Half Moon Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

paper. He handed the pencil and paper to Villeroche, and put the rest back.
    Villeroche wrote the names and addresses for him, and when they reached the corner nearest the embassy, he stopped the cab, said good-bye and then ran across the road and disappeared up the steps.
    Pitt called upon all of the men Villeroche had named. He found two of them at home and willing to talk to him.
    “Ah, but he’s a fine man,” O’Halloran said with a smile. “But I haven’t seen him in a week or more, which is surely a shame. I expected him at Wylie’s party last Saturday night, and I would have bet my shirt he’d have been at the theatre on Monday. Wilde was there himself, and what a night we had of it, for sure.” He shrugged. “Not that I’d swear I can remember everything of it myself, mind.”
    “But Henri Bonnard was not there?” Pitt pressed him.
    “That I do know,” O’Halloran said with certainty. He looked at Pitt narrowly out of vivid blue eyes. “Police, you said you are? Is there something wrong? Why are you asking about Bonnard?”
    “Because at least one of his other friends believes he is missing,” Pitt replied.
    “And they’re sending a superintendent to look for him?” O’Halloran asked wryly.
    “No. There was a body found in the Thames at Horseferry Stairs this morning. There was a question it might be him, but two men from the French Embassy have both said it is not.”
    “Thank God for that!” O’Halloran said with feeling. “Although it’s some poor devil. Surely you don’t think Bonnard is responsible? Can’t imagine it. Harmless sort of fellow, he is. A bit wild in his tastes, maybe, all for enjoying himself, but no malice in him, none at all.”
    “That was never in question,” Pitt assured him.
    O’Halloran relaxed, but he could say nothing more of use, and Pitt thanked him and left.
    The other person willing to see him was Charles Renaud.
    “Actually I rather assumed he’d gone to Paris,” he said with surprise. “I seem to remember him saying something about having to pack, and he mentioned the time the Dover train left. It was all rather in passing, you know? I made the assumption. I’m afraid I wasn’t especially interested. I’m sorry.”
    Tellman went to the river police eagerly, not because he had any great fondness for them, but questioning about tides and hours was infinitely preferable to trying to extract embarrassing truths from foreigners who were protected by diplomatic immunity. What the man in the punt had been doing that provoked his murder it was beyond Tellman’s power, or desire, even to guess. Tellman had seen a great deal of the sordid and tragic sides of life. He had grown up in extreme poverty and knew crime and both the need and the viciousness which drove it. But there were things some so-called gentlemen did, especially those connected with the theatre, which no decent person should have a guess at, far less observe.
    Men who wore green velvet dresses were among them. Tellman had been brought up to believe there were two sorts of women: good women, such as wives, mothers, and aunts, who did not show passions and probably did not have them; and the sort who did have them, and who showed them publicly and embarrassingly. A man who would dress up as the second was beyond his comprehension.
    Thinking of women, and love, brought Gracie to his mind. Without intending to, he could see her bright little face, the angle of her shoulders, the quick way she moved. She was tiny—all her dresses had to be taken up—and too thin for most men’s tastes, with not much shape to her, no more than a suggestion. He hadn’t thought he liked women like that himself. She was all spirit and mind, a sharp tongue, all courage and wit.
    Tellman had no idea what she really thought of him. He sat on the omnibus going along the embankment and remembered with curiously painful loneliness how her eyes had shone when she spoke of that Irish valet. He did not want to name the