“So theydidknow each other,” Constance said in the carriage going home. She sat very close to Solomon, her head against his shoulder, his arm around her. She wasn’t sure why she needed the comfort, but she did. “Not only that, they were old friends. Close friends at one time. What does that mean?”
“That they did not meet by accident, and so very probably they did die on the establishment doorstep. And the grief of their friends is genuine, don’t you think?”
“I do… Such a waste. Gareth Neville walked away from friendship and affection, and wasted fifteen years in poverty and hardship…”
“A gentleman does not sponge off his friends,” Solomon said mildly.
Constance shook her head impatiently. “It wasn’t a simple choice between vagrancy or charity, was it? Among such people there are always networks of favors and strings to be pulled. If Neville’s business failed, other positions would have been found where he could flourish, or at least not have to live in the streets, or off friends’ handouts. Hechoseto go. Some people do—the call of the open road and freedom. And then he chose to come back from the country and live on the streets of London. Again, why?”
“His friends don’t appear to know.”
“I think…”
Solomon used his free hand to turn her face up to his, and her heart melted. The moving light from the streets played over his beloved face and the thought of never seeing him again dried her mouth with fear. Life could change in an instant, within and without one’s own control. An accident, a bad decision, and suddenly…
“What do you think?” Solomon asked urgently.
She shivered, trying to throw off the sense of doom. “I think Zenobia knows.”
“Why Neville went away? Or why he came back?”
“Perhaps they’re connected.”
Solomon considered that. “Why wouldn’t she say? She was their friend and she feels their loss badly. She must want the killer brought to justice.”
“Perhaps her reasons have nothing to do with their deaths. Or she thinks they don’t.”
Solomon was silent, searching her eyes. “What is it you think you know?”
“That I don’t want ever to loseyou,” she whispered, throwing both arms tight around him and reaching for his mouth.
When they made love that night, it was fiercely, almost desperately, and it made her want to weep because love came in so many forms, and they could all turn tragic in an instant.
*
It was midnightbefore Esther Willow could bring herself to speak to her sister. Ruth’s frightened face and vocal twittering annoyed her almost more than the insolent policemen who had visited this morning and spent the rest of the day catechizing her servants.
At last, when even the servants had gone to bed, Esther said abruptly, “We cannot go out tonight.”
“Oh, no, no, of course we must not,” Ruth agreed fervently. “So frightening!”
“So outrageous!” Esther corrected her, still fuming. “Vile suspicions about us—us!—while That House continues to exist! What can one expect from such people? Of course there will be all manner of crimes there, a swirling, ugly mess of immorality, hatreds, and petty jealousies. Violence is the inevitable result. But do the police look there for their culprits? No, they come to us, tome, to the occupants of a godly house who live according to all the rules of decency. When all they need to do to stop this wave of atrocities is to shut down that house of sin. Drive them out, as Jesus drove the moneylenders from the temple.”
“I know,” Ruth sighed. “I know. And yet it is we who have been confined. The sin goes on unchecked.”
Slightly mollified by her sister’s understanding, Esther stood and said, “Put out the lamps, Ruth. We can at least keep a short vigil at the window.”
A carriage passed in the street, pulled by two ambling horses. Inevitably, it stopped a few doors down—at That House. There was no crest on the carriage doors, of course, and the man who leapt into it only a few moments later was unrecognizable.
“Shame on him,” Esther said.
“Shame onthem,” Ruth added.
Comforting sentiments. Comforting words in their familiarity, if nothing else. Esther began to feel she could go to bed and sleep after all.
“We shan’t allow ourselves to be cowed,” she declared. “We must maintain our dignity. Tomorrow we shall order new gowns. And in the afternoon, we must support the poor St. John family by going to the memorial service. How easily man is led astray.”
Including Joshua Willow, her husband of blessed memory. A good man, a godly man. And yet even he had been led into the sin of adultery by such women as inhabited That House. Their very presence in the crescent was a personal insult, and they deserved every ill perpetrated against them.
