Governing Passion Read Online Free

no answer, though he thought he heard
someone shuffling behind the door. Then he realized that the
gentleman callers would likely have a coded knock to be let in.
    “It’s the police, Madame LaFrance. Open
up!”
    After a brief pause, the door was eased
open.
    “Whaddya want?” Esther La France barked.
    “I got some bad news, I’m afraid.”
    “A policeman in a brothel is always bad
news,” she said, stepping back to let him into the warm
interior.
    “Yer singer, Sally Butts, was just found in
an alley near here with her throat slit. She’s dead.”
    Madame flinched. “Oh, my. I did warn her
about walking home alone,” she said, her face revealing both shock
and anger. “I offered to let Johnny walk with her, but she said she
felt safer in Devil’s Acre than she did on King Street.”
    “Well, somebody didn’t like her and wanted
her dead.”
    “She wasn’t carrying any money tonight,”
Madame said, turning to spot Nell nearby in her kimono, her face
white and her lip trembling. “She was sick and left early.”
    “Oh, poor Sally,” Nell cried. “I’d better go
and tell the other girls.”
    “Break the news gently,” Madame said.
    “I need to ask you some questions,” Cobb
said.
    “There’s nothing to tell. Sally was running a
fever. I let her go off about ten o’clock.”
    “You didn’t see anythin’ funny goin’ on here
before she left?”
    Madame’s gaze narrowed. “Whaddya mean, funny?
I run a respectable house here.”
    “Did any of yer gentlemen do or say anythin’
to her durin’ the evenin’?”
    “They sat and listened to her sing – like a
bird – that’s what they did. And behaved themselves, as I
insist.”
    “Sally Butts was not one of yer regular
girls, I take it?”
    “No, she wasn’t, though she had plenty of
offers. She was a good girl who took her pay straight home to her
parents.”
    “Did anyone make an offer tonight?”
    ”They did not. We had the usual gentlemen
here tonight. They all knew her.”
    “Did any of these gentlemen happen to leave
shortly before or after ten o’clock?”
    The gaze narrowed further. “You don’t think a
gentleman killed her? Surely it was some cutthroat.”
    “With what motive, ma’am? The girl wasn’t
molested. And she had no money, as you said.”
    “Perhaps he didn’t know that.”
    “But we have plenty of robberies in town and
seldom does the victim get his throat slashed – from behind. It
looks like murder was the motive here, by someone who knew who she
was.”
    “Well, now, there were three of my gentlemen
who left just a minute or two after poor Sally.”
    Cobb smiled and said, “Odd, don’t you
think?”
    “Not odd at all. They had come to hear her
sing, and when they knew she was finished for the night, they
naturally decided to go home.”
    “Did they usually walk together?”
    “I wouldn’t know that, would I? Though I once
saw them split up after they left my stoop.”
    “But you can tell me who they were?”
    Madame heaved a big sigh. “You know perfectly
well I can’t do that. My gentlemen have wives.”
    “If you know who they are, you’d better tell
me.”
    Madame LaFrance laughed, a coarse caw of a
laugh. “You don’t understand, do you? I don’t even know or want to
know who these people are. Here we use pseudonyms or pet names. The
three gentlemen who left at ten o’clock were called the Cavaliers –
Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad.”
    Cobb was taken aback. “Well, that ain’t much
help, is it, unless I can find me a Round Table somewheres
nearby?”
    “Well, that’s all I can tell you.”
    At this point Nell came back into the room
with Sarie and Blanche, all three of them crying.
    “Quit your bawling,” Madame snapped. “You’ll
scare away our customers.”
    “You don’t seem too broken up about losin’
Sally Butts,” Cobb observed.
    Madame took umbrage. “Of course I am. Where
am I gonna get another singer with a voice like hers?”
    ***
    Cobb spent the first half of