“I’m sorry. I was about to ask you to tread lightly with Annie. I know you will.” Julia smiled. “You and that amiable bear of a sergeant.”
“Of course.” Tennant looked over his shoulder for the waiter. “Another cup?”
Julia shook her head. “When I’m flagging a few hours from now, I’ll wish I’d taken the offer.” She started to rise, then sat again. “I’ve remembered something. Margot paid Annie to hold her room. Perhaps she left something behind.”
“Worth pursuing. Thank you.”
Tennant left two coins on the table and stood to the side to allow Julia to pass. As she swung her cape around her shouldersand brushed by him, a scent of something warm and spicy like sandalwood drifted his way. He breathed it in and blinked when she looked up from hooking her collar, her eyes inches from his.
She put her hand on his sleeve. “Richard, I think Annie is quite frightened about something.”
CHAPTER9
Three reports waited for Inspector Tennant the following morning, beginning with O’Malley’s account of his interview with Margot Miller’s house agent.
“He’s sticking to his story about remembering nothing. So, I leaned in and got my nose in his mug. Politely, I’m asking him to have another think.” O’Malley grinned. “And doesn’t he recall a familiar face?”
Tennant leaned back in his chair. “You have my attention, Sergeant.”
“Tidy fella, John Smith, says the agent, and not bad-looking for a man trying to hide a gammy lip under his mustache.”
“Rawlings. He of the harelip. Time for a chat with that gentleman’s gentleman.”
“Sorry, sir, but our bird has flown. I stopped at Blenheim Lodge on the way back from Chelsea. The valet handed in his notice. He’s going to America to work for an uncle who owns a men’s shop.”
“Damnation. Get on to the steamship lines,” Tennant said. “Perhaps we can cage Rawlings before he flies away.”
Tennant drew two reports toward him. “What about the park search and the neighborhood canvass?”
“The omnibus conductor on the Cromwell-to-Brompton line remembers Margot well. Forgetting her would be the stranger thing.”
“Did he see her on the day of the murder?”
“He’s not certain of that,” O’Malley said. “He recalls her riding the line often and recently. But he couldn’t swear to a day.”
“What about our elusive seaman? Do we have a line on Arnie Stackpole?”
“Ah, there we have an answer. A magistrate in Limehouse gave him thirty days in the nick for destruction of property. Blind drunk and brawling, he was, and leaving some patrons—and the pub—in bits. The creature’s been inside all the past week.”
“So not our man,” Tennant said.
“The killing wasn’t his style. A smash to the head or hands to the throat, more like. He wouldn’t draw the lass into a trap by sending her a letter to tea.”
“Useful to eliminate a distraction.” Tennant swept the reports into his drawer. “We can’t afford to lose time over those passenger ships, Paddy.”
“I’ll get on to it.”
Tennant plucked his hat from its peg. “I’m off to see the artists of Kensington. I’m curious about the bad blood Quain mentioned between Frederic Leighton and Margot Miller.”
* * *
Crossing artists off Mary’s list proved easier than Tennant expected: all the leading lights of the British art world had made a pact to live in Kensington.
The inspector caught most of them working at home and racing against a deadline. “Send-in day” for the Royal Academy’s Annual Exhibition was just weeks away, and the artists emerged from their studios paint-smeared and irked by the interruption. To a man, they said they hadn’t seen Margot Miller in over a year, and none had employed Franny Riley.
Tennant’s last stop was Holland House, the brick mansion built by Frederic Leighton on a wooded site off Kensington High Street. A servant wearing billowy cream trousers and an embroidered red jacket ushered the inspector into a vast, domed hall whose scale seemed designed to make a visitor feel small.
After a brief wait, a tall man with dark, curling hair and a graying beard appeared. He’d dressed as extravagantly as his servant in a flowing Turkish kaftan of crimson and gold.
