Page 66 of Murder in Blackfriars

“I see.” Mrs. Davies was sympathetic. “A good friend, is he, this man?”

“My beau,” I confessed. “He doesn’t know his own origins, and that distresses him. I want to help him find the truth, though I know we likely never will.”

“Which might be for the best,” Mrs. Davies said. “The past sometimes should remain buried. The truth might be too painful.”

“But isn’t it better that he know? Always wondering has to be even more painful.”

Mrs. Davies shook her head. “Not necessarily. I’ve been alive a bit longer than you, dear. I’ve borne four children and buried one of them, and my husband is gone, as well. My other three children now have young ones of their own, and they are the sweetest lads and lasses you can imagine. I have learned much about life through all this and know that what we have now is precious. Digging up the past can muck that about.”

I took a thoughtful sip of tea, my heart aching for her lost child and her apparent grief for her husband. “I suppose that is true. But while my past held some awful things, much good came out of it too.” Joe had been horrible, but Grace was the joy of my existence.

“Life is good and bad all mixed up, neither one nor the other,” Mrs. Davies said. “When you’re in bad times, you convince yourself that good can never come again, but it does. Even so, there is no need to open the spigot and let the bad pour in to drown out the good you have at present.”

“I should leave it alone, you mean.” I sighed. “I have tried to convince myself of this. My beau had such an awful childhood that I suppose I want to show him he was loved once.”

“I think you should show him he is lovednow,” Mrs. Davies stated. “Life goes by in the blink of an eye. Hold those you love close while you can. However”—her eyes twinkled—“I can see that you are, like me, a lady of great determination. I will copy out those names for you. It might take me a while. Shall I send the list to you at Mount Street?”

“If you have it delivered to the kitchen door,” I said quickly. “I’m not sure what Mrs. Bywater would think if she intercepted such a thing.”

“She sounds like an interfering busybody,” Mrs. Davies declared. “As am I.”

“If you are, it is in a kind way,” I said. “Mrs. Bywater simply likes controlling people.”

“If she is disappointed with her life, or constantly trying to be greater than she actually is, then I can see why. But never worry, my dear. I will send it to you with the greatest discretion.”

“I can only thank you.” I set my cup aside and rose. “I must get back before they send out a horde of footmen to search for me.”

“You can thank me with a treat when I visit you on the Portobello Road. I’ll shut up my shop for a time on Thursday and come and see you.”

“I would be delighted,” I said with sincerity. “It has been a fine thing to meet you, Mrs. Davies.”

“I’ve observed you tramping up and down this road for years, going in and out of the grocers along the way. I’m pleased you finally came into my shop. Now, how about taking a book away with you for your little girl? You can pay me back with a pastry or two.”

* * *

I returned home, armed with a slim novel for Grace, more supplies for my upcoming week at the market, and the knowledge that I might have made a friend.

I was certain Mrs. Davies’s information would come to nothing—the odds were very long, indeed—but I was grateful to her for even contemplating helping me.

It occurred to me that the number of bookshops in London was large, and the chances that we’d find the one into which Daniel’s family, or a friend of that family, had gone to purchase a book thirty years ago were impossibly slim.

However, working at possibly futile tasks felt more satisfyingto me than simply sitting and waiting for the answer to fall into my lap, or giving up entirely.

“Mrs. Bywater asked about you,” Tess said when I returned. “I told her you was at the market. Did you find much?”

“Enough.” I slid the book from my basket into the drawer in the dresser where I also kept my notebook and began unloading the small bunch of parsley and net bag of grapes I’d purchased for verisimilitude.

“Well, she’s unhappy about Lady Cynthia staying out all night and coming home hungover.” Tess tore lettuce for a salad with angry jerks. “Is trying to blame you, I gather.”

“She stayed the night with Miss Townsend.” I joined Tess in sorting the greens, liking the cool, fresh scent that wafted to us.

“She didn’t want answers from me, only to know where you’d nipped off to.” Tess sloshed the greens in a bowl of water and shook them out. “She’s been even more interfering than usual, of late.”

I thought about Mrs. Davies’s assessment that Mrs. Bywater tried to be queen of all she surveyed to make up for disappointment that her husband had no ambition beyond his present state and that the lordship his sister had married was a feckless spendthrift. Mrs. Davies likely had the right of it.

“We should have some compassion for her,” I told Tess. “She wants to be a lady of the manor and can only make do with what she has.”

Tess stared at me as though I’d run mad, then shook her head, lifted another bunch of lettuce, and began ripping into it.