They did not return immediately to Graves’s home, however. Crowther, as they rejoined the carriage, instead asked the driver to take them to Somerset House. When he settled back in his seat he realized Harriet was looking at him with her eyebrows raised.
“I have an acquaintance, Mrs. Westerman, who I know will be making use of the Royal Society’s library today. He is an expert in matters dental.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and produced a small silk bag. He pulled the string loose and shook out Fitzraven’s false teeth into his palm.
“Good God, Crowther! Have you been carrying those things with you all day?”
He looked at her with mild innocence. “Does this concern you, Mrs. Westerman?”
Harriet folded her arms as the coach rattled through the muck of the street. “I am only glad I did not know you had them earlier. I do not think I could have listened to poor Miss Marin’s account of her struggles with an easy mind, had I known you were sitting there with her father’s teeth in your pocket!”
Crowther did not seem discomfited, but lifted the teeth to the level of his eyes and clacked them together. “Indeed, it was an affecting tale.”
Harriet raised her eyebrows. “You do not believe it?”
“It is not that, Mrs. Westerman,” he said with some hesitation. “Only I am surprised she was so eager to know Mr. Fitzraven. I heard her reasons, of course, but she had a powerful motive for revenge. The man mistreated her mother quite horribly, for one thing, and for another he knew that her official biography is a lie. He could have turned her from the feted star of the season into a laughingstock.”
“I liked her.”
“That is charming, Mrs. Westerman, and so did I, but it is not evidence. Fitzraven’s accounts indicate that he was receiving money from someone recently arrived in London. She would seem a likely candidate. We may well find that he died because of some treachery more minor than Mr. Palmer thinks.”
“You may have your suspicions, but I cannot think Isabella likely to throttle a man, then hurl him in the river. Now, please do put those horrible teeth away.”
Crowther slipped the teeth back into the bag without protest. “Yes, I believe that women, when they turn murderess, more often use poison. And seldom tidy up.”
Harriet settled into her corner and turned her head to look out of the window as they turned off Oxford Street. There was some sort of commotion on the road beside them-an open cart with a man and older woman sat up in the back. The woman had her arm around the man’s shoulders, which were shaking with sobs. Harriet recognized them as two members of the little walking party they had seen passing earlier in the day.
She looked down into the back of the cart as they passed. There was the third, the pretty blond woman. Her husband was holding her in his lap and rocking her back and forth. Her arm hung loose by her side. As their coachman waited to negotiate a way through, a man in a dirty coat emerged from the barber-surgeon’s where the cart was stopped. He climbed up in the back in a rush and felt for the woman’s pulse.
Harriet craned around as the coach worked itself free and held the picture in sight long enough to see the man shake his head and pat the younger man awkwardly on the shoulder. The cart driver crossed himself. Then they turned the corner and the sight was lost.
Harriet leaned out of the window and shouted up to the driver “Slater! What was all that?”
The man sucked his teeth and half-twisted to shout back without taking his eyes from the traffic in front of them.
“Accident, ma’am. Young woman slipped and fell, up by the brick kilns. Stove her head in.”
Harriet retreated into the carriage again and met Crowther’s inquiring eye.
“What is it, Mrs. Westerman?”
“Nothing of significance, Crowther. Some other little tragedy.”
6
As Jocasta came to the main road toward Holles Street, her view of the way was blocked by a carriage with a phoenix on the door. It was working into a free space on the road, so the wheels came very close to her, almost snagging her skirts. It brought back her dream of The Chariot with a sort of sick lurch, and she stopped dead, so as it pulled away and she saw the cart and Kate’s limp body supported by her husband and mother-in-law, it was like being at a theater and watching the curtain swept back.
The sight of it almost knocked her down. She had to put her hand out palm flat to the wall of some fancy goods shop behind her to keep from falling. Kate’s face was dirty and there was red on Fred’s breeches.
She stumbled forward to the edge of the crowd where she could hear the voices talking.
“Slipped and her husband tried to catch her. .”
“Such a pretty girl too. .”
“Dead before he could pick her up again. .”
“Constable’s writing it up now. His mother was there-saw the whole thing. .”
“He’s taking it hard. .”
The crowd shifted and Jocasta saw Mrs. Mitchell reach down, unclasp the little brooch from Kate’s shawl and slip it into her pocket.
Jocasta pushed her way through and started to shout.
“Oh no, not Milan, Mr. Crowther, not Milan!”
Harriet did not think she would ever become very fond of Mr. George Gillis. He had a face that reminded her of a self-satisfied raisin pudding, and his eyes looked like dubious oysters. That, if unappetizing, she could forgive, but his voice, drawling and nasal, seemed to find its way to some sensitive spot in the middle of her forehead and attack it with a brass pin.
He was sitting back in his chair in the reading room with his legs crossed and toying with a lorgnette tied to his waistcoat with purple ribbon. His tone from their arrival had been one of conceited disdain. Having made lengthy remarks on how honored he was to be asked for advice by the great Mr. Crowther, he had been of no assistance whatsoever, answering only in negatives and evincing very little interest in Crowther’s curiosity, despite his avowed expertise in matters of the kind. The lorgnette continued to twirl and wink between his fingers. Crowther did not reply but simply watched the man with level attention. Harriet looked about her. The reading room of the Royal Society was a place of some beauty. This north wing of Somerset House had been only recently completed, and the high ceilings, comfortable armchairs scattered in groups, and conveniently lit reading desks all gave an air of elegant confidence. It was a place built by and for men who believed absolutely in their work, and in their capacity to unfold the various mysteries of the universe. Men like Crowther, but also it seemed men like Gillis. She could not believe that such a being would contribute much to the knowledge of his countrymen, yet Crowther had referred to him without irony as an expert, and stood waiting for him now.
Gillis gave a dramatic sigh. “There may be. . I suspect there was a reference in a letter I had from a correspondent on the continent some weeks ago. .”
He paused. Crowther raised his eyebrow and Harriet clenched her hands together in her muff.
Gillis unfolded himself and with a slowness Harriet thought could only be deliberate, reached into his pocket for a notebook and began turning the pages. It seemed necessary that he read each page complete before moving onto the next, and all the while he wore the same amused self-indulgent smile that certain people reserve for their own work.