Southampton Row (15 page)

“That’s what the policeman suggested,” Rose said after a second.

Emily knew that Tellman had been promoted now that Pitt was gone from Bow Street.

“Tellman?” she asked.

“No . . . Pitt, his name was.”

Emily breathed out slowly. Now a great deal of it made ugly and frightening sense. There was no doubt anymore that the murder of the spiritualist was a political matter, or Pitt would not have been called. Special Branch could surely not have foreseen it? Could they? Charlotte had told her little of what his new duties were, but Emily knew enough of current affairs to be well aware that Special Branch dealt only with violence, anarchy, threats to the government and the throne, and the ensuing danger to the peace of the nation.

Rose still had her back to Emily. She had seen nothing. Now Emily was torn between one loyalty and another. She had asked Jack to support Aubrey Serracold, and he had been reluctant, even though he would not admit it. Now she understood that he was right. She had taken it for granted that Jack would win his seat again, with all the opportunities and the benefits that it afforded. Maybe she had been hasty in that. There were forces she had not appreciated, or Pitt would not be bothering with one unfortunate crime of passion or fraud in Southampton Row.

One obvious thought crossed her mind. If Rose had unwittingly told this woman of some incident in her past, some indiscretion, a stupid act that would now look ugly, then the possibilities for political blackmail were only too clear. And such a woman could incite motive for murder so easily.

She stared at Rose now, at the wry, eccentric elegance of her, the passion in her face so easy to read behind the thin veneer of sophistication. She pretended she had everything, but there was some wound there, raw and easy to see, even if its nature was not.

“Why did you go to Maude Lamont?” Emily said bluntly. “You’re going to have to tell Pitt one day. He’ll go on looking until he finds out, and in the process uncover all sorts of other things you might very much rather were kept discreet.”

Rose’s eyebrows arched. “Really? You sound as if you know him. He hasn’t been investigating you, has he?” It was said mockingly, a joke to divert the attention, and with an edge of challenge in it sharp enough to make Emily respond—at least that was what was intended.

“It would be a waste of his time, and hardly necessary,” Emily said with a smile. “He’s my brother-in-law. He already knows everything about me that he wishes to.” It was momentary amusement to watch the shock in Rose’s face, the hesitation as she struggled to decide whether Emily was making fun of her or not, and then a surge of anger when she realized it was true.

“That dashed policeman is some kind of a relative of yours?” she said with disgust. “I think in the circumstances you might have mentioned it!” She made a quick little gesture of dismissal. “Although I suppose if I were related to a policeman, I wouldn’t tell anyone, either! Not that I would be!” It was said as an insult, and meant as such.

Emily felt the anger rise up inside her, hot and harsh. She rose to her feet with a retort already formed just as the door opened and Aubrey Serracold came in. His long, fair face had its usual air of wry good humor and the slight twist to his mouth as if he would smile were he certain quite when and to whom it was appropriate. His pale hair fell a little forward, lopsidedly, over his brow. As always, he was immaculately dressed, today in a black jacket and faintly striped trousers, his cravat perfectly tied. His valet probably regarded it as an art form. The chill was glaringly apparent in the positions and the stiffness of both women, the distance between them and the way they were half turned. But good manners directed that he affect not to have noticed.

“Emily, how nice to see you,” he said with such natural pleasure it was possible to believe for a moment that he was oblivious of the atmosphere. He came towards her, touching Rose on the arm in a gesture of affection as he passed her. “You are standing,” he observed to Emily. “I hope that means you have just arrived, not that you are just leaving? I am feeling a trifle bruised around the edges, like an overripe dessert peach that too many people have picked up and then decided against.” He smiled ruefully. “I had no idea how terribly tedious it would be arguing with people who are really not listening to a word you say, and have long since decided what you mean, and that it is nonsense. Have you had tea?”

He looked around for signs of a tray or any other evidence of recent refreshment. “Perhaps it’s too late. I think I’ll have a whiskey.” He reached for the bell cord to fetch the butler. A flash in his eye betrayed that he knew he was talking too much to cover the silence, but he went on anyway. “Jack did warn me that most people have already made up their minds what they believe, which will be either the same as their fathers before them—and grandfathers, too—or in a few instances the direct opposite, and that argument of any sort is so much wind in the trees. I admit I thought he was being cynical.” He shrugged. “Give him my apologies, Emily. He is a man of infinite sagacity.”

Emily forced herself to smile back at him. She disagreed with Aubrey over a score of things, mostly political, but she could not help herself from liking him, and none of this was his fault. His company was sharp, immediate and very seldom unkind. “Just experience,” she answered him. “He says people vote with their hearts, not their heads.”

“Actually, he meant their bellies.” Laughter lit Aubrey’s eyes and then vanished. “How can we ever improve the world if we think no further than tomorrow’s dinner?” He glanced at Rose, but she remained grimly silent, still half turned away from Emily as if refusing to acknowledge her presence anymore.

“Well, if we don’t have tomorrow’s dinner we won’t survive into this wonderful future,” Emily pointed out. “Nor our children,” she added more soberly.

“Indeed,” Aubrey said quietly. Suddenly all levity vanished. They were talking about things for which they all cared intensely. Only Rose stood still rigid, her inner fear not swept away.

“More justice would bring more food, Emily,” Aubrey said with passionate gravity. “But men hunger for vision as well as bread. People need to believe in themselves, that what they do is better than simply toil in return for enough to survive, and barely that for many.”

In her heart Emily wanted to agree with him, but her brain told her he was dreaming too far ahead. It was bright, even beautiful. It was also impractical.

She glanced at Rose and saw the softness in her eyes, the tenderness in her mouth and how very pale she was. Emily could smell lilies and steam rising from the watered earth and feel the heat of the sunlight on the stone floor, but she could sense fear as if it overrode all else. Knowing how fiercely Rose shared Aubrey’s beliefs, perhaps was even ahead of them, Emily wondered what did Rose need to know so much that she would now seek another spirit medium, even after what had happened to Maude Lamont?

And what had happened to Maude Lamont? Had she tried political blackmail one time too many, one secret too dangerous? Or was it a domestic tragedy, a lover betrayed, a jealousy over some man’s attention stolen or misdirected? Had she promised to relay a command from the next world, perhaps about money, and then reneged on it? There were a hundred possibilities. It did not have to have anything to do with Rose—except that Thomas was there not from Bow Street but from Special Branch!

Could the unknown man have been some politician, a lover, or wished to be? Perhaps he had conceived a passion for her which she had rejected, and in his humiliation he had turned on her and killed her?

Surely, Pitt would have thought of that, wouldn’t he?

She looked across at Aubrey now. His expression seemed at a glance to be earnest, but the ghost of humor always hovered in his eyes, as if he could see some enormous comic joke and knew himself a bit player, no more or less important than anyone else, no matter how intensely he might feel. Perhaps that was the greatest reason she liked him.

Rose was still half turned away. She had been listening to Aubrey, but the rigidity of her shoulders made it clear she had not forgotten her quarrel with Emily; she hid it because she would not explain it to him.

Emily gave her light, warm, social smile and said how nice it was to see them both. She wished Aubrey success and reaffirmed her support for him, and Jack’s also, even though she was less certain of it, and then took her leave. Rose went as far as the hall with her. She was polite, her voice cheerful, her eyes cold.

On the ride home, sitting in her carriage as it fought its way through the crush of hansoms, coaches, landaus and a dozen other kinds of vehicles, Emily wondered what she should tell Pitt, or if she should speak to him at all. Rose expected her to, and that in itself made her angry, as if she had deceived already, at least in intent. It was untrue, and unfair.

And yet she did instinctively think to tell Pitt all that might be of use to him, all that would explain what had happened, as much for Rose’s own sake as anyone else’s!

No it wasn’t. It was for truth, and for Jack. As she sat and puzzled over the medium’s death it was Jack’s face that was in her mind all the time, his presence with her as if he were at her shoulder, barely out of sight. She liked Aubrey, she wanted him to win, not only for the good he could do, but intensely, for himself. But it was the fear that he would drag Jack down which drove her to pursue the truth.

She had never seriously considered before that Jack might lose. She had thought only of the opportunities ahead, the privileges and the pleasures. Now she realized with a chill as the carriage lurched forward again, and the shouting of irate drivers cut the warm air, that if he lost there would be a bitter change to get used to, just as harsh as that which Charlotte faced now. Invitations would be different, parties immeasurably more tedious. How would she go back to the idleness of society after the thrill in the blood of politics, the heady dream of power? And sharp and very real, how could she hide her own humiliation that she no longer had anything worthwhile to do?

The resolve that Jack must win tightened in her. She was perfectly aware of her own motives, and it made no difference what-ever. Reason did not touch emotion any more than sunlight touches the deep-sea currents. She must do all that was within her ability to help.

She needed someone else to talk to. Charlotte was in Dartmoor; she did not even know precisely where. Her mother, Caroline, was on tour with her second husband, Joshua, an actor presently playing the lead in one of Mr. Wilde’s plays in Liverpool.

But even had they been at home, her first choice for confidante would have been Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, a great-aunt of her first husband who had remained one of her dearest friends. Therefore she now leaned forward and commanded her coachman to take her to Vespasia’s house, even though she had never written or left a card, which was a complete break of etiquette. But then Vespasia had never allowed rules to prevent her from doing what she believed to be right, and would almost certainly forgive Emily for doing the same.

Emily was fortunate in that Vespasia was in and had half an hour since said good-bye to her last visitor.

“My dear Emily, what a pleasure to see you,” Vespasia said without rising from her seat by the window of the sitting room. It was all pale colors and full of sunlight. “The more especially at this extraordinary hour,” she added, “since it must be something of great interest or urgency which brings you. Do sit down and tell me what it is.” She waved impassively at the chair opposite her own, and then regarded Emily’s costume with a critical eye. She was stiff-backed, silver-haired, and still had the marvelous eyes and bones which had made her the greatest beauty of her generation. She had never followed fashion, she had always led it. “Very becoming,” she gave her approval. “You have been calling upon someone you wish to impress . . . a woman who takes her clothes very seriously, I imagine.”

Emily smiled with a sharp sense of pleasure, and relief at being in the company of someone she liked without shadow or equivocation. “Yes,” she agreed. “Rose Serracold. Do you know of her?” Vespasia would not be socially acquainted with Rose, since there were the best part of two generations, a gulf of social status, and a considerable degree of wealth, even though Aubrey was more than comfortable, between them. Emily had no idea whether Vespasia would approve of Rose’s political opinions. Vespasia could be very extreme herself on occasions, and had fought like a tigress for the reforms in which she believed. But she was also a realist, and fiercely practical. She could very easily see the Socialist ideals as ill-based in the realities of human nature.

“And what in Mrs. Serracold’s visit brought you here, rather than home to change for dinner?” Vespasia asked. “Is she related to Aubrey Serracold, who is standing for Lambeth South, and according to the newspapers has expressed some rather foolish ideals?”

“Yes, she is his wife.”

“Emily, I am not a dentist to be extracting information from you, like teeth!”

“I’m sorry,” Emily said contritely. “It all seems so absurd now I come to put it into words.”

“Many things do,” Vespasia observed. “That does not mean they are not real. Is it to do with Thomas?” There was a sharp note of concern in her voice, and her eyes were shadowed.

“Yes . . . and no,” Emily said quietly. Suddenly it was not ridiculous at all. If Vespasia were afraid, too, then the cause of it was real. “Thomas and Charlotte were going on holiday to Dartmoor, but Thomas’s leave was canceled—”

“By whom?” Vespasia interrupted.

Emily swallowed. With a jolt of pain and embarrassment she realized Thomas had not told Vespasia of his dismissal from Bow Street the second time. But she would have to know. Silence was only delaying what was inevitable. “By Special Branch,” she said huskily, her voice choked with anger, and now fear as well. She saw the surprise, and then the hardening in Vespasia’s face. “He was dismissed from Bow Street again,” she went on. “Charlotte told me when she came to pick up Edward to take him with her to Dartmoor. Pitt had been sent back to Special Branch, and his leave rescinded.”