Simon made a deprecating gesture. “She came to help me make a success of the opening, and then I hoped to attract a student of the East to come in and see to preservation of specimens, the proper cases, some sort of cataloging, all the trimmings of a proper museum. I don’t have the money for that, not at the moment, but the quality of exhibits is quite high. I’ve already shown some of the better examples to Dr. Anderson in Oxford.” Simon grinned. “I expect he hoped I might contribute them to his own private collection. My grandfather was a skilled draftsman and has drawn birds in New Guinea and Sulawesi that created quite a fuss when Anderson showed them to specialists. Many of them hadn’t been described before.” As he spoke, his eyes flashed with more life and enthusiasm than Rutledge had ever seen him show.

“And you told her this was short-term employment?”

“Margaret herself said she wouldn’t stay—six months, a year at best. She spoke of other plans after that. I thought it might be marriage. The way she tilted her head when she said it, with a sort of pride.”

“Any idea who the man might have been?”

“No. But then I’ve been away for four years. Someone she met in the war, at a guess. I don’t see Margaret Tarlton winding up a spinster.”

“Someone she met in the war? Not Thomas Napier?”

Simon stared at Rutledge. “Elizabeth’s father? Good God, what put that idea into your head! I thought I was the only one who knew about that!”

“Someone had helped Miss Tarlton purchase a small house in Chelsea. I thought it might have been her employer.”

A cold look turned Simon’s face hard. “No. It wasn’t Thomas Napier. It was my father. She bought it through a trust fund he set up for her.”

Surprised in his turn, Rutledge said, “Why? That’s an expensive gift.”

“He didn’t see fit to tell me. And they weren’t lovers, if that’s the conclusion you’re jumping to! He said it was a business arrangement, that he’d done it because he’d known her father. Poppycock! Tarlton never came here, and my father was never in India. I’d wager Thomas Napier’s behind it!”

“Are you saying Napier was in love with Miss Tarlton? If he’d wanted her to have a house of her own, why didn’t he buy it for her?” It was the first independent corroboration of that he’d had.