I had not mistaken the look in Thompson’s eyes. He, like me, did not like puzzles to remain unsolved. And he, like me, wanted to find the person who had killed the pretty young woman on the shore. I could not imagine what harm a small woman like her could have caused anyone, and I was angry at whoever had hurt her.

I looked at her again, lying still, gray, her lips slack, her fair hair limp. I slipped the ring into my pocket, took my leave of the men, and returned to the world above.

I reached Grosvenor Street in Mayfair at ten o'clock. The thoroughfare was packed with carriages, as I had expected it to be. No one who was anyone refused an invitation to one of Lucius Grenville's soirees, even on a cold January night.

I descended my very unfashionable hackney at the end of the line of carriages, paid over my shillings, and walked the rest of the way to Grenville's house.

The facade of Grenville's home was unostentatious, even plain. The simplicity of the outside, however, hid a magnificent interior, made even more magnificent tonight.

Grenville's fortune was vast, his taste impeccable. Chandeliers glittered above a wide marble staircase that lifted to a landing arched like a Roman piazza. Hothouse flowers graced every niche of the staircase and expansive hall, their reds and blues and oranges vibrant against the white marble walls. The scent of the flowers mixed with that of the people-perfume, soap, pomade, fabric, perspiration.

I'd had the privilege of being shown over this house from top to bottom, of entering the rooms into which Grenville invited very few. Those private rooms revealed glimpses of the real man-intellectual, curious, fascinated by the world; tonight, the public rooms showed only the lavishness that people expected from him.