Seven Dials Page 0,40

we don't get the right person, then the wrong man... or woman, will be hanged."

"I suppose so." Jack listed off four names, and what he knew of where they might be found.

Pitt did not need to write them down. He wished he did not even need to hear them or make enquiries; he could understand their emotions too easily. Imagination was necessary to his job, but it was also a curse.

The dog came back, quivering with excitement and delight, dropping the stick at Pitt's feet and dancing around waiting for him to throw it again. It did not often meet people so willing to play, and who obviously understood the game.

Pitt obliged and the animal went racing off again. He really would like to have a dog. He would tell Charlotte the cats would just have to accommodate it.

"You could ask Emily," Jack said suddenly, looking at Pitt and biting his lip. He looked slightly abashed to be saying it. "She notices things about people..." He left it hanging. They were both aware of past cases where Charlotte and Emily had interfered, sometimes dangerously, but their acute discretion and understanding of nuances of meaning had been key to the solution.

"Yes," Pitt agreed, surprised that he had not thought of it for himself. "Yes, I'll do that. Will she be at home?"

Jack smiled suddenly. "I've no idea!"

ACTUALLY, IT TOOK PITT two hours to catch up with Emily. Her butler told him that she had gone to a newly opened art exhibition, and after that she expected to return home only for the time it took her to change for the evening, and dinner at Lady Mansfield's home in Belgravia. Tomorrow morning she would be riding in the park, and then visiting her dressmaker before taking an early luncheon and making the usual afternoon calls. The evening would be spent at the opera.

Pitt thanked the butler, asked for directions to the exhibition, and took himself there immediately.

The gallery was crowded with women in beautiful gowns, and a few men escorting them, flirting a little, and passing grave and wordy comments on the paintings.

Pitt looked at them only briefly, which he regretted. He thought them not only beautiful but of great interest. The style was impressionist in a manner he had not seen before, blurred and hazy, and yet creating a feeling of light which pleased him enormously.

But he was not here for interest. He must find Emily before she left, and that would require concentration, and even considerable physical effort merely to keep on excusing himself and pushing between groups of chattering people, women with skirts which brushed up against each other and blocked the way for several feet in every direction.

He received several angry and imperious glances and heard mutters of "Well, really!" on more than one occasion, but he could not afford the time to wait until they moved on and allowed him to pass of their own accord.

He found Emily in the third room, in idle conversation with a young woman in a cornflower-blue dress and an extravagant hat which he thought was most becoming. It lent her a drama which she did not otherwise possess.

He was wondering how to attract Emily's attention without being rude when she noticed him, perhaps because he was conspicuously out of place in the rest of the crowd. Her face filled with consternation. She excused herself urgently from the woman in blue, and came straight over to Pitt.

"There is nothing wrong," he assured her.

"I had not thought there was," she said, without altering her expression in the slightest. "My fear was of being so bored I fell asleep and lost my balance. There is nothing whatever here to hold me up."

"Don't you like the pictures?" he asked.

"Thomas, don't be so pedestrian. Nobody comes to look at the paintings, not really look. They only glance at them in order to make remarks they think are fearfully deep, and hope someone will repeat. Why have you come? They're not stolen, are they?"

"No, they're not." He smiled in spite of himself. "Jack suggested that you might be able to help me."

Her face quickened with interest. "Of course!" she said eagerly. "What can I do?"

"All I want is information, and perhaps your opinion."

"About whom?" She linked her arm in his and turned towards one of the pictures as if she were studying it intently.

It was not really the situation in which to hold a hotly discreet conversation, but if he spoke softly it would probably be neither