Bethlehem Road

Rawlins was very pale. He was neither so drunk nor so shaken that he did not realize the implication of Pitt's insistence.

"I think there was someone on the opposite of the bridge. I mean across the road, coming towards me; a big stout person. I have the impression of a longish coat, dark-that's really what I remember, a sort of darkness moving. That's about it. I'm sorry."

Pitt hesitated a moment longer, half hoping Rawlins would think of something more. Then he accepted that the young man's mind had been in such a muddled state that that was really all there was.

"And the time, sir?" he asked.

"What?"

"The time? Big Ben is just behind you, sir."

"Oh. Yes. Well, I definitely heard it strike eleven, so about five past. Not later."

"And you are sure you saw no one else? No cabs passing, for instance?"

There was a flicker of light in his eyes. "Oh yes-yes I did see a cab. Came off the bridge and went along the Victoria Embankment. Remember now that you mention it. Sorry Constable.''

Pitt did not bother to correct Rawlins as to his rank. The man had intended no insult; he was shocked past everyday niceties.

"Thank you. If you think of anything else, I'm at the Bow 75

Street Station. Now you had better go home and have a hot cup of tea and go to bed.''

"Yes-yes I'll do that. Good night, er-good night!" He went off rapidly and rather unsteadily, lurching from one pool of light to the next on up Westminster Bridge Road and disappearing behind the buildings.

Pitt crossed the street back to Drummond. Drummond met his eyes, searching for some sign of hope and finding little.

"There's nothing else," he said bleakly. "Looks political after all. We'll get the men out tomorrow morning after conspiracies, but we're already doing all we can. There isn't a single piece of evidence of any sort to connect anyone with this. Dear heaven, Pitt, I hope it isn't some lunatic."

"So do I," Pitt said grimly. "We'll be reduced to doubling police on duty and hoping to catch him in the act." He said it in desperation, but he knew there was little else they could do if indeed that were the case. "There are still other possibilities."

"Someone mistook the first victim?" Drummond said thoughtfully. "They intended Etheridge, but got Hamilton by mistake? It's dark enough in the stretches between the lamps, and if he'd had his back to the light and his face in shadow when he was attacked, their features are enough alike, and with the same light hair-a frightened or enraged person-" He did not finish; the vision was clear enough.

"Or the second crime is an imitation of the first." Pitt doubted it even as he spoke. "Sometimes it happens, especially when a crime gains a lot of publicity, as Hamilton's murder did. Or it could be that only one of the murders matters, and we are intended to believe it is anarchists or a madman, when one cold-blooded crime was committed to mask another."

"Who was the intended victim, Hamilton or Etheridge?" Drummond looked tired. He had slept little in the last week

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and now this cold horror with all its implications stretched darkly in front of him.

"I'd better go and tell the widow." Pitt was shivering. The night air seemed to eat right through his clothes into his bones. "Have you the address?"

"Three Paris Road, off the Lambeth Palace Road."

"I'll walk."

"There's a hansom," said Drummond.

"No, I'd rather walk." He needed time to think, to prepare himself. He set off briskly, swinging his arms to get warm and trying to form in his mind how he would tell this new family of its bereavement.

It took him over five minutes of knocking at the door and waiting before a footman turned on the light hi the hall and gingerly opened the door.

"Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street Station," Pitt said quietly. "I'm sorry, but I have bad news for Mr. Etheridge's family. May I come in?"

' 'Yes-yes sir.'' The footman stepped back and pulled the door wider. The hall was large and lined with oak. A single gaslight showed the dun outlines of portraits and the soft blues of a Venetian scene. A magnificent staircase curved up towards the shadows of the gallery landing and the one light glowing there.

"Has there been an accident, sir!" the footman asked anxiously, his face puckered with doubt. "Was Mr. Ether-idge taken ill?"

"No, I am afraid he is dead. He was murdered-in the same way as Sir Lockwood Hamilton."

"Oh my Gawd!" The footman's face blanched, leaving the freckles across his nose standing out sharply. For a moment Pitt was afraid he was going to faint. He put out his hand, and the gesture seemed to recall the man. He was probably no more than twenty at most.

"Is there a butler?" Pitt asked him. The youth should not have to bear the burden of such news alone.

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"Yes sir."

"Perhaps you should waken him, and a lady's maid, before we tell Mrs. Etheridge."

"Mrs. Etheridge? There in't no Mrs. Etheridge, sir. 'E's- 'e were a widower. Long time now, before I come 'ere. There's just Miss Helen-that's 'is daughter; Mrs. Carfax, she is-and Mr. Carfax."

"Then call the butler, and a maid, and Mr. and Mrs. Carfax. I am sorry, but I shall need to speak to them."

Pitt was shown into the morning room, austere in dark green, with early spring flowers in a misty blue Lalique bowl and paintings on the wall, at least one of which Pitt believed to be an original Guardi. The late Vyvyan Etheridge had had not only fine taste, but a great deal of money with which to indulge it.

It was nearly a quarter of an hour before James and Helen Carfax came in, pale-faced and dressed in nightclothes and robes. Etheridge's daughter was in her late twenties and had his long, aristocratic face and good brow, but her mouth was softer, and there was a delicacy in her cheekbones and the line of her throat which, while it did not give her beauty, certainly spoke of an imagination and perhaps a sensitivity not apparent in her father. Her hair was thick but of no particular depth of shade, and disturbed from sleep and caught by tragedy, she was bereft of color or animation.

James Carfax was far taller than she, lean and slenderly built. He had a magnificent head of dark hair and wide eyes. He would have been handsome had there been strength in his face instead of mere smoothness. There was in his mouth a mercurial quality; it was a mouth that would be as quick to smile as to sulk. He stood with his arm round his wife's shoulder and stared defensively at Pitt.

"I am extremely sorry, Mrs. Carfax," Pitt said immediately. "If it is of any comfort to you, your father died within seconds of being attacked, and from the look of peace upon

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his face, I think he probably knew no fear, and barely a moment's pain."

"Thank you," she said with difficulty.

"Perhaps if you were to sit down," Pitt suggested, "and have your maid bring you some restorative?"

"It is not necessary," James Carfax snapped. "Now that you have told us the news, my wife will retire to her room."

' 'If you prefer that I return tomorrow morning,'' Pitt said looking not at James but at Helen, "then of course I shall. However, the sooner you give us all the information possible, the better chance we have of apprehending whoever is responsible."

"Rubbish!" James said instantly. "There is nothing we can tell you that would help! Obviously whoever murdered Sir Lockwood Hamilton is still at large and murdered my father-in-law as well. You should be out hi the streets hunting for him-or them. It's either a madman, or some anarchist plot. Either way, you won't find any guidance to it in this house!"

Pitt was used to shock and knew the first wave of grief often showed itself as anger. Many people fought against pain by driving it out with some other intense emotion. The desire to blame someone seemed to come most readily.

"Nevertheless, I must ask," Pitt insisted. "It is possible the attack may have been personally inspired, made by someone who had some political animosity-"

"Against both Sir Lockwood and my father-in-law?" James's dark eyebrows shot upward in sarcastic disbelief.

"I need to investigate, sir." Pitt held his gaze steadily. "I must not decide in advance what the solution is going to be. Sometimes one man may commit murder in imitation of another, hoping the first will be blamed for both crimes."

James lost his fragile temper. "More likely it's anarchists, and you're simply incompetent to catch them!"

Pitt overlooked the jibe. He turned to Helen, who had taken his advice and seated herself uncomfortably on the

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edge of the wide, forest green sofa. She was hunched forward, arms folded across herself as if she were cold, although the room still retained the warmth of the smoldering fire.

"Are there any other members of the family we should inform?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "No, I am the only child. My brother died several years ago, when he was twelve. My mother died shortly after. I have an uncle in the Indian Army, but I shall write to him myself, in a day or two."

So she would inherit. Pitt would make sure, of course, but it would be extraordinary if Etheridge had left his fortune outside the family. "So your father had been a widower for some time," he said.

"Yes."

"Had he ever considered marrying again?" It was a reasonably tactful way of inquiring whether Etheridge had any romantic alliances. He hoped she understood what he meant.

A wan smile lit her face for an instant, and vanished.' 'Not so far as I know. That is not to say there were not several ladies who considered it."

"I imagine so," Pitt agreed. "He was of fine family, had a successful career, an impeccable reputation, was charming and personable, and was of very substantial means, and still young enough to have another family."

James's head came up sharply and his mouth fell slack with some emotion of alarm or loss that Pitt could see for an instant, before it was masked, but he could not be sure of its nature.

Helen's eyes flashed upward to her husband's face; she grew even more pale, then the color rushed up in her cheeks. She turned to Pitt and spoke so quietly he had to lean forward to catch her words.

' 'I don't think he ... ever had any desire to marry again. I'm sure I should have known of it.''

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"Would any of these ladies have had reason for entertaining hopes?"

"No."

Pitt looked at James, but James avoided his eyes.

"Perhaps you would give me the name of his solicitors in the morning?" Pitt asked. "And any business partners or associates he may have had?"

"Yes, if you think it necessary." She was very pale. Her hands were clenched and her body still hunched forward on the edge of the seat.

"His affairs were in excellent order," James put in, suddenly looking at Pitt and frowning. "Surely they have no bearing on this? I think you intrude on our privacy without justification. Mr. Etheridge's wealth was inherited through lands in Lincolnshire and the West Riding, and shares in several companies in the City. I suppose there may be some malcontents or would-be revolutionaries who resent that, but only the same ones who would resent anyone with property." His eyes were bright, his jaw a little forward. He was half challenging Pitt, as if he suspected Pitt might have some secret sympathy with those James considered to be his own class.

"We are looking into that, of course." Pitt smiled briefly back at him and held his gaze. It was James who looked away. "I will also inquire into his political career as well," he continued. "Perhaps you can give me an outline from which to begin?"

Helen cleared her throat. ' 'He has been a Liberal Member of Parliament for twenty-one years, from the general election in December 1868. His constituency is in Lincolnshire. He served as a junior minister in the Treasury in 1880 when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the India Office when Lord Randolph Churchill was Secretary for India, I think that was 1885. And he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir William Harcourt when he was Home Secretary, but only for about a year-I

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think it was 1883. At present he has-he had," she said, hesitating for only a moment, "no particular office, so far as I know, but a great deal of influence."

"Thank you. Do you happen to know if he held strong views on the Irish question? Home Rule, for example."

She shivered and glanced again at James, but he was apparently unaware of it, his mind absorbed with something else.

' 'He was against Home Rule,'' she answered very quietly. Then her eyes widened and there was a flash, a quickening of something within. Anger and hope? Or merely intelligence? "Do you think it could have been Fenians? An Irish conspiracy?"

' 'Possibly.'' Pitt doubted it; he remembered Hamilton had been strongly in favor of Home Rule. But then perhaps Hamilton had been killed by mistake. At night with the distortion of the lamplight . . . the two^men were of a height, roughly of an age, and not dissimilar in coloring and features. ' 'Yes-possibly.''

"Then you had better begin inquiring," James said. He seemed a little more relaxed. "We will retire. My wife has had a profound shock. I am sure you can learn anything else you need from my father-in-law's political colleagues." He turned to leave. His concern for Helen did not extend to offering her his arm.

The merest flicker of hurt crossed Helen's face before it was mastered and concealed again. Pitt debated for an instant whether to offer his hand. He wished to, as he would have to Charlotte, but he remembered his position: he was a policeman, not a guest or an equal. She would regard it as an impertinence, and more powerful in his mind, it would highlight the fact that her husband had not done so. James was standing by the door, holding it open.

"Have you been at home all evening, sir?" Pitt said with an edge to his voice he had not intended, but his anger at the man was too strong.

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James looked surprised. Then a wave of color spread up his cheeks, dim in the light of the two lamps that had been turned up but unmistakable to someone staring at him as Pitt was.

He hesitated. Was he debating whether to lie?

"Never mind." Pitt smiled sourly. "I can ask the footman. I need not detain you. Thank you, Mrs. Carfax. I am deeply sorry to have had to bring you such news."

"We don't need your apologies-just get off about your business!" James said waspishly. Then realizing at last how he betrayed himself by unnecessary rudeness, he turned and walked out of the door, leaving it wide and unattended for Helen to follow.

She stood still, her eyes on Pitt's face, struggling with herself whether to speak or not.

Pitt waited. He was afraid she would retreat if he prompted her.

' 'I was at home,'' she said, then instantly seemed to regret it. "I mean, I went to sleep early. I-I am not sure about my husband, but-but my father did receive a ... a letter that troubled him. I think he may have been threatened in some way."

"Do you know who sent this letter, Mrs. Carfax?"

"No. It was political, I think. Maybe regarding the Irish?"

"Thank you. Tomorrow perhaps you would be kind enough to see if you can remember any more. We will inquire at his office, and among his colleagues. Do you know if he kept the letter?"

She looked almost at the point of collapse. "No. I have no idea."

"Please don't destroy anything, Mrs. Carfax. It would be better if you were to lock your father's study.''

"Of course. Now if you will excuse me, I must be alone."

Pitt stood to attention. It was an odd gesture, but he felt a profound sympathy for her, not only because she had lost her father in violent and peculiarly public circumstances, but

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because of some other pain he sensed in her, a loneliness that had something to do with her husband. He thought perhaps she loved him far more than he did her, and she knew it, and yet there was also something beyond that, another wound he could only guess at.

The footman showed him out, and he went down the steps into the quiet lamplit street with a deep feeling that there were other tragedies to be revealed.

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1 he following day constables set about finding any witnesses who might have seen anything from which a fact could be deduced: a more exact time, whether the attacker had come from the north side of the bridge or the south, which way he had gone afterwards, whether by cab or on foot. There was little they could do until the evening, because those who frequented the streets close to midnight were in their own homes, shops, or lodgings through the day, which could be almost anywhere, and even the members of Parliament were at home or in offices and ministries.

By midweek they had found four of the cabbies who had crossed the bridge between half past ten and eleven o'clock. None of them had seen anything that was of any help, nothing out of the ordinary, no loitering figures except the usual prostitutes, and they, like Hetty Milner, were merely pursuing their trade. One had seen a man selling hot plum duff, but he was a regular, and when the police met the man in the early evening he could tell them nothing further.

Other members of Parliament had spoken with Etheridge shortly before they all left the House and went their several

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ways. None had seen him approached by anyone or could remember his actually walking towards the bridge. They had been busy in conversation themselves, the night was dark, it was late, and they were tired and thinking of home.

All that the day's labor, walking, questioning, and deduction produced by midnight was the confirmation of a very ordinary evening. No unusual person had been noticed, nothing had disturbed Etheridge or caused him to behave other than after any late night sitting of the House. There had been no quarrels, no sudden messages, no haste or anxiety, no friends or acquaintances with him except other members.

Etheridge had been found dead by Harry Rawlins within ten minutes of his last words to his colleagues outside the entrance of the House of Commons.

Pitt turned his attention to the personal life of Etheridge, beginning with his financial affairs. It took him only a couple of hours to confirm that he had been an extremely wealthy man, and there was no heir apart from his only child, Helen Carfax. The estate was in no way entailed, and the house in Paris Road and the extremely fine properties in Lincolnshire and the West Riding were freehold and without mortgage.

Pitt left the solicitors' offices with no satisfaction. Even in the spring sunshine he felt cold. The lawyer, a small, punctilious man with spectacles on the bridge of his narrow nose, had said nothing of James Carfax, but his silences were eloquent. He pursed his mouth and gazed at Pitt with steady sadness in his pale blue eyes, but his discretion had been immaculate; he told Pitt only what was in due course going to become public knowledge when the will was probated, not that Pitt had expected anything else. Families of Ether-idge's standing did not employ lawyers who betrayed their clients' trust.

Pitt took a quick lunch of bread, cold mutton, and cider at the Goat and Compasses and then hired a hansom through Westminster and across the bridge back to Paris Road. It was an acceptable hour to call, and even if Helen Carfax were

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not well enough to receive him herself, it would not matter; his primary purpose was to search Etheridge's papers to see if he could find the letter she had spoken of, or any other correspondence which would indicate an enemy, a woman who felt ill-used, a business or professional rival, anything at all.

When he alighted from the cab he found the house as he had expected, all the curtains drawn and a dark wreath on the door. The parlormaid who answered his knock wore black crepe in her hair instead of the crisp white cap she would normally have had, and no white apron. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to go to the tradesmen's entrance, but some mixture of uncertainty, fear, and the aftermath of shock made her choose the simpler measure and ask him in.

"I don't know whether Mrs. Carfax will see you," she said warningly.

"How about Mr. Carfax?" Pitt asked as he followed her into the morning room.

"He's gone out to attend some business. I expect he'll be back after luncheon.''

"Would you ask Mrs. Carfax if I may have permission to look through Mr. Etheridge's study to see if I can find the letter she mentioned to me last night?"

"Yes sir, I'll ask," she said doubtfully, and left him to wait alone. He looked round the room more closely than he had the previous night. Guests who might call unexpectedly would be received here, and residents of the house might spend a quiet morning attending to correspondence. The mistress would come here to order the affairs of the day, give the cook and the housekeeper their instructions, and discuss some domestic or cellar matter with the butler.

There was a Queen Anne writing desk in one corner, and a table with a number of framed photographs on it. He studied them carefully; the largest was obviously Etheridge himself as a young man, with a gentle-faced woman beside him. They looked stiff as they faced the photographer, but even in

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the formal pose there was a confidence that shone through, a composure that had more to do with happiness than discipline. To judge from the fashions it had been taken about twenty years ago. There was also a picture of a boy of about thirteen, thin, with the large, intense eyes of an invalid. The picture was mounted in black.

The elderly woman who reminded Pitt of a benign, rather lugubrious horse was presumably Etheridge's mother. The family resemblance was there; she had the good brow and tender mouth, recalling her granddaughter as she might have been in another age.

To the left side of the table was a large picture of Helen herself with James Carfax. She looked startlingly innocent, her face very young, eyes full of hope and the kind of radiance that belongs to those in love. James also smiled, but only with his mouth and his beautiful teeth; his eyes held satisfaction, almost relief. He seemed more aware of the camera than she.

The date was in the corner, 1883. Possibly it was shortly after their marriage.

Pitt went to the bookcase. A man's choice of books said much of his character, if the books were actually read; if, on the other hand, they were meant to impress, they revealed something of the people whose opinion mattered to him. If they were merely to decorate the wall they revealed nothing, except the certain shallowness of a person who used books for such a purpose. These were well-used volumes of history, philosophy, and a few classic works of literature.

It was Helen herself who appeared nearly ten minutes later, ashen-faced and dressed entirely in black, which made her look younger, but also wearier, as if she were recovering from a long and confining illness. But her composure was admirable.

"Good morning, Inspector Pitt," she said levelly. "I believe you wish to search for the letter I mentioned last night?

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I doubt you will find it-I don't imagine my father will have preserved it. But of course you may look."

"Thank you, Mrs. Carfax." He wanted to apologize for disturbing her, but he could think of nothing that would not sound trivial in the circumstances and so found himself following her silently across the gaslit hallway. An upstairs maid with a pile of laundry and a tweeny of about fourteen with a mop in her hand were both leaning over the landing rail watching. If the housekeeper caught them, they would be disciplined sharply and told precisely what happened to girls who could not attend to their work but interested themselves in the affairs of their betters.

The library was another spacious room, with two oak-paneled walls, one with large windows, the curtains drawn as suited a house in mourning; the other two walls were lined with glass-fronted bookcases. The fire was unlit, but the ashes had been cleared and the grate freshly blacked.

' 'There is my father's desk,'' Helen said, indicating a large oak desk inlaid with tooled leather in dark maroon and containing nine drawers, four on either side and one central one. She held out her thin hand, offering him a little carefully wrought key.

"Thank you, ma'am." He took it, and feeling even more intrusive than usual, he opened the first drawer and began to look through the papers.

' 'I presume these are all Mr. Etheridge's?'' he asked.' 'Mr. Carfax never uses this room?"

"No, my husband has offices in the City. He never brings work home. He has many friends, but little personal correspondence."

Pitt was sorting through unanswered constituency letters, small matters of land boundaries, bad roads, quarrels with neighbors, all trivial compared with violent death. None of them were written with ill will; simple irritation, more than rage or despair, seemed the ruling emotion.

"Has Mr. Carfax been obliged to go into the City this 89

morning?" he asked suddenly, hoping to surprise something from her.

"Yes. I mean-" She stared at him. "I-I am not sure. He told me, and I-forgot."

"Is Mr. Carfax interested in politics?"

"No. He is in publishing. It is a family interest. He does not go in every day, only when there is a board meeting, or . . ." She trailed off, changing her mind about discussing the subject.

Pitt came to the second drawer, which was full of various tradesmen's bills. He looked at them closely, interested to see that apparently they were all addressed to Etheridge, none to James Carfax. Everything was accounted for here that he might have expected would be required for the running of the establishment: the purchase of food, soap, candles, polishes, linen, coal, coke and wood; the replacement of crockery and kitchenware, servants' uniforms, footmen's livery; the maintenance of the carriages and supplies for the horses, even the repair of harness. Whatever James Carfax contributed, it must be very little indeed.

The only thing absent was any account of expenditure for feminine clothing, shoes, dress fabrics or dressmakers' bills, millinery or perfumes. It would seem Helen had either an allowance or money of her own; or perhaps these were the things which James provided.

He continued with the next drawer, and the next. He discovered nothing but old domestic accounts and some papers to do with the properties in the country. None of it bore the faintest resemblance to a threat.

"I did not imagine he would keep it," Helen said again, when Pitt completed his search. "But it was ... it must have meant something." She looked away towards the curtained windows. "I had to mention it."

' 'Of course.'' He had seen the compulsion that had driven her to speak, although he was less sure of its nature than his polite agreement led her to suppose. Some nameless anar-

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chist, out there in the streets, come at night from the tangle of the slums, was frightening enough, but so infinitely better than that a passion to murder had been born here in the house, living here, bound here, forever a part of them and their lives, its shadow intruding across every hush in conversation, every silence in the night.

"Thank you, Mrs. Carfax," he said, turning from the desk. "Is it possible this letter could be in some other room? The morning room perhaps, or the withdrawing room? Or might your father have taken it upstairs to prevent someone finding it by chance and being distressed?" He did not for a moment think it likely, but he would like to spend a little longer in the house and perhaps speak to the staff. Helen's lady's maid could probably tell him all he wanted to know, but of course she would not. Discretion was her chief qualification, more even than her skill at dressing hair and at fine needlework, and in the art of trimming and pressing a gown. Those who betrayed confidences never found work again. Society was very small.

It seemed Helen did not want to abandon the possibility either, no matter how slim.

"Yes-yes, he may have put it upstairs. I will show you his dressing room; that would be a private place to keep such a thing. There would be no chance of my finding it and being distressed." And she led him out into the hall and up the lovely curved staircase and along the landing to the master bedroom and the dressing room beside it. Here the curtains were not fully drawn, and Pitt had time to notice the view across the mews to the loveliness of the gardens of Lambeth Palace.

He turned to find Helen standing beside a dresser, the top drawer of which had a brass-bound keyhole. Silently she unlocked it for him and pulled out the drawer. It contained Etheridge's personal jewelry, two watches, several pair of cuff links set with semiprecious stones and three plain gold

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pair, engraved with a crest, as well as two finger rings, one a woman's with a fine emerald.

"My mother's," Helen said softly at Pitt's shoulder. "He kept it himself. He said I should have it after he was . . . dead. ..." For a moment her composure broke and she swung round to hide her face till she should regain it.

There was nothing Pitt could do; even to show that he had noticed would be inappropriate. They were strangers, of opposite sexes, and socially the gulf between them was unbridgeable. To share whatever pity he felt, whatever understanding, would be inexcusable.

Instead he searched the drawers as quickly as possible, seeing quite easily that there was nothing of a threatening nature: an old love letter from Etheridge's wife, two bank notes, for ten pounds and twenty pounds, respectively, and some photographs of his family. Pitt slid the drawer shut and looked up to find that Helen had turned to face him again, the moment mastered.

"No?" She spoke as though she had known the conclusion.

"No," he agreed. "But then, as you say, ma'am, it is the sort of thing one destroys.''

"Yes. ..." She seemed to want to say something more, but could not find the form of it.

Pitt waited. He could not help her, although he was as aware of her anxiety as of the sunlight which filled the room. Finally he could bear it no longer.

"It may be in his office in the House of Commons," he said quietly. "I have yet to go there."

"Ah, yes, of course."

' 'But if you think of anything else to tell me, Mrs. Carfax, please send a message to Bow Street, and I shall call on you at your first convenience.''

"Thank you-thank you, Inspector," she replied, seeming a little relieved. She led him back onto the landing. As he was passing the top of the stairs he noticed two faded

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patches on the wallpaper, only slight, but it seemed a picture had been removed, and two others changed in position to return the balance.

"Your father sold one of his paintings recently," he said. "Would you know to whom?"

She was startled, but she did not refuse to answer.' 'It was my painting, Mr. Pitt. It can have nothing to do with his death."

"I see. Thank you." So she had recently acquired an amount of money. He would have to investigate it discreetly and discover how much.

The front door opened and James Carfax came in on a gust of spring wind and sunlight. The footman came forward and took his hat, coat, and umbrella, and James strode across the hall, stopping as the movement at the top of the stairs caught his eye, his face darkening with irritation and then, as he recognized Pitt, anger.

"What in hell are you doing here?" he demanded. "For God's sake, man, my wife's just lost her father! Get out on the streets and look for whatever lunatic's responsible. Don't waste your tune here harassing us!"

' 'James-'' Helen started down the stairs, her hand white, on the bannister. Pitt waited well behind because he could hardly see her black skirts on the gaslit stair and feared lest he might tread on them. "James, he came back to see if he could find a threatening letter I told him Father had received."

' 'We'll look for it!'' James was not to be so easily soothed. "If we find it we'll inform you. Now good day to you, sir- the footman will show you out."

Pitt ignored him and turned to Helen. "With your permission, ma'am, I would like to speak to the footmen and coachmen."

"Whatever for?" Clearly James still considered his presence a trespass.

"Since Mr. Etheridge was attacked in the street, sir, it is 93

possible he was followed and watched some time beforehand," Pitt replied levelly. "On recollection one of them may bring something helpful to mind."

Anger stained James's cheeks with color; he should have seen that point himself. In many ways he was younger than the thirty or so years Pitt judged him to be. His sophistication was a thin skin over his emotions, over the rawness of someone unproved in his own eyes. Perhaps his father-in-law's complete control of the household had oppressed him more than he could admit to himself.

Helen put her hand on her husband's arm, her fingers resting very lightly, as if she were half afraid he might brush her off and she wanted to be able to pretend not to have noticed.

"James, we have to help all we can. I know they may never catch this madman, or anarchist, whoever it is, but-"

"That hardly needs to be said, Helen!" He looked at Pitt; they were much of a height. "Question the outside staff, if you must-and then leave us alone. Let my wife mourn in private, and with some decency." He did not put his hand over hers, as Pitt would have done in his place. Instead he moved away from her hand, and then put his arm round her shoulders, holding her by his side for a moment. Pitt saw Helen's face relax and a soft pleasure relax her features. To Pitt it was a colder gesture than the touching of hands would have been, a masked thing, kept apart by layers of cloth. But one does not know what happens in the relationships of others. Sometimes what seems close hides voids of loneliness whose pain outsiders can never conceive: others who sound to be remote, pursuing their own paths without regard, actually understand each other and silences exist because there is no need for speech, as quarrels are the strange coverings of enfolding warmth and intense loyalties. Perhaps James and Helen Carfax's love was not as one-sided as he had imagined, not so full of pain for her, nor so cramping and unwelcome to him.

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He excused himself and went through the green baize door to the servants' quarters, explaining to the butler who he was, and that he had Mr. Carfax's permission to speak to them. He was met with cool suspicion.

"Mrs. Carfax told me her father had received a threatening letter," he added. "She naturally wished me to pursue it, to discover anything I can."

The watchfulness relaxed. The thought of James Carfax giving or withholding permission in the household was obviously so unfamiliar to them it had not registered. The mention of Helen, however, was different.

''If we knew anything we'd have told you,'' the butler said grimly. "But if you want to ask anyone, then of course I'll see that they're brought, and that they answer you as best they can."

"Thank you." Pitt had thought of several questions, not that he expected helpful answers to any of them, but it gave him an opportunity to make a better judgment of the household. The cook offered him a cup of tea, for which he was grateful, and during the conversation he saw the extent of the establishment. Etheridge had kept ten maids altogether, including an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid, the tweeny, a lady's maid for Helen, laundresses, a parlourmaid, a kitch-enmaid, and scullery maids. And of course there was a housekeeper. There were two footmen, both six feet tall and nicely matched, a butler, a valet, a bootboy, and outside, two grooms and a coachman.

He watched them all relax and become easier as he told them one or two mildly humorous stories of his experience and shared tea and some of the cook's best Dundee cake, which she kept for the servants' hall. He observed the lady's maid more closely than the rest of them. She accepted some good-natured teasing because her position in the servants ranking was higher, despite her being only twenty-five or twenty-six, but as soon as he turned the subject towards Helen and James there was a very slight alteration in the angle of

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her chin, a tightening of the muscles in her shoulders, a carefulness in her eyes. She knew the pain of a woman who loves more than she is loved, and she was not going to betray it to the rest of the servants, still less to this intrusive policeman.

It was all Pitt had wanted, and when he had eaten the last crumb of his cake, he thanked them, complimented them, and went outside to find the coachman, who was busy cleaning harness in the mews.

Pitt asked the coachman if he'd noticed anyone taking an unusual interest in Etheridge's journeys, but he did not expect to learn anything. What he wanted to know was where James Carfax went, and how often.

When he left in the late afternoon he was in time to catch a hansom back across the river to St. James's and the famous gentlemen's club of Boodle's, where the coachman had said James Carfax was a member. The man had been discreet, naming only the places where such a young man might be presumed to go: his club, very occasionally his place of business, the theaters, balls and dinners of the usual social round, and in the summer the races, regattas, and garden parties which all Society attended, if they had the rank to be invited and the money to accept.

It was growing dark when Pitt found the doorman at Boodle's and with a mixture of flattery and pressure, elicited from him that Mr. James Carfax was indeed a regular visitor to the premises, that he had many friends among the members and they often sat far into the night playing cards, and yes, he supposed they drank a fair bit, as gentlemen will. No, he did not always leave in his own carriage, at times he dismissed it and left hi the vehicle of one or another of his friends. Did he return home? Well it was not for him to say where a young gentleman went when he left.

Was Mr. Carfax overall a winner at cards, or a loser? He had no idea, but certainly he paid his debts, or he would not remain a member, now would he?

Pitt agreed that he would not and had to be content with 96

that, although the thoughts that disturbed him were growing in his mind, and nothing he had learned dispelled them.

There was one more thing he could do before going home. He took another cab, from St. James's down the Buckingham Palace Road and south to the Chelsea Embankment to Barclay Hamilton's house close to the Albert Bridge. There was no use asking any professional or social acquaintance of James Carfax the sort of thing he wished to know. But Barclay Hamilton had recently lost his own father to the same grotesque death as Helen Carfax's father had met with. He could reasonably be pressed with questions more direct and might be free to answer them without fear of the social condemnation others might feel, the sense of having betrayed those who implicitly trusted him.

He was received with some surprise, but civilly enough. Now that he had the opportunity to see Barclay Hamilton on his own, and not in the circumstances of the immediate impact of bereavement, Pitt found him a man of quiet charm. The brusqueness of his manner at their first meeting had completely vanished, and he invited Pitt into his sitting room with as much curiosity as it was courteous to show.

It was not a large room, but graciously furnished, obviously for the comfort of its owner rather than to impress others. The chairs were old, the red and blue Turkey rug was worn in the center but at the outer edges still retained its stained glass vividness. The pictures, mostly watercolors, were not expensive, perhaps even amateur, but each had a mood and a delicacy that suggested they had been chosen for their charm rather than for monetary value. The books in the glass-fronted cases were arranged in order of subject, not to please the eye.

' 'I don't let my housekeeper touch anything in here, except to dust it," Hamilton said, following Pitt's gaze with a faint smile. "She complains, but obeys. She is greatly put out that I will not allow her to decorate the back of every chair with an antimacassar and put family photographs all over the ta-

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ble. I will permit one of my mother-that is enough. I don't care to feel stared at by an entire gallery."

Pitt smiled back. It was a man's room, and it reminded him of his own bachelor days, although his lodgings had consisted of only one room and had been far from the elegance of Chelsea. It was only the masculinity of it that held the echo, the mark of a single owner, a single taste, a man free to come and go as he pleased, to drop things where he liked without regard for another's convenience.

It had been a good time in his life, a necessary time for growing from boy to man, but he looked back on it with a tolerance that held no yearning, no desire to recapture it. No house could be home to him without Charlotte in it, her favorite pictures, which he loathed, hanging on the wall, her sewing spread out, her books left lying on the tables, her slippers somewhere for him to trip over, her voice from the kitchen, the lights on, the warmth, her touch, familiar now but still exciting, still needed with an urgency, and above all, her sharing, the talk of her day, what had been right or wrong in it, what had been funny or infuriating, and her endless concern and curiosity about his work and what mattered to him in it.

Hamilton was looking at him now, his eyes wide and puzzled. There was humor in his face, but a shadow about the bridge of the nose, a delicacy, as if he had seen his dreams die and had to rebuild with care over a loss that still pained.

"What can I tell you, Inspector Pitt, that you do not already know?"

"You have read of the death of Vyvyan Etheridge?"

"Of course. I should not think there is a soul in the city who has not."

"Are you acquainted, either personally or by repute, with his son-in-law, Mr. James Carfax?"

"A little. Not closely. Why? Surely you cannot think he has any connection with anarchists?" Again the fleeting

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smile, the knowledge of absurdity which amused rather than angered him.

"You don't think it likely?"

"I don't."

"Why not?" Pitt tried to put skepticism into his voice, as if it were the line of investigation he was pursuing.

"Frankly, he hadn't the passion or the dedication to be anything so total."

"So total?" Pitt was curious. It was not the reason he had expected: not moral impossibility but emotional shallow-ness. The perception said more of Hamilton than perhaps it did of James Carfax. "You do not think he would find it repugnant, unethical? Disloyal to his own class?"

Hamilton colored faintly, but his candid eyes never left Pitt's. "I would be surprised if he considered the question in that light. In fact, I doubt he has ever thought of politics one way or the other, except to assume that the system will remain as it is and ensure him the sort of life he wishes.''

"Which is?"

Hamilton lifted his shoulders very slightly. "As far as I know, lunching with friends, a little gambling, visiting the races and the fashionable parties, the theaters, dinners, balls- and discreet nights with a trollop now and then-perhaps a visit to the dogfight or a fistfight if he can find one."

"You have no high opinion of him," Pitt said levelly, still holding his eyes.

Hamilton pulled a slight face. "I suppose he is no worse than many. But I cannot believe he is a passionate anarchist in heavy disguise. Believe me, Inspector, no disguise could be so superb!"

"Does he win at gambling?"

"Not overall, according to the gossip I've heard."

"And yet he pays up. Does he have considerable private means?"

' 'I doubt it. His family is not wealthy, although his mother inherited some honorary title. He married well, as you know.

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Helen Etheridge has tremendous expectations-I suppose now they are a reality. I imagine she pays whatever debts he runs up. He isn't a heavy loser, so far as I know."

' 'Are you a member of Boodle's?''

"I? No-not my sort of interest. But I have several acquaintances who are. Society is very small, Inspector. And my father lived within a mile of Paris Road.''

"But you have not lived in your father's house for many years now."

All the ease and humor died out of Hamilton's face, as if someone had opened a door and let in a blast of winter. "No." His voice was tight, caught in his throat. "My father married again after my mother's death. I was an adult; it was perfectly natural and suitable that I should find my own premises. But that can have nothing to do with James Carfax. I referred to it only to show you that in Society one cannot help knowing something about other people if they move in similar circles."

Pitt regretted having inadvertently caused him pain. He liked the man, and it had been no part of his search to touch an old wound that could hardly have any bearing either on Lockwood Hamilton's death or Etheridge's.

"Of course," he agreed, leaving the apology tacit in his voice; the less the wound was touched the sooner the thin skin would heal over it again.' 'Did you mention other women as a supposition from his general conduct, or have you some specific knowledge?"

Hamilton breathed out, relaxing again. "No, Inspector. I regret my speculations were based solely on his reputation. It is possible I did him an injustice. I don't like the man; please consider anything I say with that in view."

"You knew Carfax's wife before her marriage?"

"Oh yes."

"Did you like Helen Etheridge, Mr. Hamilton?" Pitt asked it so candidly that it was robbed of implication.

"Yes," Hamilton said equally frankly. "But not roman-100

tically, you understand. I always felt her very young. There was something childlike in her; she was like a girl who keeps her dreams." He smiled ruefully. "As if she had only just put her hair up and donned her first long skirts!"

Pitt pictured Mrs. Carfax, her vulnerability and her obvious adoration for her husband, and silently agreed.

"Unfortunately we all have to grow up," Hamilton added with a small smile. "Perhaps women less so, on the whole." Then he bit his lips as if he wished to take the words back. "Some women, anyway. I fear I cannot help you very much, Inspector. I don't care for James Carfax very much, but I would swear he has no connection with anarchists, or any other political conspiracy, nor is he a madman. He is exactly what he appears, a rather selfish young man who is bored, drinks a little more than is wise, and likes to show off but has not the financial means to keep up with his friends without using his wife's money, which galls him, but not enough to prevent him from doing it."

' 'And if his wife ceased to provide the money?" Pitt asked.

"She won't. At least," he corrected himself, "I don't believe she will, unless he becomes too rash hi his behavior and hurts her too much. But I don't think he's fool enough format"

"No, I don't suppose so. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. I appreciate your candor; it has probably saved me hours of delicate questions." Pitt stood up. It was late and growing cold outside, and he wanted to go home. Tomorrow would come soon enough, and he had achieved little.

Barclay Hamilton stood up also. He was taller than Pitt had remembered, and leaner. He looked embarrassed.

"I apologize, Inspector Pitt. I have spoken more frankly man I had a right to. It is the end of the day, and I am tired. I was less than discreet, and possibly uncharitable towards Carfax. I should not have spoken my thoughts."

Pitt smiled broadly. "You did warn me that you did not like him."

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Hamilton relaxed, a sudden lightness in his face evoking the young man he must have been eighteen years ago, when Amethyst Royce had married his father. "I hope we meet again, Inspector, in happier circumstances." And instead of calling the manservant he held out his hand and shook Pitt's as if they had been friends, not gentleman and detective.

Pitt left the house and walked slowly along the Embankment until he should find a cab and at last go home. The night air was raw, and there was a mist rising from the water. Somewhere far down the river by the Pool of London, ships' foghorns were blaring out, muffled by distance and damp.

Could James Carfax have murdered his father-in-law to speed his wife's inheritance? Or, uglier and more painful than that, could Helen, in her anguish to keep her husband, have murdered her own father for his money, money she needed to give James the material things he counted so dear? To keep his attention, so she might pretend it was love? She could hardly have done it herself, but she might have paid someone else to do it. That might account as well for Sir Lockwood Hamilton's murder: a paid assassin might have mistaken him for Etheridge, something a person who knew him well would not do on a lamplit bridge like Westminster.

Tomorrow he must find out which picture she had sold, and for how much. It wouldn't be as easy to discover what had happened to the money it had brought, but that too should be possible.

Pitt went home tired after a long day, Helen's face lingering in his mind, with its painful tenderness and the fear in her eyes.

The following morning Pitt got up early and set out in the rain to report to Micah Drummond, and Charlotte received her first letter from Emily, postmarked Paris. She sat looking at it for several minutes without opening it. Half of her was eager to know that Emily was happy and well, the other half

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was stung by an envy for the excitement of laughter and adventure and the beginning of love.

After propping it up against the teapot and staring at it while she ate two slices of toast and marmalade, a preserve which she made extremely well-it was her best culinary achievement-she finally succumbed.

It was dated Paris, April 1888, and read:

Dearest Charlotte,

I hardly know how to begin to tell you everything that has happened. Crossing on the boat was miserable! The wind was cold and the sea rough! But once we reached dry land it all changed completely. The coach drive from Calais to Paris made me think of every adventure I've ever read about musketeers and Louis XVI-it was the XVI, wasn't it? It was such a marvelous idea of Jack's, and full of all the things I imagined: farms with cheeses for sale, wonderful trees, little old villages with farmers' wives arguing, all delightful and romantic. And I thought of the fleeing aristocrats in the Revolution-they must have passed this way to reach the packet boats to England!

Jack had everything arranged in Paris. Our hotel is small and quaint, overlooking a cobbled square where the leaves on the trees are just unfolding, and a little man stands outside and plays an accordion in the evenings under the open windows. We sit outside at a table with a checked cloth and drink wine in the sun. It is a little cool, I admit, but how could I mind? Jack bought me a shawl of silk, and I feel very French and very elegant with it round my shoulders.

We have walked for miles and my feet are sore, but the weather has been lovely, bright with a fresh wind, and I have loved every minute of it. Paris is so beautiful! Everywhere I go I feel someone femous or interesting has walked these same streets, a great artist with unique and passionate vision, or a wild-eyed revolutionary, or a romantic like Sydney Carton who redeemed everything with the ultimate love. 103

And of course we have been to the theater. I did not understand most of it, but I caught the atmosphere, and that was all that mattered-and Charlotte, the music! I could have sung and danced all the way home, except that I would have been arrested for disturbing the peace! And it is all such fun because Jack is enjoying it every bit as much as I. He is such a good companion, as well as tender and considerate in all other ways that I had hoped. And I have noticed other women gazing at him with shining eyes, and not a little envy!

Paris gowns are marvelous, but I fear they would be out of fashion in no time. I can imagine spending half one's life at the dressmaker's, forever having them' 'made over'' to keep up with madame next door!

We leave for the south tomorrow morning, and I can hardly dare hope it will be as perfect as this. Can Venice really be as marvelous as I dream it will? I wish I knew more Venetian history. I shall have to find a book and read something. My head is filled with romance and, I daresay, quite unreal notions.

I do hope you are well, and the children, and Thomas is not having to work too many hours. Does he have an interesting case? I shall look forward to hearing all your news when I return, but please take care of yourself and don't get involved in anything dangerous! Be inquisitive, by all means, but only in the mind. I am not with you just at the moment, but be assured my thoughts and my love are, and I shall see you again soon.

All my love, Emily

Charlotte put the sheets of paper down with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. She would not for even a second's darker thought have wished Emily anything but total happiness. It was easy to feel a welling up of gladness inside her at the thought of Emily singing and dancing along the streets

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of Paris, especially after the tragedy and the awful misery of George's death.

But there was also a gnawing fear of having been left out. She was sitting in a kitchen by herself, in a small house, in a very ordinary suburb of London, where in all probability she would be for the rest of her life. Pitt would always work hard, for less money a month than Emily was now spending in a day.

But it was not money, money did not provide happiness- and idleness certainly did not! The cause of the ache in her throat was the thought of walking in laughter and companionship in beautiful places with time to spend, and of being in love. That was it-it was the magic of being in love, the tenderness that was not habit but was intense and thrilling, full of discovery, taking nothing for granted, making everything infinitely precious. It was being the center of someone else's world, and they of yours.

Which was all very silly. She would not have changed Pitt for Jack Radley, or anyone else. Nor would she have changed her life for Emily's . . . except perhaps just at the moment. . . .

She heard Gracie's feet clacking along the corridor, outrage audible in every step as she came from the front door having had words with the fishmonger. Gracie had no time for tradesmen who got above themselves.

"I know," Charlotte said as soon as Gracie appeared and before she could begin her expostulations.' 'He's impertinent!''

Gracie saw she would find no sympathy and instantly changed tack. She was all of sixteen now, and thoroughly experienced.

"What's Mr. Pitt working on now, ma'am?"

"A political case."

"Oh. What a pity! Well never mind-maybe it'll be better next time!" And Gracie set about riddling the grate and restarting the fire.

* * *

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Pitt discovered from Micah Drummond that he himself had already been to the House of Commons and spoken to several of Etheridge's colleagues.

"Nothing that I can see helps us," he said, shaking his head. He said nothing of pressure from the Commissioner of Police, or from the Home Office, but Pitt did not need to be told. They would still be subtle-it was early days yet-but the air of fear would be there, the anxiety to meet public demand, to answer the questions, quiet anxiety, and to appear to have everything in control. Some individuals would fear charges of incompetence, loss of status, even of office, and they would seek someone to blame.

"Political enemies?" Pitt asked.

"Rivals." Drummond shrugged. "But he wasn't ambitious enough to have enemies, or controversial enough to have stirred anyone to passion. And he had enough private income not to be greedy or to be tempted into graft."

"The Irish question?"

"Against Home Rule, but so were three hundred forty-two others three years ago, more in 'eighty-six. And anyway, Hamilton was for it. And on other issues Etheridge seems to have been moderate, humane without being radical. For penal reform, poor law reform, the Factories Acts-but change should be gradual, nothing that would destabilize society or industry. Very unremarkable all the way along."

Pitt sighed. "The more I look at it, the more it seems as if it might be personal after all, and poor Hamilton was simply a mistake."

' 'Who?'' Drummond looked up with a frown. ' 'His son-in-law, for the money? Seems a bit hysterical. He'd get it anyway in due course. No plans for disinheritance, were there? Wife not likely to leave him, surely? It would be social suicide!"

"No." Helen Carfax's worried, vulnerable face came sharply to his mind. "No, on the contrary, she's obviously very much in love with him. And probably gives him all the

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money he asks for; it seems to be the most attractive thing about her, to him."

' 'Oh.'' Drummond leaned back wearily. ''Well you'd better go on looking at that. Unless of course Hamilton was the intended victim, and Etheridge was added to conceal the motive? But I agree, that is a bit farfetched-more of a risk than it would be worth. And there doesn't seem to be anyone in Hamilton's family or among his acquaintances with any motive that we can find. What about this picture you say Helen Carfax sold? What was it worth?"

"I don't know yet. I was going to look into that today. Could be anything from a few pounds to a small fortune."

"I'll have Burrage do that. You go back to the Carfaxes' house. I don't know what else you can do, but keep trying. See if there're any women James Carfax is involved with, not just using. See if his debts are serious, or pressing. Perhaps he couldn't afford to wait?"

"Yes sir. I'll be back at lunchtime to see if Burrage has anything on the painting."

Drummond opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind and said nothing, merely watching Pitt go out the door.

But when Pitt came back long after luncheon at half past two, the news that greeted him had nothing to do with the painting. There was a hand-delivered note from Helen Carfax saying that she had remembered the exact nature of the threat her father had received, and if Pitt wished to call at the house in Paris Road, she would tell him what it had been.

He was surprised. He had believed it to be an invention, born of her desire to persuade both him and herself that the violence and the hatred that surrounded the murder had its origin far from her home or family, that it was something outside, beyond in the darkness of the streets where she never went; east in the slum and docklands, the taverns and alleys of discontent. He had not expected her to mention it again, except as a vague possibility, undefined.

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Still, she had sent for him, so he left Bow Street and took a cab south across the river to Paris Road.

She greeted him quietly, her eyes one minute downcast, the next seeking his face. Her hands, clenching and unclenching at her sides, seemed stiff, and she rumbled with the door handle as she led him into the morning room. But then she was speaking of people whom she considered might have cut her father's throat and tied him to a lamppost like an effigy, a lampoon of authority and order.

"I daresay you know of it, Mr. Pitt, being a policeman," she began, looking not at him but at a patch of sunlight on the carpet in front of her. "But three years ago there was a woman named Helen Taylor who tried to become a candidate for Parliament! A woman!" Her voice was growing a little sharp, as though underneath her stillness there was a rising hysteria. "Naturally it caused a certain amount of feeling. She was a very odd person-to call her eccentric would be charitable. She wore trousers! Dr. Pankhurst-you may have heard of him-chose to walk with her in public. It was most unbecoming, and quite naturally Mrs. Pankhurst objected, and I believe he ceased to do so. Mrs. Pankhurst is one of those who desires women to be given the franchise."

"Yes, Mrs. Carfax, I had heard there was such a movement. John Stuart Mill wrote a very powerful tract on the Admission of Women to Electoral Franchise in 1867. And a Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about political and civil equality for women in 1792."

' 'Yes, yes I suppose so. It is something in which I have no interest. But some of the women who espouse the cause do so very violently. Miss Taylor's behavior is surely an example of their-their disregard of the normal rules of society.''

Pitt kept his expression one of continued interest.' 'Indeed it would seem to have been unwise at the least," he offered.

"Unwise?" Her eyes flew wide open and for a moment her hands were perfectly still.

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"It felled to produce any of the results she desired," he answered.

"Surely it was bound to? No sane person could imagine she might succeed?"

"Who is it you believe threatened your father, Mrs. Carfax?"

"A woman-one of the women who want suffrage. He was opposed to it, you know."

"No, I didn't know. But surely he is with the majority in Parliament, and in the country. Quite a considerable majority."

"Of course, Mr. Pitt." The nervous tension in her was so great she was shaking. The color drained out of her skin and her voice was a whisper. "Mr. Pitt, I do not say they are sane. A person who would do ... what was done to my father, and to Sir Lockwood Hamilton, cannot be explained by any normal means."

"No, Mrs. Carfax. I am sorry to have pressed you." He was apologizing for being there to witness her distress, not for asking her to explain, but it did not matter if she did not understand that. All that mattered was that she should know of his sympathy for her.

"I appreciate your-your tact, Mr. Pitt. Now I must not take more of your time. Thank you for coming so quickly."

Pitt left in deep thought. Was it really conceivable that some woman, passionate for electoral justice, should cut the throat of two members of Parliament, simply because they were among the vast majority who felt her cause was untimely, or even ridiculous? It did not seem sane. But then as Helen Carfax had pointed out, such an act was not that of a person whose mind worked as others did, whatever the reason for it.

He still found his own thoughts returning to James Carfax, whose motive was far easier to understand, and to believe. He wanted to know more about him, see something besides the rather spoiled and shallow young man seen by Barclay Hamilton, or the shocked and rattled husband he had seen himself.

* * *

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Accordingly at a little after four o'clock he presented his card to the parlormaid at Lady Mary Carfax's Kensington residence and requested half an hour of her time, if she would be so gracious. It was in the matter of the recent violent death of Vyvyan Etheridge, M.P.

She sent back a message that he should wait in the morning room, and when it was convenient she would see him.

She chose to make it three quarters of an hour, in order that he should not give himself airs or imagine she had nothing better to do. Then she yielded to her curiosity and sent the maid to fetch him to the withdrawing room, where she sat in a bright pink overstuffed chair. It and three similar chairs and a chaise longue almost filled the room. There were one or two agreeable paintings on the walls and many photographs and portraits of family groups. At least a dozen of them showed the development of James Carfax from an infant to the thoughtful, rather self-conscious young man pictured with his arm round his mother's shoulders.

Lady Mary Carfax was not a tall woman, but she sat with imperious rigidity, and of course she did not rise when he came in. She had a coronet of gray hair, naturally curling. She must have been a beauty in her youth; her skin was still fine and her nose straight and delicate, but there was a coldness in her blue-gray eyes and a slack line now to her jaw and throat. Her mouth might have been charming in her early years; now there was a tightness in it that betrayed an inner chill, a ruthlessness that for Pitt dominated her face.

She did not care to crane her neck backwards, so reluctantly she gave him permission to sit.

' 'Thank you, Lady Mary,'' he said, and sat down opposite her.

"Well, what can I do for you? I know a certain amount about politics, but I doubt I can tell you anything of anarchists or other revolutionaries and malcontents."

"Your daughter-in-law, Mrs. James Carfax, believes that 110

her father was threatened by a woman who was passionate about obtaining the right to vote for Parliament."

Lady Mary's slightly downward sloping eyebrows shot upward. "Good gracious! I knew of course that they were the most brazen creatures, bereft of the sensitivities of feeling, the refinements that are natural to a woman. But I must admit that until now it had not entered my mind that they might take such complete leave of all sanity. Of course I did advise Mr. Etheridge against having any sympathy with them, right from the beginning. It is not natural for women to desire to dominate public aifairs. We do not have the brusqueness of nature; it is not our place."

Pitt was surprised.' 'You mean that at some time there was a question of his being in favor of the franchise for women?''

Her face was full of distaste. "I am not sure that he would have gone as far as that! He did consider there was some argument that women of maturity and a certain degree of property-not just any woman-should be able to vote for local councils and, in certain cases, should have the right to custody of their children when separated from their husbands."

' 'Women of property? What about other women, poorer women?"

"Are you trying to be amusing, Mr.-what was your name?"

"Pitt, ma'am. No, I just wondered what Mr. Etheridge's ideas were."

"They were misplaced, Mr. Pitt. Women have no education, no understanding of political or governmental affairs, no knowledge of the law and seldom any of finance, other than of a merely domestic nature. Can you imagine the sort of people they would elect to Parliament if they had the vote? We might find ourselves governed by a romantic novelist, or an actor! Who else in the world would take us seriously? If we became weak and foolish at home it would be the beginning of the end of the Empire, and then the whole Christian world would suffer! Can anyone wish that? Of course not!"

Ill

''And would women having the vote do that, Lady Mary?"

"There is a certain order in society, Mr. Pitt. We break it at our peril."

"But Mr. Etheridge did not agree?"

Her face tightened at the memory, but there was only irritation and impatience at the foolishness that had required her guiding hand.

"Not at first, but he came to see that he had allowed to get out of hand his natural sympathies for a certain woman who had behaved quite irresponsibly and brought upon herself a domestic misfortune. She appealed to him, in his parliamentary capacity, and for a short while his judgment was affected by her extreme and rather hysterical views. However, he did realize, of course, that the whole suggestion was absurd, and after all, it was not as if it were the desire of a large number of people! No one but a few hotheaded women of a most undesirable type has ever entertained such an idea.''

"Was that Mr. Etheridge's conclusion?"

' 'Naturally!'' The slightest smile flickered over her lips.' 'He was not a foolish man, only susceptible to a sentimental pity for people who do not warrant it. And Florence Ivory certainly did not. Her influence was short-lived; he very soon perceived that she was a most undesirable person, in all ways."

"Florence Ivory?"

"A very strident and unwomanly creature. If you are looking for a political assassin, Mr. Pitt, I should look to her, and her associates. I believe she lives in the same area across the river, somewhere near the Westminster Bridge. At least, that is what Mr. Etheridge told me."

"I see. Thank you, Lady Mary."

"My duty," she said with a lift of her chin. "Unpleasant, but necessary. Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt!"

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6

j.t took pitt all the morning of the next day to catch up on the news which had reached Bow Street regarding the case, namely that Helen Carfax's painting had been very fine and fetched five hundred pounds-enough to employ a maid every day of her life from childhood to old age and still have some to spare. What had she done with so much money? Surely it had gone to James, in some form or other: a present? an allowance? in payment of his debts at Boodle's?

There was more in from cabdrivers, but nothing that added to what they already knew. No one had any word on anarchists or Fenians, or any other violent group.

The newspapers were still featuring the story in headlines, with speculations on civil riot and dissolution below.

The Home Secretary was becoming anxious and had informed them of his profound wish that they bring the case to a speedy conclusion, before public unrest became any more serious.

The briefest of inquiries ascertained that Florence Ivory lived in Walnut Tree Walk, off the Waterloo Road, a short distance to the east of Paris Road and Royal Street, and the

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Westminster Bridge. She was acknowledged by the local police station with frowns and slight shrugs. There was no record of any offense against the law. Their attitude seemed to be a mixture of amusement and exasperation. The sergeant answering Pitt's questions pulled his features into a grimace, but it was good-natured.

Pitt called in the early afternoon. It was a pleasant house, modest for the area, but well cared for, sills recently painted and chintz curtains in the open windows and ajar of daffodils catching the sun.

A maid of all work opened the door, the apron round her broad waist obviously for service, not ornamentation, and a mop leaned against the wall where she had rested it to attend to the caller. ,

"Yes sir?" she asked, looking surprised.

"Is Mrs. Ivory at home? I am Inspector Pitt, from the Bow Street Police Station, and I believe Mrs. Ivory may be able to help us."

"I can't see 'ow she could do that! But if you want I'll go an' ask 'er." She turned and left him on the step while she retreated somewhere into the back of the house, leaving her mop behind.

It was only a moment before Florence Ivory appeared, whisking the mop out of the hallway and into the door of a room to the right, then facing Pitt with a startlingly direct gaze. She was of average height and slender to the point of gauntness. She had no bosom to speak of, and her shoulders were square and a trifle bony; nevertheless she was not un-feminine, and there was a considerable elegance to her, of a quite individual nature. Her face was far from traditionally beautiful: her eyes were large and wide set, her brows too heavy for fashion, her nose long, straight, and much too large; there were deeply marked lines round her mouth. In spite of the fact, Pitt judged her to be thirty-five at the very most. When she spoke her voice was husky, sweet, and completely unique.

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"Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt. Mrs. Pacey informs me you are from the Bow Street Police Station and believe that I can help you in some way. I cannot imagine how, but if you care to come in I shall try.''

"Thank you, Mrs. Ivory." He followed her through the hallway into a wide room at the back of the house, dark-paneled, and yet creating an illusion of light. A polished table held a porcelain dish, cracked but still retaining much of its delicate beauty, and on it was a bowl of spring blossom. The far wall was almost entirely taken up with windows and a French door opening onto a small garden. The curtains were pale cotton, sprigged with some sort of flower design, and the seat beneath the windows was covered with cushions in the same material. It was a room in which he felt immediately comfortable.

Beyond the windows he could just see the figure of a woman bending in the garden, working the earth. She was not far away, for the garden was small, but through the panes, unless he stared, he could make out no more than a white blouse and the sun on a cloud of auburn hair.

"Well?" Florence Ivory said briskly. "I would imagine your time is precious, and mine certainly is. What is it you imagine I know that could possibly interest the Bow Street police?"

He had been turning over in his mind how he could approach the subject with her, both yesterday evening and this morning, and now that he had met her all his preparations seemed inadequate. Her penetrating stare was fixed on him with impatience ready to become dislike; deviousness would be torn apart and would alienate her by insulting her intelligence, an act which he judged she would take very ill.

"I am investigating a murder, ma'am."

"I know no one who has been murdered."

"Mr. Vyvyan Etheridge?"

"Oh." She had been caught out, not in a lie, in an inaccuracy. And the foolishness of it caused a flush of irritation

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to rise to her cheeks. "Yes, indeed. Somehow the word 'murder' brought to my mind something more-more personal. I think of that as an assassination. I am afraid I do not know anything about anarchists. We live a very quiet life here, very domestic."

He had no idea from her face whether the word was meant hi praise or bitterness. Had she imagined herself in Parliament too? Or was Lady Mary Carfax simply repeating a mixture of gossip and her own prejudices?

"But you were acquainted with Mr. Etheridge?"

"Not socially." There was laughter in her voice now. It was a beautiful instrument, rich and passionate, flexible to a hundred shades of thought and meaning.

"No, Mrs. Ivory," he agreed. "But I believe you had some occasion to appeal to him professionally?"

Her face hardened, the light vanished from it, and something crossed it which was so intense it was frightening, a hatred that threatened to rob her of breath and twist her very body with its violence.

Pitt instinctively started forward, then caught himself and waited. This woman might have taken an open razor and crept up behind a man and cut his throat from ear to ear. She did not look to have the strength, but certainly she had all the force of emotion.

The silence hung between them so thickly every other tiny sound was magnified-the clatter of the maid somewhere in the kitchen, a child's feet running on the pavement beyond the curtained windows, a bird singing,

"I did," she agreed finally. Her voice seemed pressed from between her teeth, and her eyes did not move from his. "And if he dealt with others as he did with me, then I am not surprised someone killed him. But it was not I."

"What did he do, Mrs. Ivory, that you found so irredeemable?"

"He elicited trust-and then betrayed it, Mr. Pitt. Do you excuse betrayal? As perhaps you have not experienced it very

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often? No doubt you have ways to fight, recourse when you are used, wronged-oh don't look like that!" Her face was suddenly full of scorn mixed with a furious humor, a kind of derision he had never seen before. "I do not mean that he seduced my girlish heart-although, God knows, that has happened to enough women. I had no personal relationship with Mr. Etheridge, I assure you!"

For an instant there was an element of the absurd in it; then he remembered how unlikely a thing love can be, let alone that hunger that attracts people in the mask of love. She was a woman of character, high individuality; it was not impossible, her wry interest in everything could have drawn Etheridge. His dismissal died before it reached his lips.

"I understand his connection with you was as a member of Parliament, and I assumed your feeling of injustice was in mat regard," he said instead.

Her hard laughter came again. ' 'How painfully tactful you are, Mr. Pitt. Whose feelings are you trying to spare? Not mine! Nothing you could say of Mr. Etheridge could be as harsh as what I might say of him myself. Or is it your duty to speak well of your superiors?"

A dozen answers flashed through Pitt's mind, most of them sarcastic or critical, and he restrained himself. He would not allow her to dictate how he did his job, or what his manner should be.

' 'It is my duty, Mrs. Ivory, to discover who murdered Mr. Etheridge. My opinion of him is immaterial,'' he said coolly. ' 'A lot of the people who are murdered are not those I would necessarily like, had I known them. Fortunately the freedom to walk about without fear of being murdered does not depend on one's friendship with policemen, or the lack of it.''

For an instant she was furious, then her face relaxed into a sudden smile. "I suppose that is as well, or I should live in terror. You have a sharp tongue, Mr. Pitt. You are quite right, I did appeal to Mr. Etheridge to help me, as a constituent of his, which I was at the time. I lived in Lincolnshire."

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"And I assume he did not help you?"

Again the hatred twisted her face and made it ugly; her mouth, which had been mobile, soft, and intelligent a moment before became a flat, bitter line.

"He promised to, and then like all men, he rallied to his own kind in the end. He betrayed me and left me with nothing!" She was shaking, her thin body beneath the cotton of her gown was tense with passion, shoulders rigid. "Nothing!"

The French doors opened and the other woman came in, obviously having heard the anguish ringing in Florence's voice. She was several years younger, barely twenty. She was of a completely different build, taller and softer in outline, with a delicate bosom and rounded arms. Rosetti could have used her perfect Pre-Raphaelite face in one of his Arthurian romances; she had all the earthy naivete and the unconscious strength of his subjects.

She went to Florence Ivory and put an arm round her defensively, facing Pitt with anger.

Florence put one hand on the girl's. "It is all right, Africa. Mr. Pitt is from the police. He is inquiring into the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge. I was telling him what kind of a person Mr. Etheridge was. Naturally that involved my own experiences with him." Her eyes met Pitt's again. "Mr. Pitt, my friend and companion, Miss Africa Dowell, whose house this is, and who has been generous enough to take me in and give me a home when I would otherwise have nothing."

"How do you do, Miss Dowell," Pitt said gravely.

"How do you do," she answered guardedly. "What do you want from us? We despised Mr. Etheridge, but we did not kill him, nor do we know who did.''

"I did not suppose you knew who did," Pitt agreed. "At least, not that you were aware. But you may well know something that helps when it is put together with what I know or may yet learn."

"We don't know any anarchists." There was something 118

in the lift of her chin, her frank-eyed defiance, that made Pitt think it was at least in part a lie.

"You believe it was anarchists? Why, Miss Dowell?"

She swallowed, confused. It was not the reply she had expected.

Florence stepped in. "Well, if there were a personal motive, a matter of inheritance, or passion, you would hardly imagine that we should know anything of help to you. And as far as I know we are also acquainted with no lunatics."

Only part of Pitt was irritated by them, standing close together, defensively; they had been hurt and they were protecting themselves against being hurt again.

' 'But possibly some people disliked Mr. Etheridge for political reasons?" he continued.

"Dislike is far too mild a term, Mr. Pitt," Florence said, the bitterness returning. "I hated him." Her hand tightened on Africa's arm. ' 'I daresay there were others he treated similarly, but I do not know of them, nor would I tell you if I did."

"People who might have been sufficiently angered to behave violently, Mrs. Ivory?"

"I've told you, I have no idea. But sometimes all the pleading and protestations in the world do no good, when the people who have power are comfortable themselves, when they have warmth, food, safety, social rank, families around them, and the position to see that everything remains that way. They cannot and do not want to believe that other people are suffering any pain or injustice, that things should be changed-most especially if the changes involve questioning an order which they find so satisfactory."

He saw the passion in her face, the vehemence with which she spoke, and he knew this was no instant response to his words, it was a conviction boiling under the surface, awaiting the right moment to burst out with all the strength of years of suffering, however occasioned.

He must keep his emotions quiet. This was no time to give 119

his own answers, to speak of the injustices that made his own anger burn or the complacency he would have scalded with his contempt. Nor was it time to philosophize. He was here to learn if this woman could have abandoned pleading and argument and the consent to law that kept the community from barbarism, if she had put her own sense of right and equity before all others and cut the throats of two men.

"All you seem to be saying, Mrs. Ivory, is that the satisfied do not often seek change; it is the dissatisfied who press for improvement, or merely for their turn to have the power and the rewards."

Again her face tightened with anger, which was now directed at him.

"For a moment, Mr. Pitt, I thought you had imagination, pity even. Now I see you are as complacent, insensitive, and frightened for your own miserable little niche in society as the rest of your kind!''

His voice dropped. "Who are my kind, Mrs. Ivory?"

"The people with power, Mr. Pitt!" She almost spat the words. "Men-almost all men! Women are born into life and must take our father's name, his rank in life. He decides where and how we will live. In the house, his word is law- he decides whether we shall be educated or not, what we will do, if we shall marry, when, and to whom. Then our husbands decide what we shall say, do, even think! They decide what faith we shall profess, what friends we may or may not meet, what shall happen to our children. And we have to defer to them, whatever we actually think, to pretend they are cleverer than we are, subtler, wiser, have more imagination-even if they are so stupid it is painful!" She was breathing hard, her whole body shaking.

"Men make the laws and administer them; the police are men; judges are men-everywhere I turn my life is dictated by men! Nowhere can I appeal to a woman, who might understand what I really feel!

"Do you know, Mr. Pitt, it is only four years ago that I 120

ceased to be in law a chattel to my husband? A thing, an object belonging to him like his other household goods, a chair or a table, or a bale of linen. Then the law-man's law- at last recognized that I am actually a person, a human being, independent of anyone else, with my own heart and my own brain. When I am hurt it is not my husband who bleeds, it is I!"

Pitt had not known it. The women in his own family were so mightily independent it had never occurred to him to consider their legal standing. He did know that married women had been entitled to retain and administer their own property only six years ago; in fact when he had first met Charlotte in 1881, he would in law have been the owner of her money, such as it was, even her clothes, upon then- marriage. He had not thought of it until someone had made a vicious remark as to his change in fortune.

"And you find protestations and pleadings are no use?" he said fatuously, hating having to be so false to the understanding, even the empathy he felt. He had grown up the son of servants on a country estate; he knew about obedience and ownership.

Her disgust stung. ' 'You are either a fool, Mr. Pitt, or else you are deliberately patronizing me in a fashion both contemptible and completely pointless. If you are trying to make me say that I consider there are occasions when violence is the only means left to someone suffering intolerable wrongs, then consider me to have said it.'' She glared at him, defying him to make the next, inevitable charge.

"I am not a fool, Mrs. Ivory," he said instead, meeting her blazing eyes. "Nor do I imagine you are. Whatever you pleaded for to Mr. Etheridge, it was not that he should change the whole order of society and give to women an equality they have never enjoyed in all our two thousand years. You may be marvelously ambitious, but you will have started with something more specific, and I think more personal. What was it?"

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The rage died away again suddenly, like a force that has been so violent it has consumed all its fuel, and only the pain was left. She sat down on a cushioned wood settle and stared not at him but at the garden through the open window.

"I imagine if I do not tell you, then you will only go and dig it up elsewhere, perhaps less accurately. I was married fifteen years ago, to William Ivory. My property was not great, but it would have been more than enough for me to live on in some comfort. Of course, on my wedding day it became his. I have never seen it since."

Her hands were completely calm in her lap; she held a lace handkerchief, which she had pulled from her pocket, but she did not twist it. Only the whiteness of her knuckles betrayed the straining muscles.

"But that is not my complaint-although I find it monstrous. It was an institutionalized way for men to steal women's money and do whatever they pleased with it, on the grounds that we were too feeble-witted and too ignorant of financial affairs to manage it ourselves. We must watch our husbands squander it, and never speak a word, even if we had a hundred times more sense! And if we did not know how to manage affairs, whose fault is that? Who forbade our education in anything but the most trivial matters?"

Pitt waited for her to return to her grievance. All this tune Africa Dowell stood at the far end of the settle, a figure of startling immobility, as if she had indeed been one of the romantic paintings she resembled, and like them all manner of passion and dreams were in her face; she might well just this instant have seen the mirror of Shalott crack from side to side, sealing her doom. Whatever Florence Ivory was recounting, it was well known to her, and she felt the same unhealed wound.

' 'We had two children,'' Florence continued.' 'A boy, and then a girl. William Ivory became more and more dictatorial. Our laughter offended him. He thought me light-minded if I enjoyed my children's company, told them stories or played

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games, and yet if I wished to talk of politics, or of changes in the laws which might help the poor and the oppressed, he said I meddled in things that were too weighty for me and were not my concern, and I had no idea what I was talking about. My place was in the parlor, the kitchen, or the bedroom; nowhere else.

"Finally I could bear it no longer, and I left. I knew from the outset that I could not have my son, but my daughter, Pansy, who was then six years old"-even speaking the name seemed to wrench her-"I took with me. It was very hard for us. We had little money, and few means of earning any. At first I was given shelter by a friend here in London who had some understanding of my plight, and some pity for me. But her own circumstances became severely reduced, and I was obliged by honor not to burden her with our care any longer.

"It was then, about three years ago, that Africa Dowell took us in." She looked round and saw Pitt's face, perhaps detecting in him confusion and a certain impatience. It was indeed a sad story, but she had in no way touched upon Vyvyan Etheridge, nor had she any reason to blame him for any part of it.

"I supported electoral reform," Florence said wryly. "I even went so far as to endorse Miss Helen Taylor's attempt to stand for Parliament. I freely expressed my feelings on the subject of women's rights-that we should be able to vote and to hold office, to make decisions, both as to our money and our children, even to have access to that knowledge which would enable us to choose what number of children we had, rather than spend all our adult years bearing one child after another until exhausted in body and heart, and destitute in pocket."

Her voice grew harsher, and the humiliation and bitterness lay like an open wound, still lacerated, still pouring blood.

' 'My husband heard of it and pressed the courts that I was an unfit person to have custody of my daughter. I pleaded

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my cause to Vyvyan Etheridge. He said he saw well that my political views were no part of my fitness as a mother, and I should not be deprived of my child because of them.

"I did not know at that time that my husband had friends of such influence as he might bring to bear on Mr. Etheridge. He used them, he spoke man to man, and Mr. Etheridge sent word to me that he regretted he had misunderstood my case, and on closer investigation he agreed with my husband that I was an unstable woman, of a hysterical and ill-informed nature, and my daughter would be better with her father. That same day they came and took her from me, and I have not seen her since.'' She hesitated a moment, mastering herself with difficulty, forcing the memory out of her mind, and when she continued her voice was flat, almost dead. "Am I sorry Vyvyan Etheridge is dead? I am not! I am sorry only that it was quick and that he probably did not even know who had killed him, or why. He was a coward and a betrayer. He knew I was neither a hysterical person nor light-minded. I loved my daughter more than any other person on earth, and she loved me and trusted me. I could have cared for her above all other interests or causes, and I would have taught her to have courage, dignity, and honor. I would have taught her she was loved, and how to love others. And what will her father teach her? That she is fit for nothing but to listen and to obey, never to feel all her passion, to think or to dream, never to stand up for what she believes is right or good. ..." Her voice faltered with the extremity of her loss and the -waste of a child's life, the daughter she had borne and loved, tearing at her heart. It was several long minutes before she could speak again.

' 'Etheridge knew that, but he bowed to pressure from other men, from the people who might make it uncomfortable for him if he supported me. It was easier not to fight, and so he allowed them to take my child and give her to her autocratic and loveless father. I am not even permitted to see her." Her face was a mask of such anguish Pitt felt it was intrusive even

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to look at her. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she wept without a grimace; it had a kind of terrible beauty, simply from the power of her passion.

At last Africa knelt down and gently took her hand. She did not hold Florence Ivory in her arms; perhaps the time for that had already been and gone. Instead she looked across the flowered muslin of Florence's skirt at Pitt.

"Such men deserve to die," she said very quietly and gravely. "But Florence did not kill him, nor did I. If that is what you came hoping to discover, then your journey has been wasted."

Pitt knew he should press them now as to where they had been at the times Hamilton and Etheridge had been killed, but he could not bring himself to ask it. He assumed they would swear that they had been here at home in their beds. Where else would a decent woman be at close to midnight? And there was no proving it.

"I hope to find out who did murder both Mr. Etheridge and Sir Lockwood Hamilton, Miss Dowell, but I do not hope it is you. In fact I hope you can show me that it was not.''

"The door is behind you, Mr. Pitt," Africa replied. "Please have the courtesy to leave us."

Pitt arrived home at dusk, and as soon as he was in the door he tried to put the case from his mind. Daniel had had his supper and was ready for bed, it was merely a matter of hugging him good night before Charlotte took him upstairs. But Jemima, being two years older, had privileges and obligations commensurate with her seniority. They were alone in the parlor by the fire. She bent and picked up all the pieces of her jigsaw puzzle, muttering to herself as she did so. Pitt knew immediately that the mess had been left largely by Daniel, and that she was feeling weightily virtuous clearing it up. He watched her small figure, careful to hide his smile, and when she turned round with immeasurable satisfaction at the end, he was perfectly grave. He did not comment:

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discipline was Charlotte's preserve while the children were still so young. He preferred to treat his daughter as a very small friend whom he loved with an intensity and a sweetness that still caught him unaware at times, tightening his throat and quickening his heart.

"I've finished," she said solemnly.

"Yes, I see," he replied.

She came over to him and climbed onto his knee as matter-of-factly as she would into a chair, turned herself round, and sat down. Her soft little face was very serious. Her eyes were gray and her brows a finer, child's echo of Charlotte's. He seldom noticed that her hair had the curl and texture of his, only that it was the rich color of her mother's.

"Tell me a story, Papa,'' she requested, although from the way in which she had settled herself and the certainty in her voice, perhaps it was a command,

"What about?"

"Anything."

He was tired and his imagination exhausted by struggling with the murders of Etheridge and Hamilton. "Shall I read to you?" he suggested hopefully.

She looked at him with reproach. "Papa, I can read to myself! Tell me about great ladies-princesses!"

"I don't know anything about princesses."

"Oh." Disappointment filled her eyes.

"Well," he amended hastily, "only about one."

She brightened. Obviously one would do.

"Once upon a time there was a princess ..." And he told her what he could remember of the great Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, who despite much danger and many tribulations finally became monarch of all England. He got so involved in it he did not notice Charlotte standing in the doorway.

Finally, having recalled all he could, he looked at Jemima's rapt face.

"What next?" she prompted. 126

"That's all I know," he admitted.

Her eyes widened in wonder. "Was she real, Papa?"

"Oh yes, as real as you are."

She was very impressed. "Oh!"

Charlotte came in. "And it's really bedtime," she said.

Jemima put her arms round Pitt's neck and kissed him. "Thank you, Papa. Good night."

"Good night, sweetheart."

Charlotte met his eyes for a moment, smiling. Then she picked up Jemima and carried her out of the room, and as Pitt watched them go, he suddenly thought again of Florence Ivory and the child she had loved, and had had taken from her.

Would any judge consider Charlotte a "suitable" person? She had married beneath her, regularly meddled in the detection of crimes, had gone careering round music halls and mortuaries, had disguised herself as a missing courtesan, and had driven after a murderess in a carriage chase that had ended up in a fight on a bawdy house floor. And certainly she had campaigned in her own way for reform!

He could not think clearly of what he might feel if any law could visit him and take away his children if his social circumstances were deemed inadequate. The pain of it drenched even his imagination.

And the thought that inevitably followed it was that he could well believe Florence Ivory might have hated Ether-idge enough to cut his throat, and Africa Dowell with her, had she known and loved the child too, and seen the grief. It was a conclusion he could not escape, deeply as he wanted to.

He said nothing of it to Charlotte that night, but in the morning when the post came, he noticed the letter in Emily's hand with its Venetian postmark and knew it would be full of news, excitement, and romance. Emily might have debated whether to talk of all the glamor she was enjoying or to temper it, in view of the fact that Charlotte would never

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see such things, but knowing Emily, he believed she would not patronize Charlotte with such an evasion. And he guessed the mixture of happiness and envy, and the sense of being left out, that Charlotte would feel.

She would say nothing, he knew that. She had not shown him the first letter, nor would she show him this one, because she wanted him to think she cared only that Emily was happy, not about all the things Emily had, and indeed in her heart that was what mattered to her.

He chose this moment to tell her of his involvement hi the Westminster murders, both to take her mind from Emily's new and glittering world and to ease a certain loneliness he felt in not so far having shared with her his feelings, his frustration, confusion, and deep awareness of pain.

He sat at the breakfast table eating toast and Charlotte's sharp, pungent marmalade.

"Yesterday I spoke to a woman who may have cut the throats of two men on Westminster Bridge,'' he said with his mouth full.

Charlotte stopped with her cup halfway to her mouth.' 'You didn't tell me you were working on that case!" she exclaimed.

He smiled. "There hasn't been much opportunity, what with Emily's wedding. Then I suppose I became involved in the routine, rather sad questions. It doesn't concern anyone you know."

She pulled a little half apologetic face, realizing his unsaid need to speak of something that had puzzled or grieved him. He read her expression, the understanding between them wry and sweet.

' 'A woman?'' she said with raised brows. "Could it really have been a woman? Or do you mean she paid someone else?"

' 'This woman, I think, could have done it herself. She has the passion, and believes she has cause-"

"Has she?" Charlotte interrupted quickly. 128

"Perhaps." He took another bit of the toast and it crumbled in his hand. He picked up the pieces and finished them before taking another slice. Charlotte waited impatiently. "I think you would feel she had," he said, and he outlined for her all that had happened so far, -enlarging his opinions of Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell, finding depth and subtlety in them as he searched for the precise words he wanted.

She listened almost without interruption, only mentioning briefly that Florence Ivory's name had been spoken in the public meeting, but since she had learned nothing of her, except that she was an object of pity or contempt, she did not elaborate, and when he finished there was no time to discuss it. He was already late, but he felt lighter-footed and easier of heart, though nothing had changed, no new insight had flashed on his inner mind.

But as he walked along the damp street towards the thoroughfare where he could get a hansom to Westminster, he did wish he could take her just once to someplace exciting and different, give her one glamorous memory to rival Emily's. But stretch his imagination as he might, he could see no way of affording it. „

When he was gone Charlotte sat for several minutes thinking of Florence Ivory, her loss and her anger, before she pushed the matter aside and opened the letter. It was headed Venice and read:

My dearest Charlotte,

What a journey! So long-and noisy. There was a Madame Charles from Paris who talked all the way and had a laugh like a terrified horse. I never want to hear her voice again! I was so tired and dirty when I got here I was ready to cry. It was dark, and I simply fell into a carriage and was taken to our hotel, where all I wanted was to wash off some of the soot and grime before climbing into bed to sleep for a week.

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Then in the morning, what magic! I opened my eyes to see light rippling across an exquisite ceiling and to hear, beauty of beauties, the sound of a man's voice singing, lyrical as an angel, drifting across the morning air outside, almost echoing!

I jumped up, mindless of my nightgown or my hair in a tangle, not caring in the slightest how I looked or what Jack would think of me, and ran to the great window, at least two feet deep, and leaned out.

Water! Charlotte, there was water everywhere! Green and like a mirror, lapping right up to the walls. I could have leaned out and dropped no more than ten feet into it! It was the light reflected from its wind-dappled surface that I had seen on the ceiling.

The man who sang was standing up as graceful as a reed in the stern of a boat that drifted along, moved by a long pole or oar, I'm not certain which. His body swayed as he moved, and he was singing from pure joy at the loveliness of the day. Jack tells me he does it for money from tourists, but I refuse to believe him. I should have sung for joy, had I been afloat on that canal in the sparkling morning.

Opposite us there is a palace of marble-honestly! I have been for a ride in one of the boats, which are called gondolas, and have been right across the lagoon to the Church of Santa Maria della Salute. Charlotte, you never even in your dreams saw anything so utterly beautiful! It seems to float on the very surface of the sea like a vision. Everything is pale marble, blue air and water, and gold sunlight. The quality of the light is different here, there is a clarity to it-it is a different color, somehow.

I love the sound of the Italian language, there is a music in it to my ear. I prefer it to the French, although I understand scarcely a word of either.

But the smell! Oh dear-that is something quite different, and very trying. But I swear I shall not let it destroy 130

one moment of my pleasure. I think I am noticing it less as I become accustomed to it.

It has also taken me a little time to become used to the food, and I am terribly tired of the same clothes all the time, but I can pack and carry only so much. And the laundry service is far from what I might wish!

I have bought several paintings already, one for you, one for Thomas, and one for Mama, and two for myself, because I want to remember this for ever and ever.

I do miss you, in spite of everything I am seeing and even though Jack is so sweet and full of conversation. Since I do not know where I am going to be, or when, or how long letters will take to reach me, I cannot send you an address so that you may write to me. I shall just have to look forward to seeing you when I get home again, and then you must tell me everything. I am longing to hear what you have done, and thought, and felt-and learned?

Give my love to Thomas and the children. I have written separately to Mama and Edward, of course. And don't get into any adventures without me,

Your loving sister, Emily

Charlotte folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. She would put it in her work basket; that was one place Pitt would not find it. She would tell him that Emily was having a wonderful time, of course, but it would only hurt him to read of all the things Emily and Jack were able to see, and he and Charlotte were not. She could not pretend to him she was not envious, that she did not want to see Venice, the beauty and history and romance of it: he would not believe her if she did.

Better just to tell him Emily was enjoying herself. He would suppose she did not show him the letter because it contained some secret between sisters, perhaps even some

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details of personal life. After all, Emily was on her honeymoon.

She got up from the kitchen table and put the letter in her apron pocket and began organizing the day. It was spring; she would do some fierce cleaning and renew everything possible. She already had an idea for new curtains on the landing.

Pitt went to the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster and sought permission to go to Etheridge's office and examine what papers were there, in search of letters and documents that might have to do with William or Florence Ivory. He would also inquire whether there was an office in Etheridge's constituency which might have notes or correspondence on the matter.

A junior official in a stiff winged collar and gold-rimmed pince-nez looked at him dubiously.

"I don't recall the name. What was it concerning? Mr. Etheridge had many constituents appeal for his time or intervention in matters of all natures."

"The custody of a child."

"There is an ordinary law which deals with such matters." The clerk looked over the top of his pince-nez. "I imagine Mr. Etheridge will have replied to Mr. or Mrs. Ivory informing them of the fact, and that will be all the record we have, if indeed we have that. Space is limited; we cannot store trivial correspondence forever."

' "The custody of a child is not trivial!'' Pitt said with barely controlled rage. "If you cannot find the correspondence, then I'll send in men and they can go through every piece of paper there is until either we find it or we know that it is not here. Then we will look in Lincolnshire."

The man flushed faintly pink, but it was irritation, not embarrassment.

"Really Inspector, I think you forget yourself! You have no mandate to search all Mr. Etheridge's papers."

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"Then find me the ones referring to William and Florence Ivory," Pitt snapped. "I imagine you have concluded for yourself that it may have to do with murder."

The man's lips tightened and he swung round and marched away along the corridor, with Pitt at his heels. They came to the office Etheridge had shared with another member of Parliament, and the official muttered a few words under his breath to a more junior clerk. Standing at a cabinet full of files, the clerk looked with some alarm at Pitt.

"Ivory?" he looked confused. "I don't recall anything. What date was it?"

Pitt realized he did not know; he had not asked. It was a stupid omission, but too late to rectify now.

"I don't know," he replied with as much coolness as he could muster. "Start at the present and work backwards."

The clerk looked at him as if he had been something alive on the dinner plate, then swiveled round to a set of files and began searching, moving his fingers through the piles of papers.

The official sighed and excused himself, and his heels tapped away along the corridor into the distance; Pitt stood still in the office and waited.

It did not take as long as he had expected. Within five minutes the clerk pulled out a thin file and produced one letter. He held it up with a pinched look of distaste.

"Here you are, sir, a copy of one letter from Mr. Etheridge to a Mrs. Florence Ivory, dated the fourth of January, 1886." He held it out for Pitt to take. "Although I cannot imagine how it will be of interest to the police.''

Pitt read it.

Dear Mrs. Ivory,

I regret your very natural distress in the matter of your daughter, but it has been decided, and I fear I cannot enter into any further correspondence with you upon the subject.

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I am sure you will come in time to appreciate that all actions that have been taken were in the best interests of the child, which you as her mother must in the end also desire,

Yours faithfully, Vyvyan Etheridge, M.P.

"That cannot be all!" Pitt said peremptorily. "This is obviously the end of a considerable correspondence! Where is the rest of it?''

"That is all I have," the clerk said with a sniif. "I expect it is a constituency matter. I daresay it is in Lincolnshire.''

"Then give me the address in Lincolnshire," Pitt demanded. "I shall go and search there."

The man wearily wrote several lines of instruction on a piece of paper and passed it over. Pitt thanked him and left.

Back at Bow Street he went straight up to Micah Drum-mond's office and rapped impatiently on the door.

' 'Come in!'' Drummond looked up from a pile of papers, and seemed relieved to see Pitt. "Any news? The further we look at the various anarchist groups we know, the less we find anything."

' 'Yes sir.'' Pitt sat down without being invited; he was too preoccupied with his thoughts for it to have crossed his mind. "There is a past constituent of Etheridge's it appears he promised to help in a matter of child custody, and then he sided with the father. She lost the child and is distraught with the pain of it. She has admitted she considers there are times when violence is the only recourse for certain wrongs. The evidence is that Etheridge betrayed her. However, she denies having murdered him.''

"But you think she did?" Drummond's pleasure at the thought of a solution was already dimmed by his own perception of the motive, and by something in Pitt's anger, a darkness that Drummond knew was not directed at the woman.

"I don't know. But it is too probable not to investigate. 134

Most of the letters may be at the constituency office, which is in his country home in Lincolnshire. I will have to go there and search. I shall need a warrant, in case some clerk or secretary refuses me permission, and a rail ticket.''

"Do you want to go tonight?"

"Yes."

Drummond considered Pitt for a moment. Then he reached for a bell and rang it, and as soon as a constable appeared he gave his orders.

"Go to Inspector Pitt's home and inform Mrs. Pitt that he will be away tonight; have her pack him a valise, including sandwiches, and return here as quickly as you can. Keep the cab at the door. On your way out tell Parkins to make out a search warrant for the Lincolnshire home of Mr. Vyvyan Etheridge, for papers or letters that might contain threats to his life or his welfare, and anything to or from . . . ?"

"Florence or William Ivory," Pitt supplied.

' 'Right. Jump to it, man!''

The constable disappeared. Drummond looked back at Pitt. "Do you think it conceivable this poor woman did it alone?"

' 'Not likely.'' Pitt remembered her slender frame and the passion in her face, and the protective arm of the younger, bigger woman. "She was taken in by a Miss Africa Dowell, who knew the child as well, and seems to sympathize with the Ivory woman intensely.''

"Not unnatural." Drummond's face was grave and sad. He had children of his own, who were grown now, and his wife was dead. He missed family life. "What about Hamilton? A mistake?"

"Almost certainly, if it was she. I don't know how many times she actually met Etheridge, if at all."

"You said this Africa Dowell-you did say Africa?"

Pitt gave the ghost of a smile. "Yes, that's what Mrs. Ivory called her: Africa Dowell."

' 'Well if this Africa Dowell took her in, that suggests Mrs. Ivory has little means, so she could not have paid anyone

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else to kill Etheridge. It seems a very ... a very efficiently violent method for a woman. What is she like, what background? Was she a farm girl or something that she might be so skilled in cutting throats?"

"I don't know," Pitt admitted. It was another thing he had forgotten to inquire. "But she is a woman of great passion and certainly intelligence, and I think courage. I imagine she would be equal to it, if she set her mind to it. But I gathered from the home, which was very attractive and in a good area, that Miss Dowell has money. They could have paid someone."

Drummond pulled a small face.' 'Well, either way it could account for Hamilton's having been the first victim through a mistake of identity. You'd better go to Lincolnshire and see what you can find out. Bring everything back with you." He looked up, his eyes meeting Pitt's, and for several seconds it seemed he was about to add something. Then at last he changed his mind and shrugged slightly. ' 'Report to me when you get back," was all he said.

"Yes, sir." Pitt left and went downstairs to await the constable's return with his things. He knew what Drummond had wanted to say: the case must be solved, and soon. As they had feared, the public outcry was shrill, in some of the newspapers almost to the point of hysteria. The very fact that the victims had been the representatives of the people, that the crimes had struck at the foundation of everything that was freedom, stability, and order, made the violence in the heart of the city a threat to everyone. The murders seemed to reflect the soul of revolution itself, dark and savage, an unreasoning thing that might run amok and destroy anyone- everyone. Some even spoke of the guillotine of the Reign of Terror in Paris, and gutters running with blood.

And yet neither Drummond nor Pitt wanted to think that one woman had been driven to take insane revenge for the loss of her child.

Pitt arrived at the Broad Street Station of the Great Northern Railway just in time to catch his train to Lincolnshire.

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He slammed the carriage door as the engine started to belch forth steam and the fireman stoked the furnace, and with a roar and a clash of iron they moved out of the vast, grimy dome into the sunlight and began the long journey past the factories and houses and through the suburbs of the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the world. Within its bounds lived more Scots than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome.

Pitt felt a sense of awe at the city's sheer teeming enormity as he sat in his carriage watching the rows and rows of houses rush past him, grimed with the flying steam and smuts of innumberable trains just like his. Nearly four million people lived here, from those ashen-faced waifs who perished of cold and hunger, to the richest, most talented and beautiful people in all a civilized nation. It was the heart of an empire which spanned the world-the fount of art, theater, opera and music hall, laughter, law, and abuse and monumental greed.

He ate his sandwiches of cold meat and pickle and was glad to get out and stretch his cramped legs at last when he arrived at Grantham in midafternoon. It took him another hour and a half to travel by a branch line and then a hired pony and trap to the country home of the late Vyvyan Etheridge. The door was opened by a caretaking manservant, whom Pitt had some difficulty in persuading of his errand, and that it was legitimate.

It was after four o'clock when he finally stood in the waning light in Etheridge's study, another sumptuous and elegant room lined with books, and began to search through the papers. He was reading by lamplight and hunched up with cold an hour later when he finally found what he had come for.

The first letter was very simple and dated nearly two years ago.

Dear Mr. Etheridge,

I appeal to you as my member of Parliament to assist me in my present distress. My story is a simple one. I 137

married at nineteen at my parents' arrangement, to a man several years older than myself and of a nature most grim and autocratic. I endeavored to please him and to find some happiness, or at least to learn it, for twelve years. During that time I bore him three children, one of whom died. The other two, a boy and a girl, I cared for and loved with all my heart.

However, in time my husband's manner and his unyielding domination of my life, even in the smallest things, made me so wretched I determined to live apart from him. When I broached the subject he was not at all unwilling, indeed I think he had grown quite tired of me and found the prospect of his release from my company without disgrace to himself an agreeable solution.

He insisted that my son remain with him, in his sole custody, and that I should have no influence upon him nor say in his future life. My daughter he permitted to come with me.

I asked no financial provision, and he made none either for me or for our daughter, Pamela, known to us as Pansy, then aged six. I found lodgings and some small labor with a woman of reasonable means, and all was well, until this last month my husband has suddenly demanded the custody of our daughter again, and the thought of losing my child is more than I can bear. She is well and happy with me and wants for none of the necessities of life, nor does she lack regarding her education and moral welfare.

Please defend me in this matter, as I have no other to turn to.

I remain most sincerely yours, Florence Ivory

There followed a copy of Etheridge's response.

My dear Mrs. Ivory,

I am most touched by your plight, and will look into 138

the matter immediately. It seems to me that your original agreement with your husband was a most reasonable one, and since you asked of him no support, he has acted less than honorably and can have no claim upon you, still less to remove so young a child from her mother.

I shall write to you again when I have further information.

Until then I remain yours sincerely,

Vy vyan Etheridge

The next letter was also Etheridge's own copy of one he had written to Florence Ivory, dated two weeks later.

My dear Mrs. Ivory,

I have inquired further into your situation, and I see no cause for you to distress yourself, or fear for yourself or your daughter's happiness. I have spoken with your husband and assured him that he has no grounds for his demand. A child of Pansy's tender years is far better in the care of her natural mother than that of some housekeeper or hired nurse, and as you have stated, she does not lack for any of the appurtenances of health, education, and a sound moral upbringing.

I doubt that you will be troubled further in the matter, but if you are, please do not hesitate to inform me, and I will see that legal counsel is obtained and a decision handed down that will ensure you are not threatened or caused anxiety again.

I remain yours sincerely,

Vy vyan Etheridge

This was followed by a letter in a quite different hand.

Dear Mr. Etheridge,

Further to our discussion on the 4th day of last month, I think perhaps you are not aware of the conduct and character of my wife, Mrs. Florence Ivory, who somewhat 139

misrepresented herself to you when seeking your intervention to prevent my receiving custody of my daughter, Pamela Ivory.

My wife is a woman of violent emotions and sudden and immature fancies. She has unfortunately little sense of what is fit, and is most self-indulgent of her whims. It pains me to say so, but I cannot consider her a suitable person to undertake the upbringing of a child, most especially a girl, whom she would imbue with her own wild and unbecoming ideas.

I do not wish to have to inform you, but circumstances compel me. My wife has taken up several socially contentious and radical causes, including that of desiring the parliamentary franchise for women. She has taken her support for this extraordinary cause so far as publicly to visit and be seen with Miss Helen Taylor, a most fanatic and revolutionary person who parades herself wearing trousers!

She has also sought the company and expressed considerable admiration for a Mrs. Annie Bezant, who has also left the home of her husband, the Reverend Bezant, and employs herself stirring up industrial ill-will among match girls and the like employed in the factory of Bryant and Mays. She is fomenting unrest and advocating strikes!

I am sure you can see from this that my wife is no fit person to have the custody of my daughter, and I therefore request that you offer her no further assistance in the matter. It can only lead to distress for my daughter, and if her mother should prevail, to her ruin.

Your obedient servant, William Ivory

And Etheridge's copy of his reply:

Dear Mr. Ivory,

Thank you for your letter regarding your wife, Florence Ivory, and the custody of your daughter. I have met with 140

Mrs. Ivory and found her a strong-willed woman of forcible and perhaps ill-found opinions regarding certain social issues, but her behavior was perfectly seemly, and she is obviously devoted to her daughter, who is well cared for, in good health, and progressing with her education in a most satisfactory manner.

While I agree with you that Miss Taylor's behavior is quite extreme and cannot possibly profit her cause, I do not believe that your wife's support of her constitutes sufficient ill judgment to make her unfit to care for her child, and as you know, the law now allows a woman, if widowed, to be sole guardian of her children. Therefore I feel in this instance that so young a girl as Pansy is best cared for by her mother, and I hope that this will continue to be the case.

Yours sincerely, Vy vyan Etheridge

Here, as was clear from the handwriting of the letter which followed, a fourth voice joined the correspondence.

Dear Vyvyan,

I hear from William Ivory, a good friend of mine, that you have befriended his unfortunate wife in the matter of the custody of their daughter Pamela. I must tell you that I feel you are ill-advised in the matter. She is a headstrong woman who has publicly espoused some highly contentious and undesirable causes, including the parliamentary franchise for women, and worse than that, industrial militancy among some of the most unskilled labor in the city.

She has openly expressed her sympathy with the match girls at Bryant and Mays and encouraged them to withdraw their labor!

If we support such people, who knows where the general dissension and upheaval may end? You must be aware that there is unrest in the country already, and a strong element that desires the overthrow of the social order, to 141

be replaced with God knows what! Anarchy, by the way they speak.

I must strongly recommend that you give no further aid of any sort to Florence Ivory, indeed that you assist poor William to obtain custody of his unfortunate child forthwith, before she can be further injured by the eccentric and undisciplined behavior of her mother.

I remain yours in friendship, Garnet Royce, M.P.

Garnet Royce! So the civilized and arbitrary Garnet Royce, so solicitous of his sister's affairs, so concerned to be helpful, was the one who had sided with convention, and robbed Florence Ivory of her child. Why? Ignorance-conservatism-returning some old favor-or simply a belief that Florence did not know how to care for her own child's welfare?

He turned back to the copy of Etheridge's next letter.

Dear Mrs. Ivory,

I regret to inform you that I am looking further into the matter of your husband's plea for the custody of your daughter. I find that the circumstances are not as I first surmised, or as you led me to believe.

Therefore I am obliged to withdraw my support from your cause, and to put my weight behind your husband's effort to give his guardianship and care to both his children, and to raise them in an orderly and God-fearing home.

Yours faithfully, Vyvyan Etheridge

Mr. Etheridge,

I could hardly believe it when I opened your letter! I called upon you immediately, but your servant would not admit me. I felt sure that after your promises to me, and your visit to my home, that you could not possibly so betray my trust.

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If you do not help me I shall lose my child! My husband has sworn that if he obtains custody I shall not ever be permitted to see her, much less talk and play with her, teach her what I love and believe, or even assure her that it is not my will that we part, and that I shall love her with all my strength as long as I live!

Please! Please help me.

Florence Ivory

You do not reply! Please, Mr. Etheridge, at least hear me. I am not unfit to care for my child! What offense have I committed?

Florence Ivory

And from the last one, written in a scrawl ragged with emotion:

My child is gone. I cannot put my pain into words, but one day you will know everything that I feel, and then you will wish with all the power of your soul that you had not so betrayed me!

Florence Ivory

Pitt folded the note and put it together with the rest of the correspondence in a large envelope. He stood up, banging his knee against the desk without feeling it. His mind was in the darkness on Westminster Bridge, and with two women in a room in Walnut Tree Walk, a room full of chintz and sunlight, and pain that spilled out till it soaked the air.

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7

-Lr was the day after Pitt went to Lincolnshire that Charlotte received a hand-delivered letter a little before noon. She knew immediately when she saw the footman with the envelope in his hand that it was from Great-aunt Vespasia; her first dreadful thought was that some illness had befallen the old lady, but then she saw that the footman was in ordinary livery, and his face bore no mark of grief.

Charlotte bade him wait in the kitchen. Hurrying into the parlor, she tore open the paper and read Vespasia's thin, rather eccentric hand:

My dear Charlotte,

An old friend of mine, whom I am perfectly sure you would like, is greatly afraid that her favorite niece is suspected of murder. She has come to me for help, and I come to you. With your experience and skill we may be able to discern the truth-at least I intend to try!

If you are able to accompany my footman to visit me and begin a plan of campaign this afternoon, please do so. If you are not, then write and let me know the soonest that 144

you will have a moment to spare. Already it grows late, and time is short.

Yours affectionately, Vespasia Cumming-Gould

P.S. There is no need to dress glamorously for the occasion. Nobby is the least formal of people and her anxiety far outweighs her sense of occasion.

There was only one possible reply. Charlotte knew very well what it is like to have someone very dear to you suspected of murder, and to feel all the fear of arrest, imprisonment, trial, even hanging racing nightmarishly through your mind. She had known it with Emily so very recently. Aunt Vespasia had stood by them then. Of course she would

go.

"Grade!" she called as she walked back from the parlor towards the kitchen. "Grade, I have been called away, to help someone in trouble. Please give the children their lunch, and their tea if necessary. This is an emergency; I shall return when the matter is in hand.''

"Oh yes, ma'am!" Gracie turned her attention from the footman and the cup of tea she was passing him. ' 'Is it illness, ma'am, or"-she tried to keep the light of excitement out of her eyes, and failed-"is it. . ." She could not find the right word for the mixture of peril and adventure dancing on the edge of her imagination. She knew of Charlotte's battles with crime in the past, but she did not dare speak of them openly now.

Charlotte smiled wryly. "No Gracie, it is not illness," she conceded.

"Oh, ma'am!" Gracie breathed out a sigh of exquisite anticipation. Dark and wonderful adventures raced through her mind. "Do be careful, ma'am!"

Forty minutes later Charlotte alighted from the carriage, assisted by the footman, and climbed the stairs to the front door of Great-aunt Vespasia's town house. It opened before

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she raised her hand to the knocker, indicating that she was expected, indeed awaited, but she was surprised to see that it was the butler himself who stood in the entrance, grave and elegant.

"Good morning, Mrs. Pitt. Lady Cumming-Gould is in the withdrawing room, if you care to go through. Luncheon will be served presently in the breakfast room.''

"Thank you." Charlotte handed nun her cape and followed him across the parquet floor of the hallway. He opened the door for her, and she passed into the withdrawing room.

Great-aunt Vespasia was sitting in her favorite chair by the fire. Opposite her was a woman almost gawkily lean, with a face of marvelous, dynamic ugliness, so full of intelligence it had its own kind of beauty. Her eyes were very dark, her brows fiercely winged, her nose too powerful, mouth humorous, perhaps in youth even tender. She was nearly sixty, and her complexion had been ruined by all kinds of weather, from the extremes of ocean wind to the heat of a tropical sun. She gazed at Charlotte with quite undisguised curiosity.

"Come in, Charlotte," Vespasia said quickly. "Thank you, Jeavons. Call us when luncheon is ready." She turned to the other woman. "This is Charlotte Pitt. If anyone can give us really practical help it is she. Charlotte, Miss Zenobia Gunne."

"How do you do, Miss Gunne," Charlotte said courteously, although a single glance at the woman made her feel sure such formality was soon going to be dismissed.

"Sit down," Vespasia directed, waving her lace-cuffed hand. "We have a great deal to do. Nobby will tell you what we know so far.''

Charlotte obeyed, catching the urgency in Vespasia's voice and realizing the other woman must be profoundly worried to have come for help to a person she had never met before, nor even heard of socially.

"I am most grateful for your attention," Zenobia Gunne said to Charlotte. "The situation is this: My niece owns a

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house south of the river, inherited from her parents, my younger brother, and his wife upon their death some twelve years ago. Africa-my brother called her after that continent because I spent a great many years exploring it, and he was fond of me-Africa is a girl of intelligence and independent opinions, and a very lively compassion, especially for those whom she feels to have suffered injustice."

Zenobia was watching Charlotte's face as she spoke, trying already to ascertain what impression she might be forming.

' 'Some two or three years ago Africa met a woman a few years older than herself, perhaps twelve or fourteen, who had left her husband, taking with her her young daughter. She had managed quite adequately on her own resources for some time, but when some change in circumstance made this no longer possible, Africa offered both the woman and the child a home. She grew very fond of both of them, and they of her.

"Now, the part of the story that concerns us is that the woman's vicious husband sought to obtain custody of the child. She appealed to her member of Parliament, who promised to assist her, which for some time he did. Suddenly he changed his mind and instead gave his aid to the husband, who then won his custody order for the child and forthwith removed her. The mother has not seen her since."

"And the husband has been murdered?" Charlotte asked, fearing already that there was going to be nothing she or anyone could do to help.

' 'No.'' Zenobia's remarkable eyes held hers unflinchingly, but for the first time Charlotte realized that there was both resolution and pain in them, clearly justifying all Vespasia's fears. "No, it is the member of Parliament who has been murdered, Mrs. Pitt."

Charlotte felt a chill, as if that night on the Bridge with its chill and fog from the river had entered the room. This was Thomas's case that he had told her of with such confusion

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and pity. She knew all London was appalled by the crimes, not merely by their nature but by the identity of the victims and the apparent ease with which able men, men both cherished and respected, the makers of law, had been killed within sight of the Mother of Parliaments.

"Yes," Zenobia said very quietly indeed, her eyes on Charlotte's face. "The Westminster Bridge murders. I fear the police may believe it was Africa and her lodger who committed these terrible acts. The poor woman certainly had motive enough, and neither she nor Africa can prove themselves innocent."

Pitt's description of them was sharp in Charlotte's memory, his sense of Florence Ivory's anger and grief, and the passion he was sure could bring her to kill. The question beat in Charlotte's head so, nothing else could form itself or find shape. Had they? Had they ?

"Charlotte, we must do all we can to help,'' Vespasia said briskly, before the silence could become painful.' 'Where do you suggest we begin?''

Charlotte's mind was whirling. How well did Great-aunt Vespasia know this woman with the extraordinary face? Were they lifelong friends, or merely social acquaintances? They were a generation apart. If they had been friends years ago, what had happened to them since? How much had they changed and grown separate, been marked by experience, learned to value different things, to love different people? What sort of a woman explored Africa? Why? With whom? Did she perhaps count family loyalty above the lives of those who were not of her class or kin? It was ridiculous to be discussing this in front of her, where Charlotte could not be frank.

. "At the beginning,'' Zenobia said gravely into the silence, answering Vespasia's question. "No, I do not know that Africa is innocent. I believe it, but I cannot know it, and I realize that if we attempt to help her, there is a possibility

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that we may do exactly the opposite. I am prepared to take that risk."

Charlotte collected her thoughts and attempted to set them forth logically. "Then if we cannot prove them innocent," she said, ' 'we shall have to see if we can discover who is guilty-and prove that." There was no purpose in being falsely modest or decorous with this woman. "I have read something of the matter in the newspapers," she admitted. At this point she would not say that her husband was the detective in charge of the case-Zenobia might find it impossible to believe she could be impartial, and it would place an intolerable burden of double loyalty upon Vespasia.

She knew it was not the thing for ladies of quality to read anything in the newspapers except the society pages, and perhaps a little of the theater or reviews of suitable books or paintings, but there was no point in pretending she was of delicate sensibilities-even could she have carried it off-if they were going to discover the authors of any crimes at all, let alone such as these.

' 'What do we know of the facts?'' she began. ' 'Two members of Parliament have been murdered at night, upon Westminster Bridge, by having their throats cut, and then their bodies were tied up by their evening scarves to the lamppost at the south end of the bridge. The first was Sir Lockwood Hamilton, the second a Mr. Vyvyan Etheridge.'' She looked at Zenobia. ' 'Why should this woman-what is her name?''

"Florence Ivory."

"Why should Florence Ivory kill both men? Were they both connected in some way with the loss of her child?''

"No, only Mr. Etheridge. I have no idea why the police believe she should have killed Sir Lockwood as well."

Charlotte was puzzled. "Are you sure she has reason to be afraid, Miss Gunne? Is it not possible the police are merely questioning everyone who had cause to hold a grudge against either victim, in the hope they might discover something,

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and entertain no real suspicions towards Mrs. Ivory or your niece?"

A fleeting smile crossed Zenobia's face, a mixture of irony, amusement, and regret. "It is a hope to cling to, Mrs. Pitt, but Africa said the policeman who came to see them was an unusual man; he did not bluster or threaten them in the least and seemed to find no satisfaction whatever in having discovered the power of their motive. Florence told him her story and made no attempt to hide either the depth of her grief at the loss of her child or her hatred of Etheridge. Africa said she watched the man's face, and she believes he would have preferred to discover an alternative solution to his case; indeed, she was convinced the story weighed him down. But she was also equally certain that he will investigate it and return. And since they have no witness that they were at home alone in the house, which is not far from Westminster Bridge, and as they have abundant motive, and as indeed Africa has sufficient money to have employed someone else to perform the actual task, they fear they may well be arrested."

Charlotte could not help but believe it also, except for the unlikelihood of their having killed Lockwood Hamilton as well. And it seemed improbable, but not impossible, that there was another such murderer loose in London.

' 'Then if it was not Africa and Mrs. Ivory,'' she answered "it must have been someone else. We had better set about finding out who!"

Zenobia fought against a rising panic. She mastered it, but Charlotte could see clearly in her eyes her knowledge of the enormity of the task, the near hopelessness of it.

Vespasia sat up a little straighter in her chair, her chin high, but it was courage speaking rather than belief, and they all knew it.

"I am sure Charlotte will have an idea. Let us discuss it over luncheon. Shall we go through to the breakfast room? I thought it would be pleasant there; the daffodils are in bloom

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and there is always an agreeable view." And she rose, brushing away Charlotte's assistance, and led the way through as if it had been the most casual of occasions, the renewing of an old friendship and the making of a new one, and there was nothing more serious to consider than what to wear this evening and upon whom they might call tomorrow.

The breakfast room was parquet-floored like the hall and had French windows opening onto the paved terrace. There were china cabinets full of Minton porcelain in blue and white round the walls, and a full service of white Rocking-ham scrolled and tipped in gold. A gateleg table was set for three, and the parlormaid waited to serve the soup.

When they began the second course, which was chicken and vegetables, and the servants had temporarily left, Vespasia looked up and met Charlotte's gaze, and Charlotte knew it was time to begin. She forgot the succulence of the meat and the sweetness of the spring sprouts.

"If it is anarchists or revolutionaries," she said carefully, weighing her logic as she went and trying not to think of Florence Ivory and her child, or of Zenobia Gunne, calm, attentive, but under her composure desperately aware of tragedy, ' 'or a madman, then there is very little chance that we shall discover who it is. Therefore, we had best direct our efforts where we have some possibility of success-which is to say we must assume Sir Lockwood and Mr. Etheridge were killed by someone who knew them and had a personal reason for wishing them dead. As far as I can think, there are very few emotions strong enough to drive an otherwise sane person to such extremes: hatred, which covers revenge for past wrongs; greed; and fear, fear of some physical danger, or more likely the fear of losing something precious, such as one's good reputation, love, honor or position, or simply peace from day to day."

"We know very little about either of the victims," Zenobia said with a frown, and again a touch of understanding

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that the task might be far greater than she had hoped when she appealed to Vespasia.

It was not the difficulty that disturbed Charlotte, but the fear that in the end they would discover it was indeed Florence Ivory who had brought about the murders, if not directly, then by the even greater misdeed of employing someone else to commit the act.

"That is what we must set ourselves to do," she said aloud, pushing the vegetables round her plate-suddenly the delicacy of their taste no longer mattered. "We are in a far better position than the police to meet the appropriate people at a time and in a manner we can observe them unguarded. And because we are in many ways of a similar station in life, we can understand what is in their minds, what lies behind their words."

Vespasia folded her hands in her lap and paid attention like a schoolgirl in class. "With whom shall we begin?" she asked.

"What do we know of Mr. Etheridge?" Charlotte inquired. "Has he a widow, family, a mistress?" She saw with some satisfaction that Zenobia's face registered no horror, nor any indication that her sense of decency had been offended. "And if those avenues prove fruitless, then had he rivals in business, or professionally?"

"The Times said that he was a widower and leaves one daughter, married to a James Carfax,'' Vespasia offered.' 'Sir Lockwood left a widow, and a son by his first marriage."

"Excellent. That is where we shall start. It will always be easier for us both to meet with women and to make judgments and observations of them that may be useful. So we have Mr. Etheridge's daughter-"

"Helen Carfax," Vespasia supplied.

Charlotte nodded. "And Lady Amethyst Hamilton. Is the son married?"

' 'Nothing was said of a wife.''

Zenobia leaned forward. "I have a very slight acquain-152

tance with a Lady Mary Carfax; it was some time ago now, but I believe, if I remember accurately, that her son was named James."

"Then renew the acquaintance," Vespasia said instantly.

Zenobia's mobile mouth turned down. "We disliked each other," she said reluctantly. "She disapproved of me for going to Africa, among other things. She felt-and said- that I disgraced both my birth and my sex by behaving totally unsuitably on almost every occasion. And I thought her pompous, narrow-minded, and completely without imagination."

"No doubt you were both correct," Vespasia said tartly. "But since she is unlikely to have improved with time, and you wish information of her, not she of you, then it is you who will have to accommodate yourself to her social prejudices and remember your niece profoundly enough to force yourself to be agreeable to her.''

Zenobia had faced the insects and heat of the Congo, the discomforts of trekking across deserts and sailing in canoes, fought against exhaustion, disease, outraged family, stubborn officials, and mutinous natives. She had endured heartache, ostracism, and loneliness. She was more than equal now to the self-discipline required of her to be civil to Lady Mary Carfax, since it was so evidently necessary.

"Of course," she agreed simply. "What else?"

' 'One of us will visit Lady Hamilton,'' Charlotte went on. "Aunt Vespasia, perhaps that had better be you. None of us knows her, so we shall have to invent an excuse. You can say you knew Sir Lockwood through your work for social reform, and you have come to express your condolences."

' 'I did not know him,'' Vespasia replied, waving one long hand in the air. "Which I agree is immaterial. However, since it is a lie, you can tell it just as well as 1.1 shall go and see Somerset Carlisle and learn everything I can from him as to the political lives of both men. It is always possible that

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