“But men can go there.”
“Scandalous, isn’t it?”
She gave me a withering glare. “There’s no need to be prickly.” She sighed. “Very well, I’ll come with you. At least the British Museum is better than the Natural History Museum where one can’t turn without bumping into a dead creature.”
The last person I wanted with me in any museum was Flossy. The last time, she’d been completely disinterested in any of the exhibitions and continuously asked when we were leaving. I’d rushed through my visit just to be rid of her. I liked her, but our interests were not aligned. “You don’t have to come,” I told her again.
She sipped her tea.
“Flossy, I am not going there to meet Lord Rumford or any other man. I give you my word.”
She lowered her cup. “Very well. You can go alone, and I’ll go shopping. But if Mother asks, we both went to the museum.”
It was my turn to narrow my gaze. Perhapsshewas going to meet a man. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or not. Unlike me, Flossy was an heiress. She was also quite unworldly. If a man was after her money, she might not be able to tell.
My walkaround the museum not only proved to be educational, it was also cathartic. It gave me time to think as I wandered around the collections. By the time I arrived back at the hotel in the mid-afternoon I’d decided to be upfront with the Wrexhams and ask them what they were doing on the day of Pearl’s death, and also the reason why she called on Lord Wrexham. I would not tell them who I worked for, however. Indeed, by the time I arrived home, I realized I would have to lie if I were to get any answers. Lying for good reason was acceptable and this was a very good reason.
Or so I told myself.
Terence from the post desk waved me over whenI entered the hotel and handed me a letter. “It’s from Harmony,” he said.
“Should you be reading my messages, Terry?”
“It wasn’t sealed,” he said defensively. “If Harmony didn’t want me reading it, she would have sealed it. She knows I read everything that isn’t sealed.”
I must remember to seal all my letters before giving them to Terence to send.
I unfolded the letter and read. Harmony asked me to meet her at the Aerated Bread Company’s Oxford Circus teashop at three-thirty. I glanced past Terence at the clock.
“You’d best get a move on if you want to make it on time,” he said. I suspected he wanted to know why I was meeting Harmony away from the hotel. If she hadn’t told him then I wouldn’t either. The fewer people who knew about my investigating, the better.
The ABC’s tea shop near Oxford Circus was a busy place filled with mostly women chatting and drinking tea at the tables, and four men. Three of those men were with Harmony. They looked like they’d rather be in a pub.
I sat and welcomed the cup of tea Harmony poured for me from the pot. The woman behind me bumped my chair as she got up to leave and some of my tea sloshed over the sides of the cup. “Next time we should meet at the Roma Café. It’s much quieter and the coffee is excellent.”
“I know the place,” Peter said. “But I’ve never been inside.”
“I don’t like coffee in the afternoons,” Harmony said.
I wiped the cup’s sides with a napkin. “I’m sure Luigi will make you a pot of tea.”
She managed to instill both a question and disapproval into the arch of her brow. “Luigi?”
I chose to ignore her and concentrate on the task at hand. “How are your inquiries going at the hotels?”
“No luck,” Goliath said. “We all spoke to one or more staff, but no one recalled seeing Lady Rumford.”
“Cost me a copper to get the doorman to talk,” Frank grumbled. “And then he had nothing useful to tell me.”
I reached for my purse. “Let me compensate you for your trouble.” I handed out coins, hoping it covered their expenses.
Harmony handed hers back without a word. “I’m convinced the sighting of Lady Rumford was false.”
“It would seem so.”
Goliath picked up the teacup in one giant hand, the delicate handle pointing away from him. “So what’re you going to do now, Miss Fox?”
“I’ve decided to confront Lord and Lady Wrexham. I can see no other course forward.” I told them what Mr. Armitage and I had learned from the Wrexham servants and the theories we’d developed. “I think Pearl asked Wrexham for money to pay off her blackmailer. But I don’t know why she’d go to him when Rumford was her current lover. It doesn’t make sense.”
