Callander Square

ONE

The autumn air hung mild and faintly misty, and the grass in Callander Square was dappled yellow with fallen leaves in the late afternoon sun. In the small garden in the center of the square two men stood with spades, looking down into a shallow hole. The taller of them bent down and put his hands into the damp soil, searching. Gingerly he brought up the article he sought, a small, bloody bone.

The other breathed out noisily.

“What d’yer reckon it is, then? Too big to be a bird.”

“Pet,” the first replied. “Someone buried a dog, or the like.”

The shorter man shook his head. “They didn’t oughter do that.” He looked disparagingly at the pale Georgian facades rearing up in severe elegance beyond the lacy birch leaves and the limes. “They got gardens for that sort of thing. They oughter have more respect.”

“It musta bin a small dog,” the taller man turned the bone over in his hand. “Maybe a cat.”

“A cat! Go on. Gentlemen don’t ’ave cats; and ladies don’t go digging in gardens. Wouldn’t know a spade if it up an’ bit em.

“Must ’a’ bin a servant. Cook, most like.”

“Still didn’t oughter do it,” he shook his head to emphasize his point. “Like animals, I do. A pet what ’as done ’er service in the ’ouse oughter be buried proper: not where people’s going to go and dig ’er up again, unknowing like.”

“They mightn’t ’a’ thought we was going to dig ’ere. It’s years since we put anything new in this bit. Wouldn’t‘a’ done now, except we got this bush give us.”

“Well we’d better put it somewhere else: a bit over to the left p’raps. Leave the poor little thing in peace. It ain’t right to disturb the dead, even animals. Dare say someone cared for it. Kept someone’s kitchen clean o’ mice.”

“Can’t put it to the left, yer gawp! We’ll kill the forsythia.”

“You watch yer tongue! Put it to the right then.”

“Can’t. That rhode-thing grows like a house, it does. Got to put it ’ere.”

“Then put the cat under the rhode-thing. Dig it up proper, and I’ll do the burying.”

“Right.” He put his spade where he judged it would bring the body up in one piece and set his weight on it. The earth came up easily, soft with loam and leaf mold, and fell away. The two men stared.

“Oh Gawd Almighty!” The spade fell from his hands. “Oh Gawd save us!”

“What-what-is it?”

“It’s not a cat. I–I think it’s a baby.”

“Oh Holy Mother. What do we do?”

“We’d better get the police.”

“Yeah.”

He let the spade down slowly, very gently, as if somehow even now it mattered.

“You going?” The other stared at him.

“No. No, I’ll stay ’ere. You go and get a constable. And ’urry! It’ll be dark soon.”

“Yeah! Yeah!” He was galvanized into action, desperately relieved to have something to do, above all something that would take him away from the hole in the ground and the bloody little mess on the spade.

The constable was young and still new to his beat. The great fashionable squares overawed him with their beautiful carriages, their matched pairs of liveried footmen and armies of servants. He found himself tongue-tied when he was required to speak to them, the magisterial butlers, the irascible cooks, the handsome parlormaids. The bootboys, the scullery maids, and the tweenies were much more his class.

When he saw the hole in the ground and the gardeners’ discovery he knew it was totally beyond him, and with horror and relief, told them to wait where they were, move nothing, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the police station to hand the whole thing over to his inspector.

He burst into the office, abandoning his manners in the excitement.

“Mr. Pitt, sir, Mr. Pitt! There’s been a dreadful thing, sir, a terrible thing!”

Pitt was standing by the window, a big man with long, curved nose and humorous mouth. He was plain to a degree, and quite incredibly untidy, but there was intelligence and wit in his face. He raised his eyebrows at the constable’s precipitate entrance, and when he spoke his voice was beautiful.

“What sort of dreadful thing, McBeath?”

The constable gasped; he could not utter a coordinated sentence for his lack of breath.

“A body-sir. In Callander Square. Pitiful, sir-it is. They just found it now-the gardeners-dug it up. In the middle. Planting a tree, or something.”

Pitt’s face puckered in surprise.

“Callander Square? Are you sure? You haven’t got lost again, have you?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir, right in the middle. Callander Square, sir. I’m positive. You’d better come and see.”

“Buried?” Pitt frowned. “What sort of body?”

“A baby, sir.” McBeath closed his eyes and suddenly he looked quite ill. “A very small baby, sir, like newborn, I think. Reminds me of my kid sister, when she was born.”

Pitt breathed out very slowly, a sort of private sigh.

“Sergeant Batey!” he said loudly.

The door opened and a uniformed man looked in.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get an ambulance and Doctor Stillwell and come to Callander Square.”

“Someone been attacked, sir?” His face brightened. “Robbed?”

“No. Probably only a domestic tragedy.”

“A domestic tragedy?” McBeath’s voice rose in outrage. “It’s murder!”

Batey stared at him.

“Probably not,” Pitt said calmly. “Probably some wretched servant girl seduced, kept it to herself, and gave birth alone, and the child died. She’d bury it and tell no one, nurse her grief to herself, so she wouldn’t be put out on the streets with no job, and no character to get another. God knows how many times it happens.”

McBeath looked pale and pinched.

“Do you think so, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt answered him, going toward the door. “But it wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last. We’d better go and see.”

It took Pitt the last half hour of daylight to look at the little body, poke round in the crumbly soil to see if there were anything else, to help identify it, and find the second, misshapen, cold little body. He sent the doctor and the ambulance away with them both, and a shaking, white-faced McBeath home to his rooms, then Batey and his men to post guard in the gardens. There was nothing else he could do that night until the doctor had given him some information: how old the babies had been, how long ago they had died, as near as could be estimated, and if possible what had been wrong with the second, deeper buried one to cause that misshapen skull. It was too much to hope they could tell now from what they had died.

He arrived at his own home in the dark and the fine, clinging dampness of fog. The yellow gaslights were welcoming, promising warmth not only to the body, but to the mind, and the raw, vulnerable feelings.

He stepped inside with an acute sense of pleasure that nearly two years of marriage had not mellowed. In the spring of 1881 he had been called to the horrifying case of the Cater Street hangman, the mass murderer of young women, who garroted them and left their swollen-faced bodies in the dark streets. In that dreadful circumstance he had met Charlotte Ellison. Of course at that time she had treated him with the dignified coolness any such well-bred young woman would use toward a policeman, who was rather lower in the social scale than a moderately good butler. But Charlotte was a girl of terrifying honesty, not only toward others, causing a social chaos; but toward herself also. She had acknowledged her love for him, and found the courage to defy convention and accept him in marriage.

They were poor, startlingly so compared with the considerable comfort of her father’s home, but with ingenuity and her usual forthrightness she had dispensed with most of the small status symbols without which her erstwhile friends would have considered themselves bereft. Occasionally when his feelings were raw on the matter, she joked that the relief from pretense was a pleasure to her; and perhaps it was at least half true.

Now she came from the small drawing room with its sparse, well-polished furniture and autumn flowers in a glass vase. Her dress was one she had brought with her, wine colored, a little out of fashion now, but her face glowed and the lamplight picked out all the warm mahogany tones in her hair.

He felt a quick surge of joy, almost of excitement, as he saw her and reached out immediately to touch her, to kiss her.

After a moment she pulled back, looking at him.

“What is it?” she asked with a lift of anxiety in her voice.

In the quick, enveloping warmth of meeting he had forgotten Callander Square. Now the memory returned. He would not tell her; heaven knew, after Cater Street there was little of horror that she could not cope with, but there was no need to distress her with this. She was quick to sympathy-the little bodies, whether crime or simple tragedy, would stir her imagination to all the pain, the isolation and fear, whatever lonely, terrible thoughts had possessed the mother.

“What is it?” she repeated.

He put his arm round her and turned her back to the drawing room, or perhaps parlor would have been a less pretentious name for it, in so small a house.

“A case,” he replied, “in Callander Square. It will probably prove to be very little, but tedious in the proof. What have we for dinner? I’ve been outside and I’m hungry.”

She did not press him again, and he spent a slow, sweet evening by the fire, watching her face as she bent in concentration over her sewing, a piece of linen worn beyond its strength. Over the years there would be much patching and making do, many meals without meat, and when the children came, hand-me-down clothes; but it all seemed only a comfortable labor now. He found himself smiling.

In the morning it was different. He left early when the October mist still clung round the damp leaves and there was no wind. He went to the police station first, to see if Doctor Stillwell had anything to tell him.

Stillwell’s dour face was even longer than usual. He looked at Pitt sourly, bringing with his presence an immediate reminder of death and human mutability.

Pitt felt the warmth slip away, the comfort he had woken with.

“Well?” he asked grimly.

“First one quite normal, as far as I can tell,” Stillwell said quietly. “Which isn’t very far. Been dead about six months I should judge, poor little thing. Can’t tell you whether it was born dead, or died within a day or two. Nothing in the stomach.” He sighed. “Can’t even tell you if it died naturally or was killed. Suffocation would be easy, leave no marks. It was a girl, by the way.”

Pitt took a deep breath.

“What about the other, the one lower down?”

“Been dead a lot longer, nearer two years, from what I can tell. Again, that’s pretty much of a guess. And again, I don’t know whether it was born dead, or died within a few days. But it was abnormal, I can tell you beyond doubt-”

“I could see that myself. What caused it?”

“Don’t know. Congenital, not an injury in birth.”

“Would there be something in the parents’ history-?”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know what causes these things. Children like that can be born to anyone, even in the best families; it’s just that they more often manage to keep it quiet.”

Pitt thought for a few moments. Could that be what it was, a matter of social embarrassment?

“What about the top one?” He looked up at Stillwell. “Was that one deformed as well, anything wrong with its brain?”

Stillwell shook his head.

”Not that I could see, but of course if it were going to become mentally defective, there would be no way of telling at that age. It was no more than a few days old at the most. It could even have been born dead,” he frowned. “Although I don’t think so. There wasn’t anything I could see to cause death. Heart, lungs, and intestines seemed quite normal. But of course it was to some extent decomposed. I really don’t know, Pitt. You’ll just have to make your own inquiries, and see what you can find out.”

“Thank you.” There was nothing else to say. Pitt collected Batey and in silence they set out in the misty morning, the tree-lined streets smelling of rotting leaves and damp stone.

Callander Square was deserted; the sightseers such a discovery might have provoked elsewhere were abashed to invade its elegant pavements. There was no sign of life in the great houses except the whisk of a broom on an area step and the hollow sound of a footman stamping his boots. It was too early for errand boys; the cooks and parlormaids would barely have finished serving breakfast to the later risers.

Pitt went to the nearest house, up the steps, and knocked discreetly at the door, then stepped back.

Several minutes later it was opened by a well-built, darkly handsome footman. He looked at Pitt with heavy-lidded, supercilious eyes. Years of training had taught him to sum up a man even before he opened his mouth. He knew instantly that Pitt was a little better than a tradesman, but far from being a man of birth, let alone a gentleman.

“Yes, sir?” he inquired with a faint lift of his voice.

“Inspector Pitt, police.” Pitt met his eye levelly. “I would like to speak to the mistress of the house.”

The footman’s face was impassive.

“I am not aware that we have suffered any burglaries. Perhaps you have come to the wrong house? This is the residence of General Balantyne and Lady Augusta Balantyne.”

“Indeed. I did not know that. But it is the situation of the house that makes it of concern to me. May I come in?”

The footman hesitated. Pitt stood his ground.

“I’ll see if Lady Augusta will see you,” the footman conceded reluctantly. “You had better come in. You can wait in the morning room. I shall discover if her ladyship has finished her breakfast.”

It was a long, irritating half hour before the morning room door opened and Lady Augusta Balantyne came in. She was a handsome woman with bone china elegance of feature, and dressed in expensive and classic taste. She looked at Pitt without curiosity.

“Max says that you wish to see me, Mr.-er-”

“Pitt. Yes ma’am, if you please.”

“What about, pray?”

Pitt looked at her. She was not a woman with whom to prevaricate. He plunged straight in.

“Yesterday evening two bodies were dug up in the gardens in the middle of the square-”

Lady Augusta’s eyebrows rose in disbelief.

“In Callander Square? Don’t be ridiculous! Bodies of what, Mr.-er?”

“Pitt,” he repeated. “Babies, ma’am. The bodies of two newborn babies were found buried in the gardens. One was about six months ago, the other nearer to two years.”

“Oh dear,” she was visibly distressed. “How very tragic. I suppose some maidservant-To the best of my knowledge it is no one in my household, but of course I shall make inquiries, if you wish.”

“I would prefer to do it myself, ma’am; with your permission.” He tried to make it affirmative, as though he were assuring her agreement rather than asking her permission. “Naturally I shall be calling at all the houses in the square-”

“Of course. My offer was merely a matter of courtesy. If you discover anything that involves my household, naturally you will inform me.” Again it was a statement and not a question. Authority sat on her easily, long a familiar garment, and she had no need to display it.

He smiled acknowledgment, but he did not commit himself in words.

She reached for the bell and rang it. The butler appeared.

“Hackett, Mr. Pitt is from the police. There have been two babies found in the gardens. He will be questioning the servants in all the houses. Will you please find him a quiet room where he can speak to any of the staff he wishes? And see that they make themselves available.”

“Yes, my lady.” Hackett looked at Pitt with distaste, but obeyed precisely.

“Thank you, Lady Augusta,” Pitt inclined his head and followed the butler to a small room at the back which he supposed to be the housekeeper’s sitting room. He obtained a complete list of the female staff, and the essentials of information about each one. He did no more than speak to them this time. Everyone showed shock, dismay, pity; and everyone equally denied all knowledge. It was exactly what he had expected.

He was in the hall, looking for either the butler or one of the footmen to say he was finished, for the time being, when he saw another young woman coming out of one of the doorways. There was no possibility she was a servant; far more suggestive of her position than her silk gown or her beautifully dressed and coiffed hair was the hint of swagger in her walk, the half smile on her full-lipped little mouth, the sureness, the suppressed excitement in her dark, fringed eyes.

“Goodness!” she said with mock surprise. “Who are you?” She raked him up and down with an amused, blue glance. “You can’t be calling on one of the maids, at this hour! Have you come to see Father? Are you an old batman, or something?”

Only Charlotte had ever shaken Pitt’s composure, and that was because he loved her. He looked back at this girl steadily.

“No, ma’am, I am from the police. I have been speaking to some of your servants.”

“From the police!” her voice rose in delight. “How perfectly shocking. Whatever for?”

“Information.” He smiled very slightly. “That is always what the police speak to people for.”

“I have a suspicion you are laughing at me.” Her eyes were bright. “Mr.-?”

“Inspector Pitt.”

“Inspector Pitt,” she repeated. “I am Christina Balantyne; but I suppose you knew that. What are you asking questions about? Has there been a crime?”

Pitt was saved from having to compose an answer at once civil and uncommunicative by the breakfast room door opening and a man coming out whom Pitt assumed to be General Balantyne. He was tall, nearly as tall as Pitt himself, but tighter knit, of stiffer bearing. His face was smooth-boned, lean, and aquiline. It was a striking head; too arrogant to be handsome, too strong of jaw and teeth.

“Christina!” he said sharply.

She turned.

“Yes, Papa.”

“The policeman’s business with the servants can hardly be of interest to you. Have you no letters to write, or sewing to do?” The question was academic; it was a dismissal. She accepted it with a straight back and stiff lip.

Pitt hid a smile and bowed his head fractionally.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to the general after she had gone. “I was unsure how to answer her without distressing her with unpleasant facts.” It was something less than the truth, but it served well for the moment.

The general grunted.

“Have you finished?”

“Yes, sir. I was looking for the butler to say so.”

“Discover anything?” the general looked at him with quick, intelligent eyes.

“Not yet, but I have only just begun. Who lives next door?” He gestured toward the south side of the square.

“Reggie Southeron next to us,” the general replied. “Then young Bolsover at the end on this side. Garson Campbell on the other; Leatitia Doran opposite Southeron; opposite us on the far side is vacant at the moment. Has been for a couple of years. Sir Robert Carlton on the far side, and an elderly fellow called Housmann, a complete recluse. Has no women in the house, hates them; all male staff.”

“Thank you, sir, most helpful. I’ll try Mr. Southeron next.”

Balantyne took a sharp breath, then let it out. Pitt waited, but he did not add anything.

The Southeron house was busier-he heard the light laughter of children even before he had reached for the bell-pull. It was opened by one of the handsomest parlormaids he had ever seen.

“Yes, sir?” she said with perfect formality.

“Good morning, I am Inspector Pitt from the police; may I speak to either Mr. or Mrs. Southeron?”

She stepped back.

“If you would like to come in, sir, I’ll inquire if they will see you.”

He followed her into the hall, beautifully furnished, but less Spartan than the Balantynes’. There were baubles on the hangings, richly upholstered chairs, and even a doll sitting carelessly on a small side table. He watched the straight back of the parlormaid, and the becoming little twitch of her skirt as she walked. He smiled to himself; then hoped with a sudden acute stab of pity that she was not the one, that it was not the result of her seduction, her brief yielding to passion, buried out there under the trees.

She showed him into the morning room and left him. He heard a scampering of feet on the stairs-a tweeny maid, or a child of the house? There was probably little difference in age; some girls began their life in service at no more than eleven or twelve.

The door burst open and a thin, blue-eyed little face looked in. Her total composure proclaimed her immediately as a daughter of the house. Her hair was tied up in ringlets and her skin was scrubbed clean.

“Good morning,” Pitt said solemnly.

“Good morning,” she replied, letting the door swing open a little farther, her eyes still fixed on his face.

“You have a very elegant house,” he said to her with courtesy, as if she had been an adult, and the house hers. “Are you the mistress?”

She giggled, then straightened her face with quick recollection of her position.

“No, I’m Chastity Southeron. I live here, since my Mama and Papa died. Papa was Uncle Reggie’s brother. Who are you?”

“My name is Thomas Pitt, I’m an inspector of police.”

She let out her breath in a long sigh.

“Has somebody stolen something?”

“Not as far as I know. Have you lost something?”

“No. But you can question me,” she came into the room. “I might be able to tell you something.” It was an offer.

He smiled.

“I’m sure you could tell me a great deal that is interesting, but I don’t know what questions to ask, yet.”

“Oh.” She made as if to sit down, but the door opened again and Reginald Southeron came in. He was a wide man, fleshy-faced and comfortable.

“Chastity?” he said with good-humored exasperation. “Jemima will be looking for you. You should be at your lessons. Go upstairs this moment.”

“Jemima is my governess,” Chastity explained to Pitt. “I have to do lessons. Are you coming back?”

“Chastity!” Southeron repeated.

She dropped a tiny curtsey to Pitt and fled upstairs.

Southeron’s attitude stiffened slightly, but the good humor did not leave him.

“Mary Ann says you are from the police.” He sounded faintly disbelieving. “Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.” Again there was no point in circumlocution, and Pitt explained his visit as simply as he could.

“Oh dear,” Reggie Southeron sat down quickly, his rather florid face paling. “What an-a-” he changed his mind and began again. “What a shocking affair,” he said with more composure. “How very distressing. I assure you I know nothing that could be of help to you.”

“Naturally,” Pitt agreed hypocritically. He looked at the man’s wide mouth, sensuous jowls, and soft, well-manicured hands. No doubt he knew nothing of the bodies in the square, but if he knew nothing of their conception it might be more by good fortune than intent. “But I would like your permission to interview your staff,” he asked.

“My staff?” The momentary discomposure returned.

“Belowstairs gossip is invaluable,” Pitt said easily. “Even those who are in no way involved may know something, a word here or there.”

“Of course. Yes, yes, I suppose so. Well, if you must. But I should be obliged if you would not upset them more than is absolutely necessary; so difficult to get good staff these days. I’m sure you understand-no-no-of course not-you wouldn’t.” He was oblivious of patronage. “Very well. I suppose it is unavoidable. I’ll get my butler to see to it.” He hauled himself to his feet and went out without saying anything further.

Pitt spoke to all the staff one by one, informed the butler, and took his leave. It had occupied the best part of the morning and it was already time for lunch. In the afternoon he returned to the square. It was two o’clock when he knocked at the third door, which, according to General Balantyne, should be that of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bolsover. During lunch he had seen Stillwell again, and asked him if he knew of Bolsover professionally.

“Hardly in my category,” Stillwell had pulled a face. “Probably makes more in a month than I do in a year. Must do, to live in Callander Square. Society doctor, comforting a lot of hypochondriac ladies who have nothing more interesting to do than contemplate their health. Nice practice, if you have the patience, and the manners, and from what I hear Bolsover has. Good family, good start, all the right connections.”

“Good doctor?” Pitt had asked.

“No idea.” Stillwell’s eyebrows had gone up. “Does it matter?”

“Not in the least, I should think.”

The Bolsovers’ door was opened by a somewhat surprised parlormaid, small and pert, but in her own way almost as attractive as the last one. Of course, parlormaids were chosen for their looks. This one regarded Pitt with some dismay. He was not the sort of person admitted to the front door, and this was not the time of day for callers; he was at least an hour to an hour and a half early, and it was usually ladies who called for the afternoon social ritual.

“Yes, sir?” she said after a moment.

“Good afternoon. May I speak with Mrs. Bolsover, if she is at home. My name is Pitt; I am from the police.”

“The police!”

“If I may?” He moved to step inside and she retreated nervously.

“Mrs. Bolsover is expecting callers,” the maid said quickly. “I don’t think-”

”It’s important,” Pitt insisted. “Please ask her.”

The girl hesitated; he knew she was concerned in case he was still there when the lady callers arrived, thus embarrassing her mistress. After all, respectable people did not have the police in the house at all, let alone at the front door.

“The sooner you ask her, the more quickly I shall be able to finish my business,” Pitt pointed out persuasively.

She saw his argument and scurried off to comply; anything to get him off the doorstep.

Sophie Bolsover was a pretty woman, not unlike her own parlormaid, had the girl been dieted a little, dressed in silk, and her hair curled and coiffed.

“Good afternoon,” she said quickly. “Polly says you are from the police.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He respected her social embarrassment and explained his business as rapidly as possible, then asked her permission to speak to her servants as he had done in the other houses. It was granted hastily and he was almost physically bundled into the housekeeper’s parlor to conduct his inquiries safely out of sight. He began with the parlormaid Polly, to leave her free for her afternoon duties as soon as the first caller should arrive.

He learned nothing but names and faces; he would store them all in his mind, consider them, rule out the impossibilities. Perhaps the sheer tension, the presence of the police in the house, would frighten someone into indiscretions, mistakes. Or perhaps they would never find out what sordid affair, or private tragedy of love and deceit, lay behind the small deaths.

The Campbells and the Dorans were, as General Balantyne had said, not in residence at the moment. He passed the vacant house, ascertained that the reclusive Housmann did indeed employ only menservants, and it was after four o’clock when he knocked at the last door-that of Sir Robert and Lady Carlton.

It was opened by a startled parlormaid.

“Yes, sir?”

“Inspector Pitt, from the police.” He knew he was intruding, as it was the most inconvenient of all times to call, the time when the rigid etiquette of the social hierarchy was observed to the letter, the intricacies of rank, whether one called to visit, or merely left a card, whether calls were acknowledged, returned, who spoke to whom, and on what terms. To have the police at such a time was unforgettable. He endeavored to make his presence as inoffensive as possible. They could not have been taken by surprise. Backdoor gossip would long ago have reached them carrying his purpose, whom he had seen, what had been asked, probably even a minute description of him and an acute assessment of his precise social status.

The parlormaid took a deep breath.

“You had better come in,” she stepped back, surveying him with anxiety and disapproval, as if he might have brought crime in with him like a disease. “Come through to the back, we’ll find a place for you. The mistress can’t see you, of course. She has callers. Lady Townshend,” she added with pride. Pitt was ignorant of Lady Townshend’s importance, but he endeavored to look suitably impressed. The parlormaid saw his expression and was mollified. “I’ll get Mr. Johnson,” she added. “He’s the butler.”

“Thank you.” Pitt sat down where she pointed and she swept out.

At home Charlotte Pitt had attended to the ordering of her house, which took her no more than an hour, then had immediately dispatched her single housemaid to purchase a daily newspaper so that she might discover what it was that Pitt would not tell her. Previous to her marriage she had been forbidden by her father to read such things. Like most other men of breeding he believed them vulgar and totally unsuitable for women. After all, they carried little else but crime and scandal, and such political notions as were undesirable for the consideration of women, as well, of course, as intellectually beyond them. Charlotte had had to indulge her interest by bribery of the butler or with the connivance of her brother-in-law, Dominic Corde. She smiled now to think how she had loved Dominic in those days, when Sarah was still alive. The smile vanished. Sarah’s death still hurt, and the passion for Dominic had long ago cooled to friendship. She had been shocked and dismayed to discover she was in love with this awkward and impertinent policeman who had told her so disturbingly of a world she had never previously acknowledged, a world of petty crime and desperate, grinding poverty. Her own blind comfort had become offensive to her, her judgments had changed.

Of course her parents had been shaken when she had informed them she intended to marry a policeman, but they had accepted it with as good a grace as possible. After all, she was something of a liability on the marriage market, with her unacceptable frankness. She was handsome enough, in fact Pitt thought her beautiful, but she had not sufficient money to overcome her waywardness and her undisciplined tongue, devastating disadvantages in the eyes of any gentleman of her own station. Her grandmother had given up all hope and was dismally convinced poor Charlotte was destined to become an old maid. And there was the compensation of Emily having married a lord! And with the social stigma of a murder in the house, the Ellisons were no longer a family with whom one chose willingly to contract an alliance!

Pitt was a great deal firmer with Charlotte than she had expected; indeed, in spite of his being deeply and unashamedly in love with her, he was quite as insufferably bossy as all the other men she knew. She was amazed, to begin with, and even fought him a little, but in her heart she was quite glad of it. She had barely dared to admit it to herself, but she had been a little afraid that because of his devotion to her, and their previous relative social positions, he might have let her ride over him, bend his will to hers. She was secretly delighted to discover he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. Of course she had cried, and made an exhibition of both temper and hurt in their first quarrel. But she had gone to sleep with singing happiness inside her when he had come to her gently, taking her in his arms, but utterly and finally refusing to allow her her own way.

But he had never objected to her reading the newspapers, and as soon as the maid returned with the copy of today’s she scrambled through it, fingers flying to find some reference to a crime in Callander Square. She did not find it the first time and had to search more diligently before she discovered a small piece, barely two inches long, stating simply that two bodies of babies had been found in the gardens, and a domestic tragedy among the maidservants was suspected.

She knew immediately why Pitt had concealed it from her. She herself was newly expecting their first child. The thought of some servant girl, alone, desperate not to lose her livelihood, deserted by a lover-the whole thing was appalling. She felt cold at the imagining of it. Yet when she put the paper down she was already determined not to drive it from her mind. Perhaps she would be able to help the girl, if she were thrown out. It was a possibility: not herself, of course, she had no position to offer. But Emily! Emily was rich-and she had a deep suspicion she was also just a little bored. It was two years since her marriage also, and she had by now met all George Ashworth’s friends of any importance; she had been seen well dressed in all the fashionable places. Perhaps this would arouse her. Charlotte decided on the spot. This afternoon she would call upon Emily; early, so as not to collide with her more socially elite callers, and before Emily herself might be out.

Duly at two o’clock she presented herself at the front door of Emily’s London house in Tavistock Square.

The parlormaid knew her and admitted her without asking explanation. She was shown into the withdrawing room where there was a fire lit already and barely a moment later Emily herself came in. She was already dressed for her afternoon visiting; she looked magnificent in pale apple green silk with dark brown velvet ribbons. It must have cost more than Charlotte would have spent on clothes in half a year. Her face was alight with pleasure. She kissed her sister delicately, but with genuine warmth.

“Goodness, if you’re going to take up calling, Charlotte, I shall have to teach you what time to begin! It is not done to arrive before three at the very, very earliest. Ladies of rank, of course, later still.”

“I haven’t come calling,” Charlotte said quickly. “I wouldn’t think of it. I came to ask your help, if you can give it; and of course you are interested.”

Emily’s honey-colored eyebrows rose, but her eyes were bright.

“In what? Not a charity, please!”

Charlotte knew her sister too well to have come on such an errand.

“Of course not,” she said sharply. “A crime-”

“Charlotte!”

“Not to commit, goose; to help, when it is solved.”

Even Emily’s new sophistication could not hide her excitement.

“Can’t we solve it? Can’t we help? If we-”

“It’s not a nice crime, Emily, not a robbery or something clean,” Charlotte said hastily.

“Well, what is it?” Emily did not look disconcerted. Charlotte had forgotten how composed she was, how easily she adapted to the unpleasantnesses of life. Indeed, from the day she had decided she would marry Lord George Ashworth, she had accepted frankly that he had faults and that she might never eradicate more than a few of them, but she made her decision and settled for the bargain as it was. She had never complained. Although in truth Charlotte did not know if she had any cause.

“Goodness, Charlotte,” Emily prodded. “Is it so dreadful you cannot put tongue to it? I never before knew you at a loss for words.”

“No. No, it is merely very sad. Two babies’ bodies were dug up in the garden in the center of Callander Square.”

Surprisingly, Emily was shaken.

“Babies?”

“Yes.”

“But who would want to kill a baby? It’s insane.”

“A servant girl who was unmarried, of course.”

Emily frowned.

“And you want to find out who it was? Why?”

“I don’t want to find out who it was,” Charlotte said impatiently. “But if they were born dead, as seems well possible, perhaps you might be able to find her another position, if she were dismissed-”

Emily stared at her, thoughts flashing in her face almost as transparently as they crossed her mind.

Charlotte waited.

“I know someone who lives in Callander Square,” she said at last. “At least George does-Brandy Balantyne. His father is a general, or something. I’m sure they live in Callander Square. He has a sister, Christina. I shall have George introduce us; it can be arranged, with a little thought. Then I shall call on her,” her voice began to rise with excitement. There was a faint color in her cheeks and a set of determination about her head. “We shall discover the real truth. I can learn things the police never could, because I move in the right circles. They will speak to me. And you can speak to the servants; oh, the higher-up ones, of course-cook and governess, and the like. You won’t tell them you are a policeman’s wife, naturally. We shall begin immediately. As soon as George returns home I shall speak to him and he will arrange it!”

“Emily-”

“What? I thought you wanted my help. We cannot possibly know what is best to do if we do not know the truth. It is always best to know the truth, whether you then decide to dismiss it or to conceal it, or even to forget about it entirely. But if we do not know the truth to begin with, we can make the most unfortunate mistakes.”

Charlotte looked at Emily’s dancing eyes and every shred of common sense in her told her to refuse instantly.

“We shall have to be very discreet.” Common sense suffered a quick defeat.

“Of course!” Emily was withering. “My dear Charlotte, I could not possibly have survived in society for two whole years if I had not learned to say everything but what I actually mean. I am the soul of discretion. We shall begin right away. Go home and discover whatever you can. I don’t imagine you can be discreet, you never could; but at least don’t volunteer our plans. Mr. Pitt may not approve.”

That was an understatement of magnificence. Nevertheless, Charlotte stood up with every intention of obeying, a tingle of fear inside her, and a thin quiver of Emily’s excitement.