Page 14 of Corpse in the Canal

“It’s your house,” Solomon said, gazing about. “I like it. It suits you.”

“Are some of these paintings yours?” Constance asked, inspecting one of them.

“No, I bought them—or was given them—in Paris. I learned so much there, found a style that feels like my own, and a few skills to carry it through. Look, I wanted to show you this.”

He walked over to a large, covered canvas, and whipped off the cloth to reveal a breath-catching portrait of Constance and Solomon. It looked vaguely familiar, like a sketch Solomon had once seen, with Constance’s face wreathed in provocative laughter, and Solomon with brows raised and lips curved in quizzical amusement. The pose and expressions were the same, but David had vitalized it with color and a backdrop of the River Seine and Parisian spires.

“I missed you,” David said awkwardly. “So I painted you there.”

Solomon’s throat closed up. They had been apart for twenty years. They had no business missing each other, and yet only now could Solomon acknowledge his fear that David didn’t, and wouldn’t ever, miss him.

“It’s stunning,” Constance said huskily. Her hand slipped into his as they both gazed at it. “And beautiful. I am in awe.”

David’s color deepened in pleasure. “I’ll show you the others later. Let me pour you wine.”

As a host, David was newly relaxed, informal yet attentive. He had done this before, in Paris. Solomon could imagine his entertaining his artist friends, and no doubt models, not only finding but enjoying his niche in life.

It made for a wonderful evening. David’s enthusiasm for life shone through everything he said and did. Even the mingling pride and anxiety with which he showed them his work was boyish and endearing. Like the pictures themselves, he seemed full of raw energy and delight. As though the nightmare of his past was finally giving way.

It was getting late before David finally said, “Lord, listen to me going on! I haven’t even asked about you, yet! Though clearly you’re both thriving.”

“We have to decide whether or not to take on a new case of a missing young man,” Constance said.

“And will you?”

Solomon exchanged glances with his wife. “Probably. We haven’t found him. No one respectable seems to know where he is, so…”

“Time to look among the unrespectable? Does that mean another tense night out and about in low gambling dens?”

“Pretty much,” Solomon said, regarding him. “If you’re up to it.”

David grinned.

Constance said, “In that case, I shall call in at the establishment.”

*

As adventurous boys, Solomon and David had learned to blend into their environment, as at home among plantation-owning families as with sailors and stevedores and slaves. Everyone made their own assumptions about the boys, and from those assumptions they learned early about many points of view and gained the habit of thinking for themselves. And concealing their identities when necessary.

London was no longer alien to either of them. They shared the informal clothes still in David’s wardrobe and ambled through the unsavory gaming dens of Cheapside, St Giles, and Seven Dials, watchful, unthreatening, but confident.

Some of these haunts were familiar to Solomon from previous cases. Some people gave him a wide berth. No one in the first two dens admitted to knowing Percy Harvey. At the third, an angry individual drove a knife into the tabletop and swore.

“He owes you money,” Solomon guessed.

“And I’m before you in getting my share,” the man declared, glaring.

Solomon nodded as though that was perfectly fair. “I suppose if you knew where he was, you’d have found him yourself.”

“Damn right.”

“I’ll let you know if I come across him. I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same for me. You can find me at the Silver and Grey office at the corner of Chandos Street.”

“Might be nothing left of him to find,” the man said ominously.

“I wouldn’t,” Solomon advised. “His family’s powerful.”

“Then he can get the readies from them!”