Chapter 11: The Third One

Rosalind Musselman ran a print shop two streets from the department, with a bell on the door and a smell of warm paper.

She locked the door behind us and turned the sign to Closed.

She was thirty, with red hair in a thick braid and ink on her fingers.

"Sit," she said to Tristan.

Then she looked at me.

"You too. You're the fourth. You've got more right to hear this than he does."

"The fourth?" I said.

"The fourth woman Hugh has let him blame."

Piers had walked me over and stayed on the pavement outside, with his back to the glass.

I could see his grey coat through the window.

I sat on a stool by the paper cutter.

Tristan sat on the edge of a box of flyers. He did not look at her.

"You wrote to me," he said.

"Seven times in six years." She slid a plastic crate onto the counter.

"Every one went to the business inbox Hugh set up for you in the first year."

"I don't have a mail address Hugh set up."

"Yes, you do. It's your business inbox. He reads it."

"He told you he reads it so you don't have to."

Tristan's face went slack.

"I have been writing to your assistant for six years," Rosalind said.

"He's very polite. He sends me a thank-you every time."

She opened the crate.

It was full of paper. Bank slips, printouts, a folded legal letter with a firm's name at the top.

"I'll tell you what he told you," she said. "I took four million dollars from you and went overseas."

"Yes," Tristan said.

"Say it the way you heard it."

"You asked me to invest in a boutique hotel. You said you'd handle it."

"Then the money was gone and so were you."

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