents, though not very good ones. I hadn’t asked any of the others about their origins, considering it none of my affair.

“Elsie, your scullery maid. She told James,” Daniel said. “She was raised at this very Hospital. She can tell you who you can chat with, might even know the missing children and nurse in question.”

I would certainly ask her, but I fixed both men with a steely gaze. “I have quite a lot to do, Daniel. I cannot simply leave the kitchen whenever I wish. Food does not cook itself.”

I spoke with less conviction than my tone might convey. I did not like Mr. Fielding’s story, as Daniel knew I would not. If Mr. Fielding had been worried about someone fiddling the accounting, I’d have walked home and told them to leave me be, but missing children was a different matter entirely. I knew full well the horrors of London for a lad or lass on his or her own. Having to beg for coin or food would be the least terrible thing that could befall them.