Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure) by Angela Misri Page A

“Your glasses, Mrs. Jones. I can tell you’ve been wearing your opera glasses for some time today already.”
    She turned toward me now, eyes slightly widened. “My opera glasses are in my purse,” she corrected, a touch of frost creeping into her voice.
    But I knew I was right, so I pressed on. “The creases where you press the glasses against your face — you can still see where the makeup has been slightly smeared. More so on the left than the right. So if I had to guess, I’d say you were sitting in the upper left balcony this morning, perhaps watching a dress rehearsal.”
    I was out of breath and strangely excited at the end of my statement.
    “ Anything else?” she invited, one perfectly sculpted brow raised.
    I squinted in thought, and then released my breath. “No, that is all.” I awaited her reprimand, as was the usual reaction from anyone subjected to my observations.
    The corners of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Better and better. Your grandmother’s looks and your grandfather’s brains. A deadly combination, I must say.”
     
     

     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    “ Y our grandmother and I became close when we were both divorced young mothers living in San Francisco,” Mrs. Jones explained over a late cup of tea several weeks later. “We were both divorced by men who were very alike, obsessed with their work. It was like mixing oil and water in both our cases, perhaps even more so in mine than in hers.”
    A knock at the door interrupted the discussion. Brian popped his head in. He had come straight upstairs from work, not even stopping at his flat downstairs to change out of his uniform, so I knew he had something exciting to share.
    “Oh, ’scuse me ladies, I didn’t know you were over, Mrs. Jones. I had some news to share with Miss Adams from downtown. It’ll keep — I’ll come back.”
    He gave me a wink and went back out the door.
    We listened to his receding footsteps on the stairs, and then Mrs. Jones spoke. “He graduates soon as a constable, yes?”
    I nodded.
    “Most exciting,” she said, looking as if it were anything but.
    “ So you had a child from your marriage as well, and you were living in San Francisco?” I said, drawing her back to our earlier conversation.
    “ Oh, yes, as I was saying, we were very close. Our children practically grew up together, and it wasn’t until I had to leave the country—” She hesitated. “On business, of course, that we lost touch for a few years.”
    “ On business?” I repeated, noting the slightly defensive way she said the words.
    She waved her hand as she tended to when she refused to go into detail. “It seemed very important at the time, but in hindsight, it of course was not.”
    “And then … then my son left to join that cursed war.” Her eyes took on a harder sheen. She pulled in a deep breath. “He was killed in action. I ran away from everything and everyone I knew. I ran for years. It is one of the reasons I am so well-traveled, I suppose.”
    She reached into her bag for one of her monogrammed hankies. My heart stirred at the similarity of our circumstances, both her son and my father being lost in the war. But then again, many sons and fathers were lost in that war, on both sides of the conflict.
    “By the time I allowed myself to communicate with my old life, your grandmother was dead, and your mother had moved to Toronto and married that odious gambler.”
    I felt a twinge of guilt, remembering the fights I had with my mother over my former stepfather, and pushed it away with effort. My mother’s choice of a second husband had never made any sense to me, but who were we to judge so many years later? It was a very mature reaction, I felt, after years of contempt for my stepfather. But in light of all that had happened since my mother’s death, it seemed like the distant past.
    I did some quick calculations. “So then your son was about the same age as my parents?”
    She nodded stiffly. “Indeed,