“When was this?” Charlotte asked, sitting down in one of the chairs.

Juno sat opposite her. “Oh… I don’t think I know when Martin met Mr. Wood, but I know they started work on the site in Ephesus in ‘63. I think it was ‘69 when the British Museum bought the site and they started work on the Temple of Diana, and it must have been the following year that Martin met Mr. Schliemann.” Her eyes were distant with memory. “That’s when he fell in love with Troy and the whole idea of finding it. He could recite pages of Homer, you know…” She smiled. “In the English translation, not the original. At first I thought I would be bored by it… but I wasn’t. He cared so much I couldn’t help caring too.”

“And Adinett was a scholar in the same things?” Charlotte asked.

Juno looked startled. “Oh, no! Not at all. I don’t think he ever went to the Middle East, and he had no interest in archaeology that I heard of, and Martin would certainly have mentioned it.”

Charlotte was confused. “I thought they were good friends who spent much time together…”

“They were,” Juno assured her. “But it was ideals which they held in common, and admiration for other peoples and cultures. Adinett had been interested in Japan ever since his elder brother was posted there as part of the British Legation at Yedo-that’s the capital city. I believe it was attacked by some of the new reactionary authorities who were trying to expel all foreigners.”

“He traveled to the Far East?” Charlotte could not see any value in the information, but since she had not even the first thread of an idea as to the motive for murder, she would gather everything there was.

Juno shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was just fascinated by their culture. He lived in Canada for quite a long time, and he had a Japanese friend in the Hudson Bay Trading Company. They were very close. I don’t know his name. He always referred to him as Shogun. It was what he called him.”

“He talked about him?”

“Oh, yes.” Juno’s expression was bleak. “He was very interesting indeed. I listened to every word myself. I can see him across the dinner table as he told us of traveling over those great wastes of snow, how the light was, the cold, the vast polar sky, the creatures, and above all the beauty.

“There was something in it he loved, and it was there in his voice.

“Apparently there was a brief uprising in Manitoba in 1869 and 1870 led by a French-Canadian called Louis Kiel. They resented the British taking over everything, and executed someone or other.” She frowned. “The British sent in a military expedition led by Colonel Wolseley. Adinett and Shogun volunteered to act as guides for them into the interior, and met up with them at Thunder Bay, four hundred miles northwest of Toronto. They led them another six hundred and fifty miles. It was that he used to talk about.”

Charlotte could see nothing useful in it at all. It sounded like a far more interesting conversation than was held over most dinner tables. What had happened that led to a quarrel so violent it ended in murder?

“Was the rebellion put down?” She supposed it must have been, but she had not heard of it.

“Oh yes, apparently very successfully.” Juno saw Charlotte ’s confused look. “Adinett formed a very strong sympathy with the French Canadians,” she explained. “He spoke of them often, and with great warmth. He admired French republicanism and their passion for liberty and equality. He went to France quite often, even up to a few months ago. That was what he and Martin really had in common, the passion for social reform.” She smiled in recollection. “They talked about it for hours, and ways in which it could be accomplished. Martin learned about it from ancient Greece, the original democracy, and Adinett from French revolutionary idealism, but their aims were very close.” Again her eyes filled with tears. “I just don’t understand what could possibly have led them to quarrel!” She blinked several times and her voice wavered. “Could we be wrong?”

Charlotte was not ready to consider that.

“I don’t know. Please, think back if Mr. Fetters expressed any difference of opinion or anger over anything.” It seemed a slender thread. Did anyone but a lunatic quarrel to the point of blows over the virtues of one foreign country’s form of democracy rather than another’s?

“Not anger,” Juno said with certainty, staring at Charlotte. “But he was preoccupied with something. I would have said concern, not really anything more than that. But he was always a trifle absentminded when he was absorbed in his work. He was brilliant at it, you know?” There was urgency in her voice. “He used to find antiquarian pieces no one else could. He could see the value in things. Lately he did more writing about it, for various journals, and went to meetings and so on. He was a very gifted speaker. People loved to listen to him.”

Charlotte could visualize it easily. His face in the photograph was full of intelligence and enthusiasm.

“I’m so sorry…” The words were out before she thought of their effect.

Juno gulped, and it was a few moments before she regained complete control of herself again.

“I… apologize,” she said with a little shake of her head. “He was worried about something, but he wouldn’t discuss it with me, and I couldn’t press him, he just became annoyed. I have no idea what it was. I imagined it was something to do with one of the antiquarian societies he belonged to. They do fight among themselves rather a lot. There is tremendous rivalry, you know.”

Charlotte was confused. It all seemed so very ordinary and good-natured.

“But Adinett wasn’t interested in antiquities?” she reaffirmed.

“Not at all. He listened to Martin, but only because he was a friend, and I could see that sometimes he was bored by it.” Juno looked at her with shadowed eyes. “It doesn’t help, does it.” It was not a question.

“I can’t see that it does,” Charlotte admitted. “And yet there must be some reason. We just don’t know yet where to look first.” She rose to her feet. She would learn nothing more at the moment, and she had trespassed long on Juno Fetters’s time.

Juno stood up also, slowly, as if there were a debilitating tiredness in her.

Charlotte caught a glimpse of the engulfing loneliness of mourning, but she had no idea how to help. She had met Juno less than two hours ago. She could hardly offer to keep her company. And perhaps Juno preferred to grieve alone. The necessity of being courteous to strangers might be the last thing on earth she wanted… or it might be the first. At least it would force her to keep control of herself, and occupy her mind for a while, not allowing it to be consumed with memory. The conventions that kept a new widow out of society were probably meant to be kind, and to observe the decencies, and yet they could hardly have been better designed to intensify her grief. Perhaps they were for everyone else, to save them the embarrassment of having to think of something to say, and so one was not reminded too forcefully of death and that eventually it would come to all.

“May I call again?” Charlotte said aloud. She knew she was risking rebuff, but at least that gave the decision to Juno.

Juno’s face filled with hope. “Please do… I…” She breathed in deeply. “I want to know what really happened, apart from the physical facts. And… and I want to do something more than just sit here!”

Charlotte smiled back at her. “Thank you. As soon as I can think of anything remotely hopeful to follow, I shall call upon you.” And she turned towards the door, knowing that so far she had accomplished almost nothing to help Pitt.

Gracie had plans of her own. As soon as Charlotte left the house she abandoned the rest of her own chores, put on her best shawl and hat-she had only two-and taking enough for a fare in the omnibus, she went out also.