Charles shook his head. He’d laid his pen and spectacles atop a sheet of pristine paper. His glass and the whiskey decanter sat at his right elbow, its level down by several inches.
“Trouble getting your article started?”
Charles grunted a reply, tossed his drink, and pouredanother. He looked drawn and thin, with smudgy half-moons hanging under his eyes.
“Take a pew,” Charles said. After she seated herself, he leaned on his elbow, chin in his hand. “What can I do for my lovely sister?”
“A forward Irishman accosted me at the museum today. William Quain claimed to know you. He said you’d bought some sketches from him.”
“Quain . . . yes . . . ’musing fellow. Talented painter.” Charles reached into the bottom drawer, pulled out a leather folder, and opened it. “This one’s quite good.”
Quain had painted a country scene, capturing the distant fields in quick strokes of every shade of green. He’d rendered the stream in daubs of purple, cobalt, teal, and Prussian blue. In the distance, wisps of whitish smoke roughly sketched curled from the chimney of a fieldstone cottage.
“He’s spent time in France,” Mary said.
“Quain’s had a rough go of it. Fools at the Royal Academy schools rejected him.”
Mary pulled two more pictures from the portfolio. The first was a watercolor of a woman’s head and shoulders; the second showed her in full figure, standing at her washstand. Arms raised, eyes closed, she toweled dry a waterfall of coppery curls. A dressing gown of emerald silk lay tossed on the rumpled sheets of the bed behind her. The scene was intimate, the pose sensual. The model had never looked lovelier.
“Margot Miller,” Mary said.
“Yes.” He drained his glass and stared into it.
“May I take away the Irish landscape? I’d like to study it.”
“Take the lot.” He swept the sketches into the folder and pushed it across the desk. “On the wrong tack . . . too close to the wind. I warned him. . . .”
“Warned who? Charles, what’s wrong? Is it the business? Talk to me.”
“No . . . nothing to talk about.” He placed his palms on the desk and pushed himself up. He tottered, and Mary thought he would topple forward. Then he steadied himself. “Nothing a change of scene won’t cure. Leaving in the morning for Wales. David Cox wants my ’pinion on some landscapes he’s painted.”
“Louisa said nothing about a trip.”
Charles weaved to his dressing room door and leaned against the frame. “Doesn’t know yet. I’ll speak to her in the morning.”
“Will you be here for the women’s exhibition? It opens in a week. A review by the eminent Charles Allingham . . .” She smiled. “We could use the attention.”
“I’ll be back. ’Night, m’ dear.”
The door clicked as he shut himself inside his small dressing chamber, a room with a single, narrow bed.
He’d been sleeping there for weeks.
CHAPTER4
Aweek had passed since the discovery of Franny’s body, and Tennant had little to report to Chief Inspector Clark.
Sergeant O’Malley busied himself with the canvass near Harvey Nicols, showing the sketch of Franny Riley to the cabbies and shopkeepers along Brompton Road. The street was a stretch of the leg, and O’Malley understood the doorman’s surprise. How had Franny vanished from his sight? There was no turnoff before Knightsbridge.
A sudden gust snatched O’Malley’s bowler, sending it tumbling into the gutter. He retrieved it and brushed the crown with his sleeve as Inspector Tennant pulled up in a hansom.
“We’ve had a message from the Mayfair station,” he said. “There’s trouble at the women’s art exhibition.”
O’Malley climbed into the cab and settled in. “The chief won’t be happy we’re back to the ‘balmy’ lady artists.”
“I’ve been thinking about that drawing of Franny. It looks expert to me—not a sketch dashed off by a street artist. The girl was doing something to earn those extra shillings.”
“Sitting for painters, you’re thinking?”
