Bethlehem Road

the crime is political, and it would be wise of us to cover that area of investigation as well."

"Who is Somerset Carlisle?" Zenobia asked curiously. "I am sure I have heard the name."

' 'He is a member of Parliament,'' Vespasia answered. "A man of anger, and humor." She smiled as she said it, and Charlotte guessed precisely what wild adventure of the past she was remembering. Vespasia's blue gaze was faraway and almost innocent. "And with a passion to reform. If I tell him our situation, he will help us all he can."

Zenobia tried to look hopeful and nearly succeeded. "When shall we commence?"

"When we have finished luncheon," Vespasia answered her, and a flicker of satisfaction crossed her face as she saw incredulity, then a sudden real hope light Zenobia's eyes, and at last her body lost some of its rigid tension.

When the meal was finished there was very much to be done. The clothes each had worn for the consultation and the laying of plans were not at all suitable for the errands they proposed. Zenobia's very casual attire, with little matching anything else, would be an immediate insult to anyone of Lady Mary Carfax's social susceptibilities, therefore she left to go home and change into the very latest fashion she possessed, which was last year's and very plain, but a great improvement on her present garb nevertheless. It was not that she lacked means, simply that she considered clothes only for their practicality, not their appearance beyond the requirements of decency.

She asked Charlotte if there was anything in particular she should say to Lady Mary, but Charlotte, fearing the meeting was going to be hazardous enough anyway, advised that simply to reopen the acquaintance would be sufficient for now.

Vespasia changed from her light gown, suitable for the house, into something warmer in sky blue wool and with a matching jacket, so she might walk outside without chill. She added something of glamor because she loved beauty

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and could not abandon it whatever the circumstances. Had she contemplated anything so extraordinary as rowing up the Congo, she would have done so with her hair arranged and in a gown that was both fashionable and individual. Also, she was fond of Somerset Carlisle and retained enough vanity to wish to appear well before him. He might be thirty-five years her junior, but he was still a man.

And for Charlotte, Vespasia looked out an anthracite gray gown with a delicious bustle, which was both sober enough in which to express condolences, and sufficiently fashionable to proclaim the wearer a lady. It needed no attention now, because Vespasia had indulged in detecting before, and she had known what some of the requirements would be before she had dispatched the footman to collect Charlotte. Vespasia's lady's maid had been busy most of the morning.

Therefore Charlotte rode with Vespasia in her carriage, setting her down at the residence of Somerset Carlisle before proceeding on to Royal Street.

Her courage was high to begin with, but when she saw Vespasia, her back ramrod straight and wearing her hat at a superbly rakish angle, disappear through the doorway, suddenly she was overcome by the recklessness and the sheer folly of the entire scheme. She had been flattered because Great-aunt Vespasia had turned to her, and she had led both her aunt and Zenobia Gunne to believe she was capable of far more than in truth she was. She was going to end up making a fool of herself, and worse than that, she was going to insult a woman recently bereaved in the most appalling circumstances, and even more painful, she was misleading and offering false hope to two elderly women who had trusted her, when they would so much better have placed their faith in the police, or a good lawyer, which they could certainly afford.

The carriage bowled down Whitehall at an excellent pace; there were few afternoon callers with the necessity to pass this way and traffic was very light. They would be under the

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shadow of Big Ben any minute. She would scarcely have time to compose herself before they reached the Westminster Bridge and crossed it to Royal Street less than a mile on the other side. What on earth was she going to say? It had seemed an adventure over luncheon; now it was merely ridiculous, and very ill-mannered!

Should she tell the coachman to drive twice round the block while she scrambled to devise some believable account she might give of herself? Such as what? "Good afternoon, Lady Hamilton, you don't know me, but my husband is a policeman-actually he is working on your husband's murder-and I have delusions that I can detect. I am going to discover who did it, and why-and I mean to begin by scraping an acquaintance with you! Tell me everything about yourself!"

Should she try to be subtle? Or was some degree of frankness the only way?

The carriage stopped and a moment later the door opened and she was obliged to take the footman's hand and climb out. There was no more time!

Her legs felt weak, as if her knees had no bones in them. She stood on the pavement, knowing the footman and the coachman were both looking at her.

"Please wait," she said breathlessly, and picked up her skirts and walked up to the front door. She did not even have a calling card to present! There was nothing in the world she could do about it now.

The door opened and a parlormaid hi black appeared, too well trained to show her surprise.

"Yes ma'am?"

There was nothing to do but plunge ahead.

"Good afternoon. My name is Charlotte Ellison," she said-they might know or remember the name Pitt. "I hope I do not intrude, but I had such an admiration for Sir Lock-wood that I wished to call in person to express my condolences to Lady Hamilton, rather than merely to write, which

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seems so slight a thing to do." She glanced at the silver tray the parlormaid held out, waiting for a card, and felt the color rise in her cheeks. "I am so sorry, I have been abroad and unpacked in such a hurry." She forced a smile. "Would you be kind enough to tell Lady Hamilton that Miss Charlotte Ellison wishes a few moments of her time to express the thoughts of many people who admired Sir Lockwood for his courtesy and compassion, and the wisdom with which he counseled us during our struggle to bring to pass certain reforms in the poor laws and regarding the education of pauper children." That would do; she knew something of that from her desperate struggle with Great-aunt Vespasia and Somerset Carlisle for such a bill when there had been the murders in Resurrection Row. She smiled most charmingly at the maid, and stood her ground.

' 'Of course, ma'am.'' The maid put the empty tray down on the hall table and turned away, closing the door. "If you would care to wait in the morning room, I will see if Lady Hamilton is free to receive you."

In the morning room Charlotte looked round hastily to make some judgment of the woman whose house this was. It was elegant, individual, not overcrowded. Nor did she see the struggle of two personalities, two tastes, any sign that a second wife had taken over from a first. There was nothing discordant, no jarring memories. The only thing she guessed to come from the past was a painting of a cottage garden, faded, a little oversweet, out of character with the cooler watercolors on the other walls, but not displeasing, a sentimental gesture rather than an intrusion.

The door opened and a woman in black came in. She was tall and slender, perhaps in her mid or late forties, with dark hair winged with gray. Her face had known sadness long before this latest blow, but in it there was no anger, no rage at life, and certainly no self-pity.

"I am Amethyst Hamilton," she said politely. "My maid tells me you are Charlotte Ellison, and that you have come

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to express your condolences for my husband's death. I confess he did not mention your name, but it is very considerate of you to have come in person. Naturally at the moment I am not making or receiving calls, other than those of sympathy, so I shall be taking tea alone. If you care to join me, you are welcome." The briefest of smiles crossed her face and vanished, "Very few people find themselves comfortable in the houses of those in mourning. I should find your company welcome. But of course I understand if you have other calls to make.''

Charlotte was assailed with guilt. She knew the terrible isolation of mourning: she had seen Emily's loneliness after George's death the previous year, which, like this woman's, was compounded by the horror of murder, the burdens of a police investigation, and the scandal, and ultimately the terrible fear and suspicion of people one likes and loves intruding into the mind, smearing every memory, touching everything with doubt. And here she was telling lies, using the mask of sympathy to try and learn the secrets of this poor woman's family, learn facts and emotions normally guarded in the presence of the police, all because Charlotte thought her own judgment keener, better able to penetrate the vulnerabilities of her own class and sex.

"Thank you," she replied, her voice cracking, and she swallowed hard. Quite possibly Florence Ivory had killed this woman's husband, mistaking him in the lamplight for i another man. ' 'I should like to." p

"Then please come through to the withdrawing room. It' is warmer. And tell me, Miss Ellison, how you came to know my husband?"

There was no answer except to mix as much of a lie as necessary with all the truth she could remember.

' 'I worked some time ago on an attempt to have the workhouse laws altered. Of course, I was just a very small part of the attempt; I merely collected a little information. There were others far more important, people with influence and

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wisdom. Sir Lockwood was most kind to us then, and ,1 felt he was a man of both compassion and integrity."

"Yes," Amethyst Hamilton agreed with a smile, leading the way into the withdrawing room and offering Charlotte a chair by the fire. ' 'You could not have described him better,'' she said, sitting down herself. "There were many who disagreed with him over one subject or another, but none I ever knew who felt he had been either self-seeking or dishonest.'' She pulled the bell rope at her elbow, and when the maid appeared she ordered tea to be brought, and after a glance at Charlotte, sandwiches and cakes as well. When the maid had gone she continued speaking.

' 'It is strange how many people do not wish to speak of the dead. They send cards or flowers, but if they call they talk of the weather or my health, or of their own. Of anything but Lockwood. And I feel as if they are wishing him out of existence. It is most unreasonable of me; I daresay they do it out of consideration for my feelings."

"And perhaps out of embarrassment," Charlotte added, before remembering that this was a formal visit; she did not know this woman at all, and her frank opinions were not called for. She felt the heat rise in her face. "I am sorry."

Amethyst bit her lip. "You are perfectly right, Miss Ellison. We so seldom know how to deal honestly with other people's emotions when we do not share them. It is most unpatriotic of me to say so, but I fear it is something of a national failing."

"Indeed." Charlotte had never been anywhere else, so she had no idea whether it was so or not, but she had just rashly claimed to have returned from a visit abroad, so she could only nod and agree.

' 'I had a sister,'' she rushed on, ' 'who died in most tragic circumstances, and I found it exactly the same. Please, if you wish to, tell me of Sir Lockwood, anything you care to recall. I should be neither embarrassed nor uninterested. It is part of the respect we feel for those we admire that we should

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continue to speak of them when they are no longer with us, and to praise them to others.''

"You are very kind, Miss Ellison."

"Not at all." Charlotte felt again a guilt which she expected would hurt her indefinitely, but she could not stop now. "Tell me how you met? I expect it was romantic?"

"Not in the slightest!" Amethyst nearly laughed, and her face became soft at the memory, the echo of the girl she'd been was in the lines of her mouth and the momentary smoothness of her brow. "I bumped into him at a political meeting where I had gone with my elder brother. I remember I was wearing a cream hat with a feather on it, and a necklace of amber beads of which I was so fond I kept fingering it. Unfortunately it broke and scattered all over the floor. I was very upset, and bent to pick the beads up, and only made it worse. The rest cascaded all over the place. One gentleman stepped on one and lost his balance, falling against a large lady with a dog in her arms. She shrieked, the dog jumped and ran away under her neighbor's skirts. All of which put the speaker off, who quite lost his place. Lockwood glared at me and told me to compose myself, because I am afraid I was beginning to giggle. But he did help me find the beads.''

Tea was brought and she poured it, having dismissed the maid, and for the next thirty minutes Charlotte listened while she recounted her courtship, and one or two later events in her marriage. None of them showed Lockwood Hamilton as anything but a gentle, rather serious person who, beneath his outer, comfortable, rather pompous public face, was a vulnerable man, deeply in love with his second wife. How he had come to have his throat cut in the darkness on Westminster Bridge grew more inexplicable with every sentence.

It was well after four when the parlormaid knocked and announced that Mr. Barclay Hamilton had called.

Amethyst's skin drained of color and all the life left her eyes. In the midst of the recollections of happiness some pain

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had plunged right through her and brought back all her present loneliness and tragedy in its wake.

' 'Ask him to come in,'' she said, forcing her voice a little. She turned to Charlotte.' 'My husband's son by his first wife. I hope you do not mind? It will only be a matter of courtesy, and I do not wish you to feel as if you must leave."

' 'But if it is a family matter,'' Charlotte felt compelled by duty to offer,' 'might my presence not cause embarrassment? Surely-"

"No, not at all. We are not close. Indeed your presence may very well make it easier-for both of us."

It was so clearly a plea, for all the formality of her words, that Charlotte felt excused to stay, and wished she had not been.

The parlormaid returned and showed in a man perhaps ten years younger than Amethyst, very lean, with a sensitive face now almost white with tension. He looked only momentarily at Charlotte, but she knew he was disconcerted to see her there, and it robbed him of what he had intended to say.

"Good afternoon," he said uncertainly.

"Good afternoon, Barclay," Amethyst replied coolly. She turned deliberately to Charlotte. "Mr. Barclay Hamilton, Miss Charlotte Ellison, who was kind enough to call in person to express her condolences."

Barclay's face softened in recognition of a generosity.

"How do you do, Miss Ellison." Then before she could reply, he turned back to Amethyst and the moment was gone. "I apologize for calling at an inconvenient time. I brought a few papers regarding the estate." He held them forward in his hand, not so much offering them to her as indicating the reason for his presence.

"Very good of you," Amethyst replied. "But unnecessary. I was not anxious. You could have sent them and avoided the journey."

He looked as if he had been slapped; then his mouth hardened. "They are not of a nature I'd trust to the penny post.

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Perhaps I did not make myself clear: they are land deeds and rental agreements."

If Amethyst heard the edge in his voice she either refused to acknowledge it or did not care. ' 'I am sure you are better equipped than I to deal with such things. You are, after all, the executor.'' She did not offer him tea or make the slightest accommodation for him.

' 'And it is part of my duty to see that you are aware of the circumstances, and understand the properties you now own." He was staring at her, and at last she met his eyes. The blood rushed up in her cheeks, then fled again, leaving her paler than before.

"Thank you for doing your duty." She was polite now, but remote to the point that it became rudeness. "Of course, I would have expected no less of you.''

His tone was equally cold and punctilious. "Perhaps you will now do your own and look at them.''

Her body stiffened and her head came up. "I think you forget to whom you speak, Mr. Hamilton!"

There were white lines round his mouth forced by the pressure of his feeling, and the effort of self-control. When he spoke his voice shook. "I never forget who you are, ma-dame. Never from the day we met have I forgotten most exactly who and what you are, as God is my judge."

"If you have accomplished all you came to do," she said very quietly, very levelly, "then I think it would be better if you were to leave. I wish you good afternoon."

He inclined his head, first to Amethyst, then to Charlotte. "Good afternoon, ma'am; Miss Ellison." And he turned sharply and marched out, pulling the door behind him with a bang.

For an instant Charlotte considered pretending nothing had happened, but even as the idea crossed her mind she knew it was ridiculous. Before the interruption she and Amethyst had been talking together as friends; there had been a thread of

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understanding that would make such a charade impossible. It would be a deliberate rebuff, like walking away.

The seconds ticked by, and Amethyst did not move. Charlotte waited until the silence was oppressive, then she leaned across, poured the dregs of Amethyst's tea into the slop basin and filled her cup again from the pot. She stood and went to her.

"You had better have this," she said gently. "It is obviously a distressing relationship. It would be pointless of me to offer my help-there is probably nothing anyone can debut please accept my sympathy. I too have relatives I find exceedingly trying.'' She was thinking of Grandmama, which was hardly the same, but when she had been young and living at home, it was difficult enough.

Amethyst regained control of herself and accepted the tea, sipping it in silence for some moments.

' 'Thank you,'' she said at last.' 'You are most considerate. I apologize for subjecting you to such an embarrassing confrontation. I had no idea it would be so-so awkward." But further than that she said nothing, offering no explanation.

Charlotte did not expect one. It seemed that Barclay Hamilton had so violently resented her marrying his father that even after all these years he had not forgiven her. Perhaps it was a form of jealousy, perhaps a devotion to his mother which would not permit him to let anyone take her place. Poor Amethyst; the ghost of the first Lady Hamilton must have stalked her all her married life. At that moment Charlotte conceived a fierce dislike of Barclay Hamilton, in spite of all she saw in his face that she might otherwise have found peculiarly pleasing.

She was about to help herself to another cake when the parlormaid returned and announced Sir Garnet Royce. He followed her so closely it was impossible for Amethyst to deny that she would see him, and from the calm certainty in his eyes he apparently took it for granted that he was wel-

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come. His brows rose when he saw Charlotte, but it did not disconcert him.

"Good afternoon, Amethyst; good afternoon!"

"Miss Charlotte Ellison," Amethyst supplied. "She has been good enough to come in person to express her sympathy:"

"Most kind." Garnet nodded briefly. "Most kind." He had acquitted courtesy, and he ignored her now as he would have a butler or a governess. "Now Amethyst, I have completed the arrangements for a memorial service. I made a list of people it would be suitable to invite, and those who would be offended if they were not included. You can read it, of course, but I am sure you will agree." He did not make any move to pull it out of his pocket. "And I have chosen an order of prayer, and several hymns. I asked Canon Burridge if he would conduct. I am sure he is the most appropriate."

"Is there anything left for me to do?" There was a slight edge to her voice, but not enough to be exceptional in the circumstances. Charlotte would have resented anyone else's taking charge so completely, but perhaps she had become too independent since her marriage and her slide down the social scale. Garnet Royce was doing what he believed best for his sister-his face reflected decisive, practical goodwill-and Amethyst raised no objection, although for an instant a frown flickered across her brow, and she drew breath as if to say something contrary but changed her mind.

"Thank you," she said instead.

Garnet went to the table where Barclay Hamilton had left the papers he had delivered. "What are these?" He picked them up and turned them over. "Property deeds?"

' 'Barclay brought them,'' Amethyst explained, and again the shadow of anger and pain crossed her face.

' 'I '11 look at them for you.'' Garnet made as if to put them in his pocket.

"I should be obliged if you would leave them where they 164

are!" Amethyst snapped. "I am perfectly able to look at them myself!"

Garnet smiled briefly.' 'My dear, you don't know anything about them.''

"Then I shall learn. It would seem an appropriate time," she retorted.

"Nonsense!" he said, good-natured but totally dismissive. "You don't want to be bothered with the details and administration of the estate, and with learning new terms. Law is very difficult and complex for a woman, my dear. Allow your man of affairs to ascertain that everything is in order, as I am sure it is-Lockwood was meticulous about such things-and I will explain to you what it means, what you have, and advise you what steps to takie, if any. I doubt there will be much to alter. You should have a holiday, get away from this tragedy, calm your mind and your spirits. It will be good for you in all ways. Believe me, my dear, I still remember my own bereavement clearly enough." His face became shadowed with a memory he did not share except by implication, and Amethyst offered no sympathy. The loss must have been old, or crowded out by her own so current wound.

"Spend a few weeks in Aldeburgh." He looked at her, his distress replaced by solicitude again. "Walk by the sea, take the fresh air, visit with pleasant people and talk of country ways. Get away from London until all this business is over.''

She turned away from him and looked out of the small space hi the window that was clear beneath the blinds.

"I don't think I wish to."

"Be advised, my dear," he said quite gently, putting the papers in his pocket. "After what has happened you need a complete change. I'm sure Jasper would say the same."

"I'm sure he would!" she said instantly. "He always agrees with you! That does not make him right. I do not wish to leave at the moment, and I will not be pushed!"

He shook his head.

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"You are very stubborn, Amethyst. One might almost say willful; not an attractive quality in a woman. You make it very difficult to do what is best for you."

He reminded Charlotte of her father with his blind care, his determination to protect, and at the same time his complete unawareness of the root of one's feelings, of what one might be thinking or dreaming that had nothing to do with the ordinariness of the conversation.

"I appreciate your concern, Garnet," Amethyst said, obviously struggling to keep her patience. "I am not ready to leave yet. When I am I shall ask you, and if your invitation is still open, then I shall be grateful to accept. Until then I am remaining here in Royal Street. And please put those deeds back. It is time I learned what they are and how to administer the properties myself. I am a widow and had better learn how to conduct myself like one."

"You conduct yourself excellently, my dear. Jasper and I will take care of your affairs and counsel you, and of course all legal and financial matters will be dealt with by people of those professions. And in time you may wish to marry again, and we shall keep suitable people in mind."

"I do not wish to marry again!"

"Of course you don't, now. It would hardly be seemly, even if it were desired. But in a year or two ..."

She swung round to face him. "Garnet, for goodness' sake listen to me for once! I intend to become familiar with my own affairs!"

He was exasperated by her obduracy, her blind refusal to be sensible, but he maintained his even tone and composed expression in spite of all provocation. "You are being most unwise, but I daresay when you have had a little more time you will realize that. Naturally you are still suffering the first shock of your bereavement. I do know how you feel, my dear. Of course, Naomi died from scarlet fever"-his brow furrowed-"but the extraordinary sense of disbelief and loss is the same, whatever the cause."

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For a moment Amethyst's eyes opened wide in surprise, then some memory returned, confusing her further, and incredulity and pity filled her face. But he seemed to read none of it. He was absorbed with his own thoughts and plans.

"I shall call again in a day or two." He turned to Charlotte, recalling her presence. "Very courteous of you to have come, Mrs.-er, Miss Ellison. Good day."

"Good day, Sir Garnet," she replied, standing up also. ' 'I am sure it is time I was leaving.''

"Did you come in a hansom?"

"No, my carriage is outside," she said without a flicker, exactly as if she were in the habit of having such an equipage at her disposal. She turned to Amethyst. "Thank you for giving me so much of your time, Lady Hamilton. I came to offer rny condolences, and I find I have enjoyed your company more than most people's. Thank you."

For the first time since Barclay Hamilton had been announced, Amethyst smiled warmly.

"Please call again-that is, if you do not mind."

"I should be delighted to," Charlotte accepted, without knowing if it would be possible, and without the faintest hope it would further the cause of Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell. In fact her visit had done nothing except confirm that Lockwood Hamilton was exactly what he seemed, and must surely have been killed in mistake for someone else, presumably Vyvyan Etheridge.

She bade them good-bye and climbed into Aunt Vespasia's carriage feeling that she had accomplished nothing, except possibly the elimination of a certain avenue of thought. She would find it very hard to believe Amethyst Hamilton had had anything to do with her husband's death. She might ask Aunt Vespasia to inquire further about Barclay Hamilton; perhaps they might learn something of his mother. But it was a very slender thought. Sharper and blacker was the figure of Florence Ivory. The sooner she formed some personal impression of her, Charlotte felt, the better.

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"Walnut Tree Walk, please," she instructed the coachman, before realizing she should not have said please; after all she was instructing a servant, not requesting a friend. She had forgotten how to behave.

Zenobia Gunne sat in her own carriage with many of the same misgivings as Charlotte had had in Vespasia's. She was not in the least afraid of Mary Carfax, but she did not like her, and she knew the feeling was returned with some fervor. It would take an extraordinary reason to bring Zenobia to call upon her unannounced, and Mary would believe nothing less. The last time they had met, at a ball in 1850, Mary had been an imperious and fragile beauty, betrothed satisfactorily but unromantically to Gerald Carfax. Zenobia was single. They had both fallen in love, in their wildly different ways, with Captain Peter Holland. To Mary he had been comely and dashing, and she had suddenly seen romance leaving her forever as she tied herself to Gerald; to Zenobia he had been a man too poor to afford a wife, but the most immense fun, full of laughter and imagination, his mouth always ready to smile, sensitive to the beautiful, and to the absurd, a brave, tender and funny man she had loved with all her heart. He had been killed in the Crimea, and she had never loved anyone since with the same depth, or without at some moment seeing Peter's face in his and feeling all the old dreams return. And with every other man at all the best, the tenderest times, it was Peter's eyes she saw, Peter's laughter she heard.

It was after that that she had first gone to Africa, scandalizing her family, as well as Mary Carfax. But what did it matter, with Peter dead? Better to be alone than live a pretense with someone else.

Now as the carriage sped through the spring streets towards Kensington she racked her brains for a credible tale. It would be hard enough even for a long-standing friend and confidante to learn anything useful that might throw light on the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge; she would learn nothing at

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all if she did not even get through the door! Did Mary remember that ball? Did she know that Peter had loved Zeno-bia, and that she would have persuaded him that she did not care about money or Society, had he not died on the battlefield of Balaklava? Or did Mary still imagine it might have been she he would have chosen, had he the freedom to choose anyone?

Desperation was the element! She must use as much of the truth as possible. She must find a reason she could lie about convincingly; emotions were far harder to stimulate. She was at her wits' end . . . and she needed to know-that was it! She needed to know the whereabouts of a mutual friend, someone from those far-off days, and her extremity had driven her to seek Mary Carfax. Mary would believe that. But who should she say she was searching for? It must not be someone in such current circulation that Zenobia should have found her for herself. Ah! Beatrice Allenby was just the person. She had married a Belgian cheesemaker and gone to live in Bruges! No one could be expected to know that as a matter of course. And Mary Carfax would enjoy relating that: it was a minor scandal, girls of good family might marry German barons or Italian counts, but not Belgians, and certainly not cheesemakers of any sort!

By the time she alighted in Kensington she was composed in her mind and had her story rehearsed in detail. A small boy with a hoop and a stick ran down the pavement past her, and his governess hurried along, calling after him. Zenobia smiled and ascended the steps. She presented her card to the parlormaid, outstared the rather pert girl, and watched with satisfaction as she departed to take the news to her mistress.

She returned a few moments later and showed Zenobia into the withdrawing room. As she had expected, Mary Carfax's curiosity was too sharp for her to wait.

"How pleasant to see you again, Miss Gunne, after so very long," she lied with a chill smile. "Please do take a seat.'' Her concern was polite, but there was also a solicitude

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in it, a reminder that Mary was a fraction younger, which fact she had treasured even in their youth and now found too sweet to let pass. "Would you care for some refreshment? A tisane?"

Zenobia swallowed the reply that came to her lips and forced the opening she had planned. "Thank you; most kind.'' She sat on the edge of her chair, as manners dictated, not farther back, as would have been comfortable, and bared her teeth very slightly. "You look well."

"I daresay it is the climate," Lady Mary answered pointedly. "So good for the complexion."

Zenobia, burned by the African sun, longed to make some withering reply but remembered her niece and forbore. "I am sure it must be," she agreed with difficulty. "All the rain-"

"We have had quite a pleasant winter," Lady Mary contradicted. "But I daresay you have not been here to experience it?"

Zenobia satisfied her.

"No, no I returned only very recently."

Lady Mary's rather straight eyebrows shot up. "And you came to call upon me?"

Zenobia did not twitch a muscle. "I wished to call upon Beatrice Allenby, but I cannot find a trace of her. No one seems to know where she is presently staying. And remembering how fond you were of her, I thought perhaps you might know?"

Lady Mary struggled, and the opportunity to relate a scandal won. "Indeed I do-although I hardly know if I should tell you!" she said with satisfaction.

Zenobia aifected surprise and concern. "Oh dear! Some misfortune?"

"That is not the word I would have used for it.''

"Good heavens! You don't mean a crime?"

"Of course I don't! Really, your mind is-" Lady Mary caught herself just in time before she was openly rude. That

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would have been vulgar, and she disliked Zenobia Gunne far too much to be vulgar in front of her, "You have become more used to the unconventional behavior of foreigners. Certainly I do not speak of a crime-rather, a social disaster. She married beneath her and went to live hi Belgium."

"Good gracious!" Zenobia let her amazement register fully. "What an extraordinary thing! Well, there are some very fine cities in Belgium. I daresay she will be happy enough."

"A cheesemaker!" Lady Mary added.

"A what?"

"A cheesemaker!" She let the word fall with all its redolence of trade. "A person who manufactures cheese!"

Zenobia remembered a dozen such exchanges years ago- and Peter Holland's face so full of laughter. She knew exactly what he would have thought, what he would have said in a snatched moment alone. She raised her eyebrows. "Are you perfectly sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Lady Mary snapped. "It is not the sort of thing about which one makes mistakes!"

"Dear me. Her mother must be distraught!" A very clear picture came into Zenobia's mind of Beatrice Allenby's mother, who would have been delighted with any husband, so long as Beatrice did not remain at home.

"Naturally," Lady Mary agreed. "Wouldn't anyone? Although she had no one to blame but herself! She did not watch the girl as she should. One has to be vigilant."

It was the opening Zenobia had been waiting for.

' 'Of course, your son married very nicely, didn't he? But then I hear he was a fine-looking young man." She had not heard anything of the sort, but no mother minded having her son referred to as handsome; in her eyes no doubt he was. There were many photographs round the room, but she was too shortsighted to see them clearly. They could have been of anyone. "And with such charm," she added for good measure. "So rare. Good-looking young men are apt to be

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ill-mannered, as if the pleasure of looking at them were sufficient."

"Yes, indeed," Lady Mary said with satisfaction. "He could have chosen almost anyone!"

That was a wild exaggeration, but Zenobia let it pass. She recalled how sedate and pompous Gerald Carfax had been, and pictured Mary's long boredom over the years, the brief dream of love fading at last, buried, because to remember it made the present unbearable.

"Then he married with his heart?" she remarked. "How very commendable. No doubt he is very happy."

Lady Mary drew breath to declare that certainly he was, then she remembered Etheridge's murder and realized that would be a highly unfortunate thing to say. "Ah, well..."

Zenobia waited with the question written large in her face.

"His father-in-law died tragically a very short time ago. He is still in mourning."

"Oh dear-oh!" Zenobia affected sudden intelligence. "Oh, of course! Vyvyan Etheridge, murdered on Westminster Bridge. How perfectly wretched. Please accept my condolences."

Lady Mary's face tightened. "Thank you. For one who has just returned from the outreaches of the Empire you are very well informed. No doubt you have missed Society. I must say, one would have considered oneself safe from such outrages in London, but apparently not! Still, no doubt it will all be solved and forgotten soon. It can have nothing whatsoever to do with us."

"Naturally," Zenobia said with difficulty. She remembered acutely why she had disliked Mary Carfax so much. "It is hardly like marrying a cheesemaker."

Lady Mary was oblivious to sarcasm; it was outside her comprehension. "A great deal depends upon upbringing," she said serenely. "James would never have done such a selfish and completely irresponsible thing. I would not have

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permitted him to entertain such an idea when he was young, and of course now he is adult he still respects my wishes."

And your purse strings, Zenobia thought, but she said nothing.

' 'Not that he is without spirit! *' Lady Mary looked at Zenobia with a flash of dry disapproval that contained the trace of a smile. "He has many fashionable friends and pursuits, and he certainly does not permit his wife to intrude into his ... his pleasures. A woman should keep her place; it is her greatest strength, and her true power. As you would have known, Zenobia, if you had kept it yourself, instead of careering off quite unnecessarily to heathen countries! There is no call for an Englishwoman to go traipsing around on her own, wearing unbecoming clothes and getting in everyone's way. Adventuring is for men, as are many other pursuits."

"Otherwise one ends up marrying a cheesemaker instead of an heiress!" Zenobia snapped. "I imagine James's wife will inherit a fortune now?"

' 'I have no idea. I do not inquire into my son's financial affairs." Lady Mary's voice was tinged with ice, but there was a curl of satisfaction round her mouth just the same.

"Your daughter-in-law's affairs," Zenobia corrected. "Parliament passed an act, you know; a woman's property is her own now, not her husband's."

Lady Mary sniffed, and her smile did not fade.' 'A woman who loved and trusted her husband would still give it into her husband's charge,'' she replied.' 'As long as he was alive. As you would know, if you had enjoyed a happy marriage yourself. It is not natural for women to concern themselves in such things. If we once start doing it, Zenobia, then men will cease to look after us as they should! For goodness' sake, woman, have you no intelligence?"

Zenobia laughed outright. She loathed Mary Carfax and everything to do with her, but for the first time since they had parted thirty-eight years go, she felt a glimmer of understanding toward her, and with it a kind of warmth.

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"I fail to see what is funny!" Lady Mary said tartly.

"I'm sure." Zenobia nodded through her mirth. "You always did."

Lady Mary reached for the bell. "You must have other calls to make-please do not let me take all of your time."

There was nothing Zenobia could possibly do but take her leave. She rose. The visit had been a total disaster, not a thing could be salvaged, but she would go with dignity.

"Thank you for passing on the news about Beatrice Al-lenby. I knew you would be the person who would know what had happened-and who would repeat it. It has been a charming afternoon. Good day to you." And as the maid opened the door in answer to the bell, she swept past her, across the hall, and out of the front door as soon as it was opened. Outside in the street she swore fluently in a dialect she had learned from a canoeist in the Congo. She had achieved nothing to help Florence Ivory, or Africa Dowell.

Vespasia had by far the easiest task, but she was also the only person suited to perform it with excellence. She knew the political world as neither Charlotte nor Zenobia could possibly do; she had the rank and the reputation to approach almost anyone, and from her many battles for social reform she had gained the experience to know very well when she was being lied to or fobbed off with an edited version of the truth suitable for ladies and amateurs.

She was fortunate to find Somerset Carlisle at home, but had he been out she would have waited. The matter was far too urgent to put off. She had naturally not said so to Zenobia, but the more she heard of the details, the more she feared that at the very least the police could make an excellent case against Florence Ivory, and at most she was actually guilty. Had Zenobia not been the character she was-eccentric, courageous, lonely, and of deep and enduring affections- Vespasia would have avoided any involvement with the affair at all. But since she had agreed to help, the least cruel thing

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she could think of was that they should try to discover the truth as soon as they could. There was the remote possibility that they would find some other solution; if not, they would at least end Zenobia's fearful suspense, the swings between the upsurge of hope and the plunges of cold despair as one piece of information surfaced after another. And as hard as any revelation was the gray silence of waiting, not knowing what could happen next, imagining, trying to argue in the mind what the police would be thinking.

Vespasia had experienced it all after George's death and she knew what Zenobia would feel with an immediacy no outsider could.

Therefore she did not have the slightest qualm in sending for Charlotte and dispatching her on any errand that might prove useful. She would have sent Emily as well had she not been gallivanting round Italy. And she was perfectly happy to take up Somerset Carlisle's time and employ his talents, should they prove to be of help.

He received her in his study. It was a smaller room than the withdrawing room, but immensely comfortable, full of old leather and old finely polished wood reflecting the firelight. The big desk was strewn with papers and open books, and there were three pens in the stand and half a stick of sealing wax and a scatter of unused postage stamps.

Somerset Carlisle was a man in his late forties, lean, with the look of one who has burnt up all his excesses of energy in relentless activity, a face where emotion and irony lay so close to the surface that only years of schooling kept them within the bounds of taste, not because he feared or believed the doctrine of others, but because he knew the impractical-ity of shocking people. However, as Vespasia knew very well from the past, his imagination was vivid and limitless, and he was equal to any act, no matter how bizarre, if he believed it right.

He was startled to see her, and immediately curious. A lady of her quality would never have called unannounced

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unless her reason were pressing; knowing Vespasia, it had probably to do with crime or injustice, about which she felt intensely.

He rose as soon as she came in, inadvertently spilling a pile of letters, which he ignored.

"Lady Cumming-Gould! It is always a pleasure to see you. But no doubt you have come for something more than friendship. Please sit down." He rapidly pushed a great long-legged marmalade cat out of the other chair and brushed off the seat with his hand, plumping up the cushion for her. "Shall I send for tea?"

"Later perhaps," she replied. "For the moment I need your assistance."

"Of course. With what?"

The marmalade cat stalked over to the desk, jumped up onto it, and tried to climb behind a pile of books, not in alarm but from curiosity.

''Hamish!'' Carlisle said absently. "Get down, you fool!'' He turned back to Vespasia, and the cat ignored him. "Something has happened?"

"Indeed it has," she agreed, remembering with a sharply sweet sense of comfort how much she liked this man. "Two members of Parliament have had their throats cut on Westminster Bridge."

Carlisle's winged and rather crooked eyebrows rose. "And that brings you here?''

' 'No, not of itself, of course not. I am concerned because it seems the niece of a very good friend of mine may be suspected by the police."

"A woman?" he said incredulously. "Hardly a woman's sort of crime-neither the method nor the place. Thomas Pitt doesn't think so, surely?"

"I really have no idea," she admitted. "But I think not, or Charlotte would have mentioned it, always assuming she knew. She has been somewhat preoccupied with Emily's wedding recently.''

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"Emily's wedding?" He was surprised, and pleased. "I didn't know she had married again."

"Yes-to a young man of immeasurable charm and no money whatsoever. But that is not as disastrous as it sounds; I think, as much as one can ever be sure, that he cares for her deeply and has the quality of loyalty in even very trying times, a sense of adventure, and a very agreeable sense of humor, so it may well prove a happy situation. At least it has begun well, which is not always the case."

"But you are concerned about your friend's niece? Why on earth should she take to murdering M.P.s?'' His face was full of visions of the absurd, but she knew that beneath it he understood fear very well, and his light tone did not mean he did not appreciate the gravity of the situation.

"Because the second victim promised to help her retain custody of her child, and then reneged on his word and assisted her husband, with the result that she lost the child and will in all probability not see her again."

He was leaning forward towards her, tense now, concentrating. "Why? Why should a mother lose custody of her child? "he asked.

"She is deemed an unsuitable person to raise a girl because she has opinions. For example, she believes that women should have a right to vote for their representatives in Parliament and in local government, and she has associated herself with Mrs. Bezant and the fight for a decent wage and improved conditions for the match girls at Bryant and Mays. No doubt you are better aware than I of the numbers who die of necrosis of the jaw from the phosphorus and are bald before they reach the age of twenty from carrying boxes on their heads."

His face looked suddenly bruised, as if had seen too much pain. "I am. Tell me, Vespasia," he said, letting the formality drop without realizing it, "do you believe this woman could have killed the M.P.s?"

"I do," she confessed. ' 'But I have not met her yet. I may 177

think otherwise when I have, though I doubt it: Nobby- Zenobia Gunne-thinks so too. But I have promised to help. Therefore I have come to ask you if there's anything at all you can tell me about either Lockwood Hamilton or Vyvyan Etheridge which may conceivably be of any use in discovering who murdered them, whether it is Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell or someone else."

"Two women?"

"Florence Ivory is the mother who lost her child; Africa Dowell is Nobby's niece, with whom Mrs. Ivory shares a house."

He stood up and went to the door, requested tea and sandwiches, and returned to sit down opposite Vespasia again, having to remove Hamish from his chair first.

"Naturally, when I first heard of the murders it crossed my mind to wonder whether it was anarchists, a lunatic, or someone with a personal motive, although I admit, I thought the third far less likely after Etheridge was killed as well."

"Didn't they have anything in common?"

"If they did I don't know what it was, beyond the things that are equally common to a couple of hundred other people!"

"Then we may have to assume that one was killed in mistake for the other," she concluded. "Is that imaginable?"

He thought for a moment. "Yes. They both lived on the south side of the river not far from Westminster Bridge, a pleasant walk home on a spring night. They were both of medium build, with the conspicuous feature being silver hair, and both were pale, with rather longish faces. I have never mistaken one for the other, but it would be possible for someone who had only a slight acquaintance, and in the dark. That would mean that Etheridge was the intended victim, and Hamilton a mistake; one would hardly make the mistake second."

"Tell me "all you know about Etheridge." Vespasia sat back and folded her hands in her lap, her eyes on his face.

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For several seconds he sat in silence, ordering his thoughts, during which time the tea and sandwiches arrived.

' 'His career has been solid but unspectacular,'' he began at last. "He has property in two or three counties, as well as in London, and is very well provided for indeed, but it is old money, not new. He did not make much of it himself."

"Politics?" she interrupted.

His mouth turned down at the corners. "That is what is difficult to understand. He didn't do anything controversial, tended to go with the party line on everything I know of. He is for reform, but only at the speed his peers approve. He's hardly a radical or an innovator, nor, on the other hand, a die-hard."

"You are saying he went whichever way the prevailing wind blew," Vespasia said with some contempt.

' 'I don't know that I would put it as cruelly as that. But he was very much in the mainstream. If he had any convictions, they were the same as most of his colleagues. He was against Irish Home Rule, but only on a vote; he never spoke about it in the House, so he was hardly a target for the Fenians."

"What about office?" she said hopefully. "He must have trodden on somebody's toes on the way up."

"My dear Vespasia, he didn't go far enough up to do anyone out of anything of importance-certainly nothing he'd get his throat cut for!''

' 'Well did he ravish someone's daughter, or seduce someone's wife? For heaven's sake, Somerset, somebody killed him!"

"Yes I know." He looked down at his hands, then up again into her eyes. "Don't you think it may be either a lunatic simply run amok, or else your friend's niece, as you fear?"

"I think it is probable, but not certain. And as long as there is any doubt one way or the other, I shall continue to pursue it. Perhaps the man had a lover, of either sex? Or he may have gambled; maybe someone owed him more than

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they could afford to pay, or perhaps it was Etheridge himself who was owing. He may have gained some knowledge, quite by chance, and he was murdered to silence him."

Carlisle frowned. "Knowledge of what?"

"I don't know! For heaven's sake, man, you have been in the world long enough! Scandal, corruption, treason-there are more than enough possibilities."

"You know it always amazes me how a woman of your immaculate breeding and impeccable life could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the sins and perversions of mankind. You look as if you've never seen a kitchen, much less a bawdy house."

"That is how I intend to look," she replied. "A woman's appearance is her fortune, and what she seems to be will be the measure of what other people assume she is. If you had a trifle more practical sense you would know that. At times I think you are an idealist.''

"At times I probably am," he agreed. "But I will scrape around and see what I can learn about Etheridge for you, although I doubt it will be of much help.''

So did Vespasia, but she would not give up hope.

"Thank you. Knowledge will be useful, whatever it is. Even if it merely allows us to eliminate certain possibilities.''

He smiled at her, and there was some tenderness as well as respect in his eyes. She felt faintly embarrassed, which was absurd; Vespasia was above embarrassment. But she was startled to find how much his affection pleased her. She took another sandwich-they were salmon and mayonnaise-and gave one as well to the cat, and then she changed the subject.

Charlotte alighted at Walnut Tree Walk and went straight up to the door. There was no point on this call in being anything but perfectly frank. She had not asked but she presumed Zenobia Gunne had told her niece that she would do all she

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could to help; why else would her niece have confided in her?

The door was opened by a maid, not in uniform but in a plain blue dress with a white apron and no cap.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Good afternoon. I apologize for calling so late," Charlotte said with great aplomb. "But it is most important that I speak with Miss Africa Dowell. My name is Charlotte Ellison, and I have come from her aunt, Miss Gunne, on a matter of some urgency.''

The maid stepped back and invited her in, and as soon as Charlotte came into the hallway she liked the house. It was full of bamboo and polished wood, with plenty of light. Spring bulbs and flowers bloomed in green earthenware pots, and she could see chintz curtains in the dining room through the open door.

It was only a moment before the maid returned and showed her into a large sitting room, which seemed to be the one room in the house designed for receiving guests. The far wall was entirely taken up by windows and French doors, the seats were covered in flowered cushions, and on the bamboo-legged occasional table were bowls of flowers. However, Charlotte was aware of a hollowness in it, something she would not have expected from what she already knew of these women's lives. It took her only a moment to realize what had given her the feeling: there were no photographs anywhere, even though there was plenty of space on the mantelshelf, the windowsill, the table and the top of the cabinet. Most especially, there were no pictures of the child, such as Charlotte herself had of both Jemima and Daniel. There were no mementos at all.

And though it was a woman's room, there was no needlework in progress, no wool, no sewing basket, no embroidery. A sidelong glance at the bookshelf disclosed the heaviest of material, philosophy and political history, no humor, no romance, and certainly nothing a child would read.

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It was as if they had expunged all trace of painful memory and of the desire to create the heart of a home. It was pitiful; she could understand it with a part of her mind, and yet it was also chilling.

The woman who stood in the center of the room was angular, even bony, and at the same time she had a kind of perverse grace. Her plain muslin dress was oddly becoming. Frills would have been absurd with that striking face, the very wide-set eyes, the dominant nose, and the mouth etched by lines of pain. She looked to be about thirty-five, and Charlotte knew she must be Florence Ivory. Her heart sank lower. A woman with a face like this could assuredly have both loved and hated enough to do anything!

Beyond her, sitting on the window seat, a younger woman with a face straight from Rosetti stared back at Charlotte watchfully, prepared to defend what she loved, both the woman and the ideal. It was a dreamer's face, the face of one who would follow her vision, and die for it.

"How do you do," Charlotte said after a moment's hesitation. "I have spent some part of the morning in the company of Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, and your aunt, Miss Gunne. They invited me to take luncheon with them because they are deeply concerned about your welfare, and the possibility that you may be wrongly accused of a crime."

"Indeed?" Florence Ivory looked bitterly amused. "And how does that involve you, Miss Ellison? You cannot possibly call upon every woman in London who faces some injustice!"

Charlotte felt a prickle of irritation. "I should not wish to, Mrs. Ivory, and certainly not upon all those who thought they had!" she answered equally tartly. "I call upon you because Miss Gunne has taken it upon herself to try to prevent this particular injustice which she fears, and has asked my Great-aunt Vespasia's help, who has in turn asked me."

"I fail to see what you can do." Florence spoke from bitterness, but also from despair.

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"Of course you fail to," Charlotte snapped. "If you could see it you could probably do it yourself! You are not unintelligent." Her mind flashed back to that public meeting and the intensity of determination. "And I have few resources that are not open to you or anyone else. I simply have some experience, some common sense and some courage." She had not spoken so abruptly, or so arrogantly, to anyone as far back as she could remember! But there was an abrasive-ness and an anger in this woman which she at once understood, knowing her story, and found unnecessary and self-defeating.

Africa Dowell stood up and went to Florence Ivory. She was taller than Charlotte had realized, and although slender, she looked as if she might be of athletic build under the rosy cotton of her gown.

"You cannot be a detective, Miss Ellison, if Lady Cumming-Gould is your great-aunt. What is it you are proposing to do that might be of help to us?"

Florence gave her a withering look. "Really, Africa. The police are all men, and while some of them may have reasonable manners and even some imagination, it is futile to suppose they will come to any conclusion except the most obvious and convenient one! They are hardly going to suspect Miss Ellison's family or associates, are they? Our best prayer is that some lunatic is caught before they can organize the evidence against me!"

Africa had more patience man Charlotte would have had.

"Aunt Nobby is really very good." Her chin lifted a little higher. "When she was in her early thirties she began exploring. She went to Egypt, then south to the Congo. She traveled up the great river in a canoe; she was the only white person in her party. She's had the courage to do things you would like to do, so don't dismiss her.'' She refrained from adding any criticism of Florence Ivory's prejudice.

Florence was moved more by Africa's loyalty than by the facts. Her face softened, and she put her hand on the younger

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woman's arm. "I would indeed like to do such things," she admitted. ''She must be a remarkable person. But I don't see how she can help us in this.''

Africa turned to Charlotte. "Miss Ellison?"

Charlotte could not find any comforting panacea. She detected by chance and instinct, by being caught up in events, by caring and observing. And most certainly she would be ill-advised to tell either of these two women that her husband was with the police.

"We will explore the other possibilities," she answered rather lamely. "Discover whether either man had any personal, business, or political enemies-"

"Won't the police do that?" Africa asked.

Charlotte saw Florence's face, the anger in it, the conviction of injustice to come. She sympathized: Florence Ivory had suffered loss already, perhaps the worst she could conceive. But her condescension, her blanket condemnation of all persons in authority, not just those who had betrayed her, lost her the warmth that Charlotte would have felt for her otherwise.

"What makes you certain the police suspect you so strongly, Mrs. Ivory?" she asked rather brusquely.

Florence's face held both pain and contempt. "The look on the policeman's face," she answered.

Charlotte was incredulous. "I beg your pardon?"

"It was in his eyes," Florence repeated. "A mixture of pity and judgment. For heaven's sake, Miss Ellison! I have motive enough, and I wrote to Etheridge and said so-no doubt the police will find my letters before long. I have the means: anyone can purchase a razor, and the kitchen is full of knives of excellent sharpness! And I was alone in the house the night he was killed; Africa went to visit a neighbor who was sick and sat up with her half the night. But the woman was delirious, so I don't suppose she knows whether Africa remained there or not! You may be very good at solving petty thefts and discovering the authors of unpleasant

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letters, Miss Ellison, but proving me innocent is beyond your abilities. But I am grateful for your well-meaning efforts. And it was kind of Lady Cumming-Gould to be concerned for us. Please thank her for me.''

Charlotte was so angry it took all her strength of will to force herself to remember how dreadfully the woman had already been hurt. Only by recalling Jemima's face to her inner vision, by remembering the feel of her slender little body in her arms, the smell of her hair, did she quell the fury. In its place came a pity so wrenching it left her almost breathless.

' 'You may not be the only person he betrayed, Mrs. Ivory; and if you did not kill him, then we shall continue to search for whoever did. And I will do it because I wish to. Thank you for your time. Good day. Good day, Miss Dowell.'' And she turned and walked back towards the hall, out of the front door, and into the late spring sunlight feeling exhausted and frightened. She did not even know whether she believed Florence Ivory to have killed Etheridge or not. Certainly the cause was there, and the passion!

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8

wallace loughley, M.P., stood almost under the immense tower of Big Ben. It had been a long sitting, and he was tired. The debate had been really rather pointless, and in the end, nothing had been achieved. It was a lovely evening; he could think of a dozen better places to spend it than cooped up in the House of Commons listening to arguments he had heard a dozen times before. There was a jolly good Gilbert and Sullivan opera on at the Savoy Theatre, and several charming ladies he knew would be there.

The offshore breeze carried the smoke and the fog away, and he could see a dazzle of stars overhead. He had been meaning to say to Sheridan-blast! He had been a few yards away only moments ago. He could not have gone far, bound to walk on an evening like this. Only lived off the Waterloo Road.

Loughley set out smartly towards the bridge, past the statue of Boadicea with her horses and chariot outlined black against the sky, the lights along the Embankment a row of yellow moons down the course of the river. He loved this city, especially the heart of it. Here was the seat of power hallowed back to Simon de Montfort and the first Parliament in the

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thirteenth century, to even its concept in the Magna Charta, and Henry II's charter before that. Now it was the center of an Empire none of them could have conceived. Heavens, they had not even known the world was round, let alone a quarter of its face would be British!

Ah, there was Sheridan, leaning up against the last lamppost, almost as if he were waiting for him.

"Sheridan!" Loughley called out, raising his elegant cane to wave. ' 'Sheridan! Meant to ask you if you'd come to dine with me next week, at my club. Wanted to talk about the ... Whatever's the matter with you, man? Are you ill? You look ..." The rest died away in blasphemy wrung from his heart so intensely that perhaps it was no blasphemy at all.

Cuthbert Sheridan was draped half backwards against the lamppost, his head a little on one side, his hat on the crown of his head, and one lock of pale hair over his brow, looking colorless in the strange quality of the artificial light. The white scarf round his neck was so tight his chin was tipped up, and already the dark blood was soaking the silk and running under to stain his shirtfront. His face was ghastly, eyes staring, mouth a little open.

Loughley felt the sky and the river whirl about him, and his stomach lurched; he lost his balance, stumbling and grasping for the balustrade. It had happened again, and he was alone on Westminster Bridge with the appalling corpse, so horrified he could not even shout.

He turned and stumbled away back towards the north end and the Palace of Westminster, feet slipping on the damp pavement, the lights dancing in his blurred vision.

"You or'right, sir?" a voice said suspiciously.

Loughley looked up and saw light gleaming on silver buttons and the blessed uniform of a constable. He grasped the man's arm.

"Dear God! It's happened again! Over there . . . Cuthbert Sheridan."

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"Wot's 'appened sir?" The voice was heavy with skepticism.

' 'Another murder. Cuthbert Sheridan-with his throat cut, poor devil! For God's sake, do something!"

At any other time P.C. Blackett would have regarded the shaking, semicoherent man in front of him as a hallucinating drunk, but there was something hideously familiar about this.

"You come wiv me an' show me, sir." He was not going to let the man out of his sight. It crossed his mind that perhaps he even had the Westminster Cutthroat in his grasp now, although he doubted it. This man looked too genuinely shocked. But he was unquestionably a witness.

Reluctantly Loughley returned, feeling nauseated by horror. It was exactly as had been burned indelibly in his mind. Now it had the quality of a nightmare.

"Ah," P.C. Blackett said heavily. He looked back at Big Ben, noted the time, then pulled out his whistle and blew it long, shrilly, and with piercing intensity.

When Pitt arrived Micah Drummond was already there, dressed in a smoking jacket, as if he had just left his own fireside, and looking cold and sad. There was a hollowness in his eyes, even in the lamplight, and the bridge of his nose was even more pinched.

"Ah, Pitt." He turned and left the small group of men huddled together by the mortuary coach. "Another one, exactly the same. I thought perhaps with Etheridge we'd seen the last of it. Well, it looks as if it wasn't your woman after all. We're back to a lunatic."

For a moment Pitt felt a surge of relief mixed with the mounting horror. He did not want Florence Ivory to be guilty. Then her face came to his memory as clearly as if he had seen her the instant before. There was passion in it, intensity violent enough to carry out her will, whatever it was, and also a keen and subtle intelligence, quite enough to foresee precisely this conversation.

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"Probably," he agreed.

"Probably!"

"There are many possibilities." Pitt stood still, staring at the lamppost. The body had been removed and had been laid out on the ground in an attempt at decency. He looked down at it, his mind taking in the details of clothing, the hands, the wound exactly like the two others', the pallid, terrible face with its strong nose and deep-set eyes, the hair that might have been gray or blond, silvery in the lamplight. "It could be a madman," he went on. "Or anarchists, though I doubt that; or there may be some political plot afoot that we have had no whisper of as yet. Or it could be that this has nothing to do with the other two, just someone copying. It happens. Or it could be three murders, only one of which the murderer cares about, the other two meant to lead us astray."

Drummond closed his eyes, as if his eyelids could keep out the fearfulness of the thought. He put his long hands up to cover his face for a moment before taking them away with a sigh.

"Dear God, I hope not! Could anyone be so . . ." But he could not find the word, and he let it go.

"Who is he?" Pitt asked.

' 'Cuthbert Sheridan.''

* 'Member of Parliament?''

"Yes. Oh yes, he's another member of Parliament. About thirty-eight or forty, married, with three children. Lives on the south side of the river, Baron's Court, off the Waterloo Road. Up-and-coming young backbencher, member for a constituency in Warwickshire. A bit conservative, against Home Rule, against penal reform; for better working conditions in mines and factories, better poor laws and child labor laws. Very definitely against any vote for women." He looked up at Pitt and held his eyes steadily. "So is almost everyone else."

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"You know a lot about him," said Pitt, surprised. "I thought he was found only half an hour ago."

"But it was one of his colleagues, following him to ask him to dine, who found him. So he knew him straightaway and told us. Poor fellow's pretty cut up. A Wallace Loughley, over there sitting on the ground by the mortuary coach. Somebody gave him a tot of brandy, but it would be a charity to see him as soon as you can and let the poor beggar go home."

"What did the surgeon say?"

"Same as the others; at least, it seems so at first glance. A single wound, almost certainly delivered from behind. Victim doesn't seem to have suspected anyone or offered any resistance."

"Odd." Pitt tried to imagine it. "If he was walking across the bridge, going home after a late sitting, he would presumably be moving at quite a good pace. Someone must have been going very briskly to overtake him. Wouldn't you think a man alone on the bridge, especially after two other murders, would at least turn round if he heard rapid footsteps approaching him from behind? I certainly would!"

"I would too," Drummond agreed with a deepening frown. "And I'd shout and probably run. Unless of course it was someone coming towards him, from the south side. But hi any case, I certainly wouldn't stand still and wait for someone to come close enough to strike me from either direction." He let his breath out shakily. The air was so silent they could hear the water swirling round the piers of the bridge, and far away along the Embankment the rattle of a hansom cab. "Unless, of course," Drammond finished, "it was someone I knew, and trusted." He bit his lip. "Certainly not some unknown madman."

"What about Wallace Loughley?" Pitt raised his eyebrows. "What do we know about him?"

"Nothing yet. But it won't be hard to find out. For a start I'd better see if he is who he says he is. I suppose it would

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be easy enough to claim. I certainly don't know all six hundred seventy members of Parliament by sight! I'd better not let him go home until someone has identified him, poor devil."

"I'll see him." Pitt pushed his hands hard down in his pockets. He left Drummond and walked over to the mortuary carriage and the group of half a dozen men gathered round it. One was obviously the driver; he still had half his attention on the horse, although the reins were hooked to the stay. A man in early middle age, haggard, hands shaking, hair streaked across his brow, was presumably Loughley. He had been sitting on the curbside, and he stood up as Pitt approached, waiting, but he did not speak. He was very clearly suffering from shock, but there was no hysteria in him, no arrogance, no panic that Pitt could see. If he had followed Sheridan and murdered him, he had a mastery of himself to the finest detail, a brain as cold as the water of the Thames beneath them.

"Good evening, Mr. Loughley," Pitt said quietly. "What time did you last see Mr. Sheridan alive?"

Loughley swallowed, finding his voice with difficulty. "It must have been a little after half past ten, I think. I left the House at twenty minutes past, and spoke to one or two people. I-I 'm not sure for how long, but I said only a few words to each of them. I saw Sheridan and said good night to him; then after he had gone Colonel Devon said something to me about business. Then I remembered I wanted to speak to Sheridan; he'd only been gone a few minutes, so I went after him, and-and you know what I found."

"Is Colonel Devon a Member of Parliament?"

"Yes-dear God! You don't think-! You can check with him. He'll remember what was said; it was about tonight's debate."

"Did you see anyone else on the bridge, either ahead of you or behind, Mr. Loughley?"

"No. No I didn't. That's the extraordinary thing: I don't 191

remember seeing anyone else! And yet it must have been only-" He took a deep, shaky breath. "Only minutes after. . ."

There was a slight commotion at the north end of the bridge, a loud cry from some of the people being held back by the police. A woman started to scream and was led away. There were brisk footsteps, and a dark figure emerged and came towards them, overcoat flapping. As he passed under the light Pitt recognized Garnet Royce.

"Good evening, sir," Pitt said clearly.

Royce came up to him, glanced at Loughley, and greeted him by name, then looked back at Pitt and at Drummond, who had rejoined him.

"This is getting very serious, man!" he said grimly. "Have you any idea how close people are to losing control? We seem to be on the very brink of anarchy. Perfectly sane and steady people are panicking, talking about conspiracies to overthrow the throne, uprisings of workers, strikes, even revolution! I know that's absurd." He shook his head very slightly, dismissing their hysteria rather than the ideas. "It is probably an isolated lunatic-but we've got to apprehend him! This must stop! For God's sake, gentlemen, let us bend every resource we have and put an end to this horror! It is our responsibility. The weaker and less fortunate rely on us to defend them from the depradations of the lunatic underworld, and from political anarchists who would destroy the very fabric of the Empire. In God's name, it is our duty!" He was deeply earnest; there was a fire of sincerity in his eyes neither Pitt nor Drummond could doubt. "If there is anything I can do, anything whatsoever, tell me! I have friends, colleagues, influence. What do you need?" He looked urgently from one to the other of them and back again. "Name it!"

' 'If I knew what would help, Sir Garnet, I would assuredly ask," Drummond replied wearily. "But we have no idea of the motive."

192,

"Surely we cannot hope to understand the reasons of a madman?" Royce argued. "You're not suggesting this is personal, are you? That there is some enemy common to all three men?'' His face reflected his incredulity, and there was even a harsh gleam of humor in the brilliant eyes.

"Perhaps not common to all three," Pitt said, watching the expression of surprise, then understanding and horror that crossed Royce's features. "Perhaps the enemy only of one."

"Then not a madman, but a fiend," Royce said very quietly, his voice shaking. "How could anyone but a lunatic do such a thing to two strangers, in cold blood, to hide one intended death?"

"We don't know," Drummond replied quietly. "It is merely a possibility. But we are looking into every anarchist or revolutionary group we know of, and we do know of most of them. Every police informer we have has been asked.''

"A reward!" Royce said suddenly. "I am sure I could get together with other businessmen and raise a sufficient reward, so that it would be well worth the while of anyone who knew anything to come forward. I'll do it tomorrow, as soon as this atrocity reaches the newspapers.'' He pushed the heel of his hand over his brow, brushing back the sweep of hair. "I dread to think what the panic will be, and you cannot blame people. My poor sister feels bound by a sense of honor or duty to remain here until the matter is closed. I beg you, gentlemen, to do everything you can. I would take it as a favor if you would keep me informed, so that I may know if there is anything I can do. I once worked for the Home Office; I am aware of police procedures, of what you can do and what is impossible. Believe me, I have the greatest sympathy. I do not expect miracles of you."

Drummond stared beyond him to the far end of the bridge, where a crowd was gathering, frightened, increasingly hostile, huddling together and "staring at the little knot of police and the silent mortuary coach awaiting its terrible charge.

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"Thank you, sir. Yes, a reward might help. Men have betrayed every cause they have known for money at one time or another, from Judas on down. I appreciate it."

"It will be in your hands by tomorrow evening," Royce promised. "Now I will leave you to your duty. Poor Sheridan, God help him! Oh"-he turned just as he was about to leave-"would you like me to inform his wife?"

Pitt would have liked it dearly, but it was his task, not Royce's.

"Thank you, sir, but it is necessary that I should. There are questions to ask."

Royce nodded. "Understood." He replaced his hat, and walked briskly to the south side of the bridge and up the hill on the east side of the street, towards Bethlehem Road.

Drummond stood silently for a moment or two, staring into the darkness where Royce had departed.

"He seems to have an exceptional grasp of the situation," he said thoughtfully. "And to be deeply concerned. ..." He left the sentence hanging in the air.

The same thread of an idea was stirring in Pitt's mind, but it had no form, and he could find none for it.

' 'What do you know about him?'' Drummond asked, facing Pitt again curiously.

"Member of Parliament for over twenty years," Pitt answered, remembering everything he had heard, directly or indirectly. "Efficient, even gifted. As he said, he has held high office under the Home Secretary in the past. His reputation seems to be spotless, both personally and professionally. His wife died some time ago; he has remained a widower. He was Hamilton's brother-in-law-but of course you know that."

Drummond inclined his head. "I suppose you looked into their relationship?" he asked wryly.

Pitt smiled. "Yes. It was civil, but not close. And there was no financial involvement that we could find, except that he seems to be taking care of his sister's affairs now she is

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widowed. But he is the elder brother, and that seems natural."

"Professional rivalry with Hamilton?"

"No. They served in different areas. Allies, if anything."

"Personal?" Drummond persisted.

"No. Nor political-not that you would cut a man's throat because he espouses a different cause from your own. From everything I learned of Royce he is a strongly traditional family man with a deep conviction in the responsibility of the strong to care for the weak and the able to govern the masses-in their own interest."

Drummond sighed. "Sounds like practically every other Member in the House-in fact, like most well-to-do middle-aged gentlemen in England!"

Pitt let out his breath in a little grunt, then took his leave, heading in the same direction Royce had gone, only at the end of the bridge he turned towards Baron's Place and the home of the late Cuthbert Sheridan, M.P.

It was the same as before, standing on the steps in the dark, banging again and again to waken sleeping servants, and then the wait while they relit the gas and pulled jackets on hastily to find out who could be calling at such an hour.

There was the same look of horror, the halting request that he wait, the effort at composure, then the long silence while the awful news was broken, and once again Pitt found himself standing in a cold morning room in the gaslight facing a shocked and ashen woman who was trying hard not to weep or to faint.

Parthenope Sheridan was perhaps thirty-five or thirty-six, a small woman with a very straight back. Her face was a little too pointed to be pretty, but she had fine eyes and hair, and slightly crooked teeth which gave her an individuality which at another time might well have been charming. Now she stood hollow-eyed, staring at Pitt.

"Cuthbert?" she repeated the name as if she needed to say it again to grasp its meaning. "Cuthbert has been mur-

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dered-on Westminster Bridge? Like the others? But why? He has no connection with-with . . . what? What is it about, Inspector Pitt? I don't understand.'' She reached for the chair behind her and sat down in it unsteadily, covering her face with her hands.

Pitt wished passionately that they were of the same social class, just for a few moments, so he could put his arms round her and let her weep on his shoulder, instead of sitting stiffly hunched up, unable to share her emotion, isolated because there was no one in the house but servants, children, and a policeman.

But there was nothing he could do. No pity in the world crossed the chasm between them. Familiarity would add to her burden, not decrease it. So instead he broke across the silence with formal words and the necessities of duty.

"Nor do we, ma'am, but we are working on every possibility. And it seems that it may be political, or it may have been someone with a personal enmity towards any one of the three men, or it may simply be someone who is mad, and we shall find no reason that we can understand."

She made a supreme effort to speak clearly, without tears in her voice, without sniffling. "Political? You mean anarchists? People are talking about plots against the Queen, or Parliament. But why Cuthbert? He was only a very junior minister at the Treasury.''

"Had he always been at the Treasury, ma'am?"

"Oh no; members of Parliament move from one office to another, you know. He had been hi the Home Office as well, and the Foreign Office for a very short while."

"Had he any convictions about Irish Home Rule?"

"No-that is, I think he voted for it, but I'm not sure. He didn't discuss that sort of thing with me."

"And reform, ma'am; was he inclined towards social and industrial reform, or against it?"

"As long as it was well conducted and not too hasty, he 196

was for industrial reform." A curious look passed across her face; it seemed made up of both anger and pain.

He asked the question he least wished to. "And reform of the franchise; was he in favor of extending it to women?"

"No." The word came from between her teeth. "No, he was not."

"Was his opinion well known to others?"

She hesitated; her eyebrows went up. "I-yes, I imagine so. He expressed it quite forcefully at times."

He could not fail to see both the surprise and the distress in her face. "Were you of the same opinion, Mrs. Sheridan?" he asked.

Her face was so white the shadows under her eyes looked almost gray, even in this yellow gaslight.

"No." Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "I believe very strongly that women should have the right to vote for members of Parliament, if they choose, and to stand for local councils themselves. I am a member of my local group fighting for women's suffrage.''

"Are you acquainted with a Mrs. Florence Ivory, or a Miss Africa Dowell?"

There was no change in her expression, no added fear or start of apprehension. "Yes, I know them both, though not well. There are not many of us, Mr. Pitt; it is hard for us not to know of one another, especially of those few who are prepared to take risk, to fight for what they believe, rather than merely pleading for it to a government which is composed entirely of men and quite obviously not disposed to listen to us. Those who hold power have never in all history been inclined to relinquish it willingly. Usually it has been taken from them by force, or it has slipped from their hands because they were too weak or corrupt to retain it."

"Which does Mrs. Ivory believe will come to pass here?"

The first pale flush of color marked her cheeks, and her face hardened.

' 'That is a question you had better ask her, Mr. Pitt-after 197

you have discovered who murdered my husband!" Then her anger dissolved in an agony of distress and she turned awa> from him and crumpled against the back of the chair, weeping silently, her whole body shaking with the violence of her emotion.

Pitt could not apologize. It would have been ridiculous, f and without purpose; grief had nothing to do with him; to . comment would have served only to show his lack of com- I prehension. Instead he simply left, going out into the hall- f way, passing the white-faced butler, and opening the front door for himself. He went down the steps into the spring darkness; a slow mist was curling up from the river now, smelling of the incoming tide. She would weep now, and ' probably again when the cold light of morning brought back reality and memory, and loneliness.

When Pitt reached home he went straight to the kitchen and made himself a pot of tea. He sat at the table drinking it, warming his hands on the mug, for well over an hour. He felt tired and helpless. There had been three murders, and he had no more real evidence than he'd had the night of the first one. Was it really Florence Ivory, driven beyond sanity by the loss of her child?

But why Cuthbert Sheridan? Simple hatred, because he too was against giving women more power and influence in government, perhaps in law, medicine, and who knew what else? It was only twelve years since medical schools had been opened to women, six years since married women might own and administer their own property, four since they had ceased in law to be chattel belonging to their husbands.

But surely only a madwoman would murder those who were unwilling to change? That would be almost everyone except a mere handful! It made no sense-but should he be looking for sense in these deaths?

At last he went to bed, warmer, sleepy, but no more certain in his mind.

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* * #

In the morning he left early, saying little to Charlotte except a few bleak works about finding Sheridan, the horror, the rising sense of hysteria in the crowd.

"Surely it could not have been Florence Ivory?" she said when he finished. "Not this too?"

He wanted to say of course not; this changes everything. But it did not. Such a burning sense of injustice does not know the bounds of sense, not even of self-preservation. Reason was no yardstick with which to measure.

"Thomas?"

' 'Yes.'' He stood up and reached for his coat.' 'I am sorry, but it could still be her."

Micah Drummond was in his office already, and Pitt went straight up. The daily newspapers were in a pile on his desk, and the top one had black banner headlines: third murder on westminster bridge, and under it, another m.p.

BUTCHERED HALF A MILE FROM HOUSE OF COMMONS.

' 'The rest are much the same, or worse,'' Drummond said bleakly. "Royce is right; people are beginning to panic. The Home Secretary has sent for me-heaven only knows what I can tell him. What have we got? Anything?"

"Sheridan's widow knew Mrs. Ivory and Africa Dowell," Pitt replied miserably. "She is a member of her local women's suffrage organization, and her husband was fiercely against it."

Drummond sat without moving for some time. "Ah," he said at last, no conviction hi his voice, no certainty. "Do you think that has anything to do with it? A women's suffrage conspiracy?"

Put in those words it sounded absurd, yet Pitt could not forget the passion in Florence Ivory, the loss that time had hardened but not touched with even the smallest healing. She was a woman who would not be stopped by fear or convention, risks to herself, or other people's doubts or beliefs. Pitt

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was quite sure that she was capable of it, both emotionally and physically, with Africa Dowell's help.

And would Africa have helped? He thought so. She was a young woman full of idealism and burning emotions forcefully directed towards the bitter wrongs she felt had been done to Florence and her child. She had a dreamer's or a revolutionary's dedication to her vision of justice.

"Pitt?" Drummond's voice cut across his thoughts.

"No, not really," he replied, weighing his words. "Unless two people can be called a conspiracy. But it might be a series of circumstances. ..."

"What circumstances?" Drummond, too, was beginning to see the outline of a pattern, but there were too many unknowns. He had not met the people and so could not judge, and always at the back of his mind were the newspaper headlines, the grave and frightened faces of men in high office who now felt accountable and in turn passed on the responsibility and the blame to him. He was not frightened; he was not a man to run from challenge or duty, nor to blame others for his own helplessness. But neither did he evade the seriousness of the situation. "For heaven's sake, Pitt, I want to know what you think!''

Pitt was honest. "I fear it may be Florence Ivory, with Africa Dowell's help. I think she has the passion and the commitment to have done it. She certainly had the motive, and it is more than possible she mistook Hamilton for Etheridge. But why she then went on to kill Sheridan I don't know. That seems more cold-blooded than I judge her to be. It seems gratuitous. Of course, it could be someone else, perhaps an enemy of Sheridan's taking advantage of a hideous opportunity."

"And you have some sympathy for Mrs. Ivory," Drummond added, watching Pitt closely.

"Yes," Pitt admitted. It was true, he had liked Florence Ivory and felt keenly for her pain, perhaps too keenly, thinking of his own children. But then he had liked other murder-

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ers. It was the petty sinners, the hypocrites, the self-righteous, those who fed on humiliation and pain that he could not bear. "But I think it is also possible that we have come nowhere near the answer yet, that it is something we haven't guessed at."

"Political conspiracy?"

"Perhaps." But Pitt doubted it; it would have to be a monstrous one, touched with madness.

Drummond stood up and went to the fire, rubbing his hands as if he were cold, although the room was comfortable.

"We've got to solve it, Pitt," he said without condescension, turning to face him; for a moment the difference in office between them ceased to exist. "I have all the men I can spare raking through the files of every political malcontent we've ever heard of, every neorevolutionary, every radical socialist or activist for Irish Home Rule, or Welsh Home Rule, or any other reform that has ever had passionate supporters. You concentrate on the personal motives: greed, hatred, revenge, lust, blackmail; anything you can think of that makes one man kill another-or one woman, if you think that possible. There are enough women in the case with the money to employ someone to do what they could not or dared not do themselves."

"I'll have a closer look at James Carfax,'' Pitt said slowly. "And I'd better look in more detail at Etheridge's personal life. Although an outraged husband or lover doesn't seem likely-not for all three!"

"Frankly nothing seems likely, except a remarkably cunning lunatic with a hatred of M.P.s who live on the south side of the river," Drummond said with a twisted smile. "And we've doubled the police patrol of the area. All M.P.s know enough to guard themselves-I'd be very surprised if any of them choose to walk home across the bridge now." He adjusted his necktie a little and pulled his jacket straighter on his shoulders, and his face lost even the shred of bleak humor it had shown. "I'd better go and see the Home Sec-

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retary." He went to the door, then turned. "When we've dealt with this case, Pitt, you're overdue for promotion. I'll see that you get it; you have my word. I'd do it now, but I need you on the street until this is finished. You more than deserve it, and it will mean a considerable raise in salary." And with that he went out of the door and closed it, leaving Pitt standing by the fire, surprised and confused.

Drummond was right, promotion was long overdue; he had forfeited it previously by his attitude towards his superiors, by insubordination not by his acts but by his manner. It would be good to have his skills recognized, to have more command, more authority. And more money would mean so much to Charlotte, less scrimping on clothes, a few luxuries for the table, a trip to the country or the sea, maybe in time even a holiday abroad. One day she might even see Paris.

But of course it would mean working behind a desk instead of on the street. He would detail other men to go out and question people, weigh the value of answers, watch faces; someone else would have the dreadful task of telling the bereaved, of examining the dead, of making the arrests. He would merely direct, make decisions, give advice, direct the investigations.

He would not like it-at times he would hate it, hate being removed from the reality of the passion and the horror and the pity of street work. His men would hear the facts and return to him; he would no longer be aware of the flesh and the spirit, the people.

But then he thought of Charlotte with Emily's unopened letter in her pinafore pocket, waiting until he had gone because she did not want him to see her face when she read about Venice and Rome, about the glamor and romance of wherever Emily was now.

He would accept the promotion-of course he would. He must.

But first they must catch the Westminster Cutthroat, as the newspapers were calling him.

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Could it possibly be James Carfax? Pitt could not see in that handsome, charming, rather shallow face the ruthless-ness necessary to kill three people, one after the other, merely to gain his wife's inheritance, no matter how much he wanted it.

What about Helen? Did she love her husband enough, want to keep him enough to commit such crimes, first for him, then to protect herself? Or him?

He spent all day pursuing finances. First he found the record of the sale of Helen Carfax's painting, then he traced further back to see if she had sold other things and found that she had-small sketches, trinkets, a carving or two-before she'd sold the painting whose absence he had noticed. There was no way of proving what she had used the money for without searching her own personal accounts, and possibly not then. It could have been for gowns and perfumes, to make herself more attractive to a wandering husband, or for jewelry, or perhaps for medical expenses, or presents for James or even for someone else. Or maybe she gambled- some women did.

He reached home a little after six, tired and dispirited. It was not only the difficulty of the case, it was the thought of promotion, of guiding other men rather than doing the work himself. But he must never let Charlotte know his feelings or it would rob her of any pleasure in the rewards it would bring. He must disguise his feeling of loss.

She was in the kitchen finishing the children's tea and preparing his. The whole room was warm, softly glowing from the gas lamps on the wall as the light faded in the sky outside. The wooden table was scrubbed clean and there was a smell of soap and hot bread'and some kind of fragrant steam he could not place.

He went to her without speaking and took her in his arms, holding her closely, kissing her, ignoring her wet hands and

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the flour on her apron. And after her first surprise she responded warmly, even passionately.

He got it over with straightaway, before he had time to think or regret.

"I'm to be promoted! Drummond said as soon as this case is finished. It will mean far more money, and influence, and position!"

She held him even harder, burying her face against his shoulder. "Thomas, that's wonderful! You deserve it-you've deserved it for ages! Will you still be out working on cases?''

"No."

"Then you'll be safer too!"

He had done it, told her without a shadow, without her suspecting anything but joy and pride. He felt a moment of terrible isolation. She did not even know what it cost him; she had no idea how intensely he would rather be on the street, with people, feeling the dirt and the pain and the reality of it. It was the only way to understand.

But that was foolish. Why else was he telling her like this, but precisely because he did not want her to sense his misgivings! He must not spoil it now. He pushed her away a little and smiled at her.

She searched his face, and the brilliance in her eyes turned to questioning.

"What is it? What is wrong?"

"Just this case," he answered. "The further I look into it the less I seem to have hold of."

"Tell me more about it. Tell me about this latest victim," she invited him. "I'll get your dinner. Grade's upstairs with the children. You can explain it to me while we eat." And taking his agreement for granted she took the lid off the pan and stirred it once or twice, filling the kitchen with a delicious odor. Then she lifted plates out of the wanning oven and served mutton stew with thick leeks and slices of potato and sweet white turnips and a touch of dried rosemary that gave it sharpness and flavor.

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He told her all that he had omitted on his previous, rather scattered accounts, which had been more emotional than logical, together with the little of value he had learned since and the skeletal knowledge he had of Cuthbert Sheridan.

When he had finished she sat for several minutes in silence, looking down at her empty plate. When at last she did look up there was a deep color in her cheeks and the half shame-faced look of embarrassment and defiance he had seen so many times before.

"How?" he said quietly. "How are you involved? It's nothing to do with us, any of us. And Emily's in Italy-isn't she?"

"Oh yes!" She seemed amost relieved. "Yes, she's in Florence. At least, the letter I got this morning was from there. She may be somewhere else by now, of course."

"Well then?"

"Great-aunt Vespasia . . .sent for me."

He raised his eyebrows. "To discover the Westminster Cutthroat?" he said with heavy disbelief.

"Well, yes, in a way. ..."

"Explain yourself, Charlotte."

"You see, Africa Dowell is the niece of Great-aunt Vespasia's closest friend, Miss Zenobia Gunne. And they think the police suspect her-quite rightly, as it turns out. Of course I didn't tell them it was you!"

He searched her face for several moments and she held his gaze without flinching. She could keep a secret, sometimes, and she could be evasive, with difficulty, but she was no good at all at lying to him, and they both knew it.

"And what have you discovered?" he asked at length.

She bit her lip. "Nothing. I'm sorry."

"Nothing at all?"

"Well I made friends with Amethyst Hamilton-"

' 'How on earth did you do that? Does Aunt Vespasia know her?"

"No-I just lied." She looked down at the table, embar-205

rassed, then up again, meeting his eyes. "She and her stepson loathe each other so much they cannot even be civil, but I can't see anything in that which could lead to murder. She's been married for many years, and nothing new has happened . . ."she trailed off.

"And," he prompted.

"She inherits quite a lot of money, but that's hardly a reason, especially not-" Again she stopped.

"Not what?"

"I was going to say, not to kill Etheridge and Sheridan as well, but I suppose that doesn't necessarily follow, does it?"

"Not necessarily," he agreed. "It could be that the last two murders were close to hide the one that matters, or they could have been committed by a copycat. I don't know."

She put out her hand and gently covered his. "You will," she said with conviction, but he was not sure whether it was her mind or her heart which spoke. "We will," she added, as if as an afterthought.

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9

(charlotte set our the following morning on the omnibus to see Great-aunt Vespasia. It was a sparkling spring day, the air mild and the sun warm. It would be lovely to be in the country, or even in one of the fashionable squares with all the new leaves bursting and the sound of birdsong. Perhaps she and Pitt would be able to go to the country for a weekend this summer. Or longer-a whole week?

In the meantime she thought of the small things she could buy with the extra money Pitt would have. A new hat would be an excellent start, one with a very large brim, and pink ribbon on it, and flowers-big cabbage roses with golden centers, they were 'so becoming! One should wear it at a certain angle, up at the left and a little down over the right brow.

And she could get two or three muslin dresses for Jemima, instead of having to make do with only one best one for Sundays. Should she get pale blue, or a very soft shade of green? Of course, people said that blue and green should never be worn together, but personally she liked the combination, like summer leaves against the sky.

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She employed the entire journey in such pleasant thoughts, so much so that she was almost carried past her stop, which would have been very annoying, since there was a considerable distance to walk anyway. People like Great-aunt Vespasia did not live on the routes of the public omnibus.

She climbed off with indecent haste and all but fell over as she reached the pavement. She ignored the critical comments of two large ladies in black, setting off at a very brisk pace towards Great-aunt Vespasia's town house.

She was admitted at once and shown into the morning room, where Vespasia was sitting with a pen in her hand and several sheets of writing paper in front of her. She put them aside as soon as Charlotte came in.

"Have you discovered something?" she asked hopefully, dispensing with the formalities of greeting.

' 'It is as bad as we fear,'' Charlotte sat down immediately. "I did not tell you before that it is Thomas who is handling the case! I was afraid Zenobia might not believe I could be open-minded, and I thought that if you knew it might place you in something of an embarrassing position. But it is Thomas who went to Mrs. Ivory, and he does indeed think it may be she. They've got everyone possible out looking for anarchists, revolutionaries, Fenians, and anyone else who might be political, but no one has found anything at all. The only ray of light, if you can call anything so tragic a light, is that Mrs. Ivory would have no sane reason for killing Cuth-bert Sheridan."

"Not a light I care for," Vespasia said grimly.

"And Thomas will be promoted as soon as the case is solved."

"Indeed?" Vespasia's silver eyebrows rose minutely, but there was satisfaction in her eyes. "Not before time. You must tell me when it is official, and I shall send him a letter of congratulation. Meanwhile, what can we do to help Zenobia?"

Charlotte noted that she had said Zenobia, not Florence 208

Ivory. She caught her eye and knew the choice was deliberate.

"I think it is time for a little cold reason," Charlotte said as gently as it was possible to say such a thing. "Thomas says they have done everything they can to discover a conspiracy of any political or revolutionary nature, and they can find nothing whatsoever. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine any political end that would be served by such acts, unaccompanied by any demand for change or reform. Except, of course, anarchy-which seems to me to be something of a lunatic idea anyway. Who can possibly benefit from that?"

Vespasia looked at her with impatience. "My dear girl, if you imagine that all political aims owe either their conception or their execution to unadulterated sanity, then you are more naive than I had supposed!"

Charlotte felt the color climb in her cheeks. Perhaps she was naive. She certainly had not mixed in the circles of government that Vespasia had, nor heard the private dreams of those who wielded power, or aspired to. She had indeed imagined them to have a degree of common sense, which on consideration might well be an unfounded conclusion.

"Sometimes those who cannot create enjoy the power to destroy," Vespasia went on. "It is all they have. After all, what else is much of violence? Think back on the crimes you yourself have helped to solve. Look at most domination of one person over another: the fishwife or the washerwoman could have told such people that it would not produce the admiration or the love or the peace they desired, but one hears what one wishes to."

' 'But anarchists are noisy, Aunt Vespasia. They don't want anarchy alone! And Thomas says the police are aware of a great many of them, and none seems to have been involved with the Westminster Bridge murders. After all, there is no political power in anonymous acts, is there! One has to own up to them at some point in order to reap the reward.''

"One would presume so," Vespasia agreed, part of her 209

reluctant to let go of the idea of some unknown assailant lashing out wildly for a cause. It was less ugly to her than the possibility of a friend, even a relative of the intended victim prepared to murder three people in order to mask the one murder that might implicate them. "Is it possible there is some connection between the three that we have not thought of?" she pressed.

"They are all M.P.s," Charlotte said bleakly. "Thomas has not been able to discover anything further. They have no business connections, they are not related, they are not in line for any one position, for that matter they are not even of the same party! Two are Liberal, one Tory. And they have no political or social opinions in common, not even regarding Irish Home Rule, Penal Reform, Industrial or Poor Law Reform-nothing, except that they are all against extending the electoral franchise to women."

"So are most people." Vespasia's face was pale, but sixty years' training showed in her hands, resting elegantly in her lap over the wisp of her lace handkerchief. "Anyone planning to kill members of Parliament for that reason is going to decimate both houses."

"If it is personal, then we had better begin to consider very seriously who might have motive," Charlotte said gently. "And pursue them in ways that would be impossible for Thomas. I have already made the acquaintance of Lady Hamilton, and although I find it hard to believe it was she, there may be some connection." She sighed with unhappy memories. "And of course sometimes the truth is hard to believe. People you have liked, still do like, can have agonies you never conceived, fears that haunted them until they escaped all reason and turned to violence, or old wounds so terrible they cannot leave them behind. Revenge obsesses them beyond everything else-love, safety, even sanity."

Vespasia did not reply; perhaps she was thinking of the same people, or at least one of them, for whom she too had cared.

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"And there is young Barclay Hamilton," Charlotte said. "Although there seems to be a profound emotion troubling him regarding his father's second marriage, I don't know wha^ should lead him to murder."

"Nor I," Vespasia conceded quietly, a weariness in her that she overcame with difficulty.' 'What of Etheridge? There is a great deal of money.''

"James Carfax," Charlotte replied. "Either he himself, or his wife, in order to keep him from going to other women, or even leaving her altogether."

"How tragic," Vespasia sighed. "Poor creature. What a terrible price to pay for something that is in the end merely an illusion, and one that will not remain for long. She will have destroyed herself to no purpose."

"Or if indeed he has had other relationships," Charlotte said, thinking aloud, "some other love, or infatuation, perhaps ..." she trailed off.

"Quite possibly he had had affairs with other women," Vespasia agreed dourly. "But even in the unlikely event they had husbands who were offended by it, to cut the throats of three members of Parliament and hang them on Westminster Bridge seems oblique, and excessive to a degree!"

Charlotte was suitably crushed. It was absurd. Had it been Etheridge alone it might have made sense. "It doesn't seem to be a crime of passion," she said aloud. "Indeed it does not appear to make any kind of sense!''

"Then there is only one conclusion," Vespasia said grimly. "There is either a passion or a reason of which we are not aware. Certainly if it is a passion, it was not momentary, but rather extremely sustained, and therefore I would suppose it is one of great depth."

"Someone has been done a wrong so terrible it corrodes their souls like a white-hot acid," Charlotte offered.

Vespasia stared at her. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Charlotte not to be melodramatic; then she glimpsed for

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an instant the horror of what such a thing might be, and remained silent.

Charlotte pursued her own line. "Or there is a motive we have not seen, perhaps because we do not know the facts, or the people, or because it is too ugly to us, and we have refused to see it. All we know of what those three men had in common was a fierce disapproval of the movement to extend the franchise to women."

"Hamilton's disapproval was not fierce," Vespasia corrected automatically, but there was no lightness in her voice; it need not be said between them that Hamilton's death may have been a mistake, due to the assumption, in the dim light on the bridge, that he was Etheridge. "It could be others trying to blacken the reputation of the women fighting for suffrage," Vespasia went on, "knowing they would be blamed."

"Oblique, and excessive to a degree," Charlotte repeated Vespasia's own words, then instantly regretted the impertinence. "I'm sorry!"

Vespasia's face softened for a moment in recognition of the emotion. "You are quite right," she conceded. "If somewhat cruel in your manner of observation." She stood up and went to the window, gazing out at the sunlight in the garden, slanting pale and brilliant on the tree trunks and the first red shoots of the rose leaves. "We had best pursue what we can. Since we fear Florence Ivory may indeed be guilty, it would be profitable for you to form a further opinion of her character. You might call upon her again, if you will.''

Charlotte looked at Vespasia's slender back, stiff under her embroidered lace dress, her shoulders so thin Charlotte was reminded quite painfully of how old she was, how fragile; she remembered that with age one does not cease to love or to be hurt, nor feel any less vulnerable inside. Without waiting to allow self-consciousness to prevent her, she went over and put her arms round Vespasia, regardless of whether it

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was a liberty or not, and held her tight as she would have a sister or a child.

"I love you, Aunt Vespasia, and there is nothing I would like in the world more than one day to become a little like you."

It was several moments before Vespasia spoke, and when she did her voice was hesitant and a little throaty. "Thank you, my dear." She sniffed very delicately. "I am sure you have made an excellent beginning-both the good and the bad. Now if you would be so good as to let go of me, I must find my handkerchief." She did, and blew her nose in a less ladylike manner than usual, with her back to Charlotte. "Now!" she said briskly, stuffing the totally inadequate piece of cambric and lace up her sleeve. ' 'I shall use the telephone to speak to Nobby and have her call upon Lady Mary Carfax again; I shall renew some political acquaintances who may be able to tell me something of use; you will call upon Florence Ivory; and then tomorrow we shall meet here at two o'clock and go together to express our condolences to the widow of Cuthbert Sheridan. It may even be that it was he who was the intended victim." She tried hard to keep hope out of her voice-it had a certain indecency-and failed.

"Yes, Aunt Vespasia," Charlotte said obediently. "Tomorrow at two o'clock."

Charlotte set out for her visit to Florence Ivory with little pleasure. Indeed, the fear was strong inside her that she would either learn nothing at all or that her present anxieties would be strengthened and she would feel a greater conviction that Florence was both capable of such murders and likely to have committed them, with the help perhaps of Zenobia's niece Africa Dowell. She herself hoped she might find that they were not at home.

She was to be disappointed. They were at home and willing to receive her; in fact, they made her welcome.

"Come in, Miss Ellison," Africa said hastily. Her face 213

was pale, but there were spots of color high on her cheeks, and smudges of shadow under her eyes, from fear and too little sleep. "I am so glad you have called again. We were quite concerned lest this latest horror should have turned you from our cause. The whole matter is a nightmare." She led Charlotte towards the charming sitting room, with its flowered curtains and its plants. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and three blue hyacinths filled the room with a perfume so heady, at another time it would have distracted the attention.

Now however Charlotte had eyes and thoughts only for Florence Ivory, who sat in a rattan chair with cushions of green and white, a raffia basket in her hands, which she was mending. She looked up at Charlotte with a face more guarded than her companion's.

"Good afternoon, Miss Ellison. It is very civil of you to call. May I presume from your presence that you are still engaged in our cause? Or have you come to tell me that you now consider it past help?"

Charlotte was a little stung; there was in Florence's turn of phrase a whole array of assumptions which she found offensive.

"I shall not give up, Mrs. Ivory, until the matter is either won or lost, or until I find some evidence of your guilt which makes pursuing it further morally impossible,'' she replied crisply.

Florence's remarkable face, with its widely spaced eyes full of haunting intelligence, seemed for a moment on the edge of laughter; then reality asserted itself and she gestured to the chair opposite and invited Charlotte to be seated.

"What else can I tell you? I knew Cuthbert Sheridan only by reputation, but I have met his wife on a number of occasions. In fact I may have been instrumental in her joining the movement for women's suffrage."

Charlotte observed the pain in the woman's face; saw the irony in the eyes, the bitterness in the mouth, the small, bony

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hands clenched on the raffia basket. "May I presume that Mr. Sheridan did not approve?" she asked.

"You may," Florence agreed dryly. She regarded Charlotte closely, and her expression gradually became one of barely disguised contempt. Only her need for help and a residue of good manners concealed it at all. "It is a subject which produces great emotion, Miss Ellison, of which you seem to be largely unaware. I have no idea what your life has been. I can only assume you are one of those comfortable women who are satisfactorily provided for in all material ways and are happy to pay for your keep with a docile temperament and skill in keeping a home-or organizing others who do it for you-and that you consider yourself fortunate to be in such a position."

"You are quite right-you do have no idea what my life has been!" Charlotte said extremely sharply. "And your assumptions are impertinent!" As soon as the words were out of her mouth she remembered how this woman had suffered, had lost her children, and she realized with a flood of shame that perhaps she was precisely as comfortable as Florence had accused her of being. She had little money, certainly, but what part of life's ease or joy was that? She had enough. She had never been hungry, and she was not so often cold. She had her children, and Pitt treated her not as a possession, which in law she had indeed been until only recently, but as a friend. As she sat in the green and white chair with the sun coming in through the garden windows and the air full of the scent of the hyacinths, she realized with a powerful gratitude that she had freedom an uncounted number of women would have given all their silks and servants to possess.

Florence was staring at her, and for the first time since they had met, there was confusion in her face.

"I apologize," Charlotte said with great difficulty. She found this woman highly irritating, profound as her pity for her was. "My rudeness was unnecessary, and in some ways you are perfectly correct. I cannot truly understand your an-

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ger, because I have not been a victim of the wrongs of which you speak. Please tell me."

Florence's eyebrows rose. "For goodness' sake, tell you what? The social history of women?"

' 'If that is the issue,'' Charlotte replied.''Is that why these men were killed?"

"I've no idea! But if I had done it, it would be!"

"Why? For a vote on who sits in Parliament?"

Florence's tolerance snapped, and she stood up sharply, the raffia basket and needle falling to the carpet. She faced Charlotte with stinging condescension.

' 'Do you think you are intelligent? Capable of learning? Do you have emotions, even passions? Do you know anything about people, about children? Do you even know what you want for yourself?''

"Yes of course I do," Charlotte said instantly.

"Are you sure you are not just an overgrown child?"

Now Charlotte was equally angry. She rose as well, the color burning in her cheeks. "Yes I am perfectly sure!" she hissed back through her teeth. "I am very perceptive about people, I have learned a great deal about many things, and I am quite capable of making wise and sensible judgments. I make mistakes sometimes, but so does everyone. Being adult doesn't make you immune to error, it just makes those errors more important, and gives you more power to cover them up!"

Florence's face did not soften in the least. ' 'I agree. I am every bit as sure as you that I am no child, and I resent profoundly being treated as one, and having my decisions made for me by either my father or my husband, as if I had no will or desire of my own, or as if what they wanted was always the same as what I wanted for myself, or could be relied upon to be in my best interest.'' She swung round and went behind the chair, leaning forward over the back of it, the muslin of her dress straining across her thin body. "Do you suppose for one second that the law would be as it is if

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those who made it were answerable to us as well, instead of only to men? Do you?"

Charlotte opened her mouth to reply, but Florence cut her off.

"Do you give your mother a gift at Christmas, or on her birthday?"

"What?"

Florence repeated the question with a harsh, derisory impatience in her voice.

"Yes. What has that to do with suffrage, for heaven's sake?"

"Do you know that in law you cannot give anyone a gift, anyone at all, from the day you become betrothed-not married, betrothed-without your fiancees permission?"

"No, I-"

"And that until four years ago even your clothes and effects belonged to your husband? And if you inherited money, jewelry from your mother, anything, it belonged to him also? If you worked at anything and earned money, that also was his, and he could require it be paid directly to him, so you could not even touch it. Did you think you could make a will, so you could leave your belongings to your daughter, or your sister, or a friend, or reward a servant? So you can-so long as your husband approves! And if at any time he disapproves or changes his mind, or others change it for him, then you cannot! Even after you are dead! Did you know that? Or did you imagine that your dresses, your shoes, your handkerchiefs, your hairpins were your own? They are not! Nothing is yours. Certainly not your body!" Her mouth curled in memory of an old pain, one so deep no balm had ever reached it.' 'You cannot refuse your husband, regardless of his treatment of you, or how many others he may have lain with, in love or in lust. You cannot even leave his roof unless he gives you his permission! If you do, he can have the law bring you back and prosecute anyone who gives you shelter-even if it is your own mother!

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"And if he does allow you to leave, your property remains his, as does anything you might earn, and he has no obligation to give you, or your children, should he permit you to take them, a single penny to keep you from starvation or freezing.

"No-don't interrupt me!" Florence Ivory shouted when Charlotte opened her mourn to speak. "Damn your complacency! Did you imagine you had any say in what should happen to your children? Even your baby still at the breast? Well you don't! They are his, and he may do with them as he pleases-educate them or not, teach them anything he cares to, or nothing, discipline them and care for their health or welfare as he likes. When he makes a will he has the right to dispose of what property used to be yours before you married him however he pleases. He can leave your jewelry to his mistress, if he likes. Did you know that, Miss Ellison? Do you think Parliament would make laws like that if it were answerable to women voters as well as men? Do you?"

Again Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, but she was overwhelmed by the flood of injustices, and over and above that the scalding outrage that burned through Florence's thin body. Charlotte sank onto the arm of her chair. Florence was not merely cataloguing the inequities of the law, she was crying out from her own pain. It was nakedly apparent, even if Charlotte had not known from Pitt how she had lost first her home and her son, then her beloved daughter. She had never considered divorce or separation because it had not occurred in her family or any of her friends. Of course she had known for years that it was commonly believed that men had natural appetites which must be satisfied, and decent women did not; therefore it was to be expected that a man might commit adultery, and a wife's only course was to conduct herself so she was never forced into a position where she was seen to know of it. It was not grounds for divorce for a wife, and anyway, a divorced woman ceased to exist in society, and a working woman would be on the streets

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dependent on whatever skills she had to earn her keep-and her skills would be minimal, and domestic. No one took a divorced woman into service.

"That, Miss Ellison, is a fraction of the reason why I want women to have a right to vote!'' Florence was staring at her, pale now, exhausted by her own emotions and all the relieved pain, the struggles that had been lost one by one. There was hatred in her powerful enough to drown out all lesser qualms of doubt or pity, or thoughts of self-preservation. Whether she had killed three men on Westminster Bridge, Charlotte did not know, but sitting on the arm of the chintz-covered chair in this sunlit room with the odor of hyacinths, she felt again the sickening conviction that Florence Ivory was capable of it.

The three women were motionless. Florence gripped me back of her chair, her knuckles white, the cloth of her dress strained at the shoulders till the stitching thread showed at the seams. Outside in the garden a bird hopped from a low lilac branch onto the windowsill.

Africa Dowell moved from the corner by the door where she had been listening. She made a move as if to touch Florence, then something in the rigid figure warned her away, and she turned to Charlotte, knowledge and fear in her eyes, and defiance.

"Florence is speaking for a great many people, more than you might imagine. Mrs. Sheridan had recently joined a group fighting for women's suffrage, and there are others up and down the country. Famous people have urged it. John Stuart Mill wrote a paper years ago-" She stopped, painfully aware that nothing she said would erase from their minds the skin-crawling knowledge of a passion that could have driven Florence Ivory to kill, and may have.

Charlotte looked at the carpet, framing her words carefully.

"You say many women feel the same," she began. 219

"Yes, many," Africa agreed faintly, her voice without conviction.

Charlotte met her eyes.⁴ 'Why not all women? Why should any woman be against it, or even indifferent?"

'Florence's answer was harsh and instant. "Because it is easier! We are brought up from the cradle to be ignorant, charming, obedient, and to depend completely on someone else to provide for us! We tell men we are fragile of body and of mind and must be protected from anything indecent or contentious, we must be looked after, we cannot be blamed for anything because we are not responsible! And they do look after us. They do as much for us as a mother does for a child that cannot walk: she carries it! And until she puts it down, it never will walk! Well I don't want to be carried all my life!" She struck her hand so violently against her chest Charlotte felt sure it must have bruised the flesh. "I want to decide which way I will go, not be carried whether I choose to or not where someone else wishes. But many women have been told for so long they cannot walk that now they believe it, and they haven't the courage to try. Others are too lazy; it is easier to be carried."

It was only a partial truth. Charlotte knew so many more reasons: there was love, gratitude, guilt, the need to be loved with tenderness and without contention or rivalry, the deep pleasure of earning the respect and nurturing the best in a man, and perhaps the strongest reason of all-the need to give love, to cherish the young and the weak, to support a man, who seemed in the world's eyes to be the stronger, and yet whom one learned so quickly was easily as vulnerable as oneself, often more so. The world expected so much of him, and allowed him no weakness, no tears, no failure. A host of memories came to her of Pitt, of George, of Dominic, even of her father, seen now with the wisdom of hindsight, and of other men whom the astringent wash of an investigation had stripped layer by layer of all pretense. Their hidden selves had been as frail, as full of terrors and weaknesses,

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self-doubt and petty vanities and deceptions as any woman's. Only their outer garb was diiferent, and their outer power.

But there was no purpose in telling this to Florence Ivory. Her wounds were too deep, and her cause was just. Charlotte imagined her emotions, thought for an instant how she would have felt had her own children been lost to her and knew reason would be misplaced.

But only reason could help now. She changed the subject entirely, looking at Florence with a calm she did not feel. "Where were you when Mr. Sheridan was murdered?" she asked.

Florence was startled. Then she smiled without humor, her remarkable face as quick to change as reflections in a pool of water.

"I was here, alone," she said quietly. "Africa had gone to spend a little time with a friend who is confined with her first child and feeling unwell. But why in heaven's name should I kill Mr. Sheridan? He has done me no harm-no more at least than any other man who denies us the right to be people, not merely appendages to men. Do you know you can't even make a contract in law? And if you are robbed it is your husband who is offended against, not you, even if it is your purse that is taken?'' She laughed harshly. ' 'Nor can you be sued! Or be responsible for your own debts. Unfortunately, if you commit a murder, that is your fault-your husband will not be hanged in your place! But I did not kill Mr. Sheridan, or Mr. Etheridge, or Sir Lockwood Hamilton, for that matter. Though I doubt you will prove it, Miss Ellison. Your good intentions are a waste of time."

' 'Possibly.'' Charlotte stood up, staring rather coldly.' 'But it is mine to waste, if I so choose."

''I doubt it,'' Florence answered without moving. ' 'If you pursue the matter I daresay you will find that it is your father's, or your husband's if you have one." She turned her back and bent to pick up the raffia basket from where it had fallen, as though Charlotte had already left.

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Africa showed her to the door, white-faced, searching for words and discarding each before it touched her lips. Every line of her body, every stiff, awkward movement betrayed her fear. She loved Florence, she pitied her desperately, she burned for her injuries and injustices, and she was mortally afraid that the torment of the loss of her child had driven her to creep out at night with a razor in her hand, and kill-and kill-andkill.

The same thought was in Charlotte's mind, the same chill voice inside her, and she could not pretend. She looked at the girl with her ashen Pre-Raphaelite face, strong and young and so frightened, full of resolve to fight a losing battle, and she grasped her cold hands and held them tightly for a moment. There was nothing useful or honest to say.

Then she turned away and walked briskly down the street towards the place where the public omnibus might be caught for the long ride back.

Zenobia Gunne faced the prospect of calling upon Lady Mary Carfax a second time with the same resolve of fortitude she had summoned to sail up the Congo River in an open canoe, only this was a task which promised less reward. There would be no brazen sunsets, no mangrove roots rising out of the dawn-lit water, no screaming birds the color of jewels flung haphazard against the sky. Only Mary Carfax's thirty-year-long remembrance of contempt and a hundred old grudges.

With deep misgivings, a churning in the pit of her stomach, and a sense of her own inadequacy, she had her Carriage brought round and obeyed Vespasia's instructions. She had nothing in common with Mary Carfax but old memories.

She was also afraid that Florence Ivory might well be guilty, and that Africa's overaetive sense of pity might have driven her, if not actually to help Florence, then at least to shield her now the deed was done.

And then a grimmer, uglier thought forced itself upon her. 222.

Was it done? Or would it continue? Sheridan had been killed after any injustice by Etheridge was more than avenged. Did Africa know it was Florence, or did her sympathy permit her to be blind?

Zenobia should have befriended her, visited her more often, not allowed her to become so close to so compelling a woman in such distress, one so passionate about her injustices, so likely to lose her emotional balance and her sanity. Africa was her youngest brother's child; she should have taken her duties more seriously after her parents' death. She had followed her own interests across the world, selfishly.

But it was too late now to offer time and friendship; the only thing that could help would be to prove Florence innocent, and as Charlotte Pitt had said-what a curious woman Charlotte was, so divided between two worlds, and yet apparently at home in both-as she had pointed out, that could only be accomplished by proving that someone else was guilty.

She leaned forward and rapped on the front wall of the carriage. "Please hurry!" she shouted urgently. "You are going too slowly! What are you waiting for?"

She presented her card to Lady Mary's maid and watched the ramrod back of the girl as she took it away to show her mistress. Zenobia did not intend to lie as to her purpose in coming; it was not in her nature to tell petty lies, she had no art for it, and she could not think of a lie grand enough to serve the purpose.

The girl returned and showed her into the withdrawing room, where a large fire burned in spite of the clement weather. Mary Carfax sat upright in a gold-ornamented French chair. She concealed her surprise because her curiosity overrode it, and since that was an ill-bred emotion she did not own, she did her best to conceal that also.

"How agreeable to see you again-so soon," she said in a voice that veered from one tone to another as she tried to decide which attitude to adopt. "I feared that-" but she

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changed her mind again, that was too inferior. "I supposed it would be a dull afternoon," she said instead. "How are you? Please do sit down and be comfortable. The weather is most pleasant, don't you think?"

Zenobia had barely noticed it, but the conversation must be conducted with civility, whatever it cost.

"Delightful," she agreed, taking the seat farthest from the fire. "There are numerous blossoms out, and the air is quite mild. I passed several people walking in the park, and there was a German band playing in the rotunda."

"One looks forward to the summer." Lady Mary was bursting with inquisitiveness as to why Zenobia, who patently disliked her, should have called at all, let alone twice in the space of a fortnight. "Shall you be attending Ascot, or Henley? I find the races tire me, but one should be seen, don't you agree?"

Zenobia swallowed her retort and forced an amiable expression to her face. "I am sure your friends will be disappointed if you do not go, but I fear I may not find it suitable. There is a member of my family touched at present by a tragedy, and if matters get worse, I shall not feel in the slightest like enjoying such social events."

Lady Mary shifted minutely in her seat and her fingers closed over the ornate curlicues on the ends of the chair arms. "Indeed? I am sorry." She hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Can I offer any assistance?"

Zenobia swallowed hard. She thought of Peter Holland that last night before he sailed for the Crimea. How he would have laughed at this! He would have seen the danger-and the absurdity. "You might tell me something about those women who are striving to obtain the franchise." She saw the immediate tightening of disapproval in Lady Mary's face, the drawing together of the brows and the sharpening of the pale blue eyes. "What manner of people are they? Indeed, who are they?"

"What they are is very easy," Lady Mary replied. "They 224

are women who have failed to make a suitable marriage, or who have an unnaturally masculine turn of mind and desire to dominate rather than be the domestic, gracious, and sensitive creatures they were intended to be, both by God and nature. They are women who have neither made themselves attractive nor acquired such arts and accomplishments as are becoming to a woman and useful in her natural functions of bearing and raising children and ordering a house which is a refuge of quiet and decency for her husband, away from the evils of the world. Why any woman should choose otherwise I cannot imagine-except, of course, as a revenge upon those of us who are normal, whom they cannot or will not emulate. I regret to say there is a growing number of such creatures, and they endanger the very fabric of society.'' Her eyebrows rose. "I trust you will have nothing to do with them, even if your natural instincts and your spinster circumstances tempt you!" For a moment malice was plain in her eyes, and old memories sharp. Mary Carfax's pretense at pity was a sham; she had forgotten and forgiven nothing.

"Heaven knows," she continued in her rather thin voice, "there is enough unrest and distress in the country already. People are actually criticizing the Queen, and I believe there is talk of revolution and anarchy. Government is threatened on all sides.'' She sighed heavily. ' 'One only has to consider these ghastly outrages oin Westminster Bridge to realize that the whole of society is in peril."

"Do you think so?" Zenobia affected a mixture of doubt and respect, but there was a fleeting smile inside her, an old fragment of warmth, like a snatch of song returning.

"I am certain of it!" Lady Mary bridled. "What other interpretation would you put upon affairs?"

Now it was time for innocence. "Possibly the tragedies you speak of arise from a personal motive: envy, greed, fear-perhaps revenge for some injury or slight?"

"Revenge on three such men, all of them members of Parliament?" Lady Mary was interested in spite of herself.

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She breathed in slowly, glanced at the photographs of Gerald Carfax and of James on top of the piano, then let out a sigh. "One of them was the father-in-law of my son, you know."

"Yes-how very tragic for you," Zenobia murmured superficially. ' 'And, of course, for your son.'' She was not sure how to proceed. What she needed was to know more about James and his wife, and asking Lady Mary would produce only her own opinion, which was inevitably biased beyond any use. But she could think of no other avenue to pursue. "I imagine he is very much affected?"

"Ah, yes-of course. Of course he is." Lady Mary bristled a trifle.

Zenobia had watched people of many sorts, gentry and working people, artisans, gamblers, seamen, adventurers and tribesmen. She had learned much that all had in common. She recognized embarrassment under Lady Mary's stiff hesitation and the very slightest tinge of color staining her scrubbed and pallid cheeks-Mary would never descend to paint of any sort! So James Carfax was not grieving for his father-in-law.

Zenobia tried a more sympathetic tack, sensing an opening. "Mourning is very hard for young people, and of course Mrs. Carfax is no doubt most distressed."

"Most," Lady Mary agreed instantly this time. "She has taken it very hard-which is only natural, I suppose. But it puts a great strain upon James."

Zenobia said nothing, her silence inviting further enlightenment.

"She is very dependent upon him," Lady Mary added. "Very demanding, just at the moment."

Again Zenobia understood the hesitation, and the wealth of memory behind it. She recalled Lady Mary as she had been thirty years ago: proud, domineering, convinced she knew what was best for all and determined-in their interest-to accomplish it for them. No doubt James Carfax had

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been prime among them, and Lady Mary would not approve the vying demands of a wife.

Any further thought along this line was prevented by the entrance of the parlormaid, who returned to say that Mr. James and Mrs. Carfax had called, and indeed they were right behind her. Zenobia regarded them with profound interest as they came in and were introduced. James Carfax was above average height, elegantly slender, with the kind of easy smile she had never cared for. But was that a judgment of him, or of herself? Not a strong man, she thought, not a man she would have taken with her up the great rivers of Africa-he would panic when she most needed him.

Helen Carfax was a different matter. There was strength in her face, not beauty, but a balance of bone and a width to her mouth which was pleasing, and which would grow more so with time. But she was a woman under extreme stress. Zenobia had seen the signs before: she did nothing so obvious as wringing her hands, tearing her handkerchief, pulling at her gloves, or twisting a ring; it was in the eyes, a rim of white between the pupil and the lower lid, and a stiffness in her walk as if her muscles ached. It was more than grief or the pain of a loss already sustained; it was the fear of a loss yet to come. And her husband appeared to be unaware of it.

"How do you do, Miss Gunne." He bowed very slightly. He was charming, direct, his eyes were handsome and he met hers with a candid smile.' 'I do hope we do not interrupt you? I call upon Mama quite regularly, and I have nothing of urgency to say. In time of mourning there are so few calls one can make, and I thought it would be so pleasant to be out for a little while. Please do not curtail your visit on our account." ^

"How do you do, Mr. Carfax," Zenobia answered, regarding him without disguising her interest. His clothes were beautifully cut, his shirts of silk, the signet ring on his hand in perfect taste. Even his boots were handmade and, she guessed, of imported leather. Someone was making him a

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handsome allowance, and it was not Lady Mary, unless she had changed out of all character! She would give a little at a time, Zenobia knew, carefully, watching how each penny was spent: it was her form of power. "You are very gracious," Zenobia said aloud. It was habit, not any liking for him that prompted her words.

He gestured towards Helen. "May I present my wife."

"How do you do, Miss Gunne," Helen said dutifully. "I am delighted to make your acquaintance."

"And I yours, Mrs. Carfax." Zenobia smiled very slightly, as one would to a woman one had only just met. "May I offer my deepest sympathy on your recent bereavement. Everyone of sensibility must feel for you.''

Helen looked almost taken aback; her mind had been on something else. ' 'Thank you,'' she muttered. ' 'Most kind of you ..." Apparently she had already forgotten Zenobia's name.

The next thirty minutes passed in desultory conversation. James and his mother were obviously close, socially, if not emotionally. Zenobia watched them with intense interest, making occasional remarks to Helen sufficient to be civil, and now and again searching her face when she was watching her husband. From those trivial words, the exchanges of polite society, the pauses between, the flicker of resentments, suppressed pain, habits of manner so deeply ingrained as to be unconsciously adhered to, and the edge of fear unheard or ignored by others, Zenobia guessed at a whole history of hungers unmet.

She knew Mary Carfax and was not surprised that she both spoiled and dominated her only son, flattering him, indulging his vanity and his appetites, and at the same time kept the purse strings tightly in her own jewel-encrusted fingers. His carefully well-mannered resentment was inevitable, his shifts between gratitude and rancor, his habit of dependence,' his underlying knowledge that she thought him a fine man, the best, and his own whispering doubt that he had never

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justified such esteem and almost certainly never would. If it had been Mary Carfax who had been murdered, Zenobia would have known where to look immediately.

But it was Etheridge. The money leapt to mind, massive, lavish, all that even James Carfax could need to gain his precious freedom. But from whom? Only from Mary-it would tie him to Helen, now that the Married Women's Property Acts had been passed.

Or would it? One had only to glance at Helen's pale face, her eyes on James's or staring blindly through the window at the sky, to see she loved her husband far more than he did her. She praised him, she protected him, a faint flush of pleasure touched her cheeks when he spoke gently to her, her pain showed naked when he was patronizing or used her as the butt of his swift, light jokes, distasteful in their subtle cruelty. She would give him whatever he wanted in an attempt to purchase his love, and Zenobia's heart ached for her, knowing her pain would never cease. She was seeking something which he did not possess to give. Changes unimaginable would have to be wrought in James Carfax before he had the depth or the power within him from which to draw generous or untainted love. Zenobia had loved weak men herself, when she was alone in Africa, and old memories resurfaced, and old hungers. She had woken to the slow, scalding pain that her love would never be returned. You can draw little from a shallow vessel; the quality of feeling reflects the quality of the man-or woman. The soul with little courage, honor, or compassion may give what they have, but it will not satisfy a larger heart.

One day Helen Carfax would know that, would understand that she would never earn from James what he did not have to give her, or to anyone else.

Zenobia remembered some of her own romantic adventures, the rash giving, the clinging to hope, and wondered with a cold, sick fear if Helen had already paid the greatest

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price of all, having taken her father's life with her own hands, for the money to buy her husband's loyalty.

Then she looked again at the pale face with its white-rimmed eyes, now resting on James's elegant figure, and thought the fear was for him, not for herself. She was afraid that he had done the deed, or somehow contrived to have it done.

She stood up slowly, a trifle stiff from having sat so long.

"I am sure, Lady Mary, that you have family business to discuss and would care for a little privacy. It is such a delightful day I should like a short walk in the sun. Mrs. Carfax, perhaps you would be so kind as to accompany me?"

Helen looked startled, almost as if she had not understood.

"We might walk as far as the top of the road," Zenobia persisted. "I am sure the air would do us good, and I should appreciate your company, and perhaps your arm."

It was ridiculous-Zenobia was far stronger than Helen and assuredly had no need for support, but it was an invitation Helen could not civilly refuse, phrased in such terms. Obediently she excused herself to her husband and mother-in-law, and five minutes later she and Zenobia were outside in the sunny street.

It was a subject that could not possibly be approached directly, yet Zenobia felt impelled, even at the risk of causing serious offense, to speak to Helen as if she had been a daughter, a reflection of her own youth. She was prepared to mix truth of emotion with invention of setting in order to do it.

"My dear, I sympathize with you deeply," she began as soon as they were a few yards from the house. "I too lost my father in violent and distressing circumstances." She had not time to waste recounting that piece of fiction; it was merely an introduction. The story that mattered was of Zenobia's desperate attempt to win from a man a love of which he was not capable, and how instead she had lost her own

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integrity, paying a fortune for an article that did not exist, for her or for anyone.

She began slowly, extending her invented bereavement into her journeys to Africa, avoiding the numbing reality of Bal-aklava and Peter Holland's death. Instead she created first an imaginary father snatched in his late prime, then on to a suitor, a mixture of men she had known and cared for in one fashion or another-but never Peter.

"Oh my dear, I loved him so much," she sighed, looking not at Helen but at the briar hedge a little to their left. "He was handsome, and so considerate, such delightful and interesting company."

"What happened?" Helen asked out of politeness, not interest, because the silence seemed to require it.

Zenobia mixed disillusion with a modicum of poetic license.

' 'I gave him the finances for his trip, and unwisely many gifts towards it also."

Helen's whole attention was caught for the first time.' 'That is only natural-you loved him."

"And I wanted nun to love me," Zenobia continued, aware that she was about to wound, perhaps intensely. "I even did things that on looking back I realize were dishonorable. I suppose I knew it at the time, had I been brave enough to admit it." She did not look at Helen, but kept her eyes on the white drifting clouds scudding across the sky ahead of them. "It took me a long time and much heartache before I understood that I had paid a high price for something which was not real, something I could never hope to gain."

' 'What?'' Helen swallowed hard, and still Zenobia did not look at her. "What do you mean?"

"That it is an illusion many women have, my dear, that all men are capable of the kind of love we long for, and that if we are only faithful, generous, and patient enough they will give it to us in the end. Some people are not capable of that commitment. You cannot draw a deep draft from a shal-

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low vessel, and to try to do so will only cost you your peace of mind, your good health, perhaps even your self-esteem, the integrity of your own ideals which are at the heart of all lasting happiness.''

Helen said nothing for several minutes. There was no sound but the steady rhythm of their footsteps on the pavement, a bird singing in a high tree, green against the blue sky, and upon the main road the clop of horses' hooves and the hiss of carriage wheels.

At last Helen put her hand very gently on Zenobia's arm. "Thank you," she said with difficulty. "I think I have been doing the same thing. Perhaps you knew? But somehow I shall find the courage to cease now. I have already done enough damage. I have cast blame on the women fighting to be represented in Parliament, because I was desperate to direct the police away from my household, when in truth I have no idea that they have any guilt in my father's death. It was a shabby thing to do. I pray no one has been injured by it-except myself, for my poverty of spirit.

"It is a very hard truth to face, but-but I believe the time is past-" She stopped, unable to go on, and indeed words were unnecessary. Zenobia knew what she meant. She simply placed her hand over Helen's, and they continued to walk up the bright, sunlit street amid the hedges in silence.

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10

(charlotte returned home with a sense of fail-ure. The visit to Parthenope Sheridan had produced nothing new. She was exactly what she seemed to be: a woman deep in the shock of bereavement and suffering the kind of guilt it is very common to feel when suddenly a member of the family is lost to one and there has been no time to speak of love, to repair old wounds, to apologize for misunderstandings and trivial angers and grudges over things now dwarfed by death.

There was no way for her even to guess if the emotion had been anything more, anything deeper. If there were jealousies, greeds, other lovers, Charlotte had caught no whisper of it, seen no clue she might follow, nor even had she formed questions to ask in her own mind.

The single step forward they had taken that day was that Zenobia was convinced that Helen Carfax was not a suspect, either directly or indirectly. James Carfax remained, although Zenobia did not believe he had the courage to have done it himself, nor the skill or power to have procured the service from someone else. Both Charlotte and Vespasia were inclined to agree with her.

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Charlotte had told them of her own impressions of Florence Ivory, of the pity she had felt, the helplessness to counter Florence's anger, and of the terrible wound of injustice which remained inside the woman, poisoning everything that might otherwise have been love. Charlotte concluded reluctantly that she could not dismiss the idea that Florence might indeed be guilty, and they must prepare their minds for that possibility. She had found nothing to help their cause.

Different ideas came to her mind, ugly and terrible, of subtle plans, hatred cold and careful enough to design not only the death of someone known and close to them, but the corruption of another's soul, the leading to murder and all its long trail of nightmare and guilt. Was it conceivable that all the motives were separate and personal-and the link between them was deliberate conspiracy, each to fulfill the other's need? It was a monstrous thought, but they had been monstrous acts, and there seemed no other connection except their membership in Parliament, which they shared with six hundred other men, and that they walked home across Westminster Bridge.

Was Florence Ivory really deranged enough to kill, and to go on killing even after Etheridge was dead? Was her regard for life, even her own, so very little? Charlotte searched her heart, and did not know.

She organized Gracie in the kitchen, and Mrs. Phelps, the woman who came in twice a week to do the heavy work, and busied herself with linen and ironing. As she pushed the heavy fiatiron back and forth over the linen, meanwhile heating a fresh iron on the stove, she recounted everything she and Aunt Vespasia and Zenobia Gunne had learned, and all that Pitt had told her-and she was left with a confusion of mind that grasped at hope and could not hold it. If not Florence, then who?

Did Barclay Hamilton's deep, unwavering aversion to his stepmother have anything to do with his father's death? Did he know or suspect something? That thought was no pleas-

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anter; she had liked them both, and what cause could there be in their antipathy that would inspire murder now? Was the murderer a business or political enemy? Pitt had found neither.

James or Helen Carfax? Nobby Gunne had thought not, and her judgment seemed good. If their own investigations were worth anything-which was growing doubtful; never had Charlotte felt less confidence in herself-then it would be their judgment of character; their knowledge, as women, of other women; their intimacy with Society, which the police could not have; that would make a difference. They had engineered opportunities for observing their subjects in unguarded moments, obtaining confidences because their interest was unsuspected. If they discounted that advantage, then there was nothing left.

And Cuthbert Sheridan? As yet they knew nothing of him, except that his family seemed in no way unusual, nor did they seem to have any reason to desire his death. His widow was a woman newly discovering her own aspirations and for the first time in her life developing independent opinions. Perhaps they had quarreled, but one does not hire a cutthroat to murder one's husband because he disapproves of one's newfound political views, even if he forbids them outright. And there was nothing to suggest Cuthbert Sheridan had done that, was there?

Pitt was out now trying to learn something more of Sheridan's political, business, and private life. But what had he in common with the others that had marked him for death? She had not even a guess.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the postman, who brought the butcher's bill, the coal merchant's account, and a long letter from Emily. The bills were for a trifle less than expected, which was cheering: the price of mutton was three ha'pence a pound less than she had budgeted for. She put them on the kitchen mantel, then tore open Emily's latest letter.

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Florence, Saturday My dearest Charlotte,

What a perfectly marvelous city! Palaces with names that roll off the tongue, statues everywhere, and of such astounding beauty that I stand in the street and stare until passersby bump into me and I feel foolish, but I don't care. I think sometimes Jack pretends he is not with me! And the people! I used to think that those faces painted by da Vinci lived only in his imagination, or perhaps he had a fixation with one family and painted them over and over again. But Charlotte, there are people here who look exactly so! I saw a perfect "Madonna of the Rocks" standing in the piazza yesterday, feeding the birds while her carriage waited for her and her footman grew impatient. I think she may have been hoping to catch a glimpse of a lover, perhaps waiting for Dante to cross the bridge? I know I am in the wrong century-but who cares? It is all like a glorious poetic dream come true.

And I thought the golden light over the hills in Renaissance paintings was a mixture of the artist's license and the tint of old varnish. It isn't: the air really is different here, there is a warmth in its color, a shade of gold in the sky, the stones, even the trees. Utterly different from Venice, with all its shifting patterns, its blue sky and water, but every bit as lovely.

I think my favorite of all the statues is Donatello's Saint George. He is not very big, but oh so young! He has so much hope and courage in his face, as if he had newly seen God and was determined to overcome all the evil in the world to find his way back, to fight every dragon of selfishness and squalor, every dark idea of man, without having the least idea how long or how dreadful the fight would be. My heart aches for him, because I see Edward, and Daniel, too, in his innocence, and yet he lifts my spirits as well, because of his courage. I stand by the Bar-gello with the tears running down my face. Jack thinks I 236

am becoming eccentric, or perhaps that the sun has affected me, but I think I have found my best self.

Truly I am having a marvelous time, and meeting so many interesting people. There is one woman here who has been twice betrothed, and jilted on both occasions. She must be close to thirty-five, and yet she approaches life with such an expectation of enjoyment that she is a pleasure to be with. They must be poor creatures indeed who abandoned her for some other. What shallow judgment some people have, to choose one for a pretty face or a docile air; they deserve to end up with someone of disagreeable temperament and with a whining tongue-and I hope they do! She has a kind of courage I find myself admiring more with each day. She is determined to be happy, to see what is good and to make the best of what is not. How different from some of our traveling companions!

And amid all the music and theater, carriage rides, dinners, even balls, there have been some disasters. We have been robbed, but fortunately not much of value was taken, and once the carriage wheel came off and we could not find anyone prepared to assist us. We were obliged to spend the night in a cold and noisy place between Pisa and Siena, where we were obviously unwelcome, and I vow there were rats!

But Jack is perfectly charming. I believe I shall be happy with him even when all the romance is settled, and we begin to live an ordinary life, seeing each other over the breakfast table and in the evenings. I must persuade him to find some occupation, simply because I cannot bear to have him around the house all day, or we should become tired of each other. Nor on the other hand should I wish to spend my time worrying whether he is in poor company. Have you noticed how tedious people are when they mem-selves are bored?

You know, I think happiness is to some extent a matter 237

of choice. And I have determined to be happy, and that Jack shall make me so-or at least I should say that I shall take every opportunity to be pleased.

I expect to be home in two weeks, and in many ways I am looking forward to it, especially to seeing you again. I really do miss you, and since I have not been able to receive letters from you, I am longing more than ever to know what you have been doing, and Thomas. You know, I think I miss Thomas as much as anybody I know! And of course I miss Edward.

I shall be there to visit you the day I return .-Until then, take care of yourself and remember I love you,

Emily

Charlotte stood for a long time with the letter in her hand and a feeling of growing warmth. Without realizing it, she was smiling. She would love to have seen Florence, the colors and sights, the beautiful things, especially the Saint George, and the other splendors. But Emily was right: much of happiness was a choice, and she could choose to look at Emily's romance and glamor and envy her, or to look at the rare and precious friendship she had with Pitt, his gentleness, his tolerance of her adventures, his willingness to share with her his ideas and his emotions. She realized with a jolt of amazement and intense gratitude that since she had known Pitt she had never felt truly lonely. What was a lifetime of grand tours compared with that?

She spent the day working in the house, talking to herself as she went, tidying, rearranging, straightening, polishing. She sent Gracie out for flowers and fresh meat to make Pitt's favorite, steak and kidney pudding with a rich suet crust on top as light as a feather. She set the table in the parlor with linen and had the children washed and in their nightshirts when he came home.

She permitted them to run to the door to greet him and be hugged and kissed and sent to bed; then she threw her arms

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round his neck and held him tightly, saying nothing, just glad to have him there.

Pitt saw the linen and the flowers, saw that Emily had taken special care over every detail. He saw the golden pudding and the fresh vegetables and smelled the delicious steam rising from them, and he misunderstood it all. He thought of Micah Drummond's office and of the promotion, of Emily's letters, which he had not read, and all the new things a little more money would mean for Charlotte.

The more he thought of desk work, the more he hated the idea, but looking at Charlotte's smiling face across the table, at the feminine touches in his home-the flowers, the hand-painted lamp shades, the embroidered linen, the sewing box piled with fabric for the children's clothes-he felt it was a small price to pay for her happiness. He would do it, and he would try hard to see she never knew the cost. Smiling back, he began to share with her the events of the day, little as they had yielded about Cuthbert Sheridan or his family.