Highgate Rise

2

CHARLOTTE HAD DONE half the linen and her arm was tired with the weight of the flatiron. She had stitched three pillowcases and mended Jemima’s best dress. Now she had stuffed it in her needlework basket and pushed it all away where it could not be seen, at least not at a casual glance, which was the most Pitt would give the corner of the room when he came in.

It was already nearly nine o’clock and she had long been straining at every creak and bump waiting for him. Now she tried to take her mind from it, and sat on the floor in a most undignified position, reading Jane Eyre. When Pitt did come at last she was quite unaware of it until he had taken off his overcoat and hung it up and was standing in the doorway.

“Oh, Thomas!” She put the book aside and scrambled to her feet, disentangling her skirt with considerable difficulty. “Thomas, where on earth have you been? You smell terrible.”

“A fire,” he replied, kissing her, touching only her face with his lips, not holding her where the smut and grime would soil her dress.

She heard the weariness in his voice, and something more, an experience of tragedy.

“A fire?” she asked, holding his gaze. “Did someone die in it?”

“A woman.”

She looked up at his face. “Murder?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, seeing the crumpled, grimy clothes, still wet in places from the afternoon’s rain, and then the expression in his eyes.

“Do you want to eat, wash, or tell me about it?”

He smiled. There was something faintly ludicrous in her candor, especially after the careful manners of the Clitheridges and the Hatches.

“A cup of tea, my boots off, and then later hot water,” he replied honestly.

She accepted that as declining to talk, and hurried through to the kitchen, her stockinged feet making no sound on the linoleum of the passage, or the scrubbed boards of the kitchen floor. The range was hot, as always, and she put the kettle back on the hob and cut a slice of bread, buttered it and spread it with jam. She knew he would want it when he saw it.

He followed her through and unintentionally stood in her way.

“Where was it?” she asked.

“Highgate,” he said as she walked around him to get the mugs.

“Highgate? That’s not your area.”

“No, but they are sure this was arson, and the local station sent for us straightaway.”

Charlotte had deduced that much from the smell of smoke and the smudges on his clothes, but she forbore from mentioning it.

“It was the home of a doctor,” he went on. “He was out on a call, a woman in childbirth unexpectedly early, but his wife was at home. She had canceled a trip to the city at the last moment. It was she who was burned.”

The kettle was boiling and Charlotte heated the pot, then made the tea and set it to brew. He sat down gratefully and she sat opposite him.

“Was she young?” she said quietly.

“About forty.”

“What was her name?”

“Clemency Shaw.”

“Could it not have been an accident? There are lots of accidental fires, a candle dropped, a spark from an unguarded hearth, someone smoking a cigar and not putting it out properly.” She poured the tea and pushed one of the mugs towards him.

“On the curtains of four separate rooms, downstairs, at midnight?” He took his tea and sipped it and burned his tongue. He bit into the bread and jam quickly.

“Oh.” She thought of waking in the night to the roar and the heat, and knowing what it was, and that you were trapped. How much more dreadful to think someone else had lit it deliberately, knowing you were there, meaning to burn you to death. The thought was so fearful that for a moment she felt a little sick.

Pitt was too tired to notice.

“We don’t know yet if they meant to kill Mrs. Shaw—or her husband.” He tried the tea again.

She realized he must have felt all that she was now imagining. His mind would have conjured the same pictures, only more vividly; he had seen the charred rubble, the heat still radiating from it, the smoke still filling the air and stinging the eyes and throat.

“You can’t do any more tonight, Thomas. She isn’t in any pain now, and you cannot touch the grief,” she said gently. “There is always somebody hurting somewhere, and we cannot take their pain.” She rose to her feet again. “It doesn’t help.” She brushed his hand with hers as she passed. “I’ll get a bowl of hot water and you can wash. Then come to bed. It will be morning soon enough.”

Pitt left as soon as he had eaten breakfast, and Charlotte began the routine of domestic chores. The children, Jemima and Daniel, were seen off to their respective lessons at the same school along the road, and Gracie the maid began the dusting and sweeping. The heavy work, scrubbing floors, beating the carpets and carrying the coal and coke for the cooker, was done by Mrs. Hoare, who came in three days a week.

Charlotte resumed the ironing, and when she had finished that, began on pastry baking, the daily making of bread, and was about to begin washing and preparing jars for jam when there was a clatter at the door. Gracie dropped her broom and ran to answer it, and returned a moment later breathless, her thin little face alight with excitement.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s Lady Ashworth back—I mean, Mrs. Radley—back from ’er ’oneymoon—an’ lookin’ so grand—an’ ’appy.”

Indeed, Emily was only a few steps behind, laden with beautiful parcels wrapped in paper and ribbons, and swirling huge skirts of noisy taffeta in a glorious shade of pale water green. Her fair hair showed in the fine curls Charlotte had envied since childhood, and her skin was rosy fair from sun and pleasure.

She dropped everything on the kitchen table, ignoring the jars, and threw her arms around Charlotte, hugging her so fiercely she almost lost her balance.

“Oh, I have missed you,” she said exuberantly. “It’s wonderful to be home again. I’ve got so much to tell you, I couldn’t have borne it if you had been out. I haven’t had any letters from you for ages—of course I haven’t had any letters at all since we left Rome. It is so boring at sea—unless there is a scandal or something among the passengers. And there wasn’t. Charlotte, how can anyone spend all their lives playing bezique and baccarat and swapping silly stories with each other, and seeing who has the newest bustle or the most elegant hair? I was nearly driven mad by it.” She disengaged herself and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs.

Gracie was standing rooted to the spot, her eyes huge, her imagination whirling as she pictured ships full of card-playing aristocrats with marvelous clothes. Her broom was still propped against the wall in the passageway and her duster stuffed in the waist of her apron.

“Here!” Emily picked up the smallest of the packages and offered it to her. “Gracie, I brought you a shawl from Naples.”

Gracie was overcome. She stared at Emily as if she had materialized by magic in front of her. She was too overwhelmed even to speak. Her small hands locked onto the package so tightly it was fortunate it was fabric, or it might have broken.

“Open it!” Emily commanded.

At last Gracie found words. “Fer me, my lady? It’s fer me?”

“Of course it’s for you,” Emily told her. “When you go to church, or out walking, you must put it ’round your shoulders, and when someone admires you, tell them it came from the Bay of Naples and was a gift from a friend.”

“Oh—” Gracie undid the paper with fumbling fingers, then as the ripple of blue, gold and magenta silk fell out, let her breath go in a sigh of ecstasy. Suddenly she recalled her duty and shot off back to the hallway and her broom, clutching her treasure.

Charlotte smiled with a lift of happiness that would probably not be exceeded by any other gift Emily might bring, even for Jemima or Daniel.

“That was very thoughtful,” she said quietly.

“Nonsense.” Emily dismissed it, a trifle embarrassed herself. She had inherited a respectable fortune from her first husband, the shawl had cost a trifle—it was so small a thing to give so much pleasure. She spread out the other parcels and found the one with Charlotte’s name on it. “Here—please open it. The rest are for Thomas and the children. Then tell me everything. What have you done since your last letter? Have you had any adventures? Have you met anyone interesting, or scandalous? Are you working on a case?”

Charlotte smiled sweetly and benignly, and ignoring the questions, opened the parcel, laying aside the wrapping paper neatly, both to tantalize Emily and because it was far too pretty to tear. She would keep it and use it at Christmas. Inside were three trailing bouquets of handmade silk flowers that were so lush and magnificent she gasped with amazement when she saw them. They would make the most ordinary hat look fit for a duchess, or in the folds of a skirt make a simple taffeta dress into a ball gown. One was in pastel pinks, one blazing reds, and the third all the shades between flamingo and flame.

“Oh, Emily. You’re a genius.” Her mind raced through all the things she could do with them, apart from the sheer pleasure of turning them over and over in her hand and dreaming, which was a joy in itself if she never got any further. “Oh, thank you! They are exquisite.”

Emily was glowing with satisfaction. “I shall bring the paintings of Florence next time. But now I brought Thomas a dozen silk handkerchiefs—with his initials on.”

“He’ll adore them,” Charlotte said with absolute certainty. “Now tell me about your trip—everything you can that isn’t terribly private.” She did not mean to ask Emily if she were happy, nor would she have. Marrying Jack Radley had been a wild and very personal decision. He had no money and no prospects; after George Ashworth, who had had both, and a title as well, it was a radical social change. And she had certainly loved George and felt his death profoundly. Yet Jack, whose reputation was dubious, had proved that his charm was not nearly as shallow as it appeared at first. He was a loyal friend, with courage as well as humor and imagination, and was prepared to take risks in a cause he believed right.

“Put on the kettle,” Emily ordered. “And have you got pastry baking?” She sniffed. “It smells delicious.”

Charlotte obeyed, and then settled to listen.

Emily had written regularly, except for the last few weeks, which had been spent at sea on the long, late-summer voyage home from Naples to London. They had sailed slowly by intent, calling at many ports, but she had not mailed letters, believing they would not reach Charlotte before she did herself. Now the words poured out in descriptions of Sardinia, the Balearic Isles, North Africa, Gibraltar, Portugal, northern Spain and the Atlantic coast of France.

To Charlotte they were magical places, immeasurably distant from Bloomsbury and the busy streets of London, housework and domestic duties, children, and Pitt’s recounting of his day. She would never see them, and half of her regretted it and would love to have watched the brilliant light on colored walls, smelled the spice and fruit and dust in the air, felt the heat and heard the different rhythm of foreign tongues. They would have filled her imagination and enriched her memory for years. But she could have the best of them through Emily’s recounting, and do it without the seasickness, the weariness of long cramped coach rides, highly irregular sanitation and a wide variety of insects which Emily described in repulsive detail.

Through it all there emerged a sharper, kinder and less romantic picture of Jack, and Charlotte found many of her anxieties slipping away.

“Now that you’re home, are you going to stay in the city?” she asked, looking at Emily’s face, flushed with color from sun and wind but tired around the eyes. “Or are you going to the country?” She had inherited a large house in its own parklands, in trust for her son from her marriage to Lord Ashworth.

“Oh, no,” Emily said quickly. “At least—” She made a small, rueful face. “I don’t know. It’s very different now we’re not on a planned journey with something new to see or to do each day, and somewhere we have to be by nightfall. This is the beginning of real life.” She looked down at her hands, small and strong and unlined on the table. “I’m a little frightened in case suddenly we’re not sure what to say to each other—or even what to do to fill the day. It’s going to be so different. There isn’t any crisis anymore.” She sniffed rather elegantly and smiled directly at Charlotte. “Before we were married there was always some terrible event pressing us to act—first George’s death, and then the murders in Hanover Close.” She raised her fair eyebrows hopefully and her blue eyes were wide, but they knew each other far too well for even Emily to feign innocence. “I don’t suppose Thomas has a case we could help with?”

Charlotte burst into laughter, even though she knew Emily was serious and that all the past cases in which they had played a part were fraught with tragedy, and some danger as well as any sense of adventure there may have been.

“No. There was a very terrible case while you were away.”

“You didn’t tell me!” Emily’s expression was full of accusation and incredulity. “What? What sort of case? Why didn’t you write to me about it?”

“Because you would have been too worried to enjoy your honeymoon, and I wanted you to have a perfect time seeing all the glories of Paris and Italy, not thinking about people having their throats cut in a London fog,” Charlotte answered honestly. “But I will certainly tell you now, if you wish.”

“Of course I wish! But first get me some more tea.”

“We could have luncheon,” Charlotte suggested. “I have cold meat and fresh pickle—will that do?”

“Very well—but talk while you’re getting it,” Emily instructed. She did not offer to help; they had both been raised to expect marriage to gentlemen of their own social status who would provide them with homes and suitable domestic servants for all house and kitchen labor. Charlotte had married dreadfully beneath herself—to a policeman—and learned to do her own work. Emily had married equally far above herself, to an aristocrat with a fortune, and she had not even been in a kitchen in years, except Charlotte’s; and although she knew how to approve or disapprove a menu for anyone from a country squire to the Queen herself, she had no idea, and no wish for one, as to how it should be made.

“Have you been to see Great-Aunt Vespasia yet?” Charlotte asked as she carved the meat.

Great-Aunt Vespasia was actually George’s aunt, and no immediate relative to either of them, but they had both learned to love and admire her more deeply than any of their own family. She had been one of the great beauties of her generation. Now she was close to eighty, and with wealth and social position assured she had both the power and the indifference to opinion to conduct herself as she pleased, to espouse every cause her conscience dictated or her sympathies called for. She dressed in the height of fashion, and could charm the prime minister, or the dustman—or freeze them both at twenty paces with a look of ice.

“No,” Emily replied. “I thought of going this afternoon. Does Aunt Vespasia know about this case?”

Charlotte smiled smugly. “Oh yes. She was involved. In fact she lent me her carriage and footman for the final confrontation—” She let it hang in the air deliberately.

Emily glared at her.

Blithely Charlotte refilled the kettle and turned to the cupboard to find the pickle. She even thought of humming a little tune, but decided against it on the ground that she could not sing very well—and Emily could.

Emily began to drum her fingers on the scrubbed-clean wooden tabletop.

“A member of Parliament was found lashed to a lamppost on Westminster Bridge….” Charlotte began to recount the whole story, at first with relish, then with awe, and finally with horror and pity. When she had finished the meal was done and it was early afternoon.

Emily said very little, reaching her hands across the table to clasp Charlotte’s arm with her fingers. “You could have been killed!” she said angrily, but there were tears in her eyes. “You must never do such a mad thing again! I suppose whatever I think of to say to you, Thomas will already have said it? I trust he scolded you to within an inch of your life?”

“It was not necessary,” Charlotte said honestly. “I was quite aware of it all myself. Are you ready to go and see Aunt Vespasia?”

“Certainly. But you are not. You must change out of that very plain stuff dress and put on something more appealing.”

“To do the ironing?”

“Nonsense. You are coming with me. It will do you good. It is a lovely day and the drive will be excellent.”

Charlotte gave duty a brief thought, then submitted to temptation.

“Yes—if you wish. It will only take me a few moments to change. Gracie!” And she hurried out to find the maid and request her to prepare the children’s tea for their return and peel the vegetables for the main evening meal.

Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould lived in a spacious, fashionable house, and her door was opened by a maid in a crisp uniform with lace-trimmed cap and apron. She recognized Charlotte and Emily immediately and showed them in without the usual formalities of prevarication. There was no question as to whether they would be received. Her ladyship was not only very fond of them both, she was also acutely bored with the chatter of society and the endless minutiae of etiquette.

Vespasia was sitting in her private withdrawing room, very sparsely furnished by current standards of taste—no heavy oak tables, no overstuffed sofas and no fringes on the curtains. Instead it was reminiscent of a far earlier age, when Vespasia herself was born, the high empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, before the Battle of Waterloo, the clean lines of the Georgian era and the austerity of a long, desperate war for survival. One of her uncles had died in Nelson’s navy at Trafalgar. Now even the Iron Duke was dead and Wellington a name in history books, and those who fought in the Crimea forty years later were old men now.

Vespasia was sitting upright on a hard-backed Chippendale chair, her dove-gray gown high at the neck, touched with French lace, and four ropes of pearls hanging almost to her waist. She did not bother with the pretense of indifference. Her smile was full of delight.

“Emily, my dear. How very well you look. I’m so pleased you have come. You shall tell me everything you enjoyed. The tedious parts you may omit, no doubt they were just the same as when I was there and it is quite unnecessary that any of us should endure them again. Charlotte, you will live through it all a second time and ask all the pertinent questions. Come, sit down.”

They both went to her, kissed her in turn, then took the places she indicated.

“Agatha,” she commanded the maid. “You will bring tea. Cucumber sandwiches, if you please—and then have Cook make some fresh scones with—I think—raspberry jam, and of course cream.”

“Yes, my lady.” Agatha nodded obediently.

“In an hour and a half,” Vespasia added. “We have much to hear.”

Whether they would stay so long was not open to argument, nor if any other chance caller should be admitted. Lady Vespasia was not at home to anyone else.

“You may begin,” Vespasia said, her eyes bright with a mixture of anticipation and laughter.

Nearly two hours later the tea table was empty and Emily finally could think of nothing else whatever to add.

“And now what are you going to do?” Vespasia inquired with interest.

Emily looked down at the carpet. “I don’t know. I suppose I could become involved in good works of some sort. I could be patron of the local committee for the care of fallen women!”

“I doubt it,” Charlotte said dryly. “You are not Lady Ashworth anymore. You’d have to be an ordinary member.”

Emily made a face at her. “I have no intention of becoming either. I don’t mind the fallen women—it’s the committee members I cannot abide. I want a proper cause, something to do better than pontificate on the state of others. You never did answer me properly when I asked you what Thomas was doing at the moment.”

“Indeed.” Vespasia looked at Charlotte hopefully also. “What is he doing? I trust he is not in Whitechapel? The newspapers are being very critical of the police at the moment. Last year they were loud in their praises, and all blame went to the mobs in Trafalgar Square in the riots. Now the boot is on the other foot, and they are calling for Sir Charles Warren’s resignation.”

Emily shivered. “I imagine they are frightened—I think I should be if I lived in that sort of area. They criticize everyone—even the Queen. People are saying she does not appear enough, and the Prince of Wales is far too light-minded and spends too much money. And of course the Duke of Clarence behaves like an ass—but if his father lives as long as the Queen, poor Clarence will be in a bath chair before he sees the throne.”

“That is not a satisfactory excuse.” Vespasia’s lips moved in the tiniest smile, then she turned to Charlotte again. “You have not told us if Thomas is working on this Whitechapel affair.”

“No. He is in Highgate, but I know very little about the case,” Charlotte confessed. “In fact it has only just begun—”

“The very best place for us to become acquainted with it,” Emily said, her enthusiasm returning. “What is it?”

Charlotte looked at their expectant faces and wished she had more to tell.

“It was a fire,” she said bleakly. “A house was burned and a woman died in it. Her husband was out on a medical call—he is a doctor—and the servants’ wing was the last to be damaged and they were all rescued.”

“Is that all?” Emily was obviously disappointed.

“I told you it was only the very beginning,” Charlotte apologized. “Thomas came home reeking of smoke and with fine ash in his clothes. He looked drained of all energy and terribly sad. She was supposed to have gone out, but it was canceled at the last moment.”

“So it should have been the husband who was at home,” Vespasia concluded. “I assume it was arson, or Thomas would not have been called. Was the intended victim the husband—or was it he who set the fire?”

“It would seem that he was the intended victim,” Charlotte agreed. “With the best will in the world, I cannot see any way in which we could”—she smiled with a touch of self-mockery —“meddle.”

“Who was she?” Emily asked quietly. “Do you know anything about her?”

“No, nothing at all, except that people spoke well of her. But then they usually do of the dead. It is expected, even required.”

“That sounds totally vacuous,” Vespasia said wearily. “And tells neither Thomas nor us anything about her at all-only that her friends are conventional. What was her name?”

“Clemency Shaw.”

“Clemency Shaw?” Vespasia’s voice quickened with recognition. “That name is familiar, I believe. If it is the same person, then she is—was—indeed a good woman. Her death is a tragedy, and unless someone else takes over her work, a great many people will suffer.”

“Thomas said nothing of any work.” Charlotte was acutely interested herself now. “Perhaps he doesn’t know. What work was it?”

Emily sat forward in her chair, waiting eagerly.

“It may not be the same person,” Vespasia warned.

“But if it is?”

“Then she has begun a fight to get certain laws changed regarding the ownership of slum housing,” Vespasia answered gravely, her face expressing what she knew from her own experience of the near impossibility of overcoming such vested interests. “Many of the worst, where there is appalling overcrowding and no sanitation at all, are owned by people of wealth and social standing. If it were more readily known, some minimal standards might be enforced.”

“And who is in its way?” Emily was practical as always.

“I cannot give you a detailed answer,” Vespasia replied. “But if you are determined to pursue it, then we should go and visit Somerset Carlisle, who will be able to tell us.” Even as she spoke she was already rising to her feet and preparing to leave.

Charlotte caught Emily’s eye with a flash of amusement, and they also rose.

“What an excellent idea,” Charlotte agreed.

Emily hesitated only a moment. “Is it not an unsuitable time to call upon anyone, Aunt Vespasia?”

“Most unsuitable,” Vespasia agreed. “That is why it will do very well. We shall be highly unlikely to find anyone else there.” And without continuing the discussion she rang the bell for her maid to call Emily’s carriage so they might travel together.

Charlotte had a moment’s hesitation; she was not dressed well enough to call upon a member of Parliament. Usually for anything approaching such formality in the past she had borrowed a gown from Emily, or Aunt Vespasia herself, suitably made over to fit her, even if by strategic pins here and there. But she had known Somerset Carlisle for several years, and always in connection with some passionate cause when there was little thought of social niceties, only the matter in hand. Anyway, neither Emily nor Vespasia were taking the slightest notice of protests and if she did not catch them up she would be left behind, and she would have gone in her kitchen pinafore rather than that.

Somerset Carlisle was at home in his study working on papers of some political importance, and for anyone less than Vespasia his footman would politely have refused them entrance. However, he had an appreciation for the dramatic and a knowledge of his master’s past crusades in one cause or another, and he was quite aware that Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould had frequently been involved in them one way or another; indeed she was an effective ally for whom he had great regard.

Accordingly he conducted all three ladies to the study door and knocked before opening it and announcing their presence.

Somerset Carlisle was not young, nor yet middle-aged; quite possibly he never would be, but would pass directly from where he was now into a wiry and unmellowed old age. He was full of nervous energy, his winged eyebrows and thin, mercurial face never seemed completely in repose.

His study reflected his nature. It was full of books on all manner of subjects, both for his work and for his wide personal interests. The few spaces on the walls were crammed with paintings and curios, beautiful, and probably of financial value. The deep Georgian windows shed excellent light, and for winter or evening work there were several gas brackets both on the walls and pendant from the ceiling. A long-legged marmalade cat was stretched out in ecstatic sleep in the best chair in front of the fire. The desk itself was piled with papers in no imaginable sort of order.

Somerset Carlisle put his pen into the stand and rose to greet them with obvious delight, coming around the desk, knocking off a pile of letters and ignoring them completely as they cascaded to the floor. The cat did not stir.

He took the immaculately gloved hand that Vespasia offered him.

“Lady Cumming-Gould. How very nice to see you.” He met her eyes with a spark of humor. “No doubt you have some urgent injustice to fight, or you would not have come without warning. Lady Ashworth—and Mrs. Pitt—now I know something is afoot! Please sit down. I—” He looked around for some place of comfort to offer them, and failed. Gently he removed the cat and placed it on the seat of his own chair behind the desk. It stretched luxuriously and resettled itself.

Vespasia took the chair and Charlotte and Emily sat on the upright chairs opposite. Carlisle remained standing. No one bothered to correct him that Emily was now plain Mrs. Jack Radley. There was time enough for that later.

Vespasia came to the point quickly.

“A woman has died in a fire which was not accidental. We know little other than that, except that her name was Clemency Shaw—” She stopped, seeing the look of distress that had touched his face the moment she said the name. “You knew her?”

“Yes—mostly by repute,” he answered, his voice low, his eyes searching their faces, seeing the surprise and the heightened tension as he spoke. “I only met her twice. She was a quiet woman, still uncertain of how best to achieve her aims and unused to battling the intricacies of civil law, but there was an intense dedication in her and an honesty I admired very much. I believe she cared for the reforms she desired more than her own dignity or the opinions of her friends or acquaintances. I am truly grieved that she is dead. Have you no idea how it happened?” The last question he addressed to Charlotte. He had known Pitt for many years, in fact since he himself had been involved in a bizarre murder.

“It was arson,” she replied. “She was at home because a trip into town had been unexpectedly canceled, and her husband was out on a medical emergency. Otherwise he would have died, and not she.”

“So her death was accidental.” He made it almost a question, but not quite.

“Someone might have been watching and known.” Charlotte would not leave it so quickly. “What was she fighting for—what reforms? Who would want her to fail?”

Carlisle smiled bitterly. “Almost anyone who has invested in slum property and raked in exorbitant rents for letting it to whole families a room at a time, sometimes even two or three families.” He winced. “Or for sweatshops, gin mills, brothels, even opium dens. Very profitable indeed. You’d be surprised by some of the people who make money that way.”

“How did Mrs. Shaw threaten them?” Vespasia asked. “Precisely what did she wish to do about it? Or should I say, what did she have the slightest realistic prospect of doing?”

“She wanted to change the law so that owners could be easily traced, instead of hiding behind companies and lawyers so they are virtually anonymous.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to make some law as to occupancy and sanitation?” Emily asked reasonably.

Carlisle laughed. “If you limit occupancy all you would do is put even more people out into the street. And how would you police it?”

“Oh-”

“And you’d never get a law passed on sanitation.” His voice hardened. “People in power tend to believe that the poor have the sanitation they deserve, and if you gave them better, within a month they would have it back to its present state. It is easier for them to take their own luxury with a quiet conscience. Even so, to do anything about it would cost millions of pounds—”

“But each individual owner—” Emily argued. “They would have millions. At least over time—”

“Such a law would never be passed through Parliament.” He smiled as he said it, but there was anger in his eyes and his hands by his sides were tight. “You forget who votes for them.”

Again Emily said nothing. There were only two political parties with any chance of forming a government, and neither of them would espouse such a law easily, and no women had the franchise, the poor were ill organized and largely illiterate. The implication was too obvious.

Carlisle gave a little grunt that was almost a laugh. “That is why Mrs. Shaw was attempting to make it possible to discover without difficulty who owned such places. If it were public, social pressure would do a great deal that the law cannot.”

“But don’t social pressures come from the same people who vote?” Charlotte asked; then knew the moment she had said it that it was not so. Women did not vote, and subtle though it was, a very great deal of society was governed one way or another by women. Men might do all manner of things if they were sufficiently discreet, indulge tastes they would not acknowledge even to their fellows. But publicly and in the domestic tranquillity of their homes they would deplore such affronts to the fabric of a civilized people.

Carlisle saw the realization in her face and did not bother to explain.

“How perceptive of Mrs. Shaw,” Vespasia said quietly. “I imagine she made certain enemies?”

“There was some … apprehension,” he agreed. “But I don’t believe she had as yet succeeded well enough to cause actual anxiety.”

“Might she have, had she lived?” Charlotte asked with intense seriousness. She found herself regretting Clemency Shaw’s death not only with the impartial pity for any loss but because she could never meet her, and the more she heard, the more strongly she felt she would have liked her very much.

Carlisle considered for a moment before replying. It was not a time for empty compliments. He had known enough of political life and the power of financial interests, and had been close enough to several murders, not to dismiss the possibility that Clemency Shaw had been burned to death to keep her from continuing in a crusade, however unlikely it seemed that she would affect the course of law, or of public opinion.

Charlotte, Emily and Vespasia all waited in silence.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “She was a remarkable woman. She believed passionately in what she was doing, and that kind of honesty sometimes moves people where logic fails. There was no hypocrisy in her, no—” He frowned very slightly as he searched for precisely the words to convey the impression upon him of a woman he had met only twice, and yet who had marked him indelibly. “No sense that she was a woman seeking a cause to fight, or some worthy works to fill her time. There was nothing she wanted for herself; her whole heart was on easing the distress of those in filthy and overcrowded housing.”

He saw Vespasia wince and knew it was pity rather than distaste.

“She hated slum landlords with a contempt that could make you feel guilty for having a roof over your own head.” He smiled awkwardly, a crooked gesture very charming in his oddly crooked face. “I am very grieved that she is dead.” He looked at Charlotte. “I presume Thomas is on the case, which is why you know about it?”

“Yes.”

“And you intend to meddle?” The last observation was addressed to all three of them.

Vespasia sniffed a little at his choice of word, but she did not disagree in essence. “You could have expressed yourself more fortunately,” she said with a very slight lift of her shoulders.

“Yes we do.” Emily was forthright. Unlike Clemency Shaw, she was quite definitely looking for something to do, but that was no reason why she should not do it well. “I don’t yet know how.”

“Good.” He had no doubts. “If I can be of assistance, please call on me. I had a great admiration for Clemency Shaw. I should like to see whoever murdered her rot in Coldbath Fields, or some similar place.”

“They’ll hang him,” Vespasia said harshly. She knew Carlisle did not approve of the rope; it was too final, and there were too many mistakes. She did not herself, but she was a realist.

He looked at her levelly, but made no remark. The issue had been discussed before and they knew each other’s feelings. A wealth of experience lay in common, other tragedies, errors and knowledge of pain. Crime was seldom a single act, or the fault of a single person.

“That is not a reason to leave it undone.” Charlotte rose to her feet. “When I learn more I shall tell you.”

“Be careful,” Carlisle warned, going to the door ahead of her and holding it open while they went through, first Vespasia, her head high, her back very stiff, then Emily close behind, lastly Charlotte. He put his hand on her arm as she passed him. “You will be disturbing very powerful people who have a great deal at stake. If they have already murdered Clemency, they will not spare you.”

“I shall be,” she said with conviction, although she had no idea what she was going to do that would be the slightest use. “I shall merely gather information.”

He looked at her skeptically, having been involved in several of her past meddlings, but he relaxed his grip and escorted them to the door and out into the sunlit street where Emily’s carriage was waiting.

As soon as the horses began to move Emily spoke.

“I shall discover whatever I can about Mrs. Shaw and her struggles to have new laws passed to disclose who owns derelict property. I am sure if I think hard I must have some acquaintances who would know.”

“You are a new bride,” Vespasia cautioned her gently.

“Your husband may have rather different expectations of his first weeks at home from honeymoon.”

“Ah—” Emily let out her breath, but it was only a hesitation in her flight of thought. “Yes—well that will have to be got around. I shall deal with it. Charlotte, you had better be discreet about it, but discover everything you can from Thomas. We must be aware of all the facts.”

They did not wait at Vespasia’s house but wished Vespasia good-bye and watched her alight and climb the steps to the front door, which was opened before her by the waiting maid. She went in with an absentminded word of thanks, still deep in thought. There were many social evils she had fought against in the long years since her widowhood. She enjoyed battle and she was prepared to take risks and she no longer cared greatly what others thought of her, if she believed herself to be in a just cause. Which was not that the loss of friends, or their disapproval, did not hurt her.

But now it was Emily who occupied her mind. She was far more vulnerable, not only to the emotions of her new husband, who might well wish her to be more decorous in her behavior, but also to the whims of society, which loved innovations in fashion, something to marvel at and whisper about, but hated anything that threatened to disturb the underlying stability of its members’ familiar and extremely comfortable lives.

Charlotte parted from Emily at her own door after a brief hug, and heard the carriage clatter away as she went up the scrubbed steps into the hall. It smelled warm and clean; the sounds of the street were muffled almost to silence. She stood still for a moment. She could just hear Gracie chopping something on a board in the kitchen, and singing to herself. She felt an overwhelming sense of safety, and then gratitude. It was hers, all of it. She did not have to share it with anyone except her own family. No one would put up the rent or threaten her with eviction. There was running water in the kitchen, the range burned hot, and in the parlor and bedrooms there were fires. Sewage ran away unseen, and the garden was sweet with grass and flowers.

It was very easy to live here every day and forget the uncounted people who had no place warm enough, free of filth and smells, where they could be safe and have privacy enough for dignity.

Clemency Shaw must have been a most unusual woman to have cared so much for those in tenements and slums. In fact she was remarkable even to have known of their existence. Most well-bred women knew only what they were told, or read in such parts of the newspapers or periodicals as were considered suitable. Charlotte herself had not had any idea until Pitt had shown her the very edges of an utterly different world, and to begin with she had hated him for it.

Then she’d felt angry. There was a horrible irony that Clemency Shaw should be murdered by the destruction of her home, and whoever had caused it, Charlotte intended to find and expose, and their sordid and greedy motives with them. If Clemency Shaw’s life could not bring attention to the evil of slum profiteers, then Charlotte would do all in her power to see that her death did.

Emily was bent on a similar purpose, but for slightly different reasons, and in an utterly different fashion. She entered the hallway of her spacious and extremely elegant house in a swirl of skirts and petticoats and flung off her hat, rearranging her hair to look even more casually flattering, fair tendrils curling on her neck and cheeks, and composed her face into an expression of tenderness touched with grief.

Her new husband was already at home, which she knew from the identity of the footman who had opened the door for her. Had Jack been out, Arthur would have been with him.

She pushed open the withdrawing room doors and made a dramatic entrance.

He was sitting by the fire with a tea tray on the low table and his feet up on the stool. The crumpets were already gone; there was only a ring of butter on the plate.

He smiled with warmth when he heard her and stood up courteously. Then he saw the expression on her face and suddenly his pleasure turned to concern.

“Emily—what is it? Is something wrong with Charlotte? Is she ill—is it Thomas?”

“No—no.” She flew to his arms and put her head on his shoulder, partly so he would not meet her eyes. She was not entirely sure how far she could deceive Jack successfully. He was too much like her; he also had survived on his charm and very considerable good looks and he was aware of all the tricks and how to perform them. And it was also because she found herself still very much in love with him, and it was a most comfortable feeling. But she had better explain herself before he became alarmed. “No, Charlotte is perfectly well. But Thomas is engaged on a case which distresses her deeply—and I find I feel the same. A woman was burned to death—a brave and very good woman who was fighting to expose a vicious social evil. Great-Aunt Vespasia is most upset as well.” Now she could abandon subterfuge and face him squarely.

“Jack, I feel we should do what we can to help—”

He smoothed her hair gently, kissed her, then with wide eyes and barely the beginning of a smile, met her gaze.

“Oh yes? And how shall we do that?”

She made a rapid change of tactics. Drama was not going to win. She smiled back. “I’m not sure—” She bit her lip.

“What do you think?”

“What social evil?” he said guardedly. He knew Emily better than she realized.

“Slum owners who charge exorbitant rents for filthy and crowded tenements—Clemency Shaw wanted to make them answerable to public opinion by not being able to be anonymous behind rent collectors and companies and things.”

He was silent for so long she began to wonder if he had heard her.

“Jack?”

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes we will—but together. You cannot do anything alone, Emily. We shall be threatening some very powerful people—there are millions of pounds—you’d be surprised how many fortunes are seated in St. Giles and the Devil’s Acre—and the misery there.”

She smiled very slightly; the thought was ugly and there flashed through her mind the faces of people she had known in her days with George. She had accepted them easily then; it never occurred to her to wonder where their incomes were generated. Certain people simply had money; it was a state of affairs that had always existed. Now she was less innocent, and it was not a comfortable feeling.

Jack Was still holding her. He brushed one finger gently over her forehead, pushing back a wisp of hair.

“Still want to go on?” he asked.

She was startled how clearly he had understood her thoughts, and the twinges of both guilt and apprehension they had aroused.

“Of course.” She did not move; it was extremely pleasant remaining in his arms. “There is no possible way to retreat now. What should I say to Great-Aunt Vespasia, or Charlotte—and more important, what should I say to myself?”

His smile widened and he kissed her gently, and then gradually with passion.

When she thought about money again, it was a faraway thing to be dealt with another day, real and important then, but for now there were other, better things.