Pentecost Alley

5

EMILY SPENT a very ordinary day, like any other during the London season. She rose at eight and at nine went riding in the Park, where she nodded to a score of acquaintances, all of whom were agreeable enough, but none were particular friends. But the day was fine, the air brisk and sweet, and her horse was an excellent beast. She rode well, and returned a little after ten, feeling invigorated.

Jack had already left for Whitehall and Edward was in the schoolroom, so she ate alone. Evie was in the nursery being cared for by the nursemaid.

She spent the next two hours reading and answering correspondence, of which there was not a great deal. Largely she wasted time. She planned the day’s menu, over which she could not consult Jack because he was not there. Next she called the housekeeper and discussed half a dozen domestic matters with her regarding linen, parlor maids’ duties, the new scullery maid, the mark on the library carpet and several other things, to discover they had all been dealt with satisfactorily without her advice.

She spoke to her ladies’ maid, and found that she too had already solved all the minor problems which had arisen.

“The red ink on the sleeve of my morning dress,” she began. She had been leaning over Edward’s map of India, admiring it.

“Already done it, m’lady,” Gwen said with satisfaction.

“Gone?” Emily was amazed. “Red ink?”

“Yes, m’lady. Mustard does it. Smeared a little mustard over it before it was laundered. Works a treat.”

“Thank you.”

“An’ if I could have a few drops of gin, m’lady, I’ll clean up the diamonds in your bracelet. They’ve got a bit dusty over use. I asked Cook, but she wouldn’t give it me without your say-so. Reckon she thought I might drink it!”

“Yes, of course,” Emily agreed, feeling utterly redundant.

She fared no better with the nursemaid and the cook.

At noon she left the house in her own carriage and went to call upon her mother, only to find that she was out. She debated whether to go shopping or visit an art gallery, and decided upon the latter. It was extremely boring. The pictures were all very genteel, and to her, appeared exactly the same as the exhibition the previous year.

She returned home, where she was joined for luncheon by her grandmother, who demanded an account of her morning and her plans for the remainder of the week. When she had heard them, she dismissed them as trivial, scatterbrained and totally frivolous. She spoke out of envy, because she would dearly have liked to have done the same, but Emily privately agreed with her.

“You should be supporting your husband!” the old lady said viciously. “You should be engaged in some worthy work. I was, at your age! I was on the parish council for unmarried mothers. I can’t tell you the number of wicked girls whose futures I helped decide.”

“God help them,” Emily muttered.

“What did you say?” the old woman demanded.

“How helpful,” Emily lied. She did not want a full-scale battle.

At half past three she attended an afternoon concert with the wife of one of Jack’s friends, a worthy woman with very limited conversation. She found almost everything “uplifting.” At half past four they went together to a garden party and remained for half an hour, by which time Emily was ready to scream. She wished she had paid afternoon calls instead, or gone to a charity bazaar alone, but it was too late.

At half past six Jack returned home in something of a hurry. They dined in haste and then changed before leaving for a theater party with friends they knew only slightly. At half past eleven they had supper, made a great deal of light, very trivial conversation. By a quarter to one she was in bed and too tired to think constructively, but quite sure the day had been wasted.

Tomorrow she would do something with purpose. In the morning she could use the telephone and discover at which social function she could expect to run into Tallulah FitzJames. She would address the matter of helping her, either with her romantic decision regarding Jago and how to effect a satisfactory conclusion or else with clearing her brother of the suspicion of having committed the murder in Whitechapel, or possibly even both.

At a little after two o’clock, having lunched early, Emily dressed in her most gorgeously fashionable afternoon gown: an exquisitely cut pink brocade with a confection of silk at bosom, neck and elbow, and a skirt which moved most flatteringly as she walked. She took an outrageous hat, one by which even Aunt Vespasia would be impressed, and a matching parasol, then set out for a flower show in Kensington where she had ascertained Tallulah was very likely to be.

She arrived at three, alighted from her carriage and immediately saw several ladies of her acquaintance. She was obliged to exchange greetings and to accompany them into the succession of tents and enclosures filled with arrays of flowers and blooming shrubs and trees. Small wrought-iron tables painted white were set between, with two or three graceful chairs by each. Beautifully dressed ladies wandered from arrangement to arrangement, often accompanied by gentlemen in afternoon frock coats, cutaway jackets, striped trousers and shiny, tall hats. Here and there young girls of twelve or fourteen stood primly in flounced dresses, long hair held back with ribbons around their heads, or made faces at each other when they imagined no one was looking.

Emily’s heart sank. She had forgotten how crowded flower shows were, how many winding pathways there were between the exhibits, arbors under potted trees, and places between arrays of blossoms and under overhanging boughs where people might talk discreetly or flirt. One could keep assignations with little chance of being seen by those one would prefer to avoid. No doubt that was why Tallulah had chosen such a place. It sounded so respectable. What could be more appropriate for a young lady to attend than a flower show? How feminine. How delightfully innocent. No doubt she could learn much about gardens, conservatories and the tasteful ways of decorating one’s formal rooms for dinners, soirées or any other manner of receiving guests. All of which would be the last thing on Tallulah’s mind.

Emily asked quite casually if anyone had seen Miss FitzJames, inventing some slight reason for wanting to speak to her—a friend in common, a milliner’s name.

It took her nearly an hour before she found her, and then it was by chance. She came around the corner of a large exhibit of late roses and some high-standing, very vivid yellow lilies, and saw Tallulah sitting in an arbor created out of the twined branches of a vine. She was leaning back, her feet on the chair as though it were a chaise longue, skirts draped carelessly, her long, slender throat arched. Her dark hair was beginning to fall a little out of its pins. It was a relaxed, seductive pose, graceful and inviting.

The young man beside her was plainly entranced. He leaned farther and farther forward as she regarded him lazily through half-closed eyes. Emily could completely understand the desire to behave shockingly. She herself had never done anything of the sort, but then she had so far not been severely tempted … not yet.

“Why Tallulah! How nice to see you!” she said utterly ingenuously, as if they had bumped into each other walking in the Park. “Aren’t the flowers gorgeous? I would never have thought they could find as much as this so late in the year.”

Tallulah stared at her in amazement turning to dismay. Such a breach of tact was inexcusable. Emily should have withdrawn, blushing and suitably taken aback.

Emily stood precisely where she was, a bland smile on her face.

“I always think August is a difficult season,” she went on cheerfully. “Too late for one thing and too early for another.”

“There seems to me to be plenty of flowers,” the young man said, pink-faced. He straightened his tie and collar as if he were trying to appear to be doing something else.

“I am sure there are, sir,” Emily agreed, fixing her eyes on his hands. “To men there always seem to be plenty of flowers.” She let the remark hang in the air, with its double meaning, and turned to Tallulah, her bright smile back again. “I have been thinking quite hard about the matter you discussed with me the last time we had an opportunity to talk together. I would so like to be of assistance. I am sure something could be done.”

Tallulah continued to stare at her, but gradually the lightness died out of her face. She straightened up, ignoring her gown and the angle to which it had slipped. “Are you? It is much worse, you know? It is all much worse.”

The young man realized that the conversation had proceeded beyond anything of which he was aware. He rose and excused himself, doing it with surprising flair, in the circumstances, and with a bow took his leave.

Tallulah readjusted her gown, her face now very somber.

“I saw Jago again,” she said quietly. “Not for very long. It was a charity bazaar. I knew he would be there, for his wretched church, so I went. He looked through me as if I were some naughty child he was obliged to be civil to, as one does when other people’s children misbehave and one cannot do anything because their parents won’t permit it.” She screwed up her face. “Suffering with a weary and tolerant look. I was so angry I could have slapped him!”

Emily saw the pain in Tallulah’s eyes and the struggle to know whether she should deny it or try to face and overcome it. It was so much easier to pretend it was only anger she felt, not pain.

Emily sat down where the young man had been. The scent of the flowers was heavy in the air. She was glad of the very slight breeze.

“Are you sure you don’t want him simply because he’s unattainable?” she said frankly.

Tallulah thought about it in silence. She sat down again where she had been before, only this time more decorously, her feet on the ground.

“Are you attracted to a man who adores you?” Emily would not be put off.

“No,” Tallulah said immediately. Then she smiled. “Are you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Emily confessed. “He has to be at the very least unsuitable, but better he should need to be won as well. The harder the battle, the more the prize is worth. Men are the same, of course. It is simply that we are better, on the whole, at disguising it and pretending to be uninterested, when we are actually enthralled.”

“Jago is not enthralled,” Tallulah said glumly. “At least not by me. I might have a better chance of engaging his emotions if I were a fallen woman and he thought he could save my soul!”

“Is that what you were about just now?” Emily asked with a smile. “Falling?”

But Tallulah was too hurt to be amused.

“No, of course not,” she said tartly. “I was merely bored. It was all words and ideas. If you knew Sawyer, you’d know that. Everything’s a pose with him.”

Emily sat back a little farther, making herself comfortable. It was very warm in the bower, and the perfume of so many petals a trifle clinging.

“Why don’t you simply forget Jago?” she asked without pretense at subtlety. “The thought of him is only causing you distress. A challenge is excellent, but not one you can’t win. That’s just depressing. Anyway, what would you do if you had him? You couldn’t possibly marry him. He hasn’t any money! Or do you just want your revenge on him because he despises you, or you think he does?”

“He does.”

“So you want revenge?”

Tallulah stared at her. With the sunlight dappled on her face she had a kind of beauty, one born of courage and a fierce vitality.

“No, I don’t. That would be horrible.” Her voice sharpened in frustration. “You really don’t understand at all, do you? Jago is the best person I’ve ever known! There’s an honor in him, and a gentleness unlike that in anyone else I’ve ever met. He’s honest.” She leaned forward. “I don’t just mean he doesn’t take things that aren’t his, I mean he doesn’t even want to. He doesn’t lie to other people, but he doesn’t lie to himself either. That’s rare, you know? I lie to myself all the time. All my family does, mostly about why they do things. They say they had to, when what they mean is they wanted to so they looked around for an excuse. I’ve seen it all the time.”

“So have I,” Emily admitted. “But I’m not sure I could live with anyone who always spoke the unadulterated truth. I don’t think I want to know it, and I’m quite sure I don’t want to hear it. It may be very admirable, but I would sooner admire it from a distance … quite a large distance.”

Tallulah laughed, but there was no happiness in it. “You are deliberately misunderstanding me. I don’t mean he’s tactless, or cruel. I just mean he has a sort of … light inside him. He’s … whole. His mind doesn’t have lots of different pieces, like most people’s, all wanting different things, and lying to each other so you can try to have everything, and telling yourself it’s all right.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know that?” Emily repeated. “How do you know what is inside him?”

Tallulah was silent. Two girls in pink and peach walked past them, deep in conversation, heads close together, the brindled light in their hair. “I don’t know why I’m explaining all this to you!” Tallulah said at last. “It doesn’t really fit into any words. I know what I mean. I know that he has a kind of courage that most people haven’t. He faces what really matters, without evasions and excuses. His beliefs are whole.” She stared at Emily. “Do you understand me at all?”

“Yes,” Emily agreed quietly, dropping the challenge from her voice. “I only wanted to see if you really care for him as much as you think. Wouldn’t you find him a little serious? After a while might not so much goodness become a trifle predictable, and then ultimately become even boring?”

Tallulah turned her head away, her profile outlined against the bank of blossoms. “It really doesn’t matter. He’s never going to look at me as anything but Finlay FitzJames’s rather shallow sister who wastes her life buying dresses that cost enough to keep one of his Whitechapel families in food and clothes for years.” She looked down at her exquisite skirt and smoothed it over the flat of her stomach. “This cost fifty-one pounds, seventeen shillings and sixpence. We pay our best maids twenty pounds a year. The scullery maids and tweenies get less than half that. I saw it in the household accounts. And I have a dozen or more dresses as good as this one.”

She shrugged and smiled. “And yet I go to church on Sundays and pray, and so does everyone else I know, all dressed in clothes like this. It isn’t that Jago would tell me I’m wrong. If no one buys them, then the people who make them have no trade. He just wouldn’t be bothered with me, because I care so much what I look like. But then for an unmarried woman that’s what matters, isn’t it.” It was not a question but a statement of fact.

Emily did not argue, nor did she bother to mention money or family influence. Tallulah knew the rules as well as she did.

“Would you marry him?” she asked softly, thinking of Charlotte and Pitt. But Charlotte was different. She had never been the socialite that Tallulah was. Her wit was far too acerbic, her outspokenness seldom—not often—funny. She was not intentionally outrageous; she was a genuine misfit. And to be honest, it was not as if she had had so many other good offers. She rather put people off.

Although in spite of her father’s wealth, if Tallulah continued to behave as she had done this afternoon and the other evening in Chelsea, she might not receive any offers in the future. There were many women whom people found vastly entertaining but did not marry.

Tallulah sighed and looked up at the flowers overhead, her expression a strange mixture of wistfulness and horror, and a kind of desperate laughter at herself.

“If I were to marry him, I would have to live in Whitechapel, wear gray stuff dresses and be happy ladling out soup to the poor. I should have to be polite to the self-righteous women who think laughter is a sin and love is telling people what they ought to do. I would eat the same food every day, answer my own door and always watch what I said, in case it offended anyone. I’d never be able to go to the theater again, or the opera, or dine in restaurants, or ride in the Park.”

“Worse than that,” Emily put in. “You’d have to ride on the omnibus, crammed in with other people, fat, out of breath and smelling of onions. You’d have to do most of your own cooking, and count your money to judge whether you could buy a thing or not, and the answer would usually be not.” She was thinking of Charlotte’s early years, before Pitt’s last promotion. Some of them had been hard. But they had shared so much that Emily now looked back on that time with a kind of envy. She seemed to have shared more with Jack before he had won his seat in Parliament, when there was still so much to work for, and victory was uncertain, and a long way away. He had needed her so much more then.

“It wouldn’t be so bad as that,” Tallulah argued. “Papa would make me an allowance.”

“Even if you married a parish priest, instead of his choice for you?” Emily said skeptically. “Are you sure?”

Tallulah stared at her, her eyes wide and dark brown, nearly black.

“No,” she said quietly. “No, he’d be furious. He’d never forgive me. He’d like me to marry a duke, although an earl or a marquis might do. I don’t think his ambition has any ceiling, to be honest. If I thought about it harder, it would frighten me. Nothing ever stops him, he just finds a way around it. People have tried to stand up to him, but they never win.”

Distant laughter sounded somewhere behind them, and a girl giggling. It really was getting very hot.

“Have you?” Emily asked.

Tallulah shook her head. “I’ve never needed to.”

“Would you, to marry Jago?”

Tallulah turned away. “I don’t know. Perhaps not. But as I said, it doesn’t matter. Jago wouldn’t have me.”

“Perhaps that’s just as well,” Emily said deliberately. “That you don’t have to make up your mind what you really want: to be rich and have pretty gowns, parties, trips to the theater, and marry whoever your father tells you … or marry a man you really love and admire, and trust, and help him in his life’s work—in comparative poverty. I don’t suppose you’d ever actually be hungry, and you’d always have a roof over your head—but it might leak.”

Tallulah swung around on the seat to stare at her in a flash of temper.

“I don’t suppose your roof leaks, Mrs. Radley!” she snapped. “Even if Jack Radley’s would, I’ll lay any odds the late Lord Ashworth’s doesn’t!”

It was a reference to Emily’s first husband and his very considerable wealth. Emily might have resented the gibe, but she knew she had provoked a retaliation, and she accepted it as fair.

“No it doesn’t,” she agreed. “But whether I even took a decision or not is beside the point. The thing is for you to recognize the reality of what your choices are. No one has everything. No relationship does. Look at Jago carefully. Look at whoever else there is, and decide what you want … then fight for it.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“That part of it is.”

“No, it isn’t.” Tallulah sat forward and leaned over, putting her hands up over her cheeks. It was a gesture of deep and troubled thought.

An elderly couple walked by, heads close together in earnest conversation, the woman’s parasol trailing, the man’s hat at a rakish angle. She said something and they both laughed.

“If this wretched business with Finlay doesn’t get solved soon,” Tallulah went on suddenly, her voice low and filled with anger and fear, “and the police don’t stop asking everyone questions about us, then it won’t matter anyway. We’ll all be ruined, and nobody will speak to any of us unless they have to. I’ve known it to happen. A story comes out. It is whispered around, and suddenly no one sees you. You are invisible. You can walk down the street and everyone is looking the other way. You talk to people and they don’t hear you.” Her voice was rising with the fear inside her. “Restaurants where you dine frequently find they are full whenever you call. Dressmakers are too busy to see you. Milliners have nothing to suit you. Your tailors can’t fit you in. You call on people and nobody is ever at home, even if the lights are on and the carriages are lined up outside. It is as if you’d died, without being aware of it. It can happen over cheating at cards or welching on a debt of honor. Think what it would do over being hanged for murder!”

This time Emily did not rush in so quickly. It was much too painful an issue to challenge beliefs, or call it self-examination. She would like to have thought beyond doubt that of course Finlay was innocent; it was only a matter of waiting until Pitt found the proof. But she had known Pitt long enough, and seen sufficient cases of human tragedy and violence, to have any such comfortable illusion. People one loves, people one imagines one knows, can have aspects to their nature which are full of uncontrollable pain or anger, dark needs even they barely understand.

“If they are still investigating him, then they have not yet proof,” she said aloud, weighing her words carefully.

“It means they still think he is guilty, though,” Tallulah responded instantly, her eyes brilliant. “Otherwise they’d leave him alone.”

The heat in the arbor was motionless. Distant laughter sounded yards away, although it was merely around the corner. The clink of glass and china came clearly above the buzz of conversation. But they were both too intent on the matter at hand to think of refreshment.

“Do you know why?” Emily asked quietly.

Tallulah’s mouth tightened. It was obviously something she had thought about and the answer troubled her.

“Yes. There were belongings of his found where this woman was killed, a badge from that ridiculous club he used to belong to, and a cuff link. He told them about it. He said he lost both of them years ago. He hasn’t seen them, and neither has anyone else.” Her face tightened. “Some sordid little policeman came and questioned his valet, but he’s only been with us for a few years, and he’d never seen them at all. Finlay certainly didn’t have them that night.” She stared at Emily, defying her to disbelieve.

“Nothing else?” Emily asked without changing her expression from one of strictly practical enquiry into fact.

“Yes … actually, some prostitute says she saw a man going into the woman’s room, and swears he looked like Finlay. But how can they take her word against his? No jury ever would!” She searched Emily’s eyes. “Would they?”

Emily could feel the fear in Tallulah as powerfully as the heat of the sun or the clinging scent of the flowers. It was more real than the distant chatter or movement of color as a woman in an exquisite gown drifted by. But was it fear of social ruin, fear of being unjustly convicted or fear that perhaps he was not innocent at all?

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Emily said cautiously. “Where was he that evening?”

“At a party in Beaufort Street. I can’t remember what number, but nearer the river end.”

“Well, can’t he prove it?” Emily said with a rush of hope. “Someone there must remember him. In fact, probably dozens of people do. Surely he’s said so?”

Tallulah looked deeply unhappy.

“Wasn’t he there?” Emily asked.

“Yes … yes he was.” Tallulah’s face creased with confusion and misery. “I saw him there myself….”

A waiter strode by, holding aloft a tray of chilled drinks in long-stemmed glasses which chinked as they touched each other. In the distance someone laughed.

Emily realized there must be far more to the story, something very ugly and very private. She did not ask.

“But you cannot say so,” she concluded the obvious.

Tallulah turned to her quickly. “I would if I thought anyone would believe me. I’m not trying to protect myself. I’d clear Fin in a second, if I could! But it wasn’t that sort of party. They were all taking opium, and that kind of thing. I was only there for about half an hour, then I left. But I did see Fin, although I think he was already too far gone to see me. The place was full of people, all laughing and either drunk or in a daze.”

“But you saw Finlay … definitely!” Emily said with conviction. “You weren’t drunk … or … or on opium?”

“No.” Tallulah took a shaky breath. “But, you see, when Papa asked where I had been, in front of Mama, and the servants, and Mama’s doctor … I said I had been somewhere else. No one would believe me now. They’d think I was just lying to protect Fin! And who wouldn’t think so? If I were them, that’s what I’d think.”

Emily would like to have argued, said something comforting, but she knew that Tallulah was right. No one would take her testimony seriously.

Tallulah looked down at her hands lying on her skirt. “Damnation!” she said fiercely. “Isn’t this a mess!” She clenched her fists. “Sometimes he’s so stupid I could hate him.”

Emily said nothing. She was thinking hard, searching for any thread she could grasp that might help. This was a practical problem. It would not be solved by indulging emotions, however justified.

“I remember I used to think he was marvelous,” Tallulah went on, as much to herself as to Emily. “When I was young he used to have such exciting ideas. He would invent games for us, turn the whole nursery into another world, a desert island, a pirate ship, the Victory at Trafalgar, or a palace, or the Houses of Parliament.” She smiled and her eyes were soft with the memory. “Or a forest with dragons. I’d be the maiden and he’d rescue me. He’d be the dragon as well. He used to make me laugh so much.”

Emily did not interrupt.

“Then of course he had to go away to school,” Tallulah went on. “I missed him terribly. I don’t think I’ve ever been as lonely as I was then. I lived the whole term time until he should come back home again. To begin with he was just the same, but gradually he changed. Of course he did. He grew up. He only wanted to play with boys. He was still kind to me, but he had no patience. All his dreams were forward and not backward to where I was. It was then I began to understand all the things that men can do and women can’t.” She looked across at a group strolling past, a man in a tall hat with a young woman on one arm and an older woman on the other with a magnificent feather-trimmed hat, but she did not seem to see them.

“Men can go to Parliament or become ambassadors,” she went on. “Join the army or the navy, become explorers or bankers or deal in stocks or imports and exports.” She shrugged dramatically. “Write drama, music, be philosophers or poets. Women get married. Men get married too, but only as an incidental. I realized that when I understood what Papa expected of me and what he hoped for Fin. He would like to have had more sons. Mama was always sorry for that. I suppose it was her fault.”

Emily had a suddenly bleak picture of family life at the FitzJameses’, a little girl realizing with a rush of coldness how small a part of her life was in her own control, how restricted her choices compared with those of her brother. Her mother’s success or failure depended on how many sons she bore, and it was not something she could help. Perhaps Tallulah would be the same … a failure. Only one thing of importance would be asked of her, and she might not manage to do it.

Emily’s own life was the same. She had married a man who wanted sons to carry on his title, but she had not felt the same pressure. She could not recall even doubting herself. But then she had had no brothers.

“Sometimes when Fin was home from school there’d be some terrible quarrels.” Tallulah was still staring into the distance, living the past. “Papa would call him into his study, and Fin would come out white-faced. But it was always all right in the end. Nothing terrible ever happened. I was very frightened at first. I remember I sat on the landing behind the stair rail and looked down into the hall, waiting for him to come out of the study, terrified he’d been beaten or something. I don’t know what I really expected. But it never happened. It was always all right.”

Someone laughed in the distance, but she barely seemed to hear it.

“Fin and Papa still made their plans. Fin went back to school, then to University, then into the Foreign Office. If this goes away without any scandal, he’ll be posted to a really good ambassadorship, probably Paris. He’ll have to get married first, but that won’t be difficult. There are dozens of suitable girls who’d be happy to have him.”

She took a deep breath and turned to look at Emily, her eyes bright with tears.

“I wish I could help, but I don’t even have any idea what I could do! He won’t talk about it to me, but I know he’s frightened. Mama won’t talk about it either, except to say it will be all right because he can’t be guilty and Papa will see that he isn’t blamed for something he couldn’t possibly have done.”

Emily had a picture of a frightened woman, loving her son but knowing startlingly little about him, seeing in her heart only the child she had known so many years ago. She did not see the present man who lived in a world outside her experience, with appetites beyond her emotional or physical imagination, a woman clinging to decency because it was what she lived by, perhaps even lived for. What did Aloysia FitzJames know of reality beyond her very handsome, safe front door?

No wonder modern, outrageous Tallulah could not speak to her or share her fears. It would be cruel and completely pointless even to try. Who did Tallulah talk to? Her society friends who were all totally occupied in seeking suitable marriages? The convention-defying aesthete set who sat up all night talking about art and meaning, the idolatry of the senses, the worship of beauty and wit? Jago? But he had time only for the poor. He did not see the loneliness or the panic behind her extravagant dresses and defiant face.

“We’ll do something,” Emily stated with absolute determination. “To begin with we’ll deal with this badge which they say is his. If he didn’t leave it there, then someone else must have, either by accident or deliberately.”

“Deliberately?” Tallulah stared at her. “You mean they stole it and put it there to try to get Finlay hanged?” She shivered in spite of the heat, which was now so intense there was a fine dew of perspiration on her brow and Emily could feel the muslin of her own gown sticking to her uncomfortably.

“Is that impossible?” she asked.

Tallulah hesitated only a moment. “No, no it isn’t,” she answered with a catch in her voice. “Papa has quite a few enemies. I’ve come to realize that more lately. They might want to strike out at him where it would hurt the most, and where he was most vulnerable. Finlay does behave like a fool sometimes. I know that.” She shook her head a little. “I think he’s half afraid of being an ambassador, and then going into Parliament, in case he doesn’t live up to all Papa’s expectations for him. It’s almost as if he wanted to do something to prevent it, even before he really tries. Not really,” she added quickly, with a fleeting smile. “Just at moments when he’s … when he has no confidence in himself. We all get times like that.”

“Who in particular?” Emily pressed, flicking her hand sharply to shoo a fly away.

Tallulah thought for a moment. “Roger Balfour, for one. Papa just about ruined him in a business deal with the army—over munitions, I think. Peter Zoffany. I used to like him. He told wonderful stories about living in India. I think he rather liked me too. I thought Papa might marry me to him, but then he used him to get to somebody else and there was a terrible row and I never saw him again. But Fin would never do anything like that.” She did not add any assurance, which made it the more absolute.

She looked at Emily with a frown.

“Does it matter who? All we could do would be tell the police. I wouldn’t mind telling Mr. Pitt if he comes again, but I wouldn’t tell that other miserable-faced man. I think his name was Tellman, or Bellman, or something like that. He looked at me as if I were a leper. He’d only think I was trying to protect Finlay anyway.”

“No, I don’t suppose it matters,” Emily conceded. “That club badge is the thing. If we could throw doubt on that, it would weaken this case a great deal.”

“But they’ve got it!” Tallulah protested. “What doubt could there be? It has Fin’s name engraved on the back. He told me. Anyway, I’ve seen it.”

“What is it like?” Emily asked quickly. “What is it like exactly? Do you remember?”

“Certainly. About that size.” She held her finger and thumb apart about three quarters of an inch. “Round. Gray enamel, with ‘Hellfire Club, 1881’ on the front in gold letters and a pin across the back. Why?”

“And where was his name?”

“On the back, under the pin. Why?”

“Written how?”

“What do you mean?”

“Copperplate, Gothic, Roman?”

“In … copperplate, like a signature, only neater.” Her expression quickened. “Why?” She drew in her breath. “Are you thinking we could duplicate it? Have another one made? But what could we do with it?”

“Well, if there are two,” Emily was still juggling ideas in her mind, “it will at least raise doubts as to which one is real. One of them has to be false! Why not the one found in the prostitute’s room? At least it would prove that someone could get a false one made and put it wherever they wanted to.”

“Yes it would,” Tallulah agreed with alacrity, sitting forward. “Where should we put it?”

“I’m not sure.” Emily was still thinking. “I suppose somewhere it could have fallen accidentally, so Finlay couldn’t find it. At the back of a drawer, or in the pocket of something he never wears.”

“But if we find it,” Tallulah pointed out, “they will know that we put it there, or they might do.”

“Obviously we can’t find it,” Emily agreed. “But we can arrange for the police to search again, and they can find it themselves.”

“How can we do that?”

“I can. Don’t worry about it.” Emily was certainly not going to explain that Superintendent Pitt, in charge of the case, was her brother-in-law. “I’ll think of a way.”

“Won’t they check up on all of us, to see if we had the copy made?” Tallulah went on. “I would! And Tellman may be a horrible little man, but I’ve a feeling he’s awfully clever, in his own way. And Mr. Pitt might come back again. He speaks beautifully, even though he’s a policeman, but underneath the good manners I don’t think he’d be fooled either.”

“Then it’s your job to see that you and your mother can account for your time, and if possible that Finlay can too,” Emily said decisively. “There’s nothing we can do about your father. I’ll take care of getting another badge made. You must draw it for me, as precisely as you can, the right size, with the writing exactly like the other one.”

Tallulah was alarmed. “I’m not sure if I remember exactly.”

“Then you’ll have to find out, from Finlay, without him realizing why you want to know. Don’t ask any of the other members. They might know what you are doing, and even if they wouldn’t intentionally betray Finlay, they might to save themselves, even without meaning to.”

“Yes …” Tallulah said with increasing conviction in her voice. She rose to her feet, stopping for a moment as the heat and the dizzying perfume overcame her.

Emily stood also.

“Yes. I’ll start straightaway.” Tallulah straightened her shoulders. “I’ll draw the badge for you and send it in the post. You’ll receive it tomorrow. Emily … thank you! I don’t know why you should befriend me like this, but I’m more grateful to you than I can say.”

Emily dismissed it as gracefully as she could. It embarrassed her, because she had done it out of boredom and her own sense of having done nothing valuable for months, and of being unnecessary to anybody.

They parted at the entrance, surprised to find that everyone else was gone too. It was already well into the hour appropriate for final calls, or even returning home if one was thinking of an early dinner before the opera or the theater.

Tallulah was as good as her word, and in the midday delivery the following day, Emily received a letter from her, hastily and sprawlingly written, and accompanying two rather good sketches of a badge, both front and reverse. One was in minute detail, larger than scale so it could be seen easily; the other was less exact but of precisely the same size as the original. The materials were also described. With it was a five-pound note, neatly folded, to cover the cost, and Tallulah’s repeated thanks.

Emily had already decided where she intended to go in order to get the badge made. One or two friends had from time to time had need of a discreet and skilled jeweler who was able to either copy a piece or maybe reproduce it from a drawing or photograph. One had accidents. An original piece had been pawned and sold against a debt one did not care to mention to one’s husband and which could not be met from a dress allowance. One misplaced things sometimes. There were even occasions when it was not advisable to wear an original. A jeweler unknown to the rest of the family, and who knew how to keep his own counsel, was a friend to be treasured.

Of course, Emily did not tell him who she was. But he was used to ladies who veiled their faces and whose names did not appear in any social register, even though both their-clothes and their manners suggested that they should. He accepted the commission without demur and promised to have it completed for collection in two days’ time. Emily thanked him, paid him half the price, and promised the rest on completion.

She returned home only just before Jack arrived, coming into her boudoir looking harassed and apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly, and indeed he did look very disturbed about something. His usually immaculate jacket was a trifle crooked and his eyes were tired.

“What is it?” she asked, touched with a moment’s anxiety. “What’s happened?” She rose to her feet and went over to him, her eyes searching his face.

“The Home Secretary has called a meeting this evening,” he said ruefully. “I have to be there or no one will put my point of view. I’m sorry, but it really does matter.”

“Of course you have to,” she agreed, overwhelmed with relief.

“But I promised to take you to the opera. We have the tickets, and I know how much you wanted to see it.”

She had completely forgotten. Beside Tallulah’s troubles it was so unimportant. What was an evening’s entertainment compared with the fears and the loneliness she had seen only an hour or two ago?

“Never mind,” she said, smiling at him. “It is a matter of priorities, isn’t it? Perhaps I shall go and see Charlotte, or something like that. The opera will play again.” She saw the apprehension iron out of his face and felt a sharp twinge of guilt. She already knew exactly what she would do with the late afternoon and evening.

“Thank you, my dear,” Jack said, touching her gently on the cheek. Standing so close to him she could see the fine lines of tiredness around his eyes and mouth and she realized with a jolt how hard he was working, for the first time in his life, at making a success of something which was a challenge to him. It was something which he cared about for himself and for her, and which he feared might be beyond him. He had grown up a younger son, handsome and idle, with a charm which enabled him to live quite easily on those who found his company such a pleasure he could move from one to another of them and never have to think further ahead, or behind, than a few weeks.

Now, because he loved Emily and wanted to fit into her life and her circle, he had looked for depths in himself and discovered them. He had committed himself to a difficult task in which failure was more than possible, and many vested interests were ranged against him. The time of charm without battles, smiling his way out of conflict, was past.

She wanted to reach up to kiss him, but she knew it was not the right time. He was weary. There was a busy, arduous and not entirely pleasant evening ahead of him, and already his mind was straggling with its problems, anticipating them and what he would say or do.

She caught his hand and held it, feeling his fingers close around hers in a moment’s surprise and warmth.

“Don’t be silly,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to sulk over an evening at the opera when what you are doing is really important. I hope I’m never so shallow. I do know what matters, you know.”

He smiled, his eyes lighter with amusement, and for a moment his tiredness vanished.

“I do!” she said fiercely. “More than you know!”

As soon as Jack had left for his engagement, Emily herself dressed for the evening in one of her older gowns, something she did not intend to wear again, then took the second carriage and directed the coachman to Keppel Street in Bloomsbury.

When they arrived she alighted, gave instructions that they should wait for her, and knocked on Charlotte’s door. As soon as it was answered, by Gracie, she swept in and went straight through to the parlor, where Charlotte was mending one of Jemima’s pinafores.

“Please listen to me,” Emily said. She sat down in Pitt’s chair without bothering to arrange her skirts. “I know the case Thomas is working on at the moment. I have quite a good acquaintance with the sister of his chief suspect, and I know a way we might be able to prove his innocence.” She ignored Charlotte’s surprise. “Believe me, he would be very grateful. It is not a man he would wish to prosecute, but unless someone can show that he was there at the time, he may have to.”

Charlotte put down her sewing and stared at Emily with gravity and growing suspicion.

“I assume from your manner that you already have a plan as to how we shall do this, when the police have failed to?” she said guardedly.

Emily swallowed, then took a deep breath and plunged in.

“Yes I have, actually. He does not really remember where he was, but his sister, Tallulah, was at a party, and she saw him there.”

“Oh yes?” Charlotte said skeptically. “And why has she not told the police this?”

“Because nobody would believe her.”

“Except you, of course.” Charlotte picked up her sewing again. The matter was not of sufficient sense to keep her from it.

Emily snatched it away.

“Listen to me! This really matters!” she said urgently. “If Finlay was seen at this party, in Chelsea, then he could not have been in Whitechapel murdering a prostitute. And if we can prove it, we will not only save Finlay from disaster, we will save Thomas from having to arrest the son of one of London’s wealthiest men!”

Charlotte retrieved the sewing and put it away tidily.

“So what are you suggesting? Why can … Tallulah? … Tallulah … not find some of the other people who were at this party and have them swear that Finlay was there? What does she need you for? Or me?”

“Because she has already denied being at the party,” Emily said exasperatedly. “Please pay attention! She was only there for a few minutes, perhaps half an hour at the most, and she does not remember who else was there either.”

“It seems altogether an extremely forgettable party,” Charlotte said with a wry expression too close to laughter for Emily’s temper. “Do you really believe all this, Emily? It’s ridiculous. She doesn’t remember anyone there except him, and he not only doesn’t remember anyone at all, even his own sister, he doesn’t even remember being there himself!”

“They were taking opium,” Emily said furiously. “The place was a … a shambles. When Tallulah saw what it was like she left. She didn’t remember the other people because she didn’t know them. Finlay didn’t remember because he was out of his senses.”

“That last part I can believe,” Charlotte conceded dryly. “But even if it is all true, what could we do?”

“Go back to the house where the party was and see if it really happened and if it was as she said,” Emily replied, although as she heard herself, it sounded increasingly foolish. “Well … we could at least see if there had been a party that night and if anyone remembered seeing either Tallulah or Finlay. It would prove something.”

“I suppose we might find someone….” Charlotte said dubiously. “But why doesn’t Tallulah go herself? Presumably at least she knows these people? We don’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do we?”

“No! No, of course not!” Emily denied it hastily. “But that is precisely why we would be better. We are important witnesses.”

“Where is it?”

“Beaufort Street, in Chelsea. You’d better change into something a little more formal, as if you were going to a party.”

“Since everyone seems oblivious of their surroundings, it hardly seems worth it,” Charlotte answered. But she did rise to her feet and go towards the door. “I’ll be down in a few minutes. I hope you know what you are doing.”

Emily did not answer.

Half an hour later they were in the carriage, turning from the river into Beaufort Street.

“What number?” Charlotte asked.

“About here,” Emily replied.

“What do you mean ‘about here’?” Charlotte said. “What number is it?”

“I’m not sure. Tallulah didn’t know.”

“You mean she didn’t remember, I suppose,” Charlotte said sarcastically. “If Thomas arrests anyone in that family they can plead insanity and get away with it. Come to that, so could we.”

“We are not doing anything to get arrested for,” Emily retorted sharply.

Charlotte did not reply.

Emily called out for the driver to stop and, with a challenging look at Charlotte, she alighted, rearranged her skirts, and walked across the pavement towards the front of a house where three other carriages appeared to be waiting. By the time she reached the door, Charlotte had caught up with her.

“What are you going to say?” Charlotte demanded. “You can’t just ask if they had an orgy here last Friday and do they know who was here!”

“Of course not!” Emily whispered. “I’ll say I forgot something … a glove.”

“Doesn’t sound to me like an affair where they wore gloves.”

“Well, I’d hardly go home without my shoes!”

“If you could go home without your memory or your wits, why not the odd shoe?” Charlotte said waspishly.

Emily was prevented from replying by the door’s opening and a footman’s staring down at her. He was in full livery, and stood a full head above her.

“Good afternoon.” Emily smiled dazzlingly at him, swallowed convulsively, and began. “I was at a party last Friday evening, and I believe I may have left behind me, er … my …”

The footman’s stare would have frozen milk.

“I believe that would have been at number sixteen, madam. This is number six.” And without waiting for any further remark he stepped back and closed the door, leaving Emily on the step.

“I gather sixteen has something of a reputation,” Charlotte said with a reluctant smile.

Emily said nothing. The color was burning her face in a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“Well, come on.” Charlotte touched her arm. “Having come this far, we might as well finish it.”

Emily would dearly liked to have gone back to the carriage and never returned to Beaufort Street in her life. The look on the footman’s face would haunt her dreams.

“Come on,” Charlotte said urgently. There might even have been laughter in her voice.

Reluctantly Emily obeyed, and they made their way up the street towards number sixteen. This time it was Charlotte who rang the bell.

The door was opened by a young man with an open-necked shirt, possibly silk, and dark hair which flopped over his brow.

“Hello?” he said with a charming smile. “Ought I to know you? Forgive my absentmindedness, but there are occasions when my mind is absolutely absent. Off on travels to another world where the most fantastic things happen.” He regarded her with candid, friendly interest, waiting for her reply as if his explanation had been utterly reasonable.

“Not very well,” she said, sketching the truth. “But I think I may have left my glove here last Friday. Silly place to wear gloves, I know, but I told my father I was going to the opera, so I had to dress as if I were. I came with Tallulah FitzJames,” she added, as though it were an afterthought.

He looked completely blank. “Do I know her too?”

“Slender, dark,” Emily chipped in. “Very elegant and rather a beauty. She has a … well, a long nose, and very fine eyes.”

“Sounds interesting,” he said approvingly.

“I’m sure you know her brother Finlay,” Charlotte said, making a last attempt.

“Oh! Fin … yes, I know him,” he agreed. “Do you want to come in and look for your glove?”

They accepted and followed him into a wide hallway, and then through a series of rooms all decorated in exotic styles, some strongly Chinese, some Turkish or mock Egyptian. They pretended to look for the glove, and at the same time asked the young man more about Finlay FitzJames, but beyond establishing that he had been there several times, they learned nothing else. The young man had no idea whether the Friday of the murder in Whitechapel was one of those occasions or not.

They thanked him and left, without a glove.

“Well, it could be,” Emily said as soon as they were on the pavement. “It was certainly the sort of party she described, that much at least is true.”

“You believe her, don’t you?” Charlotte said seriously.

“Yes, I do. I really want to help. I know what it feels like to be suspected of something you didn’t do … something you could be hanged for.”

“I know,” Charlotte said quickly, taking her arm. “But you really didn’t do it.”

“I don’t think he did either,” Emily replied. “I’m going to do everything I can to help!”

The following morning Emily wrote a hasty note to Tallulah outlining what she further planned and asking if Tallulah would come with her. If so, would she send a reply with the messenger who delivered the letter.

An hour later a note was returned in Tallulah’s scrawling hand saying that most certainly she could come. She would meet Emily at seven o’clock at St. Mary’s Church, Whitechapel, and from there they could follow their campaign. As requested, she would be dressed very plainly indeed, in order to be inconspicuous, taken by a casual observer to be a maid on her day off, perhaps visiting her family.

Emily was nervous sitting in the hansom clipping smartly eastward from her own highly fashionable street with its elegant windows overlooking wide, clean pavements, private carriages with liveried coachmen and footmen, its front doors and side entrances for servants and tradesmen. The surroundings changed as she came through the City itself. There were more business premises and shops. The traffic became heavier. There was far more noise. The hansom had to stop frequently where the roads were congested.

Gradually she moved beyond the banks and trading centers and under the great shadow of St. Paul’s, closer to the river. It was a balmy summer evening. There would be pleasure boats out, perhaps music, but she could not hear it above the clatter of hooves and wheels.

Soon she was on the Whitechapel Road. It was narrower, grayer, the buildings high and small-windowed, the footpaths sometimes mere ledges where people scurried by, heads down, with no time to stroll or chatter. The traffic was different also. Now there were carts and drays, wagons, even a herd of pigs blocking the road and making everyone stop for several minutes. The smell of manure was sharp in the air.

She alighted at St. Mary’s Church and paid the cabby quickly, before she lost heart and changed her mind. What if she couldn’t find a hansom back again? What if she had to walk? How far would it be? Would people take her for a street woman? She had heard that perfectly respectable women had been arrested by the police for being alone in the wrong places … even in the West End, never mind here. What would Jack think? He would never forgive her. And who would blame him? Would he understand that she had come to try to help clear the name of a man who faced ruin for a crime he did not commit? Charlotte would have done the same. Not that that was any mitigation.

Where on earth was Tallulah? What if she did not come?

Emily would have to go home again. It was still broad daylight. In fact, it was sunny and quite warm. She did not need to hug her shawl around her as if it were midwinter.

“Are you lorst, luv?”

She spun around. There was a short man with an ugly, friendly face staring at her. His cap was on crookedly and he had gaps in his teeth. There was a smear of dirt across his broad nose.

“No … thank you.” She gulped, then forced herself to smile back. “I’m looking for someone, but she doesn’t seem to be here yet. This is Saint Mary’s Church, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Yer ain’t lookin’ fer Mr. Jones, are yer? The Rev’rent? ’Cos ’e’s up Coke Street wi’ Maisie Wallace. She lorst ’er little girl yest’dy. Scarlet fever. She’s taken it ’ard, an’ ’e gorn up there ter sit wiv’ ’er.”

“I’m sorry,” Emily said quickly, her own fears vanishing. She thought of Evie at home asleep in her clean, quiet nursery in the afternoon sun, with someone to watch over her all the time, and Edward, his fair head bent over his books as he had been when she left. “I’m very sorry.”

“Bless yer, luv, it ’appens. ’Appens every day ter some poor soul.”

“I suppose so. That doesn’t stop it being like the end of the world when it happens to you.”

“Course it don’t. Yer sure yer all right, now? You in’t from ’round ’ere, are yer?” His eyes narrowed with concern. Suddenly she realized what he might imagine—an elopement, or far worse, a respectable woman fallen on desperate times and taking to the streets as an attempt to meet impossible debts … or worst of all, perhaps, seeking an illegal abortion. She forced herself to smile cheerfully and frankly at him, meeting his worried eyes.

“Yes, I am all right,” she said firmly. “But if she doesn’t come, perhaps you can tell me where I could get a hansom to take me home again? I have the fare,” she added hastily.

“Right ’ere’s as good as any place,” he answered. “Or yer could try Commercial Road. That way!” He pointed, stretching out his arm. “Well, if yer all right then, I’ll get ’ome ter me tea. Gor’ bless yer.”

“And bless you too,” she said with warmth. She watched him walk off and turn down an alley to the left, and wondered what he did and what family he was going back to.

She was still facing the way he had gone when a hansom stopped a dozen yards away and Tallulah scrambled out, paid, and came hurrying towards her. She looked untidy, very different in a navy stuff dress with no frills, and a gray shawl.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” she said breathlessly. “I had to tell so many lies to get away without Papa thinking there was anything odd. Sometimes I get so tired of being told what to do. And now Mama has agreed I really must accept the next remotely reasonable offer of marriage if there’s a title, whether there’s money or not. Papa is going to insist.” Almost unconsciously she glanced at the church, then back at Emily again, her eyes dark with foreboding. “Of course there won’t be one, if Finlay’s charged. Do you really think we can do anything?”

“Of course we can,” Emily said boldly, taking her arm. “And I do believe you about seeing him at the party.”

Tallulah looked at her curiously.

“What I mean is,” Emily said quickly, “I am not merely accepting your word, which is pleasant but of no use. I went there yesterday evening and met a young man. He had no idea who was there on that occasion, but he does know Finlay.”

“How does that help?” Tallulah asked, standing in the middle of the footpath, her face creased with anxiety.

“Well, it doesn’t prove he was there, but it shows he could have been, and that you at least know the place. And presumably you could prove that you were not where you told your father you were … if you had to?”

“Well … yes …”

“Good. And about Jago,” Emily proceeded to the next subject. “That may be hard, but we’ll try. But first we must find those wretched women who say they saw Finlay that night. They must be wrong. They saw somebody like him—that’s all. Maybe it was only a gentleman with fair hair. There can’t be many ’round here, but there must be thousands in London.”

“Yes, of course there must,” Tallulah agreed. She glanced up the street ahead of her. “Isn’t it grim around here! I think Old Montague Street is that way.” She gave a little smile. “I asked the cabby.”

“Good.” Emily started off at a brisk walk, Tallulah by her side. “I didn’t think to.”

They crossed the road and went up Osborn Street, then sharp right into Old Montague Street. The collected heat of the day shimmered up from the gray cobbles and the smell of middens and drains was thick in the air. Emily found herself wanting to hold her breath, but of course it was impossible. Memories flashed back to her of going with Charlotte into a filthy house—it seemed like years ago—and finding a sick woman huddled under old blankets in the corner. The pity she felt was almost as sharp now as it had been then, and the wish that she had never known, so it would not hurt.

A dray passed them, the horses’ flanks lathered with sweat. Two women were shouting abuse at each other. It seemed to be an argument over a pail of oysters. An old man was asleep in a doorway, or perhaps he was drunk. Half a dozen children played a game with a little heap of stones, balancing them on the backs of their hands and then tossing them into the air, shouting and cheering when someone performed the maneuver with particular skill.

Opposite Pentecost Alley the sweatshop was still busy. The windows were open and they could see the women’s heads bent over the needles. They had many hours to go yet before they could leave and go home for the short night before half past four, and time to return. Some of them actually lived there.

Tallulah stopped and looked at Emily. Now that it came to the moment, both found their courage evaporating. Could they really go into this brothel and ask to speak to one of the women? How would they know which one? Perhaps it was all rather ridiculous.

Emily drew in a deep breath. “Come on. If we stop now, we’ll never do it.”

Tallulah stood rooted to the spot.

“Is Finlay innocent or guilty?” Emily whispered fiercely. “Did he strangle that poor woman and leave her?”

“No! No, of course he didn’t!” Tallulah clenched her fists and strode forward up the steps with Emily behind her. There was a wooden door at the top, streaked with damp. It was closed, but there was a tarnished brass bell beside it. Tallulah yanked on it hard.

Nothing happened, and she tugged again, still facing it, and not looking at Emily. She was shivering, in spite of the close heat.

A few moments later the door creaked open and an enormous woman with a bloated face peered out.

“We got one room, duck. Can’t take two o’ yer. This is an Ouse o’ business.”

“We don’t need a room, thank you,” Tallulah said politely. Emily, standing a step behind her, could see her hands clenched into fists, nails biting into the palms. “We’ve come to speak to one of your … residents. We’re not quite sure who, but she saw a young man the night poor Ada McKinley was murdered, and we need to speak to her.”

The larger woman’s naked eyebrows shot up. “Wot fer? Yer in’t rozzers, so ’oo are yer?”

“We used to work with Ada,” Emily put in before Tallulah could speak. “I was a ladies’ maid in the same house. Lula here was laundress. My name’s Millie.”

Tallulah gulped. “That’s right. May we speak to her, please?”

“Well, that’d be up to Rose. I’ll ask ’er.” And with that she closed the door again, leaving them standing waiting.

“That was brilliant,” Tallulah said with admiration. “Now we’ll just have to hope Ada was in service at some time.”

“It’s a good chance,” Emily replied. “If not, we’ll just have to pretend we got the wrong person.”

“If she’ll see us,” Tallulah added.

They waited in silence the few moments until the fat woman returned, this time smiling. She ushered them in.

“That’s Rosie’s room,” she said, pointing to a door some way along the passage.

“Thank you.” Tallulah straightened her shoulders and obeyed, knocking sharply on the indicated door. As soon as she heard an answer, she opened it and went in, Emily hard at her elbow in case she should change her mind.

Inside the room was opulent in a garish way, lots of red and flounces, a huge bed with tattered red-pink curtains tied back with cord. That would have done for strangling someone, Emily thought grimly. She wondered if that was what he had used, if Ada had had the same.

Rose herself was a handsome woman, probably in her middle thirties. There was no paint on her face at this hour, and she had had a good day’s sleep. Emily could see that in other circumstances, cleaner, properly dressed, she could have been beautiful. Now she was looking at them curiously, leaning back a little in the one chair in the room.

“So you knew Ada, poor cow?” she said coolly. “Wot yer want wi’ me? I can’t ’elp yer. If yer cared so much abaht ’er, w’ere was yer w’en that bleedin’ butler done ’er, eh?”

Tallulah looked blank, her face white, her eyes almost hollow.

Emily made a quick guess at what she meant.

“She didn’t tell us,” Emily said aloud. “It was all dealt with without any of the rest of us knowing, until it was too late. Did you really see the man who killed her?”

“Yeah.” Rose shifted position slightly, easing herself backwards. “Why? Wot’s it ter you? Yer know ’im? It were some toff from up west.”

“We work up west,” Emily pointed out. “Did you see him clearly?”

“Yeah, more or less.” Rosie’s eyes narrowed. “Why’d you care?”

Emily made another guess. They had not much to lose.

“We hoped you hadn’t, not to know him for sure, beyond question, because we hoped it might be our butler. You see, he’s done it again, and this time he might have been caught, if anyone had believed Ada then.”

Suddenly they had Rose’s true attention.

“D’yer reckon? I’d love to get that swine, fer Ada. Bleedin’ bastard.”

“But are you sure it was this other man?” Emily said doubtfully. “Did you hear him speak?”

“Nah! Jus’ saw ’im goin’ past like.”

“Could it have been our butler?”

“Yeah, course it could. Were ’e out that night?”

“Yes,” Tallulah said quickly. She was still standing rigid in the middle of the floor, as though to move might bring some catastrophe on her.

Rose let out her breath in a long sigh, her eyes bright.

“Geez, I’d love ter get that son of a bitch. Maybe it were ’im? We could nail the sod proper!”

“What about what you’ve told the police?” Emily asked.

Rose shrugged. “Don’t matter. I in’t said anythin’ in court yet. They can’t do me fer it. I didn’t swear ter nuthin’. It were just me and one rozzer in an ’ansom. I thought it were ’im, now I’m not sure. Nan in’t sure anyway, so I’m only goin’ wi’ ’er.”

Tallulah let out her breath in a long, silent sigh. At last her shoulders relaxed a little, although her back was still stiff and her feet rooted to the spot.

“Thank you,” she said with passionate sincerity. “Thank you very much.”

When they were outside again they walked rapidly back along Old Montague Street without speaking, or even looking at each other, until they reached the corner of Osborn Street and turned down towards the Whitechapel Road. Then Tallulah stopped abruptly.

“We did it,” she said almost in a squeak. “We did it!” She threw her arms around Emily impulsively and hugged her so fiercely that for a moment Emily could not draw breath. “Thank you! Thank you more than I can say! Not just for helping me to defend Fin, but for showing that it wasn’t really evidence against him.” She let go and stepped back a bit, her eyes bright with tears. She sniffed. “If you hadn’t had the courage, I’d still be at home pacing the floor, or out at some wretched party, pretending to enjoy myself, and all the time worried sick he’d never prove he was innocent.”

“Then let us go and address the next problem,” Emily said resolutely. “If Finlay is not involved, and there is no charge brought against him, then your father will have you married to the next suitable person whose admiration you attract. Are you prepared for that to happen?”

“I shall probably have to be,” Tallulah replied, the happiness draining out of her. “Jago really does despise me. I’m not being falsely modest, you know.”

“Then we must change that,” Emily declared, too elated with her victory to consider defeat in anything. “Or at least we must try.” She started walking again towards the church of St. Mary’s and Tallulah followed reluctantly.

They reached it just as the Reverend Jago Jones came out and almost strode past them, so intent was he upon his errand. It was only that Emily stopped and let out a cry that drew his attention. He swung on his heel and stared at her.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked with concern puckering his brow.

She was startled by his face, then instantly knew she should not have been. She had expected something blander, handsomer, less urgently alive. She had expected someone she could manipulate and outwit. Instead she faced a man whose intelligence she knew instinctively and whose will would not easily be subverted by flattery or irrelevance. Now that she had drawn his attention, what could she possibly say?

“Yes … thank you.” She made it almost an apology. “We were in the area … because …”

He glanced at Tallulah and did not recognize her. He looked back at Emily, waiting for her to continue.

“Because of the death of poor Ada McKinley …” Emily went on desperately. “It touches us closely … because …”

“Because my brother is suspected of the crime,” Tallulah finished.

“I don’t think …” he began, then frowned, studying her face in the light. “Tallulah?” His voice was high-pitched with incredulity. Even as he said it he could not completely believe. It was a question rather than a statement.

“Hello, Jago.” Her voice was rough with emotion. “Did you not know they suspected Finlay?”

“Yes. Yes, I did know, but I can’t believe he’s guilty. It’s too …” He did not finish. Whatever he had been going to say, he changed his mind. His face hardened, the pity or the tenderness forced out of it. “There really isn’t anything you can do here. You had better go home before it gets dark. I’m going ’round to Coke Street to serve out soup, but I’ll walk with you up to a place where you can get a hansom first. Come on.”

“We’ll help you with the soup,” Tallulah offered.

He dismissed the idea contemptuously. “Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t belong here. You’ll get dirty, your feet will hurt standing, and the people will smell and it will offend you. You’ll be tired and bored.” Anger hardened in his eyes and his mouth. “Those people’s hunger is not entertaining. They are real, with feelings and dignity, not something for you to come to look at so you can tell your friends.”

Emily felt as if she had been slapped. Tallulah had not exaggerated his scorn of her.

“Why do you imagine you are the only person who can wish to help from a genuine desire, Mr. Jones?” Emily said tartly. “Is compassion solely your preserve?”

Tallulah’s mouth dropped.

Jago drew in his breath sharply and the skin tightened across his cheeks. It was too dark to see if he blushed.

“No, Miss …”

“Radley,” Emily supplied. “Mrs. Radley.”

“No, Mrs. Radley, of course not. I have known Miss FitzJames for several years. But I had no right to judge you by her past nature. I apologize.”

“I accept your apology,” Emily said with considerable condescension. “But you should extend it to Tallulah as well. It was she who offered to help. Now, if you would lead the way, we shall come with you. I am sure more hands would make the task easier.”

Jago smiled in spite of himself, and obeyed, moving to the outside of the narrow footpath and walking beside them towards Coke Street.

He was right. The work was hard. Emily’s feet hurt, her arms ached and her shoulders and back felt as if they would never adjust to their natural position again. The people were noisy and the smell of hot, unwashed bodies and stale clothes was at times almost sickening. But far more than that she was oppressed by the hunger, the hollow eyes in the lamplight, the spindly limbs and skin pitted and dark with ingrained dirt. She saw tired women with sickly children and no hope. She looked across at Tallulah and saw the shock in her eyes. In the space of a couple of hours, poverty had become a word with a whole realm of meaning. It was reality, pain, people of flesh and blood who loved and had dreams, who got frightened and tired just as she did, only it was most of the time, not merely once or twice a year.

And Jago Jones had become different also, not an idealization but a man of flesh and spirit who also felt, who was occasionally clumsy and dropped things, whose knuckles bled when he scraped them against the wall while maneuvering the cart that carried the soup, who laughed at a child’s silly joke and who turned away to hide his grief when he was told of a woman’s miscarrying her baby.

Emily watched him and saw his contempt for Tallulah slowly soften as she worked to help, stifling her disgust at the smell of dirt and stale sweat, and smiling back at people with blackened or missing teeth, at first with an effort, at the end almost naturally, forgetting the gulf between them.

When the last person was fed they tidied away the empty churns and began slowly to push the cart back to the house where it was kept and the food was cooked. It all came from donations, sometimes from wealthy people, sometimes people with little more themselves.

At quarter past nine, in the dark, they walked side by side to the church. Then Jago insisted on accompanying them until they should find a hansom.

“Why did you really come to Whitechapel?” he asked Tallulah. They were passing under a gas lamp, and in the pool of light his expression was innocent. There was no guile in him, or expectation of a particular answer. Emily was interested that he had no thought that she might have come to see him. She liked him even better for his modesty.

“I wanted to help Finlay,” Tallulah answered after only a moment.

Emily longed to tell her to be quiet. Jago Jones would not approve of their going to see Rose Burke about her testimony. She pretended to trip, and caught hold of Tallulah’s sleeve, jerking her hard.

“Are you all right?” Jago said quickly, putting out his hand to steady her.

“Yes, thank you.” She stood upright again, smiling, although they were past the lamp now. “It wasn’t a very clever idea really. There isn’t anything we can do. But we thought if we saw the place, we might think of something.”

Jago shook his head but forbore from comment. He could be tactful when he chose.

Tallulah glanced at Emily as they moved under the next light. She seemed to have understood the hint.

Jago found them a hansom on Commercial Road, and after helping them in, bade them good-bye and thanked them with a wry smile, then turned and walked away without looking back.

Tallulah swiveled to face Emily, although they could barely see each other in the darkness inside the cab.

“I know even less than I did before,” she said, her voice tight with confusion and weariness. “I know I love Jago, but I don’t think I could live here. It smells so awful! Everything is so … dirty! Who could I even talk to? How can he bear it?”

Emily did not answer, because there really was nothing to say, nothing to argue about or rationalize. There was only the decision to be made, and no one could help with that.

Emily collected the new Hellfire Club badge and met Tallulah, by arrangement, at a dog show held by the members of the Ladies’ Kennel Club. It was somewhere they could both go quite comfortably without comment, and meet and compare notes, as if on the scores of dogs of every breed and color and size. Tallulah was in a gorgeous gown of daisy-patterned muslin with white satin ribbon trim. No one would have recognized her as the woman who had helped ladle soup in Coke Street the previous evening. She looked carefree, full of laughter and grace, until she saw Emily. Then she excused herself from her friends and came over, her hand held out, her face tense and shadows of unhappiness in her eyes.

Without comment Emily put her hand into Tallulah’s and passed over the badge, then as quickly withdrew. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Has something new happened?”

“No. I …” Tallulah shook her head. “I just love this dog show. Look at them all. Aren’t they beautiful and intelligent?”

“The people or the dogs?”

“The dogs, of course!” She brushed her fingers against the soft fabric of her skirt. “And I love this dress.”

“You look wonderful in it,” Emily said honestly.

“Can you see me wearing it in Whitechapel? It probably cost more than Jago makes in a year. Maybe two years.”

“Nobody can decide for you,” Emily replied under her breath, smiling and nodding to the wife of another member of Parliament who walked by leading a Great Dane and trying to look as if it were not leading her. “The one thing you must never do is blame someone else because you have chosen the wrong way. Be honest with yourself. If you want your life as it is, with money, fashion, a husband you may not love, then take it.” She smiled and lifted her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment to the wife of a cabinet minister she loathed. “But if you want Jago, with all that that means, don’t attempt to change him or blame him for being what he is.”

“Don’t you expect to change a husband a little?” Tallulah said reasonably. “Why should I be the one to make all the accommodations?”

“Because that way doesn’t work,” Emily said with eminent practicality. “It is no good dealing with what you think is fair, only with what is real. Anyhow, would you want Jago to accommodate you by changing his beliefs? What would that make of him?”

“I thought marriage was supposed to improve men, at least a little,” Tallulah protested. “Are we not meant to be a gentler and civilizing influence? Isn’t that what we are for? To have children and to provide an island of peace and purity and high ideals away from the clamor and conflict of the world?”

Emily bit her tongue so she did not reply too savagely.

“Did you ever know a man who wished to be civilized and improved?”

“No,” Tallulah said with some surprise. “All the men I know wish to be supported, admired and obeyed. That is certainly what Papa wants and insists on. In return he provides for us, advises us and, on occasion, protects us.”

“Of course,” Emily countered with a smile. “Sometimes we may behave in such a way as to cause a man to wish to civilize and improve himself. But that is a different proposal altogether. It is one thing to ask for something, it is quite different to accept when offered it.”

Tallulah was prevented from continuing the discussion by the intervention of a group of ladies who came across to them, leading two spaniels and a setter. The conversation was turned over to dogs.

Emily remained only another ten minutes or so, then excused herself and went to her carriage. It was agreed that Tallulah would place the badge immediately on her return home. Now it was necessary for someone to provoke Pitt into searching again, in order for it to be found. She gave her coachman Charlotte’s address in Bloomsbury and sat back to compose some sensible way of introducing such a suggestion into a conversation. Naturally she would not tell Charlotte why; that would place too great a strain on her loyalties, and Emily had no wish for Pitt to be told. At this point it could defeat everything.

It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and still with that mellow tone of sunshine one gets only in the late summer, a sort of gold in the air, a heavy perfume of flowers, and the knowledge that in a month’s time the first leaves would yellow, but would ripen and the nights begin to chill, and to darken earlier.

Charlotte was in the garden inspecting the young chrysanthemum plants and admiring the asters in bloom, great shaggy heads of purple and magenta. “It’s perfectly beautiful,” Emily said sincerely.

Charlotte looked at her skeptically. “Is that what you came to say?”

“No, of course not.” She wondered for an instant if picking a quarrel might divert Charlotte’s attention from what she had come to say, and decided it would not. It was extremely difficult to think of a way of having Charlotte persuade Pitt to search again for the badge without Charlotte’s realizing exactly what Emily was doing, and why.

“I’ve just come from the dog show,” she said tentatively. “I saw Tallulah FitzJames there. She looks terribly worried. I feel so helpless to know what to say to her. Does Thomas really think her brother is guilty? Did you mention …” She stopped.

“That we went to Beaufort Street?” Charlotte said with wide eyes. “No, of course I didn’t! What could I say? That Finlay’s sister says she saw him at a party, but she can’t remember who else was there because nobody remembers anything about the whole event, except where it was held, and when?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t help,” Emily agreed unhappily.

They walked side by side very gently down the lawn towards the apple tree and past the honeysuckle, which was still in bloom. The late afternoon began to send a heavy sweetness into the air.

“All it would really do,” Charlotte said gently, “is show that Tallulah is a loyal sister.”

“It’s the badge, isn’t it?” Emily seized her opportunity. “That’s what makes it look so bad for him. How could it be there if he wasn’t?”

They had reached the end of the lawn and stood together in the sheltered sun.

“If he’s not guilty,” Emily continued, as though thinking aloud, “then either this is a most hideous mischance or he has a terrible enemy. And from what Tallulah says, that is not impossible. At least,” she hurried on to prevent Charlotte from interrupting, “they are Augustus’s enemies.”

“You think they stole his badge, murdered someone, and left it at the scene?” Charlotte asked with incredulity. “Isn’t that a terrible risk to take with your own life, simply to injure someone else? What if they were caught and hanged themselves?”

Emily drew in her breath and let it out slowly.

“Someone so very arrogant is probably quite sure in their own minds that they will not be caught. And I hadn’t thought of their stealing Finlay’s badge … why not simply have another one made? It wouldn’t be very difficult. Then leave that one there.”

“But what if the police found the original? Or Finlay did himself?” Charlotte reasoned.

“The club disbanded years ago. He probably hasn’t any idea even when he last had it, let alone where.”

“But they looked for it…. Thomas did.”

“Did he look for it himself?” Emily pressed. “Or did he simply have a constable do it, thinking that if Finlay knew where it was he would produce it quickly enough?”

“Perhaps a constable, I don’t know.”

Late swallows dipped and darted after tiny flies. The light was lengthening and turning gold, casting heavy shadows from the apple tree.

“Well, ask him,” Emily said, trying not to sound desperate. “After all, if he found another badge, it would make things much easier, wouldn’t it? For Thomas, I mean. Then he wouldn’t have any real evidence against Finlay, and he wouldn’t be in the wretched position of having to charge him! He wouldn’t be caught between the pressure from the establishment and the Home Office, and it would stop the newspapers suggesting that he is letting Finlay off because of who he is. I know the sort of thing they will say.”

“I suppose you might be right,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “I’ll mention it to him.”

Emily linked her arm in Charlotte’s and they began to walk back up the lawn towards the house. She did not trust herself to say anything further.