Page 36 of Triple Jeopardy (Daniel Pitt)

They parted at the corner of the street, Kitteridge to the left to the best public house to buy supper, Daniel to the right to find a cab to take him to the fford Croft home, where Miriam lived and had her laboratory.

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HE ARRIVED MORE rapidly than he was prepared for. He told the cabby to wait. If she was home, h

e would try to persuade her as quickly as possible to come back to the office with him. If she was out, he would have to start looking for her. The servants might not know where she had gone or be willing to tell Daniel, even though, since she was Marcus’s daughter, they of course knew him.

It was three months since he had been here. It seemed like only days. The path down to the separate cellar entrance was familiar. He knew where the cracked step was, and the paving stone that wobbled. He rang the bell and heard it jangle on the inside.

There was no answer. He felt a rush of emotion. Relief? Disappointment? Now what? Try the main house. He took a step backward.

The door opened and Miriam stood in the entrance. She looked just the same as the last time he saw her: high cheekbones, fair skin, too strong a nose, too wide a mouth, and bright auburn hair, pinned back absentmindedly, one long strand having fallen out of its original knot.

“Mr. Pitt?” she said in some surprise. She had called him “Daniel” when they had worked together.

On the ride here he had considered several different ways of asking her to help immediately, without anything to offer her but an intellectual exercise and gratitude. It looked extraordinarily graceless. How could he even begin, without sounding ridiculous? How on earth had it once seemed so natural? He knew all sorts of things about her: what made her laugh, what angered her, what she read, her ambitions—both the ones she had achieved and those that were denied her because women did not do such things, like become recognized forensic pathologists. And that her birthday was in October, and this year she would be forty! She must look at him as if he were a boy.

“You are not looking for my father or you would have gone to the front door, not the cellar,” she remarked. “So, you are looking for me. You want some information? You don’t appear to have anything with you, so you have nothing you want tested. Not another corpse to dig up, I trust? You are a little early. We don’t do that sort of thing until midnight. It tends to disturb the locals.”

Daniel felt himself blush. She was making fun of him, quite gently, but unmistakably. He deserved it. “You are right. I do have something on which I need your opinion. I haven’t brought it because I can’t take it out of the office. I…need you to come. We have to give it back to the prosecution tomorrow.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you have it legally? Or would I rather not know that?”

“Yes! It’s perfectly legal. It’s just that Kitteridge swore he would not take it anywhere else. It’s…only paper.”

“What do you need to know about it? I must bring the appropriate instruments with me.”

“Documents. We need to know if they’re forged or genuine.”

“And presumably you need to give them all back? And in the state you received them?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

She looked at him a little more closely. “Are you sure that you have them legally?”

“Yes! I wouldn’t ask you to be involved if it weren’t legal!”

“Stuff and nonsense! Of course you would, if you believed it was to bring about justice. Is that your cab I see waiting at the curb?” she said, looking over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Then you had better come in and help me carry my good microscope. And don’t drop it! Don’t tell me about the case yet. I want to make an unbiased judgment.”

He followed her in and pushed the door closed behind him. He knew the taxi driver would wait, since he had not paid him yet.

Miriam walked ahead of him, stiff-backed, straight-shouldered. He had forgotten how slender she was, the certainty with which she moved.

The huge cellar at first looked vast and full of shadows, but his eyes became accustomed to the lack of light quickly and he recognized the outlines of cupboards, tables, sinks where there was running water and drains, others where there were burners and retorts. Shelves were filled with glass jars full of chemicals.

“Daniel!”

He brought his attention back to the moment. She was holding out a large case for him to take.

“Be careful of it,” she warned. “Please take it to the cab and look after it. I shall follow in a moment.”

“Do you want me to come back and—”

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