Death in the Devil's Acre Read Online Free PDF Page B

m’lady,” he said.
    Emily stood up, pushing her pen and papers away before Charlotte was even through the door. She was not quite as tall as Charlotte, and had fairer hair that turned to curls with a softness Charlotte had envied all her life. She came forward and hugged Charlotte impulsively, her face alight with pleasure.
    “How delightful of you to come! I’m bored to pieces with letters. They are all to George’s cousins, and I can’t bear any of them. Really, you know, the young girls out this Season seem to be even sillier than last year. And heaven knows they were light-witted enough! I refuse to think what next year will be like! How are you?” She stood back and surveyed Charlotte critically. “You look far too healthy to be in the least fashionable. You should appear delicate, like a lily, not some great bursting rose! That is the thing these days. And don’t you know that it is vulgar to look so excited? Whatever has happened? If you don’t tell me, I shall—” A suitable chastisement eluded her; she went over to the comfortable chair in front of the fire and curled up in it.
    Charlotte joined her on the sofa opposite, feeling warm, comfortable, and smug. “Do you remember the murders in Callander Square?” she began.
    Emily sat up a little straighter, her eyes bright. “Don’t be idiotic! Whoever forgets a murder? Why? Has there been another?”
    “Do you remember that dreadful footman, Max?”
    “Vaguely. Why? Charlotte, for goodness’ sake stop being so obscure! What on earth are you talking about?”
    “Did you read of the murder of Dr. Hubert Pinchin in the newspapers yesterday, or this morning?”
    “No, of course not.” Emily was on the edge of her seat now, her back ramrod stiff. “You know George doesn’t give me anything but the society pages. Who is Hubert Pinchin, and what has it to do with that unpleasant footman? Really, you can be extremely irritating!”
    Charlotte settled more deeply into the cushions and recounted everything she knew.
    Emily clenched her hands, crushing the shell-pink silk of her dress. “Oh dear—how very disgusting! But I never liked that man,” she added frankly. “He left the Balantynes, didn’t he—before the end of that affair, anyway?”
    “Yes. It seems he became very successful as a procurer of women.”
    Emily winced. “Then perhaps it was rather suitable that he was found in a gutter. And by a prostitute. Do you suppose God has a sense of humor? Or would that be blasphemous?”
    “He created man,” Charlotte answered. “He must at the very least have a pronounced sense of the absurd. The newspapers say that Dr. Pinchin was perfectly respectable.”
    “Then what was he doing in the Devil’s Acre? Did he take charity cases or something of the sort?”
    “I don’t know. I expect Thomas will find out.”
    “Well, any man of quality who wanted to pick up a loose woman for the evening would go to a music hall, or the Haymarket. He wouldn’t go to some dangerous slum like the Devil’s Acre.”
    Charlotte felt a little crushed. The mystery was fast dissolving in front of her. “Perhaps the women in the Haymarket were too expensive. If Max kept a brothel, there must be customers in the Devil’s Acre! If Dr. Pinchin was one of them—”
    “Why kill him?” Emily interrupted with an irritating display of reason. “Nobody but an idiot kills his own customers.”
    “Maybe his wife did.”
    Emily raised her eyebrows. “In the Devil’s Acre?”
    “Not personally, stupid! She may have hired someone. You would have to hate a person very much and in a particular sort of way to do that to him.”
    Emily’s face lost its spark of amusement. “Of course you would. But, my dear, all sorts of men use loose women from time to time, and as long as they do it discreetly, a wife with any sense at all does not inquire into it. If a man does not offer explanations of where he has been, for the sake of one’s own happiness it is wiser not to