Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [46]
He looked down. There it was; he would know her exuberant writing anywhere. He was grinning as he picked it up and tore it open, pushing the door closed behind him with his foot. He read:
Dearest Thomas,
I am having a marvelous time. It is so very beautiful along the Bois de Boulogne, so desperately fashionable and terribly French. You should see the clothes!
[She went on to describe them in some detail.]
Which brings me to the Moulin Rouge again, she continued. One keeps hearing whispers of terrible gossip. The artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec goes there often. He sits at one of the tables and makes sketches of the women. He is a dwarf, you know—at least his legs have never grown, and he is terribly short. Apparently the dance that the chorus girls do is inexpressibly vulgar and exciting. The music is marvelous, the costumes outrageous, and they have no undergarments, even when they kick their legs right over their heads—or so I’m told. That is why Jack has said we absolutely cannot go. No decent woman would even mention the place. (Of course we all do! How could we not? We simply don’t do it in the hearing of the gentlemen—just as they don’t within ours! Isn’t it all silly? But we have nothing else to do but play games. The less we have to do that matters, the more complicated the rules become.) Reputations are made and lost there.
I think of you all so often, wonder how you are, how is Gracie managing at the seaside and are the children enjoying it? They were so keen to go. I hope it is living up to all their dreams. My trip is, in every way. Best of all because I shall be ready to come home when the time arrives.
I sit here at the end of my long day and wonder what you are doing with your body in the punt. I suppose all cities have their crimes and their scandals. Here everyone is talking about the case I mentioned to you before—the young gentleman who is accused of murder, but swears he was somewhere else and so could not be guilty. But the trouble is that the “somewhere else” is the Moulin Rouge—at the very hour when La Goulue, the infamous dancer, was doing the cancan. No one else is willing to say they saw him because they dare not admit they were there. I suppose most people know it, but saying it is different. Then we “ladies” cannot pretend not to know, and if we know of course we have to react. We cannot be seen to approve, so we have to disapprove. I wonder how many situations are like that? I wish you were here to talk to. There is no one else to whom I could say exactly what I think, or who will tell me what they think so honestly.
Dear Thomas—I miss you. I shall have so much to say when I get home. I hope you are not too bored staying in London. Dare I wish you an interesting case? Or is that tempting fate?
Either way, be well, be happy—but miss me! I shall see you soon,
With my true love,
Charlotte
He folded the last page, still smiling, and held on to the letter as he went along the corridor to the kitchen. She must have stayed up very late writing that. He did miss her terribly; it would probably be foolish to tell her how much. And in a way he was pleased she had gone. It was good to realize how much he valued her. The silence of the house was all around him, but in his mind he could hear her voice.
And sometimes when parted one would write the deeper feelings one did not express in words when the daily business of living intruded. Certainly that had been so lately.
He left the letter out on the table as he stoked up the stove and put the kettle on to make himself a pot of tea. Archie and Angus were both purring and winding themselves around his legs, leaving hairs on his trousers. He spoke to them conversationally, and fed them.
He did not bother to meet with Tellman before going to see Lord Kilgour, another of Cathcart’s clients.
“Yes!