Rutland Place (19 page)

Then she looked at Emily and knew that she had seen it also.

“How kind of you,” Emily said with an edge to her voice that had far more to do with her own fears than any concern for Alston. “I am sure it is a most excellent act. Companionship is invaluable at such a time. I recall when I was bereaved, it was the company of my mother and my sister that gave me the most comfort.”

Charlotte had no idea what she was talking about—surely not Sarah’s death? That had affected them all equally—but she knew of no other bereavement.

Emily continued, regardless: “And I see no reason why you should not take a small drive if Monsieur Alaric is good enough to offer his company for that also. No one of any sensibility at all—no one who could possibly matter—would misunderstand that.” She lifted her chin. “People do misconstrue some associations, of course, but that is more often so when it is a friendship between a lady and a gentleman. Then people are bound to talk, no matter how innocent it may be in truth. Do you not agree, Monsieur Alaric?”

Charlotte watched him closely to see if she could detect in his face even the faintest degree of comprehension of what they really meant, the purpose under their superficial words.

He remained completely at ease; seemingly his attention was still upon Alston.

“There are always those who will think evil, Lady Ashworth,” he answered her. “Whatever the circumstances. One cannot possibly afford to cater to all of them. One must satisfy one’s own conscience and observe the most obvious conventions so as not to offend unnecessarily. I believe that is all. Beyond that, I think one should please oneself.” He turned to Charlotte, his eyes penetrating, as if he understood in some sense that she would have said exactly the same, were she to be truthful. “Do you not agree, Mrs. Pitt?”

She was caught in a dilemma. She hated equivocation, and her own tongue had caused enough social disasters to make anything but concurrence with him laughable. Also she would like to have been agreeable because there was a quality in him far beyond elegance, or even intellect, which drew her—a reserve of emotion as yet unreached that fascinated, like a thunderstorm, or the splendor of a rising wind far out at sea: dangerous and overwhelmingly beautiful.

She shut her eyes, then opened them wide.

“I think that can be a very selfish indulgence, Monsieur Alaric,” she said with primness that made her sick even as she was speaking. “Much as one would like to on occasion, one cannot ignore Society. If it were ever to be only oneself who paid the price for outraging people’s sensibilities, no matter how misplaced, it would be quite a different matter. But it is not. Gossip also hurts the innocent, more often than not. We are none of us alone. There are families upon whom every stain rubs off. The notion that you can please yourself without harming others is an illusion, and a most immature one. Too many people use it as an excuse for all manner of self-indulgences, and then plead ignorance and total amazement when others are dragged down with them, as if it could not have been foreseen with an ounce of sense!” She stopped for breath, not daring to look at any of them, least of all at Alaric.

“Bravo,” Emily whispered so softly that to the others it must have seemed as if she were no more than sighing.

“Charlotte!” Caroline was stunned, unable to think what to say.

“How very perceptive of you.” Emily rushed in to fill the hot silence. “And you have expressed it so well! It is a subject which has long needed some plain speaking! We delude ourselves so often to give us excuse for all sorts of behavior. Perhaps I should not, since you are my sister, but I do so commend your honesty!”

Since it was a precept Charlotte had been the last to obey in her own life, Emily’s remark could only be ironic, although there was nothing but translucent candor in her blue eyes now.

Charlotte beamed at her, daggers in her mind.

“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “You flatter me.” She stood up. “And now I, at least, must leave or I shall not have left myself time to call upon Mrs. Charrington, and I do find her so charming. Do you care to come with me, Mama? Or shall I tell her that you felt it your duty to remain here with Mr. Spencer-Brown—and Monsieur Alaric?”

Since it was manifestly ridiculous for Caroline to think anything of the sort, she had no alternative but to rise as well.

“Of course not,” she said tartly. “I should be delighted to come with you. I am very fond of Ambrosine and would like very much to call upon her. I must introduce her to Emily. Or do you know her already as well?” she added waspishly.

Emily was not in the least deterred. “No, I don’t believe I do. But Charlotte has spoken of her so kindly, I have been looking forward to meeting her.”

That was also untrue: Charlotte had never mentioned her, but it was an excellent parting line.

Alaric stood up, very straight, shoulders beautifully square, a flicker of the old laughter in his eyes, seeing them all so clearly, as a foreigner sometimes does.

“You will find her unique,” he said with a little bow. “And above all things, never, ever a bore.”

“Such a rare quality,” Charlotte murmured, blushing. “Never to be boring.”

Caroline lost her temper in frustration and reached out to kick Charlotte underneath her skirts. She missed, but the second time she caught her sharply on the ankle. The corners of her mouth lifted with satisfaction. “Quite,” she said. Then she looked at Alston, who had also risen to bid them goodbye. “If there is anything we can do, please do let me know.” Curiously she did not mention Edward, except by implication. “We are so close by and would be happy in any help or comfort we could offer—perhaps in practical arrangements?”

“How very kind of you,” Alston replied. “I should be most grateful.”

Charlotte looked straight at Alaric and met his eyes. She took a deep breath.

“I’m sure if you felt my father could offer you any help with regard to your assistance at the funeral, he would be delighted to do so.” She lifted her chin. “Perhaps he should call upon you and see what would be convenient? We have suffered bereavements ourselves, and he is a most sensitive person. I am quite convinced you would like him.” She did not look away, although she could feel the heat creeping up her face.

At last she was rewarded by an answering flash of understanding in the depths of Alaric’s eyes, and a slow color under his skin.

“Indeed.” His voice was very quiet. “I respect your purpose, Mrs. Pitt. I shall consider it gravely.”

She tried to smile, and failed. “Thank you.”

They said their formal farewells and walked to the entrance where the parlormaid was waiting, Alston having rung for her. Both doors were opened so that they might pass through without being forced into single file. Charlotte turned as they stepped into the hall and found to her considerable embarrassment that Paul Alaric was still facing them, and his eyes, wide and black, were not on Caroline, or Emily, who had also looked back, but upon herself.

The last thing she wanted was to look at Caroline, yet she found herself doing precisely that. The gaze that met hers was of one woman to another, no more; they might never have met before. The only element there was the sudden and complete knowledge of rivalry.

C
HARLOTTE COULD HARDLY
wait until Pitt returned. She made the easiest of meals, placed it in the oven to cook itself, and then flitted from one job to another, accomplishing nothing. It was quarter past six when at last she heard the front door open, and she instantly dropped the linen cloth in her hand and ran from the kitchen to meet him. Usually she forced herself to let him come to the warmth of the big cooking range, take off his coat, and sit down before speaking to him of the day, but this time she shouted as soon as his foot was in the passage.

“Thomas! Thomas, I saw Alston Spencer-Brown today, and I discovered something!” She ran down the corridor and grasped at both his hands. “I think I know something about Mina—perhaps why she was killed!”

He was wet and tired, and not in the best of moods. His superiors were still clinging to the belief that it must have been suicide while the balance of her mind was upset by some private distress. It could all be so much more decently disposed of, and without turning over a lot of people’s lives to investigate affairs that were far preferably left alone. Uncovering causes for enmity was always an ugly and unpopular occupation, and seldom profited the career of whoever undertook it—at least not if he was of a rank sufficiently advanced that there was no validity in the shield that he was merely following orders.

Pitt’s superior, Dudley Athelstan, was a younger son who had married well and had an ambition that fed on its own success. He had spent the latter part of the day trying to persuade Pitt that there was no case to investigate. There were any number of ways an unbalanced woman might come by sufficient poison to take her own life if that was what she had determined to do. When Pitt had left him, Athelstan had been in growing ill-humor because he could not convince even himself, let alone Pitt and Sergeant Harris, that the matter had been answered beyond reasonable doubt, for no chemist or apothecary could be found who had sold such a substance, and certainly no doctor had prescribed it, no matter how diligently they had searched.

Now Pitt started to undo his coat. It was dripping in the hallway, and the day before he had received a very wounded and sober criticism from Gracie about the amount of labor it took to get the floor to its degree of polish, without inconsiderate people spilling water all over it.

“Why did you go and see Alston Spencer-Brown?” he inquired a little sourly. “He’s surely nothing to do with you, or your mother?”

Charlotte could feel the irritation in him as if he had brought the cold in from the street, but she was too excited to take heed.

“The murder is to do with Mama,” she said briskly, taking the coat and putting it on a hook to drip further, instead of carrying it through to the kitchen to dry. “We have to get the locket back. Anyway, Emily wanted to visit Mama, and I went with her!” If the flame of the gas lamp in the hallway had been brighter, he might have seen her blush at the half-truth. She turned and walked smartly back to the kitchen and the fire. “Mama went to call upon him to express her sympathy,” she explained. “Anyway, that’s not important!” She swung around and faced him. “I know at least one good reason why Mina Spencer-Brown might have been killed—maybe two!” She waited, glowing with excitement.

“I can think of a dozen,” he said soberly. “But no proof for any of them. It never lacked possibilities, but they are not enough. Superintendent Athelstan wants the case closed. Suicide leaves them decently alone with their grief.”

“Not possibilities,” she burst out with impatience. “I mean real reasons! Do you remember I told you Mama said she felt as if she were being followed, watched all the time?”

“No,” he said honestly.

“I told you! Mama was aware of someone—most of the time! And Ambrosine Charrington said the same thing. Well, I believe it was Mina! She spied on people—she was what is called a Peeping Tom. Alston said so, in a roundabout sort of way— although of course he didn’t realize what he was meaning. Don’t you see, Thomas? If she followed someone with a secret, a real secret, she may have learned something that was worth killing over. And I know from Alston of at least two possibilities!”

He sat down and took off his wet boots. “What?”

“Don’t you believe me?” She had expected him to receive the news eagerly, and now he looked as if he were listening only to humor her.

He was too tired to be polite.

“I think your mother’s affaire is probably not as serious as you imagine. Plenty of people have a little flirtation, especially Society women who have little else to do. You should know that by now. I expect it’s all dropped handkerchiefs and bunches of flowers—about as real as a piece of embroidery. And I daresay if anyone was watching her, it was only out of boredom. You are making too much of it, Charlotte. If she were not your mother, you would take no notice.”

She restrained herself with great difficulty. For a moment she considered losing her temper, telling him that the outward show might be trivial but the feeling underneath was as real and as potentially violent as anything conducted in the back streets, or in less naturally restricted levels of Society. Then she realized how tired he was, how discouraged by Athelstan’s desire to hide or ignore what did not suit his ambition. Anger would communicate nothing.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said instead, looking at his wet feet and the white skin of his hands where the cold had numbed the circulation. Without waiting for an answer, she topped up the kettle and moved it from the back of the stove onto the front.

After a few moments’ silence while he put on dry socks, he looked up.

“What are these two possibilities?”

She heated the teapot and measured out the tea.

“Theodora von Schenck has an income, lately acquired, which nobody can account for. Her husband left her nothing, nor did anyone else, apparently. When she came to Rutland Place, she had nothing but the house. Now she has coats with sable collars, and Mina perhaps put forward some very interesting speculations as to where they might have come from.”

“Like what?” he inquired.

She jiggled the teapot impatiently while the kettle blew faint halfhearted whiffs of steam, hot but not yet boiling.

“A brothel,” Charlotte answered. “Or a lover. Or blackmail? There are all sorts of things worth killing to hide, where money is concerned. Maybe Theodora was blackmailing people with Mina’s information and they had a fight over the money.”

He smiled sourly. “Indeed. Your Mina seems to have had a most uncharitable turn of imagination, and a tongue to go with it. Are you sure that is what she said, and not what you are thinking for her?”

“Alston remarked several times on how perceptive she was of other people’s characters, especially the less pleasant aspects of them. But he also said that she never spoke of them to anyone but him.” She reached for the kettle at last. “However, that is the less likely possibility of the two, I think. The other possibility I remember Mina mentioning myself, and with a kind of relish, as if she knew something.” She poured the water onto the tea and put on the lid, then brought the pot to the table and set it on the polished pewter stand. She let it brew while she went on: “It has to do with the death of Ottilie Charrington, which was sudden and unexplained. One week she was in perfect health, and the next the family returned from a holiday in the country and said she was dead. Just like that! No one ever said from what cause, no one was invited to any funeral, and she was never mentioned again. Mina apparently hinted that there was something very shameful about it—perhaps a badly done abortion?” She shivered and thought of Jemima asleep upstairs in her pink cot. “Or she was murdered by a lover, or in some unbearable place, like a brothel. Or possibly even she did something so terrible that her own family murdered her to keep it silent!”