Alice’s gaze focused on the dark stone walls as she thought how unwelcoming it was below ground. At least it was safe here. She shuddered at the thought of approaching these criminals in their homes, but there wasn’t any other way; these were the people she should be going after, the ones who had been investigated before—the ones who could be out there, still operating.

She made her way through to the other room, where Elizabeth was filing. “Did Olive leave me anything else . . . another folder of clippings, perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. There were plenty that she requested, but she told me to put them back.” Elizabeth glanced at the stack of documents on the counter, the same pile from which she had retrieved Alice’s folder.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Alice asked.

“I suppose not. I was just about to put them back, but it can wait.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, of course, knock yourself out,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “Anything that helps put these bastards behind bars.”

Back at the desk, Alice spent the next hour working her way through the folders. The articles made bleak reading, all ending in the conviction of the suspected baby farmer for the death of a child. The headline of an article in the Cheltenham Chronicle read: Baby Farmer Sentenced to Ten Years’ Penal Servitude. The brief article recorded that Jessie Byers, forty-three, had been found guilty of the manslaughter of Reginald Turnbull, aged five months; after the prisoner adopted the baby, he was given laudanum and abandoned.

Alice’s eyes were dewy, and she strained to read the small print in the gloomy light, while her body grew rigid, stiffening in protest at the awful stories. It was almost too much to bear, the thought of these poor mites suffering so horrifically—and she struggled not to think that anything like this might happen to Eadie.

The next article was an older piece about a conviction some years earlier and she instantly recognized the name as the couple Olive had warned her against.

At Woodford Police Court yesterday, Frank Richard Pritchard, 50, clerk, and Beatrice Pritchard, 46, his wife, of London Road, Woodford, were charged on remand with being concerned together in the manslaughter of Sally Merriweather, aged seven months, by willfully withholding food from her. The child was found dead in a carriage at the prisoners’ home.

Alice took a deep breath, understanding why Olive might have kept this from her, then forced herself to keep reading, knowing that no matter how disturbing the material was, she needed to collect as much information as she could.