“Tuesday last. She took her afternoon out—she doesn’t often. Doesn’t like to leave the tykes. One is always getting hurt or upset, and she wants to be there for them. But off she goes, and hasn’t come back. Her family lives in Camden Town. We weren’t alarmed when she didn’t return right away, but when the next day came and went, and Mrs. Shaw made inquiries, her mum and dad said she never come home at all.” Mrs. Compton swallowed, eyes glistening with tears.

“Did her parents think to go to the police?” I asked, my consternation growing.

Mrs. Compton made a dismissive gesture. “They’re the sort what have no trust of the police. They insist we know where she is, that she simply don’t want to see them, and we’re shielding her. How such a sweet young woman comes from such a family, I don’t know.”

I wondered. The family might have a history with the police that made them reluctant to summon a constable. And if they were resentful of their daughter working at the Hospital, perhaps they themselves had something to do with her disappearance.

I was speculating wildly, but at this point, I had few ideas. Nurse Betts’s parents might simply be poor but respectable people who would be embarrassed to have anything to do with the police. Camden was a rather run-down area, but Nurse Betts’s family might be the scrupulous sort who guarded their reputations carefully.

“Did she have friends?” I asked. “Or a young man—someone with whom she might have decided to remain?”

“She is a good girl, Mrs. Holloway,” Mrs. Compton said stiffly.

I reflected that plenty of “good” young women in this world had run off with young men, leaving their friends stunned and shocked, but I kept this to myself. “I am not implying she was otherwise. But if Nurse Betts was not happy at home, she might have preferred to visit another besides her parents. Or perhaps she went to tend someone ill and isn’t able to send word.”

Mrs. Compton shook her head. “I have thought much on this. Nurse Betts simply isn’t the sort to not tell a soul where she is. She’d find a way. And she don’t have many friends, not outside the Hospital. She loves the lads and lasses, she does, protective of them, like. She’d not stay from them long.”

We lapsed into silence. I longed to find a benign explanation for her absence, but I very much feared Nurse Betts was in danger. Coupled with the missing children . . . I imagined her trying to find them or going after them to keep them safe, coming to grief at the hands of their abductors.

“What about the children who have gone?” I asked. “Were they her charges?”