Half Moon Street Read Free Page A

unpleasant.
    “It’ll be hard enough to find out who did this,” Tellman went on, “without not knowing who he is either.”
    “Well, he’s either Bonnard or he’s someone else,” Pitt said dryly. “We’d better assume he’s someone else, and start looking. The punt, in the state it is, won’t have come more than a couple of miles down the river . . .”
    “That’s what the river police said,” Tellman agreed. “Somewhere up Chelsea, they reckoned.” He wrinkled his nose. “I still think it’s the Frenchman, and they just don’t want to say so.”
    Pitt was not disposed to argue with Tellman’s prejudices, at least not yet. Personally, he would very much prefer it to be an Englishman. It was going to be ugly enough without working with a foreign embassy.
    “You had better go with the river police and see the sorts of places the punt could have been kept within a mile or two of the Chelsea reach. And see if by any extraordinary chance anyone saw it drifting . . .”
    “In the dark?” Tellman said indignantly. “In that mist? Anyway, barges passing upriver of here before dawn will be way beyond the Pool by now.”
    “I know that!” Pitt said sharply. “Try the shore. Someone may know where it is usually moored. It’s obviously been lying in water for some time.”
    “Yes sir. Where’ll I find you?”
    “At the morgue.”
    “Surgeon won’t be ready yet. He’s only just gone.”
    “I’m going home for breakfast first.”
    “Oh.”
    Pitt smiled. “You can get a cup of tea from the stall over there.”
    Tellman gave him a sideways look and went, back stiff, shoulders square.
    Pitt unlocked his front door and went into a silent house. It was full daylight as he took off his coat and hung it in the hall, then removed his boots, leaving them behind him, and padded in his stocking feet along to the kitchen. The stove was about out. He would have to riddle it, carry out the dead ash, and nurture the last of the embers into flame again. He had seen Gracie do it often enough that he should know the idiosyncrasies of this particular grate, but there was something peculiarly desolate about a kitchen without a woman busy in it. Mrs. Brady came in every morning and attended to the heavy work, the laundry and ordinary housecleaning. She was a good-hearted soul and quite often also brought him a pie or a nice piece of roast beef, but she would not make up for the absence of his family.
    Charlotte had been invited to go to Paris with her sister, Emily, and Emily’s husband, Jack. It was only for three weeks, and it had seemed to Pitt that it would have been mean-spirited for him to forbid her going or to be so resentful that it would effectively ruin her pleasure. In marrying a man so far beneath her own financial and social status Charlotte would have been the first to say she had gained enormously in freedom to become involved in all manner of pursuits impossible to ladies of her mother’s or sister’s situation. But the marriage also denied her many things, and Pitt was wise enough to realize that however much he missed her, or would like to have been the one to take her to Paris, the greater happiness of both of them rested in his agreeing to her going with Emily and Jack.
    Gracie, the maid who had been with them now for seven and a half years—in fact, since she was thirteen—he considered almost as family. She had taken the children, Jemima and Daniel, to the seaside for a fortnight’s holiday. They had all three of them been beside themselves with excitement, fervently packing boxes and chattering about everything they intended to see and to do. They had never been to the coast before, and it was an enormous adventure. Gracie felt her responsibility keenly and was very proud that she should be given it.
    So Pitt was left at home with no company except the two cats, Archie and Angus, now curled up together in the clothes basket where Mrs. Brady had left the clean linen.
    Pitt had grown up on a