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!
