to have his hands grasped by both Mrs. Cordell and her second daughter, while the third grinned at him from behind with unfeigned delight.
“Dragan, thank God!” Mrs. Cordell exclaimed. “The police were here, searching your room! I have never been so mortified in my life. Has that poor young man not suffered enough in his own country? I said to them. Must he suffer persecution in our supposedly civilized country, too? You can be sure they left much more shame-faced than they arrived, and I made sure they took nothing with them!”
“I’m so sorry you were subjected to that,” Dragan said seriously, allowing himself to be dragged into the parlor.
“They said Nancy Barrow was dead,” Annie, the middle daughter, burst out. “They said you had been arrested for her murder!”
“Both are true,” Dragan allowed. “I found Nancy, you see, but I could not save her. She was already dead.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Cordell, pressing him into a chair. “Poor Nancy. What in the world happened to her?”
“We’ll know more soon,” Dragan said evasively. “At least they are aware I did not do it and so will look for whoever did.” He stood up again. “Forgive me, I spent the night locked up with several other miscreants, and I can’t imagine I am pleasant company. Excuse me, while I change…”
To his relief, they let him go, although they seemed avid for his story. He was reluctant to speak of Lady Grizelda’s part in the tale for many reasons.
Only when he had washed thoroughly from head to toe, shaved, and dressed in a clean shirt and his only other trousers and coat did he notice his hat placed on the center of his bed. He smiled, for he had left it at the opera last night. Cordell must have picked it up.
Clapping it on his head, he picked up his small, battered medical bag and walked quietly downstairs.
“Just going to the clinic!” he called and hastily let himself out of the house.
By now, he had made the journey so often that his feet knew the way without any interference from his brain, which spent the time mulling over Grizelda Niven and her connection to the murder.
Dragan had seen enough violence in the last three years to know that given the right circumstances, anyone was capable of anything. As far as he could tell, Grizelda was the only person he knew of with the time to have killed Nancy. And the weapon belonged to her family. She was undoubtedly troubled by last night’s events, a disturbance not unfree of guilt.
But guilt was not necessarily an emotion of truth, and for the life of him, he could not imagine her killing her maid. She was not so stupid or so ill-disciplined. And she really did not seem the kind of person to hurt someone beneath her, a dependent of her family. She did not even care that Nancy hadn’t been very good at her job.
Exactly what sort of person was Lady Grizelda Niven?
Pretty, eccentric, an idle, aristocratic lady with too much time on her hands. With acting skills that seemed to surprise even herself.
He came back to his own surroundings with a start, to realize he was already in the waiting room of Dr. Cordell’s surgery. It was several months since he had lost so much time in his head. But at least he had been thinking of only one death and one very much alive young woman. He hadn’t abandoned himself to the horror and grief of war.
He nodded to the waiting patients, some of whom he recognized. They smiled at him. Someone greeted him by name.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Tizsa,” Mrs. Johns said in surprise. A respectable widow, she acted as their secretary three days a week. “Dr. Cordell didn’t think you would be here today.”
“Neither did I,” Dragan said cheerfully, “but here I am.”
The afternoon passed in a flurry, as their clinic often did, situated as it was on the boundary of Kensington’s relatively affluent neighborhood and the poorer streets beyond. There was neither time nor inclination to talk to Cordell about anything other than medical matters until they were walking home together at the end of the day.
“What happened?” Cordell demanded bluntly, his bushy brows contracted, his piercing blue eyes fixed on Dragan.
Dragan told him, ending with an apology for ruining his family’s rare treat to the opera and causing the indignity of a police search, both of which the doctor waved impatiently aside.