She smiled indulgently and patted her husband’s cheek. “You’re a fine man, Jack Dorian.” Then she turned to me. “There now, you know as much as we do. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find Philippe escaped to the country and changed his name, just as she did. Finding him will be difficult, I’m afraid, unless . . . ”

“Unless he changed it to John Michelson.”

She shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose.” She swiveled in her chair to address her husband. “Perhaps we should see what can be found of Emily. She’d be next of kin, if Annika’s husband cannot be found, and hopefully she’d be able to free her mother and point us toward what became of Philippe.”

“I can do a bit of digging,” Dorian offered. “It’s been a while since I’ve tried. Perhaps she’s left a trail.”

“Leave me an address where you can be reached, will you, Doctor . . . Turner, was it?”

Mitchell tore out a sheet from the notebook he carried and scribbled down the address, rising to leave as he handed it to her. “I shall look forward to any communication from you, my lady, and I do hope we can help Annika. She’s a good soul.”

She gave a dignified nod of Annika’s head. “I’ll let you know the moment I find anything of value.”

On the train ride back to Menston, Turner thought of Anna and her complex life, the dancer Philippe who’d been arrested, the daughter who had presumably abandoned them, and then of her husband, John Michelson. That’s what had stuck with him most—that name John Michelson. He recognized it—he knew he did.

Ever since he’d seen the name listed in her paperwork, it had nagged at him. There was something he ought to remember about the name. Something he should know but had forgotten in the jumble of all the other things bombarding him every day. His mind wouldn’t let it go—it turned and puzzled about, an unfinished story his brain could not let rest until it had worked the thing out.

29

My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.

~Johann Sebastian Bach

“Superintendent Thornhill is asking after you. Come down straightaway.” Nurse Duffy’s voice startled me at the washbasin where I’d flooded my face with water.

A quiet dawn stretched through the ward. Bridget hadn’t been to the room to sleep. Her thin blankets were still pulled up to the head of her cot, and I’d spent a night of increasing worry. I was already prone to it in broad daylight lately, but something about the darkness of night distorted logic and hope even further.

I had gone to the pianoforte again and simply polished the wood in small, methodical circles, thinking with aching tenderness of Bridget and her desire to offer music to her baby girl.