Pinkerton Detective Agency

Pinkerton’s is the detective agency Lavinia Duke engages to find Lawyer Flense and Annag Duncan after their flight with company money. Its investigation gives Lavinia a means to pursue the fugitives, but its scattered leads resolve only one part of the case: Flense is found dead in Valparaiso, and Annag remains missing.

Commission and Purpose

After learning of the betrayal, Lavinia says she will engage Pinkerton’s to locate the guilty parties and see them imprisoned. Her anger is personal as well as financial: she had trusted Annag and given her work when she had nothing. The agency represents Lavinia’s attempt to turn that anger into action, seeking accountability through a criminal search rather than abandoning the matter.

A Search Without Reliable Leads

For months, Pinkerton’s reports rumors that Flense has been seen in widely separated places: Peru, Athens, Georgia, Glasgow, and Buenos Aires. None provides hard evidence. The succession of sightings makes the search expansive but uncertain, and the agency’s reports do not reveal where Annag has gone.

Lavinia nevertheless urges the investigation to continue, paying the steep monthly bills. Her insistence gives the search a sustained presence even as rumor fails to produce a result. The agency can keep pursuing possibilities, but the reports distinguish the promise of a lead from proof that a fugitive has been found.

Results and Limits

Pinkerton’s eventually tracks Flense to an alley behind the Mulo Rojo restaurant in Valparaiso, where he is found dead, stabbed and robbed. The discovery confirms Flense’s location and ends the uncertainty over his fate, but it does not deliver the imprisonment Lavinia had wanted. The account does not establish who killed him or why.

There is no comparable resolution for Annag. She disappears into the wilds of Scotland, where no stranger dares go, and no word of her reaches Lavinia. The contrasting outcomes define the agency’s role in the episode: it finds Flense, but the larger pursuit ends with Annag beyond reach and Lavinia without a complete reckoning.