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pain inside him. It was something he preferred not to recognize.
    He would point his mind to what he should ask the river police about tides and where the boat must have started in order to finish at Horseferry Stairs by dawn.
    He reported his findings to Pitt in the late afternoon, at Pitt’s home in Keppel Street. It was warm and clean, but it seemed very empty without the women in the kitchen or busying about upstairs. There were no children’s voices; no light, quick feet; no one singing. He even missed Gracie’s orders, telling him to watch his boots, not to bump anything or make a mess.
    He sat across the kitchen table from Pitt, sipping at his tea and feeling strangely empty.
    “Well?” Pitt prompted.
    “Not very helpful, actually,” Tellman answered. There was no homemade cake, only a tin of bought biscuits. It was not nearly the same. “Low water was at three minutes past five at London Bridge, and it gets later the higher you go up the river. Like it would be near quarter past six up at Battersea.”
    “And high tide?” Pitt asked.
    “Quarter past eleven last night at London Bridge.”
    “And an hour and ten minutes later at Battersea . . .”
    “No . . . that’s the thing, only twenty minutes, more like twentyfive to midnight.”
    “And the rate of flow? How far would the punt have drifted?”
    “That’s the other thing,” Tellman explained. “The ebb tide takes six and three quarter hours, near enough. The flood tide takes only five and a quarter. He reckoned the punt could go as much as two and a half miles an hour, but on the other hand, on ebb tide there are mud shoals and sandbanks it could get stuck on . . .”
    “But it didn’t,” Pitt pointed out. “If it had, it wouldn’t have come off till the flood again.”
    “Or it could have got caught up by passing barges in the dark, or anything else,” Tellman went on. “Caught on the piles of a bridge and then loosed again if something bumped into it . . . a dozen things. All they can say for sure is that it most likely came from upriver, because no one’d carry that extra weight against the tide, and there’s no place likely anyone’d keep a boat like that, which is a private sort of pleasure boat, downriver from Horseferry Stairs. It’s all city, docks and the like.”
    Pitt remained silent for several minutes, thinking it over.
    “I see,” he said at length. “So time and tide don’t really help at all. It could have been as far as eleven or twelve miles, at the outside, and as close as one mile, or wherever the nearest house is with an edge on the water. Or even nearer, if anyone kept that punt moored in the open. It’ll just be a matter of questioning.”
    “It would help to find out who he is,” Tellman pointed out. “I still think it could be that French fellow and they’re embarrassed to say so. I’d disown him if any Englishman did that in France!”
    Pitt looked at him with a faint smile. “I found a friend of his who thought he had gone to Dover, on the way to Paris. I’d like to know if that’s true.”
    “Across the Channel?” Tellman said with mixed feelings. He was not very keen on the idea of foreign travel, but on the other hand it would be quite an adventure to go in a packet boat or a steamer over to Calais, and then perhaps even to Paris itself. That would be something to tell Gracie! “I’d better find out if he did,” he said hopefully. “If he isn’t the body, he might be the one who killed him.”
    “If it isn’t he, there’s no reason to suppose he has anything to do with it,” Pitt pointed out. “But you are right, we need to know whose body it is. We’ve got nothing else.”
    Tellman stood up. “So I’ll go to Dover, sir. Shipping company ought to know whether he went over to France or not. I’ll go and find out.”

CHAPTER TWO
    The last post arrived just as Tellman left, and Pitt felt a surge of excitement as he recognized Charlotte’s handwriting on a thick envelope addressed