Read Online No Comfort for the Lost by Nancy Herriman - Free Book Online Page A

Lange’s shop. As she’d hoped, he had returned and was outside on the street, speaking with a man who had his back to Celia.
    “Mr. Lange,” she called out.
    The stranger turned toward her. He caught her eye, frowned, and rushed off. He must not appreciate being interrupted.
    Mr. Lange let him go without comment. “Madame Davies. It is good to see you. The news about Miss Li . . .” He shook his head sadly and escorted her inside the shop.
    Apparently, the stranger had distracted Mr. Lange while he had been preparing pills. A mahogany pill roller and a bowl of reddish paste bound together by plant gum and glycerine waited on the shop’s large table.
    “I cannot believe it, either,” she said.
    “A detective was here to talk to us. Do you think the police believe we are responsible?”
    “Of course not. They’re merely being thorough.”
    “Ah.
Oui.
” Hubert Lange stepped around the table. “Do you mind if I continue?” He gestured at the pill roller. “It is a most important order.”
    “Not at all. Please do.”
    He formed a thin tube out of the reddish paste. “You have come for your gum arabic, no?”
    “I have. You were not here when I stopped by earlier.”
    “Ah yes. I was called away to make a delivery.” She noticed his hands were shaking. It was not like him to be so agitated; he must be very upset by Li Sha’s death. “Was not Thérèse here?” he asked.
    She was glad he asked the question; now she did not have to think up a reason to inquire about Tessie’s peculiar actions. “No, she was gone as well.”
    “I must speak to her about leaving when I am away.” He flipped over the mahogany roller, revealing the twenty-four channels carved on the other side, laid the paste tube atop them, and began pressing out pills. “We cannot have the customers going to the other shops because we are not open.”
    “I was on my way home when I spotted her heading for the Barbary.”
A trifle disingenuous, Celia.
“I thought it so unusual, I decided to follow her.”
    He glanced up then and peered at her through his spectacles. “You follow my daughter?”
    Celia flushed. However, in for a pence, in for a pound.
    “I’m far too curious at times, I suppose,” she said, hoping she sounded as though she realized she’d been silly. She probably had been silly. “I know how much you worry about her, though. So I thought I should tell you that when Tessie was in the Barbary, I saw her talking to a rather unpleasant-looking man.”
    “A man in the Barbary?” he asked, stroking the flat paddle forcefully across the grooves, the pills dropping into the shallow trough at the end. “Perhaps she did not go to speak to this man you saw, but he stopped her. You know how it is in this city. The men, they can be so . . . what is the word? Brazen?”
    Tessie hadn’t seemed alarmed by the man’s advances, though. “So you don’t believe the man was an acquaintance of hers?”
    “Not at all. Who would she know in such a place?” asked Mr. Lange, applying a trembling fingertip to his spectacles and sliding them up the bridge of his nose. “I thank you for the concern, Madame Davies, but you do not need to worry. I will tend to Thérèse.”
    He picked up a labeled jar from the table. “Here is your gum arabic,” he said, and waved a hand at his pills. “And as you see, I am most busy, so . . .”
    “Yes, of course. I will leave you to your work,” she answered, taking the glass jar and leaving behind the money she owed him. “Good day.”
    She exited the shop, pausing to look back through the window. Mr. Lange returned her gaze, his mouth set in a grim line. She waved jauntily and headed up the street.
    “There is something wrong there,” she said to herself.
    Not only had Tessie’s behavior been strange, but her father’s agitation was out of character. She’d known the Langes since she and Patrick had arrived in San Francisco and she’d gone to him for medication to relieve some chest