Midnight at Marble Arch

the steadiness of her gaze. Her hair was the color of honey and had a deep, natural wave.

Narraway rose to his feet immediately.

Hythe introduced her as his wife.

“How do you do, Lord Narraway?” Maris Hythe said with interest. Her voice was soft and surprisingly deep, giving her a gravity that her smooth, candid face belied.

“How do you do, Mrs. Hythe?” he replied. “I am sorry to intrude on your evening with such an unhappy subject.”

She sat down gracefully and the men followed her lead.

“That is hardly of any importance, if we can assist you in any way.” She dismissed it with a slight gesture of one hand. “I liked Catherine very much. She was funny and wise and brave. I have no idea who could have wanted to kill her, but if I can help you find him, then all my time is yours.” She looked at him gravely, waiting for his answer.

He told her of his conversation with Flaxley, and then later with Quixwood, explaining why he needed to know Catherine’s friends, but always skirting around the subject of rape. However, he was not subtle enough to deceive her.

“Was his intention robbery?” she said very quietly, almost under her breath. “Or did he attack her … personally?”

There was nothing to be gained by evasion, and he needed her help. “I am afraid it was the latter. The details of that would be better not spoken of.”

“I see.” She did not argue with him, nor respond to her husband’s sudden look of surprise and distress.

“Perhaps if I give you a list of her most recent engagements,” Narraway suggested, “then you can tell me who you remember as also being present, and who might have become close to her recently. I realize it is distasteful, but-”

“We understand,” Hythe interrupted him. He glanced at Maris and then back at Narraway, holding out his hand for the list.

Narraway passed it to him, and watched as he and Maris read it together.

For half an hour they mentioned names back and forth, and Narraway learned something of each of the events Flaxley had described. Hythe appeared to have enjoyed those he had also attended, and there was pleasure in his voice as he told of each. If the grief Hythe exhibited as he remembered Catherine was artificial, he was a superb actor.

But Narraway had known people every bit as convincing who would kill without hesitation if their own needs were thwarted or their safety in jeopardy. Quixwood was right: Hythe and Catherine had clearly been good friends, and Maris also, especially where music was concerned. If there had been an affair between Catherine and Hythe, then it was well concealed. But he had to grant that it was easily possible. Everything Hythe said seemed to be true, and yet looking at the tenseness in his shoulders, the awkward way he sat, without moving, Narraway grew increasingly certain that he was concealing something that mattered, something that frightened him.

Maris explained that she was close to one of her sisters, recently widowed, and she spent much of her time helping her, offering comfort, simply being there so her sister was not alone. Alban Hythe could not account for his time on most of these occasions, including the night of Catherine’s murder.

The three conversed for nearly two hours. Afterward, Narraway thanked them both and left, walking out into the soft dusk of the summer evening, the last light fading pink in the west. He was saddened by the possibility that Alban Hythe had begun an affair with Catherine because of her loneliness and his temporary solitude, and perhaps a weakness in both of them, played on by the depth of intellectual understanding and mutual love of the interesting, beautiful and creative.

But what terrible change in their seeming friendship had led to such violence? Had he wanted more and she refused him? Or had she wanted more, possibly even a commitment, and he refused her? Had she threatened his safety in some way and he responded from a fearful darkness in his character she had not for a moment imagined?

Narraway walked along the pavement toward the lights of the main thoroughfare and felt sadness overwhelm him. His anger at Hythe also returned, for the life and passion that, he was beginning to suspect, Hythe might’ve destroyed.

CHAPTER 5

“Mama, I can’t possibly wear that!” Jemima said indignantly. “I shall look terrible. People will think I am ill. They’ll be offering me chairs to sit on, in case I fall over.” Her face was flushed with temper and frustration. She appeared the picture of health, as if it would take a runaway carriage to knock her off balance, not a fainting fit.

Pitt looked up from the newspaper he was reading. They were all in the parlor, the summer evening air drifting in from the open French windows. Daniel was absorbed in a Boy’s Own Paper and Charlotte had been looking at the London Illustrated News.

Pitt regarded the dress Jemima was holding up. “You wanted that last year,” he pointed out. “It suited you excellently.”

“Papa, that was last year!” she said with exasperation at his lack of understanding.

“You haven’t changed all that much.” He looked her up and down quite carefully. “An inch taller, perhaps,” he conceded.

“Two inches taller,” she corrected him. “At the very least. And anyway, I’m completely different.” It distressed her that he had not noticed.

“You don’t look completely different to me,” he answered.

“Yes, she does,” Daniel argued. “She’s a girl. She’s getting all …” Suddenly he realized what he was saying and was lost for the appropriate words.

Jemima blushed. “You’re trying to make me look like a child,” she accused her father. “Genevieve’s father does the same thing. He doesn’t want her ever to become a woman.”

“You’re fourteen,” Pitt said flatly. “You are a child.”

“I’m not! That’s a terrible thing to say!” Unaccountably Jemima was on the edge of tears.

Daniel bent his head back to his Boy’s Own Paper, lifting it a little higher to hide his face.

Pitt looked at Charlotte. He had no idea how he had offended, or what to do about it. It was totally unreasonable.

Charlotte had grown up with two sisters and there was no mystery in it for her.

“You are not having a purple dress, and that’s all there is to it,” she told her daughter. “If you feel that that one is too young for you, then wear the blue one.”

“Blue’s ordinary,” Jemima responded. “Everyone has blue. It’s dull. It’s safe!” That was the worst condemnation she could think of.

“You don’t need anything special,” Pitt told her gently. “You’re very pretty whatever you wear.”

“You just say that because you’re my father!” Her voice choked as if she could not control her tears any longer. “You have to like the way I look.”

“I don’t!” He was surprised and a little defensive himself. “If you wore something I didn’t like, I would say so.”

“You’d have my hair in braids down my back as if I were ten!” she said furiously. She turned to Charlotte. “Mama, everyone wears blue, it’s boring. And pink looks like you’re a child!”

“Yellow?” Daniel suggested helpfully.

“Then I shall look as if I have jaundice!” she responded. “Why can’t I wear purple?”

Daniel was not to be put off. “Green?”

“Then I’ll look sickly! Just be quiet!”

“Aunt Emily wears green,” he pointed out.

“She’s got fair hair, stupid!” she shouted at him.