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Given how Mr. Higgins had spoken about Mr. Rodney, Gabriella’s conscience wasn’t in the least bit disturbed by keeping up the subterfuge.

“That was back in the summer.” She tapped her lips. “So knowing you, you’d have found out who we really need to speak to.”

“It’s Sutcliffe,” Solomon said. He said it like she would expect someone to say, “It’s the devil himself.”

“That’s bad, I take it?” she asked.

“Sutcliffe owns maybe thirty or more houses in Notting Hill and Kensington. And he deliberately rents mostly to West Indians, because he knows hardly anyone else will rent us a place, and because of that, we won’t complain about the conditions as much.” Solomon shook his head. “I’ve left a message at his office for someone to come out and see what needs fixing here. So keep an eye out.”

“Thanks, I will.” Gabriella didn’t like the sound of Sutcliffe. “Do you think he will send someone?”

Solomon shrugged. “If he doesn’t, I’ll have to kick up more of a fuss. No one who lives here can even get in and out by the front door, now.”

“And did you see someone tried to pry their way in with a crowbar?” Gabriella said. “Mr. Vincent ran him off last night.”

“Was that what happened?” Mr. Rodney had been following their conversation quietly, but now he leaned forward. “I heard the commotion and wondered.”

“I just spoke with Mr. Vincent now on the way in. He thought someone was trying to jimmy the door because it was locked, but then he realized it was swollen shut with the rain. Still, the man doesn’t live here, so it’s strange that he was trying to get in.”

“Did you see the man?” Solomon asked.

“Not well,” Gabriella admitted. “I think it was the same man James and I saw earlier in the evening who looked like he was waiting for someone at the house next door. He was tall and I got the impression he was very young, but I didn’t get a good look at his face in the rain.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Vincent if he got a better look.” Solomon stood.

Gabriella stood with him and asked both men if they could keep an eye out for Jerry and Scotty, and if they could spread the word about them being missing, before she went up to her flat.

She had a bath in the tiny bathroom she shared with Jerome to warm herself up, and then realized that because of the early dinner she’d had with Ruby and Teddy Roe, she was in her pajamas and ready for bed and it was only eight o’clock.

The rain suddenly started up again, hitting the window with hard slaps that sounded like there might be a bit of ice in every drop.

The water pipes shuddered as someone below her used them, and she worried for a moment that they were going to come apart.

She switched off the little electric heater for the night and climbed into bed, setting a large hardcover book on her lap to press on so she could write to her mother back in Melbourne.

She had been putting off writing to her for over a week, but a letter was definitely due. She’d start it, she decided, and then finish it up after the meeting with Mr. Havelock on Friday.

She wrote out the date and the usual greetings, and then wondered what James was doing tonight. She’d wondered if he would come round tonight, but they had no way to get in touch with each other during the day except through their work, and that was highly frowned upon.

She could brave the weather and go to the phone booth on the corner and give him a call at his flat, she considered. It wasn’t that late.

She pondered the idea, but then forced herself to keep going with the letter.

Her mother had seemed more neutral about her traveling to England to look for her father when she’d left, but since then, she’d had a change of heart, begging Gabriella to come home whenever she wrote.

But Gino must be glad about what she was doing.

He loved her mother, wanted to marry her, and her mother couldn’t say yes until they knew what had happened to her father.

She had written to let her mother know that she had found him, alive and well and married to someone else, with a new family. It had been the hardest letter she’d ever had to write.

Ever since that letter, dropping the bombshell, her mother’s replies had been stilted, almost distant, and Gabriella couldn’t work out whether her mother was furious, hurt, or a churning mixture of both.

Whatever she felt, Gabriella needed to let her know that she was going forward with dealing with her father and whatever legal representation he might appoint, to force him to divorce her mother legally so she could move on with her life.

There was legal jeopardy for her father in this. He was a bigamist, which was illegal, and the children he’d had since he’d left Australia were not considered legitimate in the eyes of the law as far as their titles went.

Ben, her friend who worked for Mr. Havelock as his junior, said that they had finally had a reply to the first official letter Havelock had sent, and it was that reply that they needed to discuss on Friday.