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at every creak and bump waiting for him. Now she tried to take her mind from it, and sat on the floor in a most undignified position, reading
Jane Eyre.
When Pitt did come at last she was quite unaware of it until he had taken off his overcoat and hung it up and was standing in the doorway.
    “Oh, Thomas!” She put the book aside and scrambled to her feet, disentangling her skirt with considerable difficulty. “Thomas, where on earth have you been? You smell terrible.”
    “A fire,” he replied, kissing her, touching only her face with his lips, not holding her where the smut and grime would soil her dress.
    She heard the weariness in his voice, and something more, an experience of tragedy.
    “A fire?” she asked, holding his gaze. “Did someone die in it?”
    “A woman.”
    She looked up at his face. “Murder?”
    “Yes.”
    She hesitated, seeing the crumpled, grimy clothes, still wet in places from the afternoon’s rain, and then the expression in his eyes.
    “Do you want to eat, wash, or tell me about it?”
    He smiled. There was something faintly ludicrous in her candor, especially after the careful manners of the Clitheridges and the Hatches.
    “A cup of tea, my boots off, and then later hot water,” he replied honestly.
    She accepted that as declining to talk, and hurried through to the kitchen, her stockinged feet making no sound on the linoleum of the passage, or the scrubbed boards of the kitchen floor. The range was hot, as always, and she put the kettle back on the hob and cut a slice of bread, buttered it and spread it with jam. She knew he would want it when he saw it.
    He followed her through and unintentionally stood in her way.
    “Where was it?” she asked.
    “Highgate,” he said as she walked around him to get the mugs.
    “Highgate? That’s not your area.”
    “No, but they are sure this was arson, and the local station sent for us straightaway.”
    Charlotte had deduced that much from the smell of smoke and the smudges on his clothes, but she forbore from mentioning it.
    “It was the home of a doctor,” he went on. “He was out on a call, a woman in childbirth unexpectedly early, but his wife was at home. She had canceled a trip to the city at the last moment. It was she who was burned.”
    The kettle was boiling and Charlotte heated the pot, thenmade the tea and set it to brew. He sat down gratefully and she sat opposite him.
    “Was she young?” she said quietly.
    “About forty.”
    “What was her name?”
    “Clemency Shaw.”
    “Could it not have been an accident? There are lots of accidental fires, a candle dropped, a spark from an unguarded hearth, someone smoking a cigar and not putting it out properly.” She poured the tea and pushed one of the mugs towards him.
    “On the curtains of four separate rooms, downstairs, at midnight?” He took his tea and sipped it and burned his tongue. He bit into the bread and jam quickly.
    “Oh.” She thought of waking in the night to the roar and the heat, and knowing what it was, and that you were trapped. How much more dreadful to think someone else had lit it deliberately, knowing you were there, meaning to burn you to death. The thought was so fearful that for a moment she felt a little sick.
    Pitt was too tired to notice.
    “We don’t know yet if they meant to kill Mrs. Shaw—or her husband.” He tried the tea again.
    She realized he must have felt all that she was now imagining. His mind would have conjured the same pictures, only more vividly; he had seen the charred rubble, the heat still radiating from it, the smoke still filling the air and stinging the eyes and throat.
    “You can’t do any more tonight, Thomas. She isn’t in any pain now, and you cannot touch the grief,” she said gently. “There is always somebody hurting somewhere, and we cannot take their pain.” She rose to her feet again. “It doesn’t help.” She brushed his hand with hers as she passed. “I’ll get a bowl of hot water and you can wash.