'I will do anything to bring Charlotte back,' he said. 'She belongs here.'
His wife nodded.
'There was no question of her returning to Somerset?' Grenville asked.
'Why should she return to Somerset?' Beauchamp demanded. 'This is her home now.'
'She might have taken a whim to go there, visit her old friends,' Grenville said.
'I tell you, she would have told us, not walked away,' Beauchamp said. 'Why do you question her character? Someone took her from us and that is that.'
Grenville lifted his hands. 'I beg your pardon. I did not mean to upset you. I am trying to establish possibilities. If you assure me that Charlotte would not have left of her own accord, I will believe you.'
I was not as sanguine, but I said nothing.
Mrs. Beauchamp looked pensive. 'There was something odd.'
Her husband scowled. 'Odd? What do you mean? I know of nothing odd.'
'A week or two before, she-well, she seemed to fade a little. I cannot be more forthcoming than that, because I did not notice it at the time. But several times she started to tell me something, something she was worried about, but she would stop herself and change the subject.'
'It probably had nothing to do with her disappearance,' Beauchamp said. 'Nothing at all.' His face was red, his eyes glittering.
'She missed Somerset, though,' Mrs. Beauchamp said. 'She loved it. Her letters to us before she came here were filled with the delights of it.'
'She would not have gone there without telling us.'
His wife subsided. 'No.'
Grenville broke in. 'We do need to prepare you. The other girl we are looking for was abducted, we believe, by a man called Horne.'
'Or Denis,' I put in.
Grenville shot me a warning look.
Both Beauchamps remained blank. 'I have not heard either name,' Beauchamp said. 'But we are not much in London. Who are these gentlemen?'
'Mr. Horne lived in Hanover Square,' Grenville said. 'He had our young lady in his keeping for a time, and we are trying to discover what became of her. Miss Morrison's fate might be similar.'
Mrs. Beauchamp bowed her head. 'I thought of that-that she might be ruined. But I only want her back. I only want her safe.'
Beauchamp regarded his wife a moment, his face unreadable. 'My wife and I were never blessed with children. We quite looked upon Charlotte as our daughter. No man could be prouder of his own offspring.'
'Or woman.'
Tears stood in Mrs. Beauchamp's eyes. I felt like a fraud. I had no help to give.
'The letters she wrote,' I said. 'Would you permit me to read them?'
Mrs. Beauchamp looked up, hope lighting her face. 'Indeed, yes, Captain. She wrote beautiful letters. She was a dear, sweet girl.'
Beauchamp wasn't as happy. 'What good will it do to read her letters? She made no indication in them that she wanted to leave us.'
'She might have met someone that she wrote about, might have known someone in Somerset, someone she might have gone away with.'
'I tell you, there was no one.'
Mrs. Beauchamp rose. 'No, I want him to read the letters. So he'll understand what she was like. And he might see something we missed. We don't know that.'
She passed me in a swish of skirts and a waft of old-fashioned soap as Grenville and I got politely to our feet. Mr. Beauchamp also rose, but he crossed to the window and stood with his back to us. Beyond him, the rain dripped down the gray windows.
I said, 'I will do everything in my power to discover what happened to Miss Morrison.'
Beauchamp turned, his stance dejected. 'I will not lie to you, Captain. Writing to you was my wife's idea. She holds out too much hope. She will not even voice the possibility that Charlotte is lost to us forever, as I believe her to be.'
'Dead, do you mean?' I asked gently.
'Yes. Because she would have written to us, otherwise. We are her only family. Why would she go away? She would have explained.'
Tears hovered in his eyes. I wondered very much what he had truly felt for Charlotte-the love of a father? Or something else? And did he even realize it himself?
Mrs. Beauchamp fluttered into the room and thrust a lacquered wooden box at me. 'I've kept all the letters she'd written me in the year before she came to us. She also copied out a few that she sent to a friend in Somerset since then. Read them, Captain. You will come to know her through them.'
I took the box. 'I will return them to you as soon as I can.'
'Take all the time you like. I ask only that you do not lose them. They are dear to me.'
'I will take very good care of them,' I promised.
They hovered, but I knew that the interview was over. 'Thank you for seeing us,' I said, then Grenville and I bowed and took our leave.
As we rode away in Grenville's carriage, the box tucked beside me, I looked back. Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp stood at the wide ground-floor window, watching us depart.
We spent the night in Hampstead. While we'd talked with the Beauchamps, the rain had increased, until black water fell around us and cold rose from the Heath. It was Grenville's idea to find a public house to stay the rest of the evening and drive leisurely back to London the next day.
I'd thought the public house would be too rustic for the wealthy Lucius Grenville, but he laughed and said that he'd slept in some places in the wilds of Canada that made Hampstead positively palatial.
He obtained private rooms at the top of the public house that proved snug. A sitting room in the middle opened to a bedroom at either side, luxurious accommodations by my standards. The publican's wife, a cheerful, thin woman, trundled us a supper of roasted chicken, thick soup, greens, cream, and bread. After the penetrating damp outside, we both fell upon it heartily.
The publican's wife lingered, inclined to talk. 'I'm afraid it's only the leavings and the soup from yesterday's beef and vegetables, but it will fill the stomach. I know gentlemen are used to much finer, but you won't get better in Hampstead.'
'Madam, it is admirable,' Grenville said around a mouthful of chicken.
She gave him a modest look. 'You'll have fresh eggs in the morning. I suppose you gentlemen are from London, then?'
We replied in the affirmative.
'Journalists, are you?' she asked. 'Have you come about our murder?'
Chapter Eleven
I nearly choked on my soup. I coughed and pressed my handkerchief to my mouth then hastily seized my glass of stout.
Grenville finished chewing and swallowing without expression. 'We know nothing of a murder. It happened here?'
'Oh, aye, they found her off in the woods, torn to bits, poor lamb.'
'When did this happen?' Grenville asked.
The woman leaned on the table, her eyes bright in her bone-thin face. 'A week or more, now. Maybe two weeks. I don't remember. That's when they found her. One of the blacksmith's lads, he had gone to do a spot of fishing. Didn't half give him a turn.'
