Rutland Place

Rutland Place

Anne Perry

Dedicated

with love to my father,

with friendship to Judy,

with gratitude to the city of Toronto

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

CHARLOTTE PITT TOOK the letter and looked at the errand boy in some surprise. He gazed back with round, intelligent eyes. Was he waiting for a financial reward? She hoped not. She and Thomas had only recently moved from their previous house into this larger, airier one, with its extra bedroom and tiny garden, and it had taken all their resources.

“Will there be a reply, ma’am?” the boy said cheerfully, a trifle amused by her slowness. He was generally employed in a wealthier part of the city; people in these streets ran their own errands. But this was the sort of place he aspired to one day in the dim, adult future: a terraced house of his own with a clean step, curtains at the windows, a flower box or two, and a handsome woman to open the door and welcome him in at the end of the day.

“Oh,” Charlotte breathed out in relief. “Just a moment.” She tore the envelope, pulled out the single sheet of paper, and read:

12 Rutland Place, London.

23rd March, 1886.

My dear Charlotte,

A curious and most disturbing thing has happened here lately, and I would value your advice upon it. In fact, knowing your past skill and experience with things of tragic or criminal nature, perhaps even your help? Of course this is nothing like the unspeakable affairs you have unfortunately been drawn into before, in Paragon Walk, or that appalling business near Resurrection Row, thank heavens—simply a small theft.

But since the article I have lost is of great sentimental value to me, I am more than a little distressed over it, and most anxious to have it returned.

My dear, would you help me in this, at least with your advice? I know you have a maid now who can look after Jemima for you in your absence. If I send the carriage for you tomorrow about eleven o’clock, will you come and take luncheon with me, and we can talk over this wretched business? I do so look forward to seeing you.

Your loving mother, Caroline Ellison.

Charlotte folded the letter and looked back at the boy.

“If you wait just a moment I shall write a reply,” she said with a little smile, and then, after a small interval, returned to hand him her acceptance.

“Thank you, ma’am.” The boy nodded and scampered off. Apparently he had not expected more; his reward no doubt customarily came from the sender. Anyway, he was far too worldly wise not to know precisely who was worth how much, and who would or would not part with it.

Charlotte closed the door and went back along the corridor to the kitchen where her eighteen-month-old daughter Jemima was sitting in her crib chewing a pencil. Charlotte took it from her absentmindedly and handed her a colored brick instead.

“I’ve asked you not to give her pencils, Gracie,” she said to the little maid, who was peeling potatoes. “She doesn’t know what they’re for. She only eats them.”

“Didn’t know she had it, ma’am. She can reach ever so far between those bars. Leastways, it keeps her from getting into the coal scuttle or the stove.”

There was an abacus of bright wooden beads set into the railings of the crib, and Charlotte knelt down and rattled them lightly. Jemima was immediately attracted and stood up. Charlotte began to count them out for her, and Jemima repeated the words, concentrating hard, her eyes going from the beads to Charlotte’s face, waiting after each word for approval.

Charlotte was only half alert to Jemima. Most of her concentration was on her mother. Her parents had accepted it extremely well when she had told them she was going to marry, of all things, a policeman! Edward had prevaricated a little and asked her very soberly if she was perfectly sure she knew what she was doing. But right from the start Caroline had understood that her most awkward daughter had found someone whom she loved, and the trials of such a radical drop in both social and financial status would be far less difficult for her than a politely arranged marriage to someone she did not love and who could not hold her interest or respect.

But in spite of their continued affection, it was most unlike Caroline to send for Charlotte over something as trivial as a petty theft. After all, such things did occur every so often. If it was a trinket, it was probably one of the servant girls borrowing it to wear for an evening out. It might well turn up again, if a few judicious hints were dropped. Caroline had had servants all her life; she ought to be able to cope with such a matter without recourse to advice from anyone.

Still, Charlotte would go; it would be a pleasant day, and she had been through a time of hard work getting the house into the order she wished.

“I’m going out tomorrow, Gracie,” she said casually. “My mother has invited me to take luncheon with her. We can leave doing the landing curtains until the day after. You can look after Jemima and scrub this floor and the wooden cupboard in the corner. Get some good soap into it. It still smells odd to me.”

“Yes, ma’am, and there’ll be some laundry. And shall I take Jemima for a walk if it’s fine?”

“Yes, please, that would be excellent.” Charlotte stood up. If she was going to be out for most of tomorrow, then she had better get on with the bread this afternoon, and see what her best day dress looked like after hanging up in a wardrobe over the winter. Gracie was only fifteen, but she was a competent little thing and liked nothing better than caring for Jemima. Charlotte had already told her that in six months’ time there would be another baby to care for. And it was part of the terms of Gracie’s employment that she should do the heavy laundry that another child would entail as well as the usual kitchen and household chores. Far from being daunted by the prospect, Gracie appeared to be positively excited. She came from a large family herself, and she missed the constant demanding and noisy companionship of children.

Pitt was tired when he came in from work a little before six. He had spent most of the day in the profitless pursuit of a couple of dragsmen, thieves who stole especially from carriages, and had ended up with nothing more for his exercise than half a dozen descriptions that did not match. An inspector of his experience would not have been called to deal with the affair at all had not one of the victims been a gentleman of title who was loath to have anything to do with the police. The man had lost a gold pocket watch inherited from his father-in-law, and did not care to have to explain its absence.

Charlotte welcomed him with the same strange mixture of excitement and comfort she always felt at the sight of his untidy, skew-collared, rumple-coated figure. She hugged him for several long, close minutes, then presented him with hot soup and his dinner. She did not disturb him with so trivial a matter as her mother’s mislaid item.

The following morning she stood in front of the cheval glass in her bedroom and adjusted the lace fichu at her neck to hide the place where she had taken off last year’s collar. Then she put on her best cameo brooch. The effect was entirely satisfactory; she was three months with child, but there was not yet any observable change in her figure, and with the customary whalebone corseting that laced even the most recalcitrant waist into elegant curves—uncomfortable though it was for the more generously made and almost crippling for the plump—she looked as slender as ever. The dark green wool was becoming to the warmth of her complexion and the richness of her hair, and the fichu took away from the severeness of the dress, making it a little more feminine. She did not wish Caroline, of all people, to think she had become dowdy.

The carriage came at eleven, and before half past it had crossed the city, trotted along the sedate length of Lincolnshire Road, and turned into the quiet, tree-lined elegance of Rutland Place. It stopped in front of the white portico of number 12, and the footman opened the door and handed Charlotte out onto the damp pavement.

“Thank you,” she said without looking around, as if she were perfectly accustomed to it, as indeed she had been until only a few years ago.

The door opened before she reached it, and the butler appeared.

“Good morning, Miss Charlotte,” he said, inclining his head a little.

“Good morning, Maddock.” She smiled at him. She had known him since she was sixteen and he had first come as butler when her family lived in Cater Street, before the murders there during which she had met and married Pitt.

“Mrs. Ellison is in the withdrawing room, Miss Charlotte.” Maddock moved easily just before her to push the door.

Inside, Caroline was standing in the middle of the room, a bright fire burning behind her against the chill spring, a bowl of daffodils spilling gold reflections all over the polished table. She was wearing a gown of pink peach, as soft as an evening sky, which must have cost her a month’s dress allowance. There were not more than a dozen threads of gray in her dark hair. She stepped forward immediately.

“My dear, I’m so glad to see you. You look extremely well. Do come in and warm yourself. I don’t know why spring is so cold. Everything looks marvelous, bursting with life, but the wind is like a blade. Thank you, Maddock. We’ll take luncheon in about an hour.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He closed the door behind him, and Caroline put her arms round Charlotte and hugged her hard.

“You should come more often, Charlotte. I really do miss you. Emily is so busy these days with all her social circle, I hardly see her.”

Charlotte tightened her arms round her for a moment, then stood back. Her younger sister Emily had married into the aristocracy and was enjoying every opportunity it afforded. Neither of them spoke of her other sister, Sarah, who had died so dreadfully in Cater Street.

“Well, sit down, my dear.” Caroline arranged herself elegantly on the sofa and Charlotte sat opposite in the big chair.

“How is Thomas?” Caroline asked.

“Very well, thank you. And Jemima.” Charlotte dealt with all the expected questions. “And the house is very comfortable and my new maid is working out most satisfactorily.”

Caroline sighed with faint amusement.

“You don’t change, do you, Charlotte? You still speak your mind the minute you think it. You are about as subtle as a railway engine! I don’t know what I would have done with you if you had not married Thomas Pitt!”

Charlotte smiled broadly.

“You would still be shuffling me round endless polite and disgusting parties hoping to persuade some unfortunate young man’s mother that I am really better than I sound!”

“Charlotte! Please!”

“What have you had stolen, Mama?”

“Oh dear! I simply can’t imagine how you ever detect anything. You couldn’t trick a policeman into telling you the time!”

“I shouldn’t need to, Mama. Policemen are always perfectly willing to tell you the time, in the unlikely event they know it. I can be devious if I wish.”

“Then you have changed since I ever knew you!”

“What did you lose, Mama?”

Caroline’s face changed, the laughter dying out of it. She hesitated as if trying to choose exactly the right words for something that was surely simple enough.

“A piece of jewelry,” she began. “A small locket on a gold bow. It is not of especial value, of course. It’s not very large, and I don’t imagine it is solid gold for a moment! But it was very pretty. It had a little pearl set in the front, and of course it opened.”

Charlotte voiced her first thoughts. “Do you not think one of the maids could have borrowed it, meaning to return it immediately, and forgotten?”

“My dear, don’t you imagine I’ve thought of that?” Caroline’s tone was more anxious than irritated. “But none of them had an evening off between the time I last saw it and when I missed it. And quite apart from that, I really don’t believe any of them would. The kitchenmaid would have no opportunity—and she’s only fourteen. I really don’t think it would occur to her. The parlormaid”—she smiled a little bleakly—“is as handsome as most parlormaids are. I did not realize Maddock had such excellent taste in employing our staff! Nature has endowed her quite well enough not to need the assistance of stolen jewelry, with all its risks. And my own maid I trust absolutely. I’ve had Mary since we moved here, and she came from Lady Buxton, who’d known her since she was a child. She’s the daughter of their cook. No.” Her face creased in distress again. “I’m afraid it is someone outside this house.”

Charlotte tried the next avenue. “Are any of your maids courting? Do they have followers?”

Caroline’s eyebrows rose. “Not so far as I know. Maddock is very strict. And certainly not inside the house, with access to my dressing room!”

“I suppose you’ve asked Maddock?”

“Of course I have! Charlotte, I’m perfectly capable of doing the obvious myself! If it were so simple, I should not have troubled you.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking her head a little. “I’m sorry. It’s just—the whole affair is so wretched! I can’t bear to think one of my friends could have taken it, or someone in their households, and yet what else is there to think?”

Charlotte looked at her unhappy mother, her fingers knotted together in her lap, twisting her handkerchief until the lace threatened to tear. She understood the dilemma now. To institute inquiries, even to allow the loss to be known, would sow doubt among all her acquaintances. The whole of Rutland Place would imagine Caroline suspected them of theft. Old friendships would be ruined. Perhaps perfectly innocent servants would lose their jobs, or even their reputations. The rebounding unpleasantness would be like ripples in a pool, troubling and distorting everything.

“I would forget it, Mama,” she said quickly, reaching to touch Caroline’s hand. “The regaining of a locket would be far less valuable than avoiding all the pain inquiry would cause. If anyone asks, say the pin was loose and it must have fallen out. What did you wear it on?”

“The coat to my plum-colored outfit.”

“Then that’s easy. It could have fallen anywhere—even in the street.”

Caroline shook her head.

“The pin was excellent, and it had a chain with a small extra safety catch, which I always fastened as well!”

“For goodness’ sake, you don’t need to mention that—if anyone should ask, which they probably won’t. Who gave it to you? Papa?”

Caroline’s eyes moved slightly to look over Charlotte’s shoulder out the window at the spring sun dappling the laurel bush.

“No, I would explain it to him easily enough. It was your grandmama, for last Christmas, and you know what a precise memory she has when she chooses to!”

Charlotte had a peculiar feeling that some essence had eluded her, that she had heard something important and had failed to understand it.

“But Grandmama must have lost things herself,” she said reasonably. “Explain to her before she misses it. She’ll probably be a bit self-righteous, but that’s not unbearable. She’ll be that sometime or another anyway.” She smiled. “This will only give her an excuse.”

“Yes,” Caroline said, blinking, but a certain tone in her voice belied any conviction.

Charlotte looked around the room, at the pale green curtains and soft carpet, the warm bowl of daffodils, the pictures on the walls, the piano in the comer that Sarah used to play, with the family photographs on it. Caroline was sitting on the edge of the sofa, as if she were in a strange place and were keeping herself ready to leave.

“What is it, Mama?” Charlotte asked a little sharply. “Why does this locket matter so much?”

Caroline looked down at her hands, avoiding Charlotte’s eyes.

“I had a memento in it—of—of a quite personal nature. I should feel most—embarrassed if it should fall into anyone else’s hands. A sentimental thing. I’m sure you can understand. It is not knowing who has it! Like having someone else read your letters.”

Charlotte breathed out in relief. She did not know now what she had been afraid of, but suddenly her muscles relaxed and she felt a wave of warmth ripple through her. It was all so easy, now that she understood.

“For goodness’ sake, why didn’t you say so to begin with?” There was no point in suggesting the thief might not open it. The first thing any woman would do on finding a locket would be to look inside. “Perhaps that day you forgot to do up the safety clasp, and it really did fall off? I suppose you’ve looked thoroughly in the carriage?”

“Oh yes, I did that immediately.”

“When do you last remember it?”

“I went to an afternoon party at Ambrosine’s—Ambrosine Charrington. She lives at number eighteen, a most charming person.” Caroline smiled fleetingly. “You would like her. She is quite markedly eccentric.”

Charlotte ignored the implication. At the moment the locket was more important.

“Indeed!” she said dryly. “In what way?”

Caroline looked up in surprise.

“Oh, she’s perfectly respectable—in fact, more than respectable. Her grandfather was an earl, and her husband, Lovell Charrington, is a most notable man. Ambrosine herself was presented at Court when she came out. Of course, that was a long time ago, but she still has many connections.”

“That doesn’t sound very eccentric,” Charlotte said skeptically, thinking that Caroline’s view of eccentricity was probably quite different from her own.

“She likes to sing,” Caroline explained. “And some of the oddest songs. I cannot imagine where she learned them. And she is extremely forgetful, even of things one would have thought any woman in Society would remember—such as who called in the last week or so, and who is related to whom. She sometimes makes quite startling mistakes.”

Charlotte warmed to her immediately.

“Good for her. That must be most entertaining.” She remembered endless afternoons before she was married when Caroline had taken her three daughters to meet the mothers of suitable young men, and they had all sat in overstuffed chairs drinking lukewarm tea, sizing each other up with regard to income, dress sense, complexion, and agreeability, while the girls wondered which callow young man they would be introduced to next, and which iron-eyed prospective mother-in-law would inspect them. She shivered at the recollection and thought of Pitt in his linoleum-floor office with its brown desk and files of papers; Pitt stalking in and out of alleys and tenements after forgers and dealers in stolen goods, and just occasionally walking the smarter streets after a safebreaker, or embezzler, or even a killer.

“Charlotte?” Caroline’s voice recalled her to Rutland Place and the warm withdrawing room.

“Yes, Mama. Perhaps it would be better if you said nothing at all. After all, if it was stolen, the thief is hardly going to admit it, and anyone decent enough to return it to you would not have looked at what they would know is personal. And even if they did, they would not find it remarkable. After all, we all have private matters.”

Caroline forced a smile, overlooking the fact that the thief would not even know it was hers without some natural investigation, which would be bound to include opening it to see the inscription.

“No, of course not.” She stood up. “Now I’m sure it must be nearly time to eat. You look very well, my dear, but you mustn’t neglect your health. Remember, you are eating not only for yourself!”

The meal was delicious and far more delicate than Charlotte would have had at home, where she tended to skimp on midday meals. She ate with enjoyment. Afterward they repaired to the garden for a short breath of air, and in the shelter of the walls it was very pleasant. A little before three o’clock they went back to the withdrawing room, and within half an hour received the first caller of the afternoon.

“Mrs. Spencer-Brown, ma’am,” the parlormaid said formally. “Shall I tell her you are at home?”

“Yes, by all means,” Caroline agreed quickly, then waited a moment until the girl left before she turned to Charlotte. “She lives opposite, at number eleven. Her husband is a terrible bore, but she is very lively. Pretty creature, in her own way—”

The door opened again and the parlormaid ushered in the visitor. She was perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, very slender with fine features, the longest, most graceful neck Charlotte had ever seen, and fair hair that was swept to the back of her head and piled in the latest fashion. She was dressed in ecru-colored lace.

“My dear Mina, how delightful to see you,” Caroline said as easily as if no thought had troubled her all day. “How opportune you should call.”

Mina turned immediately to Charlotte, her eyes bright.

“I don’t believe you have met my daughter Mrs. Thomas Pitt.” Caroline performed the awaited introductions. “Charlotte, my dear, this is my most excellent neighbor, Mrs. Spencer-Brown.”

How do you do, Mrs. Spencer-Brown.” Charlotte inclined her head a little in something like half a curtsy, and Mina made the same gesture of recognition.

“I have been so interested to meet you,” she said, looking Charlotte up and down, mentally taking note of everything she wore, from her slightly scuffed boots to the sleek styling of her hair, in order to assess the skill or otherwise of her maid, and thus the standard of her whole household. Charlotte was used to such judgments, and she met this one with unflickering coolness.

“How kind of you,” she said, her eyes amused and frank. “I’m sure had I known of you a little more, I should have looked forward to our meeting just as much.” She knew Caroline was regarding her anxiously, trying to get close enough to kick her under her skirts without being observed. Charlotte smiled even more candidly. “How fortunate Mama is to have such an agreeable neighbor. I hope you will stay and take tea with us?”

Mina had had every intention of staying, but was momentarily disconcerted to have the subject mentioned when she was hardly through the door.

“Why—why, thank you, that would be delightful, Mrs. Pitt.” They all sat down, Mina opposite Charlotte where she could face her without appearing to stare. “I haven’t seen you in Rutland Place before. Do you live far away?”

Charlotte was careful not to make Jemima an excuse. People in Mina’s position were not obliged to care for their children themselves; there would be first a wet-nurse, then a child’s nurse, then at five or six a nanny, and finally a governess or a tutor, and thus every possible need would be tended to.

“A little distance,” she said composedly. “But one gets involved with one’s own circle, you know?”

Caroline shut her eyes, and Charlotte heard her give the faintest of sighs.

Mina was temporarily at a loss. The reply had not elicited the information she had expected, nor yet led to another avenue of exploration.

“Yes,” she said. “Naturally.” She took a deep breath, smoothed her skirts, and began again. “Of course we have had the pleasure of meeting your sister Lady Ashworth—a most charming person.”

The implication was being made, very delicately, that if someone of Emily’s social distinction could find the time, then Charlotte certainly ought to.

“I’m sure she must have enjoyed it.” Charlotte knew quite well that Emily would have been bored to tears, but Emily had always been skilled at hiding her feelings; in fact, she seemed to have the entire family’s share of tactfulness.

“I do hope so,” Mina replied. “Does Mr. Pitt have interests in the city?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said quite truthfully. “I imagine he is there at this moment.”

Caroline slid a little down in her chair, as if she were pretending she was absent.

Mina brightened. “Indeed! How sensible. An idle man can so quickly fall into unfortunate company, and end up wasting both his time and his substance, don’t you think?”

“I have no doubt of it,” Charlotte said, wondering what had prompted the remark.

“Although naturally the city has its pitfalls as well,” Mina continued. “Indeed, some of our own neighbors here in the Place have the oddest of habits, with comings and goings in the city! But then, of course, young men are prone to do such things, and I suppose one must expect it of a certain sort. Family background always tells, you know—sooner or later!”

Charlotte had no idea what she was talking about.

Caroline sat up. “If you mean Inigo Charrington,” she said with only the barest edge to her voice, although Charlotte noticed her ankles cross and her knees tighten as she deliberately kept her face smooth, “I believe he has friends in the city, and no doubt he cares to dine with them on occasion, or possibly go to the theater, or a concert.”

Mina’s eyebrows went up.

“Of course! One only hopes he has chosen wisely, and his friends are worthy of him. You didn’t know poor Ottilie, did you?”

“No.” Caroline shook her head.

Mina made a little face of sympathy. “The poor creature died the summer before you arrived, as I recall. She was so young, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three.”

Charlotte looked from one to the other of them, waiting for an explanation.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know her,” Mina said, seizing the chance. “She was Ambrosine Charrington’s daughter—Inigo’s sister. Really a most tragic affair altogether. They were away for a few weeks during the summer. Ottilie was in perfect health when they left—at least she seemed so. And then within a mere fortnight she was dead! Quite dreadful! We were all completely at a loss!”

“I’m so sorry.” Charlotte meant it; the story of life cut short was suddenly sobering in the midst of all the silly chatter and games of social superiority. “How very painful—for her family, I mean.”

Mina’s slender fingers roamed over her skirt again, laying it even more smoothly over her knees.

“Actually, they have borne it with the greatest fortitude.” Her fine eyebrows rose as if she were still surprised by it. “One cannot but admire them, most especially Ambrosine herself—that is, Mrs. Charrington—she has risen above it so magnificently. If one did not know of it for oneself, one would almost believe it had not happened at all. They never speak of her, you know!”

“No doubt the wound is still there,” Charlotte answered. “One never forgets, no matter how brave one’s face.”

“Oh dear!” Mina crumpled. “I do hope I have not inadvertently said something distressing, my dear Mrs. Pitt? Nothing was further from my mind than to cause you some painful memory.”

Charlotte smiled at her, pushing Sarah from her thoughts and hoping Caroline could do so too.

“I would never imagine that you might,” she said quietly. “I expect everyone has suffered some loss or another. There cannot be a family in the land that has never had death rob them of someone.”

Before Mina could search for a courteous acceptance of this, the withdrawing-room door opened and a very elderly lady came in, her face creased with irritation, a fine lace shawl drawn round her shoulders, and her black boots polished like glass.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Spencer-Brown,” she said curtly. “Didn’t know you were entertaining this afternoon, Caroline. Cook said nothing at luncheon!” She looked at Charlotte, then took a step closer. “Good gracious! It’s Charlotte!” She snorted slightly. “Decided to come back into decent Society, have you?”

“Good afternoon, Grandmama.” Charlotte stood up and offered her the most comfortable chair, which she herself had been occupying until that moment.

The old lady accepted it after rearranging the cushions and dusting the seat. She sat down, and Charlotte found herself a hard-backed chair.

“Better for you anyway.” The old lady nodded. “Get a round back sitting in one of these at your age. Girls always sat up properly when I was young. Knew how to conduct ourselves then. None of this gadding about without chaperones, going to the theater, and the like! And electricity all over the place! It must be unhealthy. Goodness only knows what’s in the air! Gas lamps are quite bad enough. If the good Lord had intended it to be light all night, He would have made the moon as bright as the sun.”

Mina ignored her and turned to Charlotte with excitement.

“Do you go to the theater alone, Mrs. Pitt? How thrilling! Do tell us, do you have adventures?”

Grandmama pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

Charlotte hovered on the edge of pretending that she did do such a thing, to annoy her grandmother, then decided the embarrassment it would cause Caroline was too great to balance the pleasure.

“No, no, I never have,” she said with a touch of regret. “Is it adventurous?”

“Good gracious!” Mina looked startled. “I have no idea! One hears stories, of course, but—” Suddenly she giggled. “I should ask Mrs. Denbigh! She is just the sort of person who would have the courage to do it, if she wished.”

“I daresay.” Grandmama glowered at her. “But I have often thought that for all that she is a widow and ought to know her place better, Amaryllis Denbigh is no better than she should be! Caroline! Are we going to have tea this afternoon or sit here till dusk chattering dry?”

Caroline reached out and rang the bell.

“Of course we are, Mama. We were merely waiting until you joined us.” Over the years she had grown accustomed to calling the woman “Mama,” although she was in fact Edward’s mother.

“Indeed,” Grandmama said skeptically. “I hope there is some cake. I can’t bear all that bread cook sends up. The woman has a mania for bread. They used to know how to make a decent cake when I kept servants. Trained them properly—that’s what it all comes down to. Don’t let them get away with so much—then you’ll get cake when you want it!”

“I do get cake when I want it, Mama!” Caroline’s temper was wearing thin. “And keeping a good staff these days is a lot harder than it used to be. Times change!”

“Not for the better!” Grandmama glared at Charlotte. She refrained from saying anything about respectable women who married into the police, of all things! But only because there was an outsider present, who, please God, knew nothing about it. If she did, next thing it would be all over the neighborhood! And then heaven knew what people would say, let alone what they would think!

“Not for the better,” she said again. “Women working in offices like clerks when they ought to be in good domestic service. Whoever heard of such a thing? Who looks after their morals, I should like to know? There aren’t any butlers in offices. Not that there are many women, thank heaven! Women’s place is in a house—either their own or, if they haven’t one, somebody else’s!”

Charlotte thought of several answers and held her tongue on all of them. The conversation degenerated into pleasantries about fashion and the weather, with only occasional references to other residents of Rutland Place, and Grandmama’s dour comments upon them. They were almost finished when Edward came in, rubbing his hands a little from the cold.

“Why, Charlotte, my dear!” His face lit up with pleasure and surprise. “I had no idea you were calling or I would have come home sooner.” She stood up and he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You look extremely well.”

“I am, thank you, Papa.” She stepped back and he noticed Mina for the first time, her pale lace almost blending into the brocade of the sofa and its cushions.

“Mrs. Spencer-Brown, how pleasant to see you.” He bowed.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Ellison,” she answered brightly, her eyes moving from Edward back to Charlotte, interested that he had not been expecting her. “You seem cold,” she observed. “Do you care to sit next to the fire?” She moved her skirt to allow him more room on the sofa beside her.

He could not decline without discourtesy, and anyway he considered the spot nearest the fire to be his right. He sat down gingerly.

“Thank you. It does appear that the weather has changed. In fact, I fear it might rain.”

“We can hardly expect better at this time of the year,” Mina replied.

Caroline met Charlotte’s eyes over the low table in a glance of helplessness, then reached for the bell to send for a fresh pot of tea for Edward, and some more cakes.

Edward received them with obvious appetite, and they all engaged in only the barest conversation for several minutes.

“Did you find that brooch you lost, my dear?” he said presently, head toward Caroline but his attention still on the cake.

Caroline colored very slightly. “Not yet, but I daresay it will turn up.”

“Didn’t know you’d lost anything!” Grandmama exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me!”

“No reason why I should, Mama,” Caroline replied, avoiding her eyes. “I’m quite sure if you had found it you would have mentioned it to me without my asking.”

“What was it?” Grandmama was not going to let go so easily.

“How unfortunate!” Mina joined in. “I hope it was not valuable?”

“I’ve no doubt it will turn up!” Caroline replied with a note of increasing sharpness in her voice. Charlotte, glancing down, saw her hands twined in the handkerchief again, white where the tightness of the linen bit into her flesh.

“I expect you have mislaid it,” she said with a smile she hoped did not look as artificial as it was. “It may be pinned to some garment you had forgotten you had worn.”

“I do hope so,” Mina said, shaking her head. Her dark blue eyes were enormous in her fragile face. “It is most distressing to have to say so, but, my dear, there have been a number of things—taken—in the Place recently!” She stopped and looked from one to another of them.

“Taken?” Edward said incredulously. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Taken,” Mina repeated. “I hate to use a worse word.”

“You mean stolen?” Grandmama demanded. “I told you! If you don’t train your servants properly and run a house as it ought to be run, then this is the sort of thing you can expect! Sow a wind, and reap a whirlwind! I’ve always said so.”

“It wasn’t you who said that, Grandmama,” Charlotte said tartly. “It’s from the Book of Hosea, in the Bible.”

“Don’t be impertinent!” Grandmama snapped.

Edward seemed quite unaware of Caroline’s distress or of Charlotte’s attempt to close the subject.

“Did you say there have been other thefts?” he asked Mina.

“I’m afraid so. It’s perfectly dreadful! Poor Ambrosine lost a most excellent gold chain, from her very own dressing table.”

“Servants!” Grandmama snorted. “Whole class of servants is going down. I’ve said so for years! Nothing’s been the same since Prince Albert died in ’61. He was a man with standards! No wonder the poor Queen is in perpetual mourning—so should I be if my son behaved like the Prince of Wales.” She snorted in outrage. “The whole country’s heard of his goings-on!”

“And my husband lost an ornamental snuffbox with a crystal lid from our mantelshelf,” Mina continued, ignoring her completely. “And poor Eloise Lagarde lost a silver buttonhook from her reticule, unfortunate child.” She looked at the old lady candidly. “I cannot imagine any servant who had opportunity to take all those articles. I mean, how would someone else’s servant be in my house?”

Grandmama’s eyebrows went up and her nostrils flared. “Then obviously we must have more than one dishonest servant in Rutland Place! The whole world is degenerating at a disastrous speed. Heaven only knows where it will all end.”

“It will probably end with everyone finding what they have misplaced!” Charlotte said, standing up. “It has been most delightful meeting you, Mrs. Spencer-Brown. I do hope we shall have the opportunity to speak again, but since the afternoon is turning somewhat unpleasant, and it does indeed look like rain, I’m sure you will excuse me if I seek to return to my home before I am drenched.” Without waiting for a reply, she bent and gave her grandmother a peck on the cheek, her father a swift touch, and extended her arm to Caroline as if inviting her to accompany her at least as far as the door.

After rather startled murmurs of goodbye, Caroline took advantage of the opportunity. She was almost on Charlotte’s heels as they came into the hall, and she shut the withdrawing-room door behind them.

“Maddock!” Caroline called sharply. “Maddock!”

He appeared. “Yes, ma’am. Shall I call the carriage for Miss Charlotte?”

“Yes, please. And, Maddock, have Polly close the curtains, please.”

“It is still two hours at least until dark, ma’am,” he said with slight surprise.

“Don’t argue with me, Maddock!” Caroline took a breath and steadied herself. “The wind is rising and it will rain quite shortly. I prefer not to watch it. Please do as you are asked!”

“Yes, ma’am.” He withdrew obediently, stiff-shouldered in correct and spotless black.

Charlotte turned to her. “Mama, why does this locket matter so much? And why do you want the curtains drawn at four o’clock in the afternoon?”

Caroline stared at her as if frozen.

Charlotte put out her hands and touched her mother gently. Caroline’s body was stiff under the fine material of her dress.

She let out her breath slowly and stared past Charlotte toward the light coming through the hall windows.

“I’m not really sure—it sounds so hysterical—but I feel as if there were someone watching me—and—waiting!”

Charlotte did not know what to say. Caroline was right; it did sound hysterical.

“I know it’s foolish,” Caroline went on, hunching her shoulders and shivering a little although the hall was perfectly warm, “but I can’t get rid of the sensation. I’ve told myself not to be so fanciful, that everyone else has far too much to do to be interested in my comings and goings. But it’s still there—the feeling that there are eyes, and a mind—a mind that knows—and waits!”

The idea was horrible.

“Waits for what?” Charlotte asked, trying to bring some rationality into it.

“I don’t know! A mistake? Waits for me to make a mistake.”

Charlotte felt a chill of real fear. This was unhealthy, even morbid. It carried a faint whiff of madness. If her mother was as overwrought as this, why on earth had Edward not noticed and called both her and Emily to do something? Even called a doctor! Certainly Grandmama was always watching and criticizing, but then she had done that for as long as Charlotte could remember, and no one had ever really minded before. She did it to everyone: to know better than anybody else was part of her satisfaction in living on when so many of her friends were dead.

Caroline shook herself. “I believe you’ll get home before the rain. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to rain after all.”

It was of total indifference to Charlotte whether it rained or even snowed.

“Do you know who took the locket and the other things, Mama?”

“No, of course not! What on earth makes you ask such a thing? I should hardly have asked you to help me in the matter if I already knew!”

“Why not? You might have wished to get it back without bringing in the police if it were a friend, or even a good servant of someone else.”

“Well, I told you, Charlotte, I have no idea!”

Suddenly Charlotte had a glimpse of the obvious, and wondered why she had been so blind as not to have seen it before.

“What is in the locket, Mama?”

“In”—Caroline swallowed—“in the locket?”

“Yes, Mama, what is in it?” She almost wished she had not asked. Caroline’s face was white, and she stood perfectly still for several seconds. Outside, the carriage wheels rattled on the road and a horse snorted.

“A photograph,” Caroline said at last.

Charlotte looked at her. She heard her own voice almost against her will, sounding disembodied and remote.

“Of whom?”

“A—friend. Just a friend. But I would rather it was not found by anyone else. They might misunderstand my feelings and cause me embarrassment, and even—” She stopped, and her eyes came up to meet Charlotte’s at last.

“Even what, Mama?” Charlotte asked very softly. Maddock was back in the hall, standing with her cloak, and the footman was at the door.

“Even perhaps—a little pressure,” Caroline whispered.

Charlotte was used to ugly words, and ugly thoughts. Crime was part of Pitt’s life, and she was too close to him not to share much of his pain, confusion, or pity.

“You mean blackmail?” she asked.

Caroline winced. “I suppose I do.”

Charlotte put her arms around her and held her tightly for a moment. To Maddock and the footman it must have looked like an affectionate goodbye.

“Then we must find out where it is,” she said almost under her breath. “And see that it does no harm. Don’t worry! We’ll manage.” Then she raised her tone to normal and stepped back. “Thank you for a most pleasant afternoon, Mama. I hope I shall come again sooner next time.”

Caroline blinked and sniffed in a manner she would have abhorred, had she been aware of it.

“Thank you, my dear,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

Chapter Two

IT WAS THREE DAYS after this that Charlotte received another letter from Caroline touching on the same subject. This time she did speak of it to Pitt. They were sitting in front of the fire after Jemima had been put to sleep; Charlotte was sewing, and Pitt was gazing into the flames and sinking gently lower and lower into his chair.

“Thomas.” Charlotte looked up from her work and held the needle in the air.

He turned his head and hitched himself a little higher before his feet slipped over the fender. The light flickered and jumped warmly in its glowing brass.

“Yes?”

“I had a letter from Mama today,” she remarked casually. “She is distressed about the recent loss of a piece of jewelry.”

His eyes narrowed. He knew Charlotte a great deal better than she suspected.

“When you say ‘loss,’ I take it you do not mean that she misplaced it?” he inquired.

Charlotte hesitated. “I’m really not quite sure. She may have.” She picked up her work again to give herself time to arrange her words. She had not expected him to perceive quite so quickly. Actually, she had thought he was very nearly asleep.

After a moment or two she looked across at him and found his eyes bright and waiting, watching her through his lashes. She took a long breath and abandoned the idea of subtlety.

“It was a locket and there was a picture of somebody inside it,” she went on. “She would not say who, but I gathered it was someone whose presence she would prefer not to explain.” She smiled a little self-consciously. “Perhaps it was an old love, someone she knew before Papa?”

He straightened up and took his legs off the fender; his feet were getting hot and he would scorch his slippers if he was not careful.

“And she thinks someone has taken it?” he asked the obvious.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I think she does.”

“Any idea who?”

She shook her head. “If she has, she won’t say so. And of course if she were to report the loss, it would cause far more unpleasantness than even having it returned would be worth.”

Pitt needed no further explanation. He was perfectly familiar with Society’s feelings about having police in the house, with the attendant vulgarity. One reported a break-in, of course, and that was regrettable enough, but at least a break-in was an outside affair, a misfortune that could happen to anyone with goods worth the taking. Domestic crime was different; it was something that might involve the questioning, and resultant embarrassment, of one’s friends, and therefore resorting to the police was unthinkable.

“Does she expect you to play discreet detective?” he asked with a broad smile.

“I’m not a bad detective,” she said defensively. “In Paragon Walk I knew the truth before you did!” As soon as she had spoken, memory came back and brought with it ugliness and pain, and self-congratulation became ridiculous, almost indecent.

“That was murder,” he pointed out soberly. “And you nearly got yourself killed for your cleverness. You can hardly go around asking your mother’s friends, ‘Do you happen to have stolen Mama’s locket, and if so, would you please give it back unopened, because it contains some indiscretion, or a picture that might be interpreted as such.’ ”

“You’re not being very helpful!” Charlotte said crossly. “If I could have done it as easily as that, I wouldn’t have needed to ask you about it!”

He sat up straight and leaned forward to take her hand. “My darling, if it really does contain something private, then the less said about it the better. Leave it alone!”

She frowned. “It’s more than that, Thomas. She feels someone is watching her, and waiting!”

He screwed up his face. “You mean someone has already opened it and is waiting for an opportunity to apply a little blackmail?”

“Yes, I suppose I do.” Her fingers grasped around his. “It’s horrid, and I think she’s really quite frightened.”

“If I come in, it will only make it worse,” he said softly. “And I can’t officially anyway, unless she calls me.”

“I know.” Her fingers tightened.

“Charlotte, be careful. I know you mean well, but, my dear, you have a transparent face and a tongue about as subtle as an avalanche.”

“Oh, that’s unfair!” she protested, although at least half of her knew it was not. “I shall be very careful!”

“I still think it would be better if you left it alone—unless someone actually does try blackmail. There may be nothing to it—no more than your mother’s own fears painting shadows on the wall. Perhaps a little conscience?”

“I can’t do nothing,” she said unhappily. “She has asked me to come see her, and I can’t leave her so distressed without doing all I am able to.”

“I suppose not,” he conceded. “But for goodness’ sake, do as little as you can. Questions will only arouse curiosity and are more likely than anything else to bring about the very speculations she is afraid of!”

Charlotte knew he was right and she nodded, but at the same time she was already making plans to call at Rutland Place the following day.

She found Caroline in and awaiting her anxiously.

“My dear, I’m so glad you were able to come,” she said, kissing Charlotte on the cheek. “I have planned for us to make a few calls this afternoon, so you can meet some of the other people in the Place—particularly those I am best acquainted with myself, and to whose houses I have been, or who have come here.”

Charlotte’s heart sank. Obviously, Caroline intended to pursue the pendant.

“Do you not think it would be better to be quite casual about it, Mama?” she asked as lightly as she could. “You do not wish anyone to realize how important it is to you, or their curiosity will be aroused. Whereas if you say nothing, it may pass almost without remark.”

Caroline’s lips tightened. “I wish I could believe that, but I feel terribly sure that whoever it is already knows—” She stopped.

“Knows what?” Charlotte asked.

“Knows that it is mine, and that it is important to me,” Caroline finished awkwardly. “I told you—I can feel them, feel their eyes on me. And don’t say it’s foolish! I know it is, but I’m as sure as I have ever been of anything that there is some—person—here who is watching, watching and laughing!” She shivered. “And hating! I—I have even felt once or twice as if they were following me, in the dusk.” The red color burned uncomfortably in her cheeks.

“That person sounds like somebody mad,” Charlotte said as levelly as she could. “Very unpleasant, but more to be pitied than feared.”

Caroline shook her head sharply. “I would prefer to be sorry for madness at a much greater distance.”

Charlotte was shaken. Her voice came far more roughly, more critically than she had intended.

“So would most people,” she said. “I think that is what is called ‘passing by on the other side.’ ” Then she stopped, aware of how unjust she was being. She was confused; she was afraid Caroline was hysterical, and she did not know how to treat it.

A look of amazement crossed Caroline’s face, followed swiftly by anger.

“Are you suggesting I owe some Christian duty to this creature who stole my pendant, and now is peeping at me and following me?” she said incredulously.

Charlotte was ashamed and angry with herself. She should not have spoken her thoughts so bluntly, especially since they had nothing to do with the problem, and would hardly be of comfort in what was now obviously a far deeper matter than she had appreciated.

“No,” she said gravely. “I am trying to make you see that it is not as serious as you believe. If whoever stole or found the pendant is really watching you, and sniggering behind the curtains, then they are not quite right in their minds, and need not be feared so much as viewed with revulsion, and some sense of pity as well. It is not like a personal enemy who wished you harm and had the ability to bring it about.”

“You don’t understand!” Caroline shut her eyes in exasperation, and the muscles in her face were tight. “They would not need to have any brains to cause me harm! Merely to open the locket and see the picture would be enough! One can be as mad as a bedlamite, and still be able to open a locket and see that the picture inside it is not of your father.”

Charlotte sat silent a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. There must be a great deal more to it that Caroline had not said. The picture must be more than some dim, romantic memory. Either the dream was still sharp, the event still capable of causing pain, or else the picture was of some man she knew now, here in Rutland Place!

“Who is it in the picture, Mama?” she asked.

“A friend.” Caroline was not looking at her. “A gentleman of my acquaintance. There is no more to it than a—regard, but it could easily be misunderstood.”

A flirtation. Charlotte was only momentarily surprised. She had learned a lot since her total innocence at the beginning of the Cater Street murders. Few people are immune to flattery, a little romance to flesh out the ordinariness of every day. Edward had not been, so why should Caroline?

And she had kept a picture in a locket. Foolish, but very human. People kept pressed flowers, theater or dance programs, old letters. A wise husband or wife allowed a little privacy for such things, and did not inquire or dig up old dreams to look for answers.

She smiled, trying to be gentler.

“Don’t worry about it, Mama. Everyone has something private.” She deliberately phrased it evasively. “I daresay that if you do not make much of it, other people won’t. In fact, I don’t suppose they will wish to. Quite apart from liking you, they probably have lockets themselves, or letters they would prefer not to lose.”

Caroline smiled bleakly. “You have a charitable view, my dear. You have been out of Society too long. You see it from a distance, and lose the detail.”

Charlotte took her arm and squeezed it for a moment.

“Above all things, Society is practical, Mama. It knows what it can afford. Now who is it you wish us to visit? Tell me something about them, so I don’t say anything tactless and embarrass you.”

“Good gracious! What a hope!” Caroline put her hand over Charlotte’s in a little gesture of thanks. “First we are going to the Charringtons’, to see Ambrosine. I told you about her before. Then I think on to Eloise Lagarde. I don’t think I said anything about her.”

“No, but was that not a name Mrs. Spencer-Brown mentioned?”

“I don’t recall. Anyway, Eloise is a charming person, but quite retiring. She has led a very sheltered life, so please, Charlotte, do give some thought to what you say.”

From Charlotte’s now wider viewpoint, everyone in Rutland Place had led a very sheltered life, including Caroline herself, but she forbore saying so. Pitt’s broader, teeming world, with its vigor and squalor, farce and tragedy, would only be confusing and frightening to Caroline. In Pitt’s world, realities were not softened by evasion and genteel words. Its raw life and death would horrify the inhabitants of Rutland Place, just as the myriad icebound rules of Society would appall a stranger to it.

“Is Eloise in delicate health, Mama?” Charlotte asked.

“I have never heard of any actual illness, but there are many things a person of taste does not discuss. It has occurred to me that she might be consumptive. She seems a little delicate, and I have noticed her faint once or twice. But it is so hard to tell with these fashions whether a girl is robust or not. I confess that when Mary does her best with my whalebone and laces to give me back the twenty-inch waist I used to have, I sometimes feel like fainting myself!” She smiled ruefully, and Charlotte felt another twinge of anxiety. Fashion was all very well, but at Caroline’s age she should not care so much.

“I have not seen a great deal of Eloise lately,” Caroline continued. “I think perhaps this inclement weather does not agree with her. That would not be hard to understand. It has been distressingly cold. She is quite lovely—she has the whitest skin and the darkest eyes you ever saw, and she moves marvelously. She reminds me of Lord Byron’s poem—‘She walks in beauty like the night.’ ” She smiled. “As fragile and as tender as the moon.”

“Did he say that, about the moon?”

“No, I did. Anyway, you will meet her and judge for yourself. Her parents both died when she was very young—no more than eight or nine—and she and her brother were cared for by an aunt. Now that the aunt is dead also, the two of them live here most of the time, and only go back to the country house for a few weeks at a time, or perhaps a month.”

“Mrs. Spencer-Brown described her as a child,” Charlotte said.

Caroline dismissed it. “Oh, that’s just Mina’s turn of phrase. Eloise must be twenty-two or more, and Tormod her brother, is three or four years older at least.” She reached for the bell and rang it for the maid to bring her coat. “I think it’s about time we should leave. I would like you to meet Ambrosine before there are a number of callers.”

Charlotte was afraid the matter of the locket was going to be raised again, but she did not argue. She pulled her own coat closed and followed obediently.

It was a very short walk, and Ambrosine Charrington welcomed them with an enthusiasm that startled Charlotte. She was a striking woman, with fine features under a smooth skin only faintly wrinkled around the corners of the mouth and eyes. Her cheekbones were high and swept wide to wings of dark hair. She surveyed Charlotte with interest and gradual approval as her instinct recognized another highly individual woman.

“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt,” she said with a charming smile. “I’m delighted you have come at last. Your mother has spoken of you so often.”

Charlotte was surprised; she had not realized Caroline would be willing to talk about her socially at all, let alone often! It gave her an unexpected feeling of pleasure, even pride, and she found herself smiling more than the occasion called for.

The room was large and the furnishings a little austere compared to the ornate and bulging interiors that were currently popular. There were none of the usual stuffed animals in glass cases or arrangements of dried flowers, no embroidered samplers, or elaborate antimacassars across the backs of chairs. By comparison with most withdrawing rooms it seemed airy, almost bare. Charlotte found it rather pleasing, except for the phalanxes of photographs on the farthest wall, covering the top of the grand piano, and spread along the mantelshelf. They all appeared to include rather elderly people, and had been taken years before, to judge from the fashions. Obviously they were not of Ambrosine and her children, but rather of a generation earlier. Charlotte presumed the man who appeared in them so frequently was her husband—a vain man, she decided from the number of his pictures.

There were some half-dozen highly exotic weapons displayed above the fireplace.

Ambrosine caught Charlotte’s glance. “Horrible, aren’t they?” she said. “But my husband insists. His younger brother was killed in the first Afghan War, forty-five years ago, and he’s set them up there as a sort of memorial. The maids are always complaining that they are the perfect devil to clean. Collect dust like mad, above the fire.”

Charlotte looked up at the knives in their ornamental sheaths and scabbards, and had nothing but sympathy for the maids.

“Quite!” Ambrosine said fervently, observing her expression. “And they are in excellent condition. Bronwen swears someone will wind up with their throat cut one of these days. Although of course it is not her task to clean them. Heathen weapons, she calls them, and I suppose they are.”

“Bronwen?” Caroline was at a loss.

“My maid.” Ambrosine invited them all to be seated with a gesture of her arm. “The excellent one with the reddish hair.”

“I thought her name was Louisa,” Caroline said.

“I daresay it is.” Ambrosine arranged herself gracefully on the chaise longue. “But the best maid I ever had was called Bronwen, and I don’t believe in changing a good thing. I always call my personal maids Bronwen now. Also it saves confusion. There are dozens of Lilies and Roses and Marys.”

There was no argument to this, and Charlotte was obliged to turn and look out of the window in order to hide her amusement.

“Finding a really good maid is quite an achievement,” Caroline said, pursuing the subject. “So often those who are competent are less than honest, and those whom one can really trust are not as efficient as one would like.”

“My dear, you sound most despondent,” Ambrosine said with sympathy. “A current misfortune?”

“I’m really not quite sure,” Caroline plunged on. “I have missed a small article of jewelry, and I don’t know whether it is a theft or merely mischance. It is a wretched feeling. I don’t wish to be unjust when the whole affair may be quite accidental.”

“Was it of value?” Ambrosine inquired with a little frown.

“Not especially, except that it was a gift from my mother-in-law, and she might be hurt that I had been careless with it.”

“Or flattered that of all your pieces someone chose that to take,” Ambrosine pointed out.

Caroline laughed without pleasure.

“I hadn’t even thought of that. I’m obliged to you. If she makes any observation, I must say that to her.”

“I still think you may have mislaid it, Mama,” Charlotte said, trying to allow the subject to die. “It may well turn up in a day or two. If you let Grandmama think it has been stolen, she will begin to accuse people, and she will never let the matter rest until someone is blamed.”

Caroline caught the sharpness in her voice and perceived the danger she was inviting upon herself.

“You are quite right,” she said. “It would be wiser to say nothing.”

“People with not enough business of their own to mind will be quick enough to mind yours if you start word of things like theft,” Charlotte added for good measure.

“I see your estimate of people’s charity matches my own, Mrs. Pitt.” Ambrosine reached for the bell cord and pulled it. “I hope you will take tea? As well as a good maid, I also have an excellent cook. I employed her for her ability with cakes and desserts. She makes the most dreadful soups, but then since I don’t care for soup, I am perfectly happy to overlook that.”

“My husband is extremely fond of soup,” Caroline remarked absently.

“So is mine,” Ambrosine said. “But one cannot have everything.”

The parlormaid came and Ambrosine sent her for the tea.

“You know, Mrs. Pitt,” Ambrosine continued, “your observations about other people’s curiosity are peculiarly apposite. I have had the disturbing sensation lately that someone is taking a marked interest in me—not a kindly one, but purely inquisitive. If anything, I have the feeling it is malicious.”

Charlotte sat perfectly still. She was conscious of Caroline’s body stiffening beside her.

“How distressing,” Charlotte said after a moment. “Have you any notion who it may be?”

“No, none at all. That is what makes it so unpleasant. It is merely a repeated impression.”

The door opened, and the maid came in with tea and at least a dozen different kinds of cakes and tarts, many of them with whipped cream.

“Thank you,” Ambrosine said, eyeing one particular fruit pastry with satisfaction. “Perhaps I am being fanciful,” she went on as the maid disappeared again. “I daresay there is no one with as much interest in me as such a thing supposes.”

Caroline opened her mouth as if to speak, then said nothing after all.

“You are quite right,” Charlotte said, hurrying to fill the silence, her eyes on the tea table. “You have a most accomplished cook. I vow I should grow out of every garment I possess if I were to live with such a woman.”

Ambrosine observed Caroline’s still slender figure.

“I hope that does not mean you will not call upon me again?”

Charlotte smiled. “On the contrary, it means that I shall now have two reasons for calling instead of one.” She accepted her tea and an enormous cream sponge. No one bothered with the polite fiction of taking bread and butter first.

They had been at tea only a matter of five minutes or so when the door opened again and a gray-haired, middle-aged man came in. Charlotte immediately recognized the short-nosed, rather severe face from the photographs. This man was even wearing the same kind of stiff-winged collar and black tie as the man in the photographs. He had to be Lovell Charrington.

Introductions proved her correct.

“No sandwiches?” He looked at the plates critically.

“Didn’t know you would be joining us,” Ambrosine replied. “I can always call cook for some if you wish.”

“Please! I cannot imagine that all this cream is good for you, my dear. And we should not restrict our visitors to indulging in your somewhat eccentric tastes.”

“Oh, we are equally eccentric,” Charlotte answered without thinking. Her impulse was to side with Ambrosine; moreover, she had quite enough bread at home. “I am delighted to be able to enjoy them in such happy company.”

Ambrosine rewarded her with a smile of satisfaction and surprise.

“If you will not be offended by my saying so, Mrs. Pitt, you remind me of my own daughter, Ottilie. She enjoyed things so much and was not averse to saying so.”

Charlotte did not know whether it would be all right to admit knowing of the girl’s death, or if it might seem as if she had been talking of the Charringtons’ affairs too familiarly. She was saved from her dilemma by Lovell.

“Our daughter has passed on, Mrs. Pitt. I’m sure you will understand if I say that we find it distressing to discuss.”

Since Charlotte had not spoken, she thought his manner less than courteous, but for Ambrosine’s sake she restrained herself.

“Of course,” she said. “I myself seldom speak of those I have lost, for the same reason.”

To her satisfaction, he looked a little taken aback. Obviously he had not considered the possibility that she might have feelings on the subject.

“Quite,” he said hastily. “Quite!”

Charlotte deliberately took another cream cake, and was forced to spend the next few moments concentrating on eating it without dropping the cream down her bosom.

Conversation became polite and stilted. They discussed the weather, what the newspapers were reporting in the Society columns, and the possibility—or, in Lovell’s opinion, the impossibility—of there being any lost treasures in Africa, such as those that were portrayed in Mr. Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines, published the previous year.

“Nonsense,” he said firmly. “Dangerous imagination. Fellow ought to employ his time to better purpose. Ridiculous way for a grown man to earn his living, spinning fantasies to beguile foolish women and girls who are susceptible enough to take him seriously. Overstimulating the minds of such persons is bad for their health . . . and their morals!”

“I think it is an excellent way to employ oneself,” said a young man of perhaps twenty-nine or thirty, coming into the room with a wave of his arm. He helped himself to the last cake, ate it almost in one gulp, and flashed a dazzling smile at Charlotte, then at Caroline. He picked up the teapot to test if there was anything still in it. “Harms no one and entertains thousands. Brings a little color into lives that might ordinarily never have a dream worth indulging. Without dreams their lives might be unbearable.”

“Never heard such nonsense!” Lovell replied. “Panders to overheated imaginations, and to greed. If you wish for tea, Inigo, please ring for the maid and request it instead of swinging the pot around like that. That is what servants are for. I don’t think you have been introduced to Mrs. Pitt?”

Inigo looked at Charlotte. “Of course not. If I had, I would most certainly have remembered. How do you do, Mrs. Pitt. I will not ask how you are. You are obviously in excellent health— and spirits.”

“Indeed I am.” Charlotte tried to keep up the front of dignity she knew Caroline would wish, if not expect. “And if you said less for yourself, I should find it hard to believe,” she added.

“Oh!” His eyebrows went up with evident pleasure. “A woman of opinions. You would have liked my sister Tillie. She always had opinions. A few rather odd ones, mind, but she always knew what she thought, and usually said so.”

“Inigo!” Lovell’s face was deeply flushed. “Your sister has passed away. Kindly remember that, and do not speak of her in that flippant and overfamiliar manner!” He swung round. “I apologize, Mrs. Pitt. Such indelicacy must be embarrassing to you.” His tone lacked conviction. In his mind, Charlotte was already hardly better than his son.

“On the contrary.” Charlotte settled more comfortably into her seat. “I find it very easy to understand how one still thinks with great vividness and affection of those whom one has loved. We all bear our losses in different ways—however is easiest for us—and afford others the same comfort.”

Lovell’s face paled, but before he could reply Caroline stood up, setting her cup and saucer on the table.

“It has been most charming,” she said to no one in particular. “But we have other calls it would be only civil to make. I trust you will excuse us? My dear Ambrosine, I do hope I shall see you again soon. Good afternoon, Mr. Charrington, Inigo.”

Lovell rose from his chair and bowed. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Ellison, Mrs. Pitt. So delightful to have made your acquaintance.”

Inigo opened the door for them and followed them out into the hall.

“I’m so sorry if I caused you distress, Mrs. Pitt,” he said with a little frown. “It was not my intention in the least.”

“Of course not,” Charlotte answered him. “And I think from what I have heard of her that I should have liked your sister very much indeed. I certainly find your mother the most comfortable person I have met for a long time.”

“Comfortable!” he said in amazement. “Most people find her quite the opposite.”

“I suppose it must be a matter of taste, but I assure you, I like her a great deal.”

Inigo smiled broadly, all the anxiety slipping out of his face. He shook her hand warmly.

The footman was helping Caroline with her coat. She fastened it and Charlotte accepted hers. A moment later they were outside in the sharp March wind.

An open carriage rattled by, and the man inside raised his hat to them. Caroline had a brief impression of a dark, elegant head, with thick hair curving close to the nape of his neck, sleek and beautiful, and of dark, level eyes. She caught only a glimpse, and then the carriage had passed, but it woke a memory in her so sharp it left her tingling. The man in the carriage was Paul Alaric, the Frenchman who had lived in Paragon Walk, only a hundred yards from Emily, and who had stirred so many passions that summer of the murders. Poor Selena had been so obsessed with him it had almost deranged her.

Against all her common sense, Charlotte herself had felt attracted by his cool wit, the charm that seemed almost unconscious, and the very fact that they all knew so little about him—no family, no past, no social category in which to fit him. Even Emily, with all her grace and élan, had not been entirely impervious.

Could it really have been he just now?

She turned and found Caroline standing very straight, her head high, the wind whipping color into her cheeks.

“Do you know him?” Charlotte asked incredulously.

Caroline began to walk again, her steps sharp on the pavement.

“Slightly,” she replied. “He is Monsieur Paul Alaric.”

Charlotte felt the heat flood through her—so it was he. . . .

“He is acquainted with quite a few residents in the Place,” Caroline continued.

Charlotte was about to add that it seemed beyond question that Caroline was one of them; then, without being sure why, she changed her mind.

“He seems to be a person of leisure,” she said instead. It was a pointless remark, but suddenly sensible words had left her.

“He has business in the city.” Caroline walked more rapidly, and further conversation was whipped away from them by the wind. Twenty or thirty yards on, they were at the Lagardes’ front entrance.

“Are they French?” Charlotte whispered under her breath as the door opened and they were conducted into the hall.

“No,” Caroline whispered as the parlormaid went to announce them. “Great-grandfather, or something. Came over at the time of the Revolution.”

“The Revolution? That was nearly a hundred years ago!” Charlotte whispered back, then fixed her face in an appropriately expectant expression as they were ushered into the withdrawing room.

“All right, then it was further back. I have heard so much history from your grandmother I am tired of it,” Caroline snapped. “Good afternoon, Eloise. May I present my daughter Mrs. Pitt,” she continued with a total change of voice and expression, without drawing breath.

The girl who faced Charlotte was indeed, as Caroline had said, darkly lovely, with the translucence of moonlight on water. Her hair was soft and full, without sheen, quite unlike Charlotte’s, which gleamed like polished wood and was hard to keep pinned because of its weight.

“How delightful of you to call.” Eloise stepped back, smiling and by implication inviting them to sit down. “Will you take tea?”

It was a little late, and perhaps it was merely a courtesy that she asked.

“Thank you, but we would not wish to be of inconvenience,” Caroline said, declining in an accepted formula. It would be less than flattering to say that they had already taken tea elsewhere. She turned to the mantelshelf. “What a delightful picture! I don’t believe I have noticed it before.”

Personally, Charlotte would not have given it houseroom, but tastes varied.

“Do you like it?” Eloise looked up, a flicker of amusement in her face. “I always think it makes the house look rather dark, and it isn’t really like that at all. But Tormod is fond of it, so I let it hang there.”

“That is your country house?” Charlotte asked the obvious question because there was nothing else she could think of to say, and she knew that the reply would provide material for several minutes’ polite discussion. They were still on the subject of town and country differences when the door opened and a young man came in who Charlotte knew immediately must be Eloise’s brother. He had the same mass of dark hair and the same wide eyes and pale skin. The resemblance in features was not so great, however; he had a higher brow, with the hair sweeping away from it in a broad wave, and his nose was rather aquiline. His mouth was wide, quick to laugh, and, Charlotte judged, quick to sulk. Now he came forward with easy, quite natural grace.

“Mrs. Ellison, what a pleasure to see you.” He slipped his arm around Eloise. “I don’t believe I have met your companion?”

“My daughter Mrs. Pitt.” Caroline smiled back. “Mr. Tormod Lagarde.”

He bowed very slightly.

“Welcome to Rutland Place, Mrs. Pitt. I hope we shall see you often.”

“That is most kind of you,” Charlotte replied.

Tormod sat next to Eloise on a broad sofa.

“I expect I shall call upon my mother more often as the spring approaches,” Charlotte added.

“I’m afraid the winter is very grim,” he answered. “One feels far more like remaining close to the fire than venturing out to go visiting. In fact, we quite often retreat altogether to our house in the country and simply close the doors all January and February.”

Eloise’s face warmed as if at some sweet and lingering memory. She said nothing, but Charlotte imagined she could see reflected in her eyes the light of Christmases with trees and lanterns, pinecone fires and hot toast, and long, happy companionship too easy to need the communication of words.

Tormod fished in his pocket and brought out a small package.

“Here.” He held it out to Eloise. “To replace the one you lost.”

She took it, looking up at him, then down at the little parcel in her hands.

“Open it!” he commanded. “It’s not so very special.”

Slowly she obeyed, anticipation and pleasure in her face.

Inside the parcel was a small, silver-handled buttonhook.

“Thank you, dear,” she said gently. “That really was most thoughtful of you. Especially since it might so easily have been my own fault. I shall feel dreadfully guilty now if the other one turns up and I had merely been careless all the time.” She looked over at Charlotte, apology and a touch of embarrassment in her face. “I lost my old one that I had for years. I think it went from my reticule, but I suppose I might have put it somewhere else and forgotten.”

Charlotte’s desire to know was stronger than her good judgment to keep silent on the subject. “You mean you think it could have been stolen?” she asked, feigning surprise.

Tormod dismissed it. “These things happen sometimes. It’s an unpleasant thought, but one must face reality—servants do steal from time to time. But since it appears to have happened in someone else’s house, it is far better to say nothing. It would be in very poor taste to embarrass a friend by letting it be known. Besides, as Eloise says, it may turn up—although I doubt it now.”

Caroline cleared her throat nervously. “But should theft be condoned?” she said a little hesitantly. “I mean—is that right?”

Tormod was still casual, his voice light. He smiled at her with a little twist of regret.

“I suppose not, if one knew for sure who it was and had proof that it had occurred,” he said. “But we haven’t. All we would do is rouse suspicion, and perhaps quite unjustly. Better to let the matter lie. Once one begins an inquiry into evil, one can start a train of events that is very difficult to stop. A silver-plated buttonhook is hardly worth all the anger and fear, and the doubts, that inquiry would raise.”

“I think you are quite right,” Charlotte said quickly. “After all, a case of something missing—one has no idea where—is very different from actually knowing beyond question that a particular person has stolen it.”

“How wise of you.” Tormod flashed her a rapid smile. “Justice is not always best served by shouting ‘thief.’ ”

Before Caroline could defend her view, the maid announced another caller.

“Mrs. Denbigh, ma’am,” she said to Eloise. “Shall I say that you will receive her?”

Eloise’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. In another light, farther from the window, the change in her expression might not have been visible at all.

“Yes, of course, Beryl, please do.”

Amaryllis Denbigh was the sort of woman Charlotte felt quite uncomfortable with. She came into the room with assurance, carrying with her an air of always having been successful, always valued. She was not beautiful, but there was an appeal in her face of wide eyes and slightly too round, curved lips, the innocence of an adolescent who does not yet understand her own potential for excitement and hunger. She had an abundance of fair, wavy hair that was dressed just casually enough not to look unnatural. It required a very skilled maid to achieve such an effect. Her dress was undeniably expensive—not in the least ostentatious, but Charlotte knew how much it cost to have a dressmaker cut it so cleverly that the bust looked just that much fuller, the waist those few inches smaller.

Introductions were formal and very complete. Amaryllis weighed Charlotte to an exactness, and dismissed her. She turned to Tormod.

“Shall you be coming to Mrs. Wallace’s soirée on Thursday? I do so hope so. I have heard the pianist she has invited is quite excellent. I’m sure you would enjoy it. And Eloise too, of course,” she added as an afterthought, a politeness without conviction.

Charlotte noted the tone in her voice and drew conclusions of her own.

“I think we will,” Tormod replied. He turned to Eloise. “You have nothing else prepared, have you, dear?”

“No, not at all. If this pianist is good, it will be a great pleasure. I only hope they do not all make such a noise we cannot hear him.”

“My dear, you cannot expect conversation to cease just to listen to a pianist—not at a soirée,” Amaryllis said gently. “After all, it is primarily a social event, and the music is merely a diversion, a pleasantness. And of course it gives people something to talk about without having to think too hard for a suitable subject. Some people are so awkward, you know.” She smiled at Charlotte. “Do you not think so, Mrs. Pitt?”

“Indeed, I am sure of it,” Charlotte agreed frankly. “Some cannot think of anything suitable to say at all, while others speak far too much and at all the wrong times. I greatly like a person who knows how to be silent comfortably, especially when there is good music playing.”

Amaryllis’ face tightened. She ignored the implication.

“Do you play, Mrs. Pitt?” she asked.

“No,” Charlotte answered blandly. “I regret I do not. Do you?”

Amaryllis regarded her chillingly.

“I paint,” she replied. “I prefer it. So much less intrusive, I think. One can look or not, as one chooses. Oh”—she widened her eyes and bit her lip—“I’m so sorry, Eloise. I had forgotten that you play. I did not mean you, of course! You have never played at anyone’s soirée!”

“No, I think I should be very nervous,” Eloise said. “Although it would be an honor to be asked. But I rather think I should be irritated if everyone talked so much that no one else could listen.” She spoke with some feeling. “Music should be respected, not treated like street sounds, or wallpaper, no more than a sort of background. Then one becomes bored with it, without ever having appreciated its beauty.”

Amaryllis laughed, a high, pretty sound that irked Charlotte unreasonably—perhaps because she would have liked to have such a laugh, and knew she did not.

“How philosophical you are!” Amaryllis said brightly. “I warn you, my dear, if you start saying things like that at a soirée, you will become most unpopular. People will not know what to make of you!”

Charlotte gave her mother a sharp nudge on the ankle, and as Caroline bent to touch the place, thinking something had fallen on her, Charlotte pretended to assume she was preparing to leave.

“May I help you, Mama?” she offered, then rose and gave Caroline her arm.

Caroline glanced at her. “I am not yet in need of assistance, Charlotte,” she said crisply. But although the idea of sitting down again, out of contrariness, lingered quite clearly in her eyes, after a moment she excused herself politely, and a few minutes later they were both outside in the street again.

“I dislike Mrs. Denbigh,” Charlotte said with feeling. “Very much!”

“That was obvious.” Caroline pulled her collar up. Then she smiled. “Actually, so do I. It is completely unfair, because I have no idea why, but I find her most irritating.”

“She has set her cap at Tormod Lagarde,” Charlotte remarked by way of partial explanation. “And she is being very bold about it.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course she is! Don’t tell me you had not noticed!”

“Of course I have noticed!” Caroline shivered. “But I have seen a great many more women set their caps at men than you have, my dear, and I had not thought Amaryllis was particularly clumsy. In fact, I think she is really quite patient.”

“I still do not care for her!”

“That is because you like Eloise and you cannot think what will happen to her if Tormod marries, since Amaryllis obviously is not fond of her. Perhaps Eloise herself will marry, and that will solve the problem.”

“Then it would be a great deal cleverer of Amaryllis to find a suitable young man for Eloise than to sit there disparaging her, wouldn’t it! It should not be hard—she is perfectly charming. What is the matter, Mama? You keep hunching your shoulders as if you were in a draft, but it is quite sheltered here.”

“Is there anyone behind us?”

Charlotte turned. “No. Why? Were you expecting someone?”

“No! No—I—I just have the feeling that someone is watching us. For goodness’ sake, don’t stare like that, Charlotte. You will have people think we are watching them, trying to see in through their curtains!”

“What people?” Charlotte forced herself to smile in an effort to hide her anxiety for Caroline. “There isn’t anyone,” she said reasonably.

“Don’t be silly!” Caroline snapped. “There is always someone—a butler or a maid drawing curtains, or a footman at a door.”

“Then it is hardly anything to matter.” Charlotte dismissed it with words, but in her mind she did not find it so easy. The sensation of being watched—not casually observed by someone about another duty, but deliberately and systematically watched—was extremely unpleasant. Surely Caroline was imagining it? Why should anyone do such a thing? What possible reason would there be?

Caroline had quickened her pace, and now she did so again. They were walking so rapidly Charlotte’s skirts whipped round her ankles, and she was afraid that if she did not look where she was going she would trip over one of the paving stones and fall headlong.

Caroline whirled around the gatepost and up the steps to her own front door. She was there before the footman had seen them to open it, and was obliged to wait. She shifted from foot to foot, and once actually turned to stare back into the road.

“Mama, has someone accosted you in the street?” Charlotte asked, touching her arm.

“No, of course not! It’s just—” She shook herself angrily. “I have the feeling that I am not alone, even when it would appear in every way that I am. There is someone I cannot see but who I am perfectly sure can see me.”

The door opened and Caroline swept in, with Charlotte behind her.

“Close the curtains please, Martin,” she said to the footman.

“All of them, ma’am?” His voice rose in surprise. It was still daylight for another two hours, and perfectly pleasant.

“Yes, please! In all the rooms that we shall occupy.” Caroline removed her coat and hat and gave them to him; Charlotte did the same.

In the withdrawing room Grandmama was sitting in front of the fire.

“Well?” She surveyed them up and down. “Is there any news?”

“Of what, Mama?” Caroline asked, turning toward the table.

“Of anything, girl! How can I ask for news of something if I do not know what it is? If I already knew it, it would not be news to me, would it?”

It was a fallacious argument, but Charlotte had long ago discovered the futility of pointing that out to her.

“We called upon Mrs. Charrington and Miss Lagarde,” she said. “I found them both quite delightful.”

“Mrs. Charrington is eccentric.” Grandmama’s voice was tart, as if she had bitten into a green plum.

“That pleased me.” Charlotte was not going to be bested. “She was very civil, and after all that is the important thing.”

“And Miss Lagarde—was she civil too? She is far too shy for her own good. The girl seems incapable of flirting with any skill at all!” Grandmama snapped. “She’ll never find herself a husband by wandering around looking fey, however pretty her face. Men don’t marry just a face, you know!”

“Which is as well for most of us.” Charlotte was equally acerbic, looking at Grandmama’s slightly hooked nose and heavy-lidded eyes.

The old woman affected not to have understood her. She turned toward Caroline icily. “You had a caller while you were out.”

“Indeed?” Caroline was not particularly interested. It was quite usual for at least one person to visit during the afternoon, just as she and Charlotte had visited others; it was part of the ritual. “I expect they left a card and Maddock will bring it in presently.”

“Don’t you even wish to know who it was?” Grandmama sniffed, staring at Caroline’s back.

“Not especially.”

“It was that Frenchman with his foreign manners. I forget his name.” She chose not to remember because it was not English. “But he has the best tailor I have seen in thirty years.”

Caroline stiffened. There was absolute silence in the room, so thick one imagined one could hear carriage wheels two streets away.

“Indeed?” Caroline said again, her voice unnaturally casual. There was a catch in it as if she were bursting to say more and forcing herself to wait so her words would not fall over each other. “Did he say anything?”

“Of course he said something! Do you think he stood there like a fool?”

Caroline kept her back to them. She took one of the daffodils out of the bowl, shortened its stalk, and replaced it.

“Anything of interest?”

“Who ever says anything of interest these days?” Grandmama answered miserably. “There aren’t any heroes anymore. General Gordon has been murdered by those savages in Khartoum. Even Mr. Disraeli is dead—not that he was a hero, of course! Or a gentleman either, for that matter. But he was clever. Everyone with any breeding is gone.”

“Was Monsieur Alaric discourteous?” Charlotte asked in surprise. He had been so perfectly at ease in Paragon Walk, good manners innate in his nature, even if she had frequently seen humor disconcertingly close beneath.

“No,” Grandmama admitted grudgingly. “He was civil enough, but he is a foreigner. He cannot afford not to be civil. If he’d been born forty years earlier, I daresay he would have made something of himself in spite of that. There isn’t even a decent war now where a man could go and prove his worth. At least there was the Crimea in Edward’s time—not that he went!”

“The Crimea is in the Black Sea,” Charlotte pointed out. “I don’t see what it has to do with us.”

“You have no patriotism,” Grandmama accused. “No sense of Empire! That’s what is wrong with the young. You are not great!”

“Did Monsieur Alaric leave any message?” Caroline turned around at last. Her face was flushed, but her voice was perfectly steady now.

“Were you expecting one?” Grandmama squinted at her.

Caroline breathed in and out again before replying.

“Since I do not know why he called,” she said, walking over to the door, “I wondered if he left some word. I think I’ll go and ask Maddock.” And she slipped out, leaving Charlotte and the old lady alone.

Charlotte hesitated. Should she ask the questions that were teeming in her head? The old woman’s sight was poor; she had not seen Caroline’s body, the rigid muscles, the slow, controlled turn of her head. Still, her hearing was excellent when she chose to listen, and her mind was still as sharp and as worldly as it had ever been. But Charlotte realized that there was not anything Grandmama could tell her she had not already guessed for herself.

“I think I will go and see if Mama can spare the carriage to take me home,” she said after a moment or two. “Before dark.”

“As you please.” Grandmama sniffed. “I don’t really know what you came for just to go calling, I suppose.”

“To see Mama,” Charlotte answered.

“Twice in one week?”

Charlotte was not disposed to argue. “Goodbye, Grandmama. It has been very nice to see you looking in such good health.”

The old lady snorted. “Full of yourself,” she said dryly. “Never did know how to behave. Just as well you married beneath you. You’d never have done in Society.”

All the way home, rolling smoothly through the streets in her father’s carriage, Charlotte was too consumed by her thoughts to take proper pleasure in how much more comfortable the carriage was than the omnibus.

It was painfully apparent that Caroline’s interest in Paul Alaric was not in the least casual. Charlotte could recall too many of the idiotic details of her own infatuation with her brother-in-law Dominic, before she had met Thomas, to be deceived by this. She knew just that affectation of indifference, the clenching of the stomach in spite of all one could do, the heart in the throat when his name was mentioned, when he smiled at her, when people spoke of them in the same breath. It was all incredibly silly now, and she burned with embarrassment at the memory.

But she recognized the same feeling in others when she saw it; she had seen it before for Paul Alaric, more than once. She understood Caroline’s stiff back, the overly casual voice, the pretense of disinterest that was not strong enough to stop her from almost running to Maddock to find out if Alaric had left a message.

It had to be Paul Alaric’s picture in the locket. No wonder Caroline wanted it back! It was not some anonymous admirer from the past, but a face that might be recognized by any resident of Rutland Place, even the bootboys and the scullery maids.

And there was no possible way she could explain it! There could be no reason but one why she should carry a locket with his picture.

By the time Charlotte reached home, she had made up her mind to tell Pitt something about it and to ask his advice, simply because she could not bear the burden alone. She did not tell him whose picture was in the locket.

“Do nothing,” he said gravely. “With any luck, it has been lost in the street and has fallen down a gutter somewhere, or else it has been stolen by someone who has sold it or passed it on, and it will never be seen again in Rutland Place, or by anyone who has the faintest idea who it belonged to, or whose picture it is.”

“But what about Mama?” she said urgently. “She is obviously flattered and attracted by this man, and she doesn’t intend to send him away.”

Pitt weighed his words carefully, watching her face. “Not for a little while, perhaps. But she will be discreet.” He saw Charlotte draw breath to argue, and he closed his hand over hers. “My dear, there is nothing you can do about it, and even if there were you have no right to interfere.”

“She’s my mother!”

“That makes you care—but it does not give you the right to step into her affairs, which you are only guessing at.”

“I saw her! Thomas, I’m perfectly capable of putting together what I saw this afternoon, the locket, and what will happen if Papa finds out!”

“Then do what you can to make sure that he doesn’t. Warn her to be careful, by all means, and to forget the locket, but don’t do anything more. You will only make it worse.”

She stared back at him, into his light, clever eyes. This time he was wrong. He knew a lot about people in general, but she knew more about women. Caroline needed more than a warning. She needed help. And whatever Pitt said, Charlotte would have to give it.

She lowered her eyes. “I’ll warn her—about pursuing the locket,” she agreed.

He understood her better than she knew. He would not press her into a position where she was obliged to lie. He sat back, resigned but unhappy.

Chapter Three

PITT WAS TOO BUSY with his own duties to harass his mind with anxieties over Caroline. Previous cases had led him into association with people of similar positions in Society, but the circumstances in which he had seen them had necessarily been unusual, and he was aware that these past associations gave him little real understanding of their beliefs or their values. He understood even less of what might be acceptable to them in their relationships, and what would cause irreparable harm.

Pitt felt it was dangerous for Charlotte to get mixed up in the Rutland Place thefts, but he knew that most of his reaction sprang from his emotions rather than his reason: he was afraid she would be hurt. Now that she had moved from Cater Street and left her parents’ home, she had absorbed new beliefs, albeit some of them unconsciously, and she had forgotten many assumptions that used to be as natural to her as they still were to her parents. She had changed, and he was afraid that she had not realized how much—or that she had expected them to have changed also. Her loyal, fiercely compassionate, but blind interference could so easily bring pain to them all.

But he did not know how to persuade her from it. She was too close to see.

He was sitting at his brown wood desk at the police station looking at an unpromising list of stolen articles, his mind on Charlotte, when a sharp-nosed constable came in, his face pinched, eyes bright.

“Death,” he said simply.

Pitt raised his head. “Indeed. Not an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately. Why does this one interest us?” His mind pictured the alleys and creaking piles of rotting timber of the rookeries, the slums that backed onto the solid and spacious houses of the respectable. People died in them every day, every hour: some died from cold, some from disease or starvation, a few from murder. Pitt could afford to concern himself only with the last, and not always with them.

“Whose?” he asked.

“Woman.” The constable was as sparing with words as with his money. “Wealthy woman, good address. Married.”

Pitt’s interest quickened. “Murder?” he said, half hopeful, and ashamed of it. Murder was a double tragedy—not only for the victim and those who cared for her, but for the murderer also, and whoever loved or needed or pitied the tormented soul. But it was less gray, less inherently part of a problem too vast to begin, than death from street violence, or poverty, which was innate in the very pattern of the rookeries.

“Don’t know.” The constable’s eyes never moved from Pitt’s face. “Need to find out. Could be.”

Pitt fixed him with a cold stare.

“Who is dead?” he demanded. “And where?”

“A Mrs. Wilhelmina Spencer-Brown,” the constable answered levelly, a faint ring of anticipation in his voice at last. “Of number eleven Rutland Place.”

Pitt sat up. “Did you say Rutland Place, Harris?”

“Yes, sir. Know it, do you, sir?” He added the “sir” only to keep from being impertinent; usually he did without such extra niceties, but Pitt was his superior and he wanted to work on this job. Even if it was not murder, and it probably was not, a death in Society was still a great deal more interesting than the run-of-the-mill crimes he would otherwise employ himself with. All too seldom did he find a genuine mystery.

“No,” Pitt answered him dourly. “I don’t.” He stood up and pushed his chair back, scraping it along the floor. “But I imagine we are about to. What do you know about Mrs. Wilhelmina Spencer-Brown?”

“Not a lot.” Harris fell in behind him as they collected hats, coats, and mufflers, and strode down the police station steps into the March wind.

“Well?” Pitt demanded, keeping his eye on the thoroughfare in hope of seeing an empty cab.

Harris doubled his step to keep up.

“Early thirties, very respectable, nothing said against her. Still,” he said hopefully, “there wouldn’t be, in that sort of address. Plenty of servants, plenty of money, by the looks. Although looks don’t always mean much. Known those as had three servants, bombazine curtains, and nothing but bread and gravy on the table. All appearance.”

“Did Mrs. Spencer-Brown have bombazine curtains?” Pitt inquired, moving sideways sharply as a carriage sped by him, splattering a mixture of mud and manure onto the pavement. He swore under his breath, and then yelled “Cabbie!” furiously at the top of his lungs.

Harris winced. “Don’t know, sir. Only just got the report. Haven’t been there myself. Do you want a cab, sir?”

“Of course I do!” Pitt glared at him. “Fool!” he muttered under his breath, then was obliged to take it back the next moment when Harris leapt into the street with alacrity and stopped a hansom almost in its tracks.

A moment later they were sitting in the warmth of the cab, moving at a sharp trot toward Rutland Place.

“How did she die?” Pitt continued.

“Poison,” Harris replied.

Pitt was surprised. “How do you know?”

“Doctor said so. Doctor called us. Got one of them new machines.”

“What new machines? What are you talking about?”

“Telephones, sir. Machine what hangs on the wall and—”

“I know what a telephone is!” Pitt said sharply. “So the doctor called on a telephone. Who did he call? We haven’t got one!”

“Friend of his who lives just round the corner from us—a Mr. Wardley. This Mr. Wardley sent his man with the message.”

“I see. And the doctor said she was poisoned?”

“Yes, sir, that was his opinion.”

“Anything else?”

“Not yet, sir. Poisoned this afternoon. Parlormaid found her.”

Pitt pulled out his watch. It was quarter past three o’clock.

“What time?” he asked.

“About quarter past two, or just after.”

That would be when the maid went to inquire whether they would be expecting callers for tea, or if Mrs. Spencer-Brown was going out herself, Pitt thought. He knew enough about the habits of Society to be familiar with the afternoon routine.

A few moments later they were in Rutland Place, and Pitt looked with interest at the quiet, gracious façades of the houses, set back a little from the pavement, areaways immaculate, some shaded by trees, windows catching the light. A carriage was drawn up outside one, and a footman was handing a lady down, closing the door behind her. Farther along another was leaving, harness glinting in the sun. One of those houses was Caroline’s. Pitt had never been there; it was a tacit understanding that such a call would be comfortable for neither the occupants nor Pitt. They met occasionally, but on neutral territory where no comparisons could be made, even though it would be the last thing either had intended.

The hansom stopped, and they climbed out and paid the fare.

“Eleven,” Harris said as they mounted the step.

The door opened even before they reached it and a footman hastened them in as forcefully as was consistent with his dignity. One did not desire police to wait on the doorstep so the whole neighborhood was aware one had been obliged to call them in! It was more than his promotion was worth to be clumsy in the handling of such a matter.

“Inspector Pitt,” Pitt announced himself quietly, conscious of the presence of tragedy, whatever its nature turned out to be. He was used to death, but it never failed to move him, and he still did not know what to say in the face of loss. No words could make any difference. He hated to sound trite or unfeeling, yet feared he often did, simply because he felt it from the outside. He was an intruder, a reminder of the darkest possibilities, the ugliest explanation.

“Yes, sir,” the footman said formally. “You’ll be wanting to speak to Dr. Mulgrew, no doubt. A carriage had been sent for Mr. Spencer-Brown, but he is not home yet.”

“Do you know where he is?” Pitt asked merely as a matter of course.

“Yes, sir. He went to the city as usual. He has several interests, I believe. He is on the board of directors of a number of important business houses, and a newspaper. If you will come this way, sir, I will show you to the morning room where Dr. Mulgrew is waiting.”

Pitt and Harris followed him along the hall toward the back of the house. Pitt eyed the furnishings and noted that a great deal of money had been invested in them, whether purely for appearance’s sake or not. If the Spencer-Browns had any financial worries, a few of the pictures on the staircase and hall would have given them an income the like of which Pitt could have lived on for several years. He had come to be a fair judge of the price of a painting in the course of his professional connections with the art world.

The morning-room fire was banked high, and Mulgrew stood so close to it Pitt fancied he could smell his trousers singeing in the heat. He was a stocky man with white, heavy hair and a fine white mustache. At present his eyes were watery and his nose distinctly red. He sneezed loudly as they came in, and withdrew a large handkerchief from his pocket.

“Cold,” he said in completely unnecessary explanation. “Filthy thing. No cure for it. Never has been. Name’s Mulgrew. I suppose you are the police?”

“Yes, sir. Inspector Pitt and Constable Harris.”

“How do you do. Hate a spring cold—nothing worse, except a summer one.”

“I understand the parlormaid found Mrs. Spencer-Brown dead when she came to inquire about the afternoon’s arrangements?” Pitt asked. “Did the maid call you?”

“Not precisely.” Mulgrew put his handkerchief away. “She told the butler, which is natural, I suppose. Butler came to look for himself, then sent the footman round for me. Only live round the corner. I came straightaway. Wasn’t a thing I could do. Poor creature was stone dead. I used the telephone to call a friend of mine, William Wardley. He sent a message to you.” He sneezed again and whipped out his handkerchief.

“You ought to take something for that,” Pitt said, moving a step back. “Hot drink and a mustard poultice.”

“No cure for it.” Mulgrew shook his head and waved his hands. “No cure at all. Poison, but I can’t say what yet—not for certain.”

“You are quite sure?” Pitt did not want to insult him by questioning his competence too obviously. “Couldn’t be any form of illness?”

Mulgrew narrowed his eyes and looked at Pitt closely.

“Couldn’t take my oath on it, but don’t want to wait until I can before I tell you! Too late for you to see the scene if I do! Not a fool, you know?”

Pitt found himself wanting to smile and had to force his mouth into a more appropriate expression.

“Thank you!” It seemed the most civil thing to say. “I take it you are Mrs. Spencer-Brown’s regular physician?”

“Yes, naturally. That’s why they called me. Perfectly healthy woman. Usual small ailments from time to time, but then haven’t we all?”

“Had she any medicine that you know of which she might have taken in excess, by accident?”

“Nothing I’ve given her. Only ever had the occasional cold or fit of the vapors. No cure for them, you know? Just part of life—best to put up with it gracefully. A little sympathy, if you can get it, and a good sleep.”

Pitt again controlled his desire to smile at the man.

“What about anyone else in the house?” he asked.

“What? Oh. Doubt she’d be stupid enough to take anyone else’s medicine. Not a silly woman, as women go! But then I suppose she could have, at that. Not a lot of sense when it comes to medicine, most people.” He sneezed again, fiercely. “Gave Mr. Spencer-Brown some stuff for pain in the stomach. Though I think he brings it on himself for the most part. Tried to tell him that and got a flea in my ear for my trouble.”

“Pain in his stomach?” Pitt inquired.

“Diet, mostly.” Mulgrew shook his head and blew his nose. “Eats all the wrong things, no wonder it gives him a pain. He’s an odd fellow—no use for that either!” He looked at Pitt out of the corner his eye, as if waiting to be argued with.

“Quite,” Pitt said. “Anything in this stuff of Mr. Spencer-Brown’s that could have killed anyone if taken in excess?”

Mulgrew pulled a face. “I suppose so—if you mixed the whole lot and drank it.”

“No possibility of an overdose by accident? If Mrs. Spencer-Brown had a stomach pain, for example, and thought she would relieve it by borrowing some of her husband’s medicine?”

“Told him to keep it locked in his cabinet, but I suppose if he didn’t, she could have taken it. Still, don’t think she could take enough to kill herself by mistake.”

“Instructions on the bottle?”

“Box. It’s a powder. And yes, of course there are. Don’t go handing out poisons willy-nilly, you know.”

“Poisons?”

“Has belladonna in it.”

“I see. But we don’t know what she died of yet. Or at least if we do, you haven’t said so?” He watched hopefully.

Mulgrew looked at him over the top of his handkerchief and blew his nose solemnly. He fished in his pocket for another and failed to find one. Pitt pulled out his own spare and soberly handed it over.

“Thank you.” Mulgrew took it. “You’re a gentleman. That’s what makes me unhappy. Can’t swear to it yet, but I’ve a strong suspicion it was belladonna that killed her. Looks like it. Apparently she didn’t complain of feeling unwell. She had just come in from making an early call somewhere close by, and she was dead within fifteen or twenty minutes of going into the withdrawing room. All pretty sudden. No vomiting, no blood. Not much in the way of convulsions. You can see the dilated pupils, dry mouth—just what you’d expect from belladonna. Heart stops.”

Suddenly the reality hit. Pitt could almost feel it himself: a woman dying alone, the tightness of breath, the pain, the world receding, leaving her to face the darkness, the paralysis, and the terror.

“Poor creature,” Pitt said aloud, surprising himself.

Harris coughed in embarrassment.

Mulgrew’s face softened, and a flicker of appreciation showed in his eyes as he looked at Pitt.

“Could have been suicide,” he said slowly. “At least in theory. Don’t know of any reason, but then one usually doesn’t. God only understands what private agonies go on behind the polite faces people show. So help me, I don’t!”

There was nothing for Pitt to say; silence was the only decent answer. He must remember to send Harris to find Mr. Spencer-Brown’s medicine box and see precisely how much was gone.

“Do you want to see her?” Mulgrew asked after a moment.

“I suppose I had better,” Pitt said.

Mulgrew walked slowly to the door, and Pitt and Harris followed him out into the hall, past the footman standing gravely to attention, and into the withdrawing room, curtains drawn in acknowledgment of death.

It was a large room, with elegant, pale-covered chairs and sofas in a French style, bowed legs and lots of carved wood. There was much petit-point embroidery in evidence, artificial flowers made of silk in profuse arrangements, and some pleasant pastoral watercolors. In other circumstances, it would have been a charming, if rather overcrowded, room.

Wilhelmina Spencer-Brown was on the chaise longue, her head back, eyes wide, mouth open. There was none of the peace of sleep about her.

Pitt walked over and looked, without touching. There was no spirit left, no privacy to invade, no feelings to hurt, but still he regarded the woman as if there were. He knew nothing about her, whether she had been kind or cruel, generous or mean, brave or a coward; but for himself as much as for her, he wished to accord her some dignity.

“Have you seen all you wish?” he asked Mulgrew without turning around.

“Yes,” Mulgrew replied.

Pitt eased her forward a little so she appeared to have been relaxing, folded her hands although he could not unclench them, and closed her eyes.

“She was here only fifteen or twenty minutes before the maid found her like this?” he asked.

“So she says.”

“So whatever it was, it acted quickly.” He turned and looked around; there was no glass or cup to be seen. “What did she eat or drink?” He frowned. “It doesn’t seem to be here now. Did the maid remove anything?”

“Asked her.” Mulgrew shook his head. “She says not. Doesn’t seem like a flighty girl. Don’t see why she should lie. Too shocked when she found her mistress dead to think of tidying up, I would imagine.”

“So she didn’t take it here,” Pitt concluded. “Pity. That would have made it easier. Well, you’ll have to do a postmortem and tell me what it was, and if possible how much, and when.”

“Naturally.”

Pitt looked at the body once more. There was nothing else to learn from it. There were no signs of force, but then since she had been alone he would not have expected any. She had taken the poison willingly; whether or not she had known what it was remained to be discovered.

“Let’s go back to the morning room,” he suggested. “I can’t see anything here to help us.”

Gratefully, they returned to the fire. The house was not cold, but there was a chill in the mind that communicated itself to the flesh.

“What sort of woman was she?” Pitt asked when the door was closed. “And don’t hide behind professional confidences. I want to know if this was suicide, accident, or murder, and the sooner I do, with the fewest questions of the family, the easier it will be for them. And they’ll have enough to bear.”

Mulgrew pulled an unhappy face and blew his nose on Pitt’s handkerchief.

“I can’t imagine an accident,” he said, staring at the floor. “Not a silly woman—very capable, in her own way, very quick, noticed things. Least absentminded woman I ever knew.”

Pitt did not like the sort of question he had to ask, but there was no way to avoid it, or to make it sound any better.

“Do you know of any reason why she might have taken her own life?”

“No, or I’d have said so.”

“She looks as if she was an attractive woman, feminine, delicate. Could she have had a lover?”

“I daresay, if she’d wanted one. But if you mean do I know of one, no, I don’t. Never heard any gossip about her whatsoever— even in confidence.” He gave Pitt a very direct look.

“What about her husband?” Pitt pressed. “Could he have had a woman, a mistress? Could she have been driven to suicide over that?”

“Alston?” Mulgrew’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at the idea. Obviously it was one he had never considered before. “I should think it highly unlikely. Bloodless sort of creature. Still—you never know—the flesh is full of surprises! Nothing odder about the human animal than his predilections in that area. I’m fifty-two years old, and I’ve been a doctor for twenty-seven of them. Nothing ought to surprise me—but it does!”

Other, uglier thoughts occurred to Pitt, thoughts about other men—boys, even children. Knowledge of such a thing might drive a wife to feel her life was insupportable. But that was only a wild speculation.

Then again there were other thoughts, perhaps more likely, things that Charlotte had spoken about: thefts, a sense of being watched. Could this woman have been the thief and then, when she realized the watcher knew about it, have killed herself in the face of the overwhelming shame? Society was cruel; it seldom forgave, and it never, ever forgot.

Pitt was touched by a breath of misery as cold as January sleet.

Poor woman.

If he discovered that to be the truth, he would find some way to avoid saying so.

“Don’t lay too much on what I say, Inspector.” Mulgrew was looking at him soberly. “I don’t mean anything by it—just generalizing.”

Pitt blinked. “That’s all I took it for,” he said carefully. “Just that nothing is certain when we come to such things.”

There was a commotion out in the hall, a rising and falling of voices, and then the door burst open.

They all turned simultaneously, knowing what it was and dreading it. Only Harris stood straight up, because he knew he would not have to say anything.

Alston Spencer-Brown faced them, bristling with shock and anger.

“Who the devil are you, sir?” He glared at Pitt. “And what are you doing in my house?”

Pitt accepted the anger for what it was, but there was still no way of dealing with it that took away the hurt or the embarrassment afterward.

“Inspector Pitt,” he said without pretense. “Dr. Mulgrew called me, as was his duty.”

“Duty?” Alston demanded, swinging round to face Mulgrew. “I have the duty in this house, sir. It is my wife who is dead!” He swallowed. “God rest her soul. It is no concern of yours! There is nothing you can do for her now. She must have had a heart attack, poor creature. My butler tells me she had passed away before you even arrived. I cannot think why you are still here. Except perhaps as a courtesy to inform me yourself, for which I thank you. You may feel yourself released from all obligation now, both as physician and as friend. I am obliged to you.”

No one moved.

“It was not her heart,” Mulgrew said slowly, then sneezed and fished for a handkerchief. “At least it was, but not of itself.” He blew his nose. “I’m afraid it was caused by poison.”

All the color drained from Alston’s face, and for a moment he swayed on his feet. Pitt believed no man could act such a total and paralyzing shock.

“Poison?” Alston spoke with difficulty. “What in heaven’s name do you mean?”

“I’m sorry.” Mulgrew raised his head slowly to stare at him. “I’m sorry. But she ate or drank something that poisoned her. I think either belladonna or something very like it, but I can’t be sure yet. I had to call the police. I had no choice.”

“That’s preposterous! Mina would never have—” He was lost for words; all reason seemed to have betrayed itself and he abandoned the attempt to understand.

“Come.” Mulgrew went toward him and eased him to the big, padded chair.

Pitt went to the door and called the footman for brandy. It came; Pitt poured it and gave it to Alston, who drank without taste or pleasure.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “It’s ridiculous. It cannot be true!”

Pitt hated the necessity that drove him to speak.

“I presume you know of no tragedy or fear that could have driven your wife to such a state of distress,” he began.

Alston stared at him.

“What are you suggesting, sir? That my wife committed suicide? How—how dare you!” His chin quivered with outrage.

Pitt lowered his voice. He could not look the man in the eyes.

“Can you imagine any circumstance in which your wife would take poison by accident, sir?” he asked.

Alston opened his mouth, then closed it again. The full implication of the question reached him. He let several moments tick by as he fought to see another answer.

“No,” he said at length. “I cannot. But then neither can I conceive of any reason whatsoever why she should take it knowingly. She was a perfectly happy woman, she had everything she desired. She was an excellent wife to me, and I was happy to give her everything she wanted—comfort, a place in Society, travel when she desired it, clothes, jewels, whatever she wished. And I am a most moderate man. I have neither ill temper nor any excesses of nature. Wilhelmina was well liked and respected, as indeed she deserved to be.”

“Then the answer must be in something we do not yet know.” Pitt put the reasoning as gently as he could. “I hope you will understand, sir, that we must persist until we discover what that is.”

“No—no, I don’t understand! Why can’t you let the poor woman rest in peace?” Alston sat more upright and set the brandy glass down on the table. “Nothing any of us can do can help her now. We can at least let her memory rest with dignity. In fact, I demand it!”

Pitt hated this part. He had expected it; it was natural. It was what most people would feel and do, but that did not make it any easier. It was familiar to him: he had said his part more times than he could count, but it was always the first time for the hearer.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spencer-Brown, but your wife died in circumstances that have not yet been explained. It may have been an accident, although, on your own word, that seems unlikely. It may have been suicide, but no one knows of a reason why she should do such a thing. It may have been murder.” He looked at Alston and met his eyes. “I have to know—the law has to know.”

“That is ridiculous,” Alston said quietly, too appalled for anger. “Why on earth should anyone wish Mina harm?”

“I have no idea. But if anyone did, then the person must be found.”

Alston stared at the empty glass in front of him. All the answers were equally impossible to him, and yet his intelligence told him one of them must be the truth.

“Very well,” he said. “But I would be obliged if you would remember that we are a house in mourning, and observe whatever decencies you can. You may be accustomed to sudden death, and she was a stranger to you—but I am not, and she was my wife.”

Pitt had not warmed to him instinctively—he was a fussy, deliberate little man, where Pitt was extravagant and impulsive— but there was a dignity about him that commanded respect.

“Yes, sir,” Pitt said soberly. “I have seen death many times, but I hope I never find myself accepting it without shock, or a sense of grief for those who cared.”

“Thank you.” Alston stood up. “I presume you will wish to question the servants?”

“Yes, please.”

They were duly brought in one by one, but none of them could furnish anything beyond the simple facts that Mina had arrived home on foot a few minutes after two o’clock, the footman had let her in, she had gone upstairs to her dressing room to prepare herself for the afternoon, and a little after quarter past two the parlormaid had found her dead on the chaise longue in the withdrawing room where Pitt and Mulgrew had seen her. No one knew of any reason why she should be distressed in any way, and no one knew of anyone who wished her harm. Certainly no one knew of anything she had eaten or drunk since her breakfast, which had been at midmorning—far too early for her to have ingested the poison.

When they were gone, and Harris had been dispatched to find the box of Alston’s stomach medicine and to perform a routine inspection of the kitchen and other premises, Pitt turned to Mulgrew.

“Could she have taken something at whatever house she was visiting between luncheon and her return home?” he asked.

Mulgrew fished for another handkerchief.

“Depends on what it was. If I’m wrong and it wasn’t belladonna, then we start all over again. But if it was, then no, I don’t think so. Works pretty quickly. Can’t see her taking it in another house, walking all the way back here, going upstairs, tidying herself up, coming down here, and then being taken ill. Sorry. For the time being you’d better assume she took it here.”

“One of the servants?” Pitt did not believe it. “In that case it should not be hard to find which one brought her something—only why!”

“Glad it’s your job, not mine.” Mulgrew looked at his handkerchief with disgust, and Pitt gave him his own best one. “Thanks. What are you going to do?”

Pitt tightened his muffler and thrust his hands into his pockets.

“I’m going to pay a few calls,” he said. “Harris will make arrangements to have the body removed. The police surgeon will attend the autopsy, of course. I daresay you’ll need to help Mr. Spencer-Brown. He looks pretty shaken.”

“Yes.” Mulgrew held out his hand, and Pitt shook it.

Five minutes later he was outside on the street feeling cold and unhappy. There was only one realistic step to take now, and he could not reason himself out of it. If Charlotte was right, there was something very unpleasant going on in Rutland Place: petty theft, and perhaps some person peeping and staring with a malicious interest in the private lives of others. He could not overlook the likelihood that Mina’s death was a tragic result of some part of this.

He knocked on Caroline’s door with his hands shaking. There was no pleasant way of asking her the questions he had to. She would regard the questioning as intolerable prying, and the fact that it was he who was doing it would make it worse, not better.

The parlormaid did not know him.

“Yes, sir?” she said in some surprise. Gentlemen did not usually call at this hour, especially strangers, and this loose-boned, untidy creature on the step, with his wind-ruffled hair and coat done up at sixes and sevens, was certainly not expected.

“Will you please tell Mrs. Ellison that Mr. Pitt is here to see her?” He walked in past her before she had time to protest. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

The name was familiar to her, but she could not immediately place it. She hesitated, uncertain whether to allow him in any farther or to call one of the menservants for help.

“Well, sir, if you please to wait in the morning room,” she said dubiously.

“Certainly.” He was herded obediently out of the hallway into the silence of the back room, and within moments Caroline came in, her face flushed.

“Thomas! Is something wrong with Charlotte?” she demanded. “Is she ill?”

“No! No, she is very well.” He put out his hands as if to touch her in some form of reassurance, then remembered his place. “I’m afraid it is something quite different,” he finished.

All the anxiety slipped away from her. Then suddenly, as if hearing a cry, it returned, and without anything said, he knew she was afraid Charlotte had told him about the locket with its betraying picture. It would have been better police work if he had allowed her to go on thinking so, since she might have made some slip, but the words came to his tongue in spite of reasoning.

“I’m afraid Mrs. Spencer-Brown has died this afternoon, and the cause is not yet apparent.”

“Oh dear!” Caroline put her hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh, how dreadful! Does poor Alston—Mr. Spencer-Brown—know?”

“Yes. Are you all right?” Her face was very pale, but she seemed perfectly composed. “Would you like me to call the maid for you?”

“No, thank you.” Caroline sat on the sofa. “It was very civil of you to come to tell me, Thomas. Please sit down. I dislike having to stare up at you like that—you make me feel uncomfortable.” She took a breath and smoothed her skirts thoughtfully. “I presume from the fact that you are here it was not an entirely natural death? Was it an accident? Involving some kind of negligence, perhaps?”

He sat down opposite her.

“We don’t know yet. But it was not a carriage accident or a fall, if that is what you mean. It appears to have been poison.”

She was startled; her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Poison! That’s horrible—and ridiculous! It must have been a heart attack, or a stroke or something. It’s just a hysterical maid with too many penny novels in her bedroom—” She stopped, her hands clenched on her knees. “Are you trying to say it was murder, Thomas?”

“I don’t know what it was. It could have been—or an accident—or suicide.” He was obliged to go on. The longer he evaded it the more artificial it would seem, the more pointed. “Charlotte told me there have been a number of small thefts in the neighborhood, and that you have had the unpleasant sensation of being watched.”

“Did she?” Caroline’s body stiffened, and she sat upright. “I would prefer she had kept my confidence, but I suppose that is academic now. Yes, several people have missed small articles, and if you want to chastise me about not having called the police—”

“Not at all,” he said, more sharply than he intended. He resented the criticism of Charlotte. “But now that there is death involved, I would like to ask your opinion as to whether you believe it possible Mrs. Spencer-Brown could have been the thief?”

“Mina?” Caroline opened her eyes in surprise at the thought.

“It might be a reason why she should have killed herself,” he reasoned. “If she realized it was a compulsion she could not control.”

Caroline frowned.

“I don’t know what you mean—‘could not control’? Stealing is never right. I can understand people who steal because they are in desperate poverty, but Mina had everything she needed. And anyway none of the things that are missing are of any great value, just little things, silly things like a handkerchief, a buttonhook, a snuffbox—why on earth should Mina take those?”

“People sometimes take things because they cannot help it.” He knew even as he said it that explanation was useless. Her values had been learned in the nursery where good and evil are absolute, and although life had taught her complexity in human relationships, the right to property was one of the cornerstones of Society and order, the framework for all morality, and its precepts had never been questioned. Compulsions belonged to fear and hunger, were even accepted, if deplored, where certain appetites of the flesh were concerned, at least in men—not in women, of course. But compulsions of loneliness or inadequacy, frustration, or other gray pains without names were beyond consideration, outside the arc of thought.

“I still don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly. “Perhaps Mina knew who it was who had been taking things. She did give certain hints from time to time that she was aware of rather more than she felt she ought to say. But surely no one would murder just to hide a few wretched little thefts? I mean, one would certainly dismiss a servant who had stolen, but one might not prosecute because of the embarrassment—not only to oneself but to one’s friends. No one wishes to have to make statements and answer questions. But where murder is concerned one has no choice—the person is hanged. The police see to it.”

“If we catch them—yes.” Pitt did not want to go into the morality of the penal system now. There was no possibility of their agreeing on it. They would not even be talking of the same things; their visions would be of worlds that did not meet at the fringes of the imagination. She had never seen a treadmill or a quarry, never smelled bodies crawling with lice, or sick with jail fever, or seen fingers worked to blood picking oakum—let alone the death cell and the rope.

She sank deeper into the sofa, shivering, thinking of past terrors and Sarah’s death.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, realizing where her memories were. “There is no reason yet to suppose it was murder. We must look first for reasons why she might have taken her own life. It is a delicate question to ask, but suicide is not a respecter of feelings. Do you have any idea if she had a romantic involvement of any nature that could have driven her to such despair?” At the back of his mind was beating Charlotte’s conviction of the depth of Caroline’s own affairs, and he felt it so loudly he almost expected Caroline to answer these thoughts instead of the rather prim words he actually spoke. He felt guilty, as if he had peeped in through someone’s dressing-room window.

If Caroline was surprised, she did not show it. Perhaps she had had sufficient warning to expect such a question.

“If she had,” she replied, “I certainly have heard no word of it. She must have been extraordinarily discreet! Unless—”

“What?”

“Unless it was Tormod,” she said thoughtfully. “Please, Thomas, you must realize I am giving voice to things that are merely the faintest of ideas, just possibilities—no more.”

“I understand that. Who is Tormod?”

“Tormod Lagarde. He lives at number three. She had known him for some years, and was certainly very fond of him.”

“Is he married?”

“Oh no. He lives with his younger sister. They are orphans.”

“What sort of a person is he?”

She considered for a moment before replying, weighing the kind of facts he would want to know.

“He is very handsome,” she said deliberately. “In a romantic way. There is something about him that seems to be unattainable—lonely. He is just the sort of man women do fall in love with, because one can never get close enough to him to spoil the illusion. He remains forever just beyond one’s reach. Amaryllis Denbigh is in love with him now, and there have been others in the past.”

“And does he—” Pitt did not know how to phrase acceptably what he wanted to say.

She smiled at him, making him feel suddenly clumsy and very young.

“Not so far as I know,” she answered. “And I believe if he did, I should have heard. Society is very small, you know, especially in Rutland Place.”

“I see.” He felt his face grow warm. “So Mrs. Spencer-Brown might have been suffering an unrequited affection?”

“Possibly.”

“What do you know about Mr. Spencer-Brown?” he asked, moving on to the other major avenue for exploration. “Is he the sort of man who might have become involved with other women and caused Mrs. Spencer-Brown sufficient grief, if she discovered it, to take her own life?”

“Alston? Good gracious, no! I should find that almost impossible to believe. Of course he’s pleasant enough, in his own way, but certainly not possessed of any passion to spare.” She smiled bleakly. “Poor man. I imagine he is very upset by her death—by the manner of it as much as the event. Do clear it up as soon as you can, Thomas. Suspicion and speculation hurt more deeply than I think sometimes you know.”

He did not argue. Who could say how much anyone understood the endless ripples of one pain growing out of another?

“I will,” he promised. “Can you tell me anything else?” He knew he ought to ask her about being watched, and whether the watcher, whoever it was, could have known about Mina and Tormod Lagarde, if there was anything to know; or if Mina was the thief. Or the other great possibility: if Mina knew who was the thief, and had been killed for it.

Or yet another thought: that Mina was the thief, and in her idle pickings had taken something so potentially dangerous for the owner that she had been killed in order to redeem it silently. Something like a locket with a telltale picture in it, or more damning than that! What else might she have stolen? Had she understood it, and tried her hand at blackmail—not necessarily for money, perhaps, but for the sheer power of it?

He looked at Caroline’s smooth face with its peachbloom cheeks, the high bones and slender throat that reminded him of Charlotte, the long, delicate hands so like hers. He could not bring himself to ask.

“No,” she said candidly, unaware of the battle in him. “I’m afraid I can’t, at the moment.”

Again he let the opportunity go.

“If you recall anything, send a message and I’ll come straightaway.” He stood up. “As you say, the sooner we know the truth the less painful it will be for everyone.” He walked over to the door and turned. “I don’t suppose you know where Mrs. Spencer-Brown went early this afternoon? She called upon someone close by, because she walked.”

Caroline’s face tightened a little and she drew in her breath, knowing the meaning.

“Oh, didn’t you know? She went to the Lagardes’. I was at the Charringtons’ a little later and someone mentioned it—I don’t remember who now.”

“Thank you,” he said gently. “Perhaps that explains what happened. Poor woman. And poor man. Please don’t speak of it to anyone else. It would be a decency to let it pass unknown—if possible.”

“Of course.” She took a step toward him. “Thank you, Thomas.”

Chapter Four

CHARLOTTE WAS NOT nearly so gentle with Caroline as Pitt had been, largely because she was afraid, and the feeling was so raw and urgent inside her it overruled the caution with which her mind would otherwise have softened her words. Old memories came flooding back as if the shock and the disillusion had come yesterday. The need to protect was stronger now, though, because she could see everything so much more sharply, and this time she was on the outside, not numbed by her own emotions as she had been then.

“Mama, I think we cannot reasonably place any hope in the idea that Mina took poison by accident,” she said frankly as she sat in Caroline’s withdrawing room the following day. She had called as soon as she could after hearing the news from Pitt. Gossip would fly very quickly; mistakes might be made at a single encounter.

“It would be very tragic to think the poor woman was wretched enough to take her own life,” she went on, “and even worse to believe someone else hated her enough to commit murder, but closing our eyes to it will not remove the truth.”

“I have already told Thomas the very little I know,” Caroline said unhappily. “I even made some rather wild guesses that I wish now I had not. I have probably been extremely unjust.”

“And rather less than honest,” Charlotte added harshly. “You told him nothing about Monsieur Alaric’s picture being in your stolen locket.”

Caroline froze, her fingers locked as if she had a sudden spasm; only her eyes were hot, scalding Charlotte with contempt.

“And did you?” Caroline said slowly.

Charlotte saw the anger in her, but she was too concerned with the danger to spare time for hurt.

“Of course not!” She dismissed the question without bothering to defend herself. “But that does not alter the fact that if you lost such a thing, maybe someone else did too!”

“And if they did, what has that to do with Mina’s death?” Caroline was still stiff with chill.

“Oh, don’t be so silly!” Charlotte exploded with exasperation. Why was Caroline being so obtuse? “If Mina were the thief, then she might have been murdered to recover the stolen article, whatever it is! And if she were the victim, maybe it was something that mattered to her so much, was so dangerous for her, that she would rather die than face having it known!”

There was silence. A pan was dropped in the scullery, and the dim echo of it penetrated the room. Very slowly the hard anger died out of Caroline’s face as she understood. Charlotte watched her without speaking.

“What could there be that was worse than death?” Caroline said at last.

“That is what we need to find out.” Charlotte finally relaxed her body enough to sit properly in her chair and lean against the back. “Thomas can find facts, but it may take you or me to understand them. After all, you cannot expect the police to know the feelings of someone like Mina. Something that would seem trivial to them might have been overwhelming to her.”

It was not necessary to explain all the differences of class, sex, and the whole framework of customs and values that lay between Pitt and Mina. Both Charlotte and Caroline understood that all the sensitivity or imagination he was capable of would not guide him to see with Mina’s eyes or recognize what it was that had accomplished her death.

“I wish I didn’t have to know,” Caroline said wearily, looking away from Charlotte. “I would so much rather bury her in peace. I have no curiosity. I can abide a mystery perfectly well. I have learned that one is not very often happier for having found all the answers.”

Charlotte knew that at least half her mother’s feeling sprang from a desire for privacy herself, the need to keep her own secrets. So much of the pleasure of a flirtation was that other people should see your conquest, and this realization added to her fear. Caroline must be very enchanted with Paul Alaric if she was content for the relationship to be unobserved. That meant it was far more than a game; there was something in it that Caroline wanted very much, something more than admiration alone.

“You cannot afford not to know!” Charlotte said sharply, wanting to shock her mother into fear acute enough to bring her to some sense. “If Mina were the thief, then she may still have your locket! When her possessions are sorted out, Alston will find it—or Thomas will!”

This had all the jarring effect she intended. Caroline’s face tightened into a mask. She swallowed with difficulty.

“If Thomas finds it—” she began; and then the enormity of it hit her. “Oh, dear heaven! He might think I killed Mina! Charlotte—he couldn’t think that—could he?”

The danger was too real for soft words and lies.

“I don’t suppose Thomas himself would think so,” she answered quietly. “But other police might. There must have been some reason why Mina died, so we had better find it first, before the locket turns up and anyone else has the chance to think anything at all.”

“But what?” Caroline shut her eyes in desperation, searching blindly for some explanation in the darkness of her mind. “We don’t even know if it was suicide or murder! I did tell Thomas about Tormod Lagarde.”

“What about him?” Thomas had not mentioned Tormod or any possible connection.

“That Mina might have been in love with him,” Caroline replied. “She definitely had an admiration for him. It could have been more than we thought. And she did go to the Lagardes’ house just before she died. Perhaps she had some kind of interview with him and he rejected her in a way that she could not bear?”

The idea of a married woman finding the end of such a relationship cause for suicide disturbed Charlotte. It was frightening and pathetic in a way that repelled her, especially since she could not put Caroline and Paul Alaric from her mind. But then she did not know how disagreeable or empty the Spencer-Browns’ marriage might have been. She had no right to judge. So many marriages were “appropriate”—and even those born of love could sour. She reproved herself for making too hasty a judgment, an act she despised in others.

“I suppose Eloise Lagarde might know,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “We shall have to be very tactful in inquiring. No one would wish to believe they might have been the cause, however unintentionally, of someone else’s taking her own life. And Eloise is bound to protect her brother.”

The hope faded from Caroline’s face. “Yes. They are very close. I suppose it comes from having only each other when their parents died so young.”

“There are several other possibilities,” Charlotte continued. “Someone has been stealing. Perhaps they took from Mina some lover’s keepsake from Tormod, and the fear that it might become public was unbearable to her. Perhaps they even went to her and threatened to give it to Alston if she did not give them money—or whatever else they wished.” Her imagination went on to thoughts that might drive a person into thinking of death. “Perhaps it was another man who desired her. And that was the price of his silence.”

“Charlotte!” Caroline sat bolt upright. “What a truly appalling mind you have, girl! You would never have been capable of such thoughts when you lived in my house!”

Charlotte had on her tongue a few pointed words about Caroline, Paul Alaric, and the question of morality, but she refrained from speaking them.

“Some truly appalling things happen, Mama,” she said instead. “And I am a few years older than I was then.”

“And you also appear to have forgotten a great deal about the sort of people we are. No man in Rutland Place would stoop to such a thing!”

“Not so openly, perhaps,” Charlotte said quietly. She had her own ideas about what was done but would be called by a pleasanter name. “But he doesn’t have to be one of you. Why not a footman—or even a bootboy? Can you answer for them so surely?”

“Oh, dear God! You can’t be serious!”

“Why not? Might not that have been enough to make Mina, or any other woman, think of suicide? Might you not?”

“I—” Caroline stared at her. She let out her breath very slowly, as if she had given up some fight. “I don’t know. I should think it is one of those things that would be so dreadful you could not know how you would feel unless it happened to you.” She moved her eyes to look down at the floor. “Poor Mina. She so hated anything in the least unseemly. Something like that would have—shriveled her to the heart!”

“We don’t know that that was what happened, Mama.” Charlotte leaned forward and touched her. “There are other things it could have been. Perhaps Mina was the thief, and she could not face the shame of being discovered.”

“Mina? Oh, surely—” Caroline began, then stopped, suspicion fighting incredulity in her face.

“Someone is,” Charlotte pointed out soberly. “And considering where the articles were stolen from, it doesn’t appear that any one servant could have taken them. But someone like Mina could!”

“But she lost something herself,” Caroline argued. “A snuffbox.”

“You mean she said she did,” Charlotte corrected. “And it was her husband’s, not hers. Surely the most intelligent way to direct suspicion from oneself would be to take something of your own as well? It does not take a great deal of brains to work that out.”

“I suppose not. And you think this person who is watching knew about it?”

“It is a possibility.”

Caroline shook her head. “I find it terribly hard to believe.”

“Do you find any of it easy? Yesterday Mina was alive.”

“I know! It’s all so ugly and useless and stupid. Sometimes it seems impossible to believe how so much can change irrevocably in a few hours.”

Charlotte tried another line of thought. “Do you still have the sensation of being watched?”

Caroline looked startled. “I’ve no idea! I haven’t even considered it. What does a Peeping Tom matter now, compared with Mina’s death?”

“It might have something to do with it. I’m just trying to think of everything I can.”

“Well, none of it seems worth anyone dying over.” Caroline stood up. “I think it is time we took luncheon. I asked for it to be ready at quarter to one, and it is past that now.”

Charlotte followed her obediently and they repaired to the breakfast room where the small table was set and the parlormaid ready to serve.

After the maid had gone, Charlotte began her soup, at the same time trying to recall some of the conversation that had taken place when she had met Mina a week ago. Mina had made a number of remarks about Ottilie Charrington and her death, possibly even implying that there was something mysterious about it. It was an ugly idea, but once it was in Charlotte’s mind it had to be explored.

“Mama, Mina had lived here for some time, had she not?”

“Yes, several years.” Caroline was surprised. “Why?”

“Then she probably knew everyone fairly well. Quite well enough that if she were the thief, and took something important, she might well understand its meaning, don’t you think?”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Ottilie Charrington’s death? She said a lot about it when she was here—almost as if she suspected there could be a secret, something the family would rather were not known.”

Caroline put her soup spoon back in the bowl. “You mean that it was not natural?”

Charlotte frowned uncertainly. “Not anything quite so awful as that. But perhaps she was not as respectable as Mr. Charrington, at least, would have liked. Mina said she was very high-spirited, and definitely implied she was also indiscreet. Maybe there would have been some sort of scandal if she had not died when she did?”

Caroline started to eat again, breaking a piece of bread.

“What an unpleasant thought, but I suppose you are right,” she said. “Mina did drop several hints that there was a lot more to know about Ottilie than most people realized. I never asked her, because I am so fond of Ambrosine I did not wish to encourage talk. But Mina did make me a little curious about Theodora as well, now that I come to remember.”

Charlotte was puzzled. “Who is Theodora?”

“Theodora von Schenck, Amaryllis Denbigh’s sister. She’s a widow with two children. I don’t know her very well, but I confess to liking her considerably.”

Charlotte found it hard to imagine liking anyone related to Amaryllis. “Indeed,” she said, unaware how skeptical she sounded.

Caroline smiled dryly. “They are not at all alike. For a start, Theodora does not appear to have any desire to marry again, even though she has very little means, as far as anyone knows. And, of course, people do know! In fact, when she came here a few years ago, she had nothing but the house, which she inherited from her parents. Now she has a new coat with a collar and trim right down to the ground I would swear is sable! I remember when she got it that Mina remarked about it. I am ashamed of myself, but I cannot help wondering how she came by it!”

“A lover?” Charlotte suggested the obvious.

“Then she is incredibly discreet!”

“It doesn’t seem very discreet to wear a sable collar out of the blue, with no explanation!” Charlotte protested. “She can hardly be naïve enough to imagine it would pass unnoticed! I would wager every woman in Rutland Place could price the garments of every other woman to within a guinea! And probably name the dressmaker who made them and the month in which they were cut!”

“Oh, Charlotte! That’s unfair! We are not so—so ill-disposed or so trivial-minded as you seem to think!”

“Not ill-disposed, Mama, but practical, and with an excellent eye to value.”

“I suppose so.” Caroline finished the last of her soup, and the maid reappeared to serve the next dish. The two women began to eat slowly. It was a delicate fish, and extremely well cooked; at any other occasion Charlotte would have enjoyed it.

“Theodora obviously has more money now than she used to,” Caroline went on reluctantly. “Mina once suggested that she did something quite appalling to earn it, but I was sure at the time that she was only being facetious. She had rather poor taste sometimes.” She looked up. “Charlotte, do you think perhaps it could have been true and Mina knew something about it?”

“Perhaps.” Charlotte weighed the idea. “Or perhaps on the other hand Mina was merely being spiteful—or saying something for the sake of making an effect. The stupidest stories get started that way sometimes.”

“But Mina wasn’t like that,” Caroline argued. “She very seldom talked about other people, except as everybody does. She was much more inclined to listen.”

“Then it begins to look as if it was something to do with Tormod,” Charlotte reasoned. “Or some other man we don’t know of yet. Or perhaps something to do with Alston that we do not know. Or else simply that she was the thief.”

“Suicide?” Caroline pushed her plate away. “What a dreadful thing it is that another human being, another woman you thought of as much like yourself, only a few houses away, could be so wretched as to take her own life rather than live another day—and you know nothing about it at all. You go about your own trivial little affairs, thinking of menus and seeing that the linen is repaired, and whom to call upon, exactly as if there were nothing else to do.”

Charlotte put her hand across the table to touch Caroline.

“I don’t suppose you could have done anything even if you had known,” she said quietly. “She gave no clue at all that she was so desperately unhappy—and one cannot intrude into everyone’s business to inquire. Grief is sometimes more easily borne for being private, and a humiliation is the last thing one wishes to share. The kindest thing one can do is to affect not to have noticed.”

“I suppose you’re right. But I still feel guilty. There must have been something I could have done.”

“Well, there isn’t anything now, except speak well of her.”

Caroline sighed. “I sent a letter to Alston, of course, but I feel it is too early to call upon him yet. He is bound to be very shocked. But poor Eloise is unwell also. I thought we might call there this afternoon and express our sympathy. She has taken the whole thing very badly. I think perhaps she is even more delicate than I had realized.”

It was not a prospect Charlotte looked forward to, but she could see it was quite plainly a duty. And if the Lagardes had been the last people, apart from Mina’s own servants, to see her alive, then perhaps something could be learned.

Charlotte was stunned when she walked behind Caroline into the Lagarde withdrawing room. Eloise looked so different from the woman she had seen the week before that for a moment she almost expected a new introduction. Eloise’s face was almost colorless, and she moved so slowly she might have been fumbling in her sleep. She forced herself to smile, but it was a small gesture. Death was in the Place, and the formality of the usual pretended delight was not expected now.

“How kind of you to call,” she said quietly, first to Caroline, then to Charlotte. “Please do sit, and make yourselves comfortable. It still seems to be quite cold.” She had on a heavy shawl over her dress and kept it closed around her.

Charlotte sat down in a chair across the room, as far as she could get with courtesy from the fire that roared up the chimney as if it had been midwinter. It was a pleasant spring day outside, bright though not yet warm.

Caroline appeared to be at a loss for words. Perhaps her own anxieties were too pressing for her to organize her thoughts into polite remarks. Charlotte rushed in with speech before Eloise should become aware of it.

“I’m afraid summer is always longer in coming than one hopes,” she said meaninglessly. “One fancies because the daylight hours are longer that the sun will be warmer, and it so seldom is.”

“Yes,” Eloise said, looking at the square of blue through the window. “Yes, it is easy to be deceived. It looks so bright, but one doesn’t know till one is in it quite how cold it is.”

Caroline recollected her manners and the purpose of their visit.

“We will not stay long,” she said, “because this is not a time for social visits, but both Charlotte and I were concerned to know how you were and if there was anything we could say or do to be of comfort to you.”

For a moment Eloise seemed almost not to understand her; then comprehension flooded her face.

“That is very kind of you.” She smiled at them both. “I cannot think that I feel it more deeply than we all do. Poor Mina. How very suddenly the whole world can alter! One minute everything is as usual, and the next enormous and dreadful changes have taken place and are as complete as if years had gone by.”

“Some changes are just the results of appalling accidents.” Charlotte dared not miss an opportunity to press for knowledge; it was too important. “But others must have been growing all the time. It is just that we did not recognize them for what they were.”

Eloise’s eyes widened, momentarily confused, seeking to understand Charlotte’s curious remark.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Charlotte hedged. She must avoid seeming to pry. “Only I suppose that if poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown took her own life, then it can only have been a tragedy that had been growing, unknown to us, for some time.” She had intended to be far more subtle, but Eloise was so candid herself that Charlotte could not play word games with her as she might have with someone more devious.

Eloise looked down at the folds of her skirt arranged over her knees.

“You think Mina took her own life?” She pronounced the words one by one, very clearly, weighing them. “That seems rather a cowardly thing to do. I always thought of Mina as stronger than that.”

Charlotte was surprised. She had expected more pity, and more understanding.

“We don’t know what pain she was faced with,” she said rather less gently. “At least I don’t.”

“No.” Eloise did not look up, a flash of contrition in her face. “I suppose we seldom even guess at anyone else’s pain—how big it is, how sharp, how often it cuts.” She shook her head. “But I still think that taking one’s life is a kind of surrender.”

“Some people grow too tired to fight anymore, or the wound is greater than they can overcome,” Charlotte persisted, wondering at the back of her mind why she was defending Mina so hard. She had not especially liked her; indeed she had felt a greater warmth for Eloise.

“We do not know that poor Mina took her own life,” Caroline said, intervening at last. “It may have been some sort of horrible accident. I cannot help believing that if there had been something distressing her so dreadfully, we would have been aware of it.”

“I cannot agree with you, Mama,” Charlotte replied. “Do you think that was what happened, Miss Lagarde? You knew her quite well, did you not?”

Eloise sat without answering for several seconds.

“I don’t know. I used to think I knew all the obvious things, and heard most of the gossip one way or another, and imagined I could evaluate its worth. Now . . .” Her voice trailed away and she stood up, turning her back to them, and walked over to the garden window. “Now I realize that I knew almost nothing at all.”

Charlotte was about to press her when the door opened and Tormod came in. His glance went immediately to Eloise at the window, then to Charlotte and Caroline. There was anxiety in his face, and his body was stiff.

“Good afternoon,” he said politely. “How kind of you to call.” His eyes went to Eloise again, dark and troubled. “I’m afraid Eloise has taken this appalling tragedy very hard. It has distressed her till she is quite unwell.” There was a warning in his face to be careful, choose their words, or they might add to the burden.

Caroline murmured understandingly.

“It is a very dreadful affair,” Charlotte said. “A person of sensibility would be bound to feel for everyone concerned. And I believe you were the last to see the poor woman alive.”

Tormod gave her a glance of profound appreciation. “Of course . . . and it cannot but distress poor Eloise to wonder if perhaps there might have been something we could have done. Naturally, her own servants actually—”

“Oh, servants,” Charlotte said, waving them away with a little gesture of her fingers. “But that is not the same as friends, whom one might have confided in.”

“Exactly!” Tormod said. “Unfortunately she did not. I really think it must have been some sort of accident, perhaps a wrong dosage of a medicine.”

“Perhaps,” Charlotte said doubtfully. “Of course I did not know her very well. Was she so absentminded?”

“No.” Eloise turned from the window. “She always seemed to know precisely what she was doing. If she did something so fatally foolish, then she must have been very distracted in her mind, or she would have noticed immediately that she had poured from a wrong bottle, or a wrong box, and disposed of it instead of drinking it.”

Tormod went to her and put his arm around her gently.

“You really must stop thinking about it, dear,” he said. “There is nothing we can do for her now, and you are distressing yourself. You will make yourself ill, and that will help no one, and it will hurt me very much. Tomorrow we shall go into the country, back to Five Elms, and think of other things. The weather is improving all the time. The first daffodils will be out in the wood, and we shall take the carriage and go driving to see them—perhaps even with a picnic basket, if it is warm enough. Wouldn’t you like that?”

She smiled at him, her face softening in gentle, melting pleasure, more as if she were comforting him than he supporting her.

“Yes, of course I should.” She put her hand over his. “Thank you.”

Tormod turned to Caroline. “It was most thoughtful of you to call, Mrs. Ellison, and you, Mrs. Pitt. We appreciate it. Such courtesies of friendship make these things easier to bear. And I am sure you must feel very shocked as well. After all, poor Mina was a friend of yours also.”

“Indeed, I am completely at a loss,” Caroline said a little ambiguously.

Charlotte was still pondering what she meant by that when the maid opened the door and announced Mrs. Denbigh. Amaryllis came in so close behind her there was no time to say whether the call was acceptable or not.

Eloise looked at her bleakly, almost through her. Tormod remained with his arm still around her and smiled politely.

Amaryllis’ face stiffened and her round eyes were glittering sharp.

“Are you ill, Eloise?” she said with surprise, her voice ambivalent between sympathy and impatience. “If you are faint, let me help you upstairs to lie down. I have salts, if you wish?”

“No, thank you, I am not faint, but it is most civil of you to offer.”

“Are you sure?” Amaryllis’ eyes swept her up and down with chilly condescension. “You do not look at all well, my dear. In fact, you are really very peaked, if you do not mind my saying so. I am the last person in the world to wish my visiting you to cause you to overstrain yourself.”

“I am not ill!” Eloise said a little more sharply.

Tormod’s arm tightened around her almost as if he were bearing her weight, although to Charlotte she looked quite steady.

“Of course not, dear,” he said. “But you have suffered a deep shock—”

“And you are not strong,” Amaryllis added. “Perhaps if you send for a tisane? Shall I ring for your maid for you?”

“Thank you,” Tormod accepted quickly. “That would be an excellent idea. I’m sure Mrs. Ellison and Mrs. Pitt would care for a cup of tisane as well. It is a most distressing time for all of us. You will take some refreshment, won’t you?”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said immediately. She was not sure what could be gained from remaining, but since she had learned nothing so far, she must at least try. “I hardly knew poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown, but I still feel most profoundly sad for her death.”

“How tenderhearted of you,” Amaryllis said skeptically.

Charlotte affected an air of innocence. “Do you not feel the same, Mrs. Denbigh? I am sure I can understand Miss Lagarde’s emotions with the greatest of sympathy. To know you were the last person to see a friend and talk with them before such overwhelming despair of mind overtook them that they found life itself insupportable—I’m sure I also should be far from well.”

Amaryllis’ eyebrows rose. “Are you saying, Mrs. Pitt, that you are of the belief that Mrs. Spencer-Brown took her own life?”

“Oh dear!” Charlotte weighed all the consternation into her voice that she could contrive. “Surely you don’t believe someone else—oh dear—how very dreadful!”

For once, Amaryllis was too confused for words. It was obviously the last thing she had intended to imply.

“Well, no! I mean—” she stumbled and retreated into silence, her skin flushed and her eyes cold with awareness of having been outmaneuvered.

“I hardly think that is likely,” Tormod said, coming to her rescue—or was it Charlotte’s? “Mina was not in the least the kind of woman to rouse such an enmity in anyone. In fact, I cannot believe she would even know a person who would conceive of such an abominable thing.”

“Of course!” Amaryllis said gratefully. “I expressed myself less clearly than I should. Such a thing is unthinkable. If you had known better”—she looked meaningfully at Charlotte—“the sort of people who were her friends, then you would not have mistaken me so.”

Charlotte forced a smile she did not feel. “I am sure I should not. But I am at a disadvantage, and you will have to forgive me. Did you mean that it was some kind of accident?”

Put baldly like that, the idea of having walked home and calmly taken a fatal dose of poison, by pure mischance, was so ridiculous that there was nothing Amaryllis could say. Her round eyes looked at Charlotte with cold dislike.

“I simply do not know what happened, Mrs. Pitt. And I really think we should refrain from discussing the subject in front of poor Eloise.” She let the condescension drip from her voice. “You must have appreciated that she is most delicate and suffers from a nervous and sensitive disposition. We are causing her distress by pursuing this so tastelessly. Eloise, dear.” She swiveled around with a smile so glittering it sent shivers down Charlotte’s spine and produced a feeling of revulsion so sharp it almost burst over into words. “Eloise, are you sure you would not care to come upstairs and rest a little? You look quite extraordinarily pale.”

“Thank you,” Eloise said coolly. “I do not wish to retire. I would greatly prefer to remain down here. We must share this grief together and be what comfort we can to each other.”

But Tormod was not satisfied. “Here.” He brushed Amaryllis aside, led Eloise to lie on the chaise longue, and lifted her feet for her. Charlotte caught a flicker of anger on Amaryllis’ face so hot it would have scorched Eloise to the skin had she known of it. It gave Charlotte an acute satisfaction of which she was not proud, but she did nothing to try to rid herself of it; rather she relished it with peculiar warmth. She savored the turn of Tormod’s shoulder and the soft movement of his hand as he smoothed Eloise’s skirt while Amaryllis watched from behind.

The door opened and the maid came in with a tray, cups, and a hot tisane. Amaryllis set it on the table and poured some for Eloise immediately, giving it to her and passing her a cushion so that she might rest more easily.

Charlotte made some harmless observation about a social event she had read of in the London Illustrated News. Tormod seized on it gratefully, and after they had all drunk a little of the tisane, Charlotte and Caroline took their leave, followed by Amaryllis.

“Poor Eloise,” Amaryllis said as soon as they were in the street. “She does look most poorly. I had not expected her to take it quite so badly. I have no idea what can have caused such a tragedy, but since Eloise was the last person to see poor Mina before she died, I cannot but wonder if perhaps she knows something.” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Told her in the greatest of confidence, of course! Which must place her in a most dreadful dilemma, poor creature! Knowing something vital, and not being able to tell it! I should not care to be in such a position.”

Charlotte had begun to wonder the same thing, especially in view of Tormod’s decision to take her away from Rutland Place into the country, where Pitt could not easily question her.

“Indeed,” she said noncommittally. “Confidences are always a most difficult matter when there is strong reason to believe it might be morally right to divulge what you know. The burden is even heavier if the person who entrusted you is dead, and therefore cannot release you. One cannot envy anyone so placed. If that indeed is the case. We must not leap to conclusions and risk spreading gossip.” She flashed Amaryllis a freezing smile. “That would be quite irresponsible. It may simply be that Eloise is more compassionate than we are. I am very sorry, but I did not know Mrs. Spencer-Brown very well.” She left the implication in the air.

Amaryllis did not miss it. “Quite. And some of us display our emotions while others prefer to keep a certain reserve—a dignity as befits the death of a friend. After all, one does not wish to become the center of attention. It is poor Mina who is dead, not one of us!”

Charlotte smiled more widely, feeling as if she were baring her teeth.

“How sensitive of you, Mrs. Denbigh. I am sure you will be a great comfort to everyone. I am charmed to have met you.” They had come to Amaryllis’ gateway.

“How kind,” Amaryllis answered. “I’m sure I enjoyed it also.” She turned and, lifting her skirts, climbed the steps.

“Charlotte!” Caroline said sharply under her breath. “Really! Sometimes I am quite embarrassed for you. I thought now that you were married you might have improved a little!”

“I have improved,” Charlotte replied as she walked. “I lie much better. I used to fumble before, and now I can smile as well as anyone, and lie through my teeth. I can’t bear that woman!”

“So I gathered!” Caroline said dryly.

“Neither can you.”

“No, but I manage to keep it under considerably better control!”

Charlotte gave her a look that was unreadable, and stepped off the pavement to cross the road.

Then, suddenly, she noticed the lean, elegant figure of a man coming out of a gateway on the far side of the street. Even before he turned she knew him, knew the straight back, the grace of his head, the way his coat sat upon his shoulders. It was Paul Alaric, the Frenchman from Paragon Walk about whom everyone thought so much and actually knew so little.

He walked over to them easily, a half smile on his face, and raised his hat. His eyes met Charlotte’s with a widening of surprise, and then a flash that might have been pleasure or amusement—or even only the courtesy of remembering a most agreeable acquaintance with whom one had shared profound emotions of danger and pity. But naturally he spoke to Caroline first, since she was the elder woman.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Ellison.” His voice was exactly as Charlotte had remembered: soft, the pronunciation exquisitely correct, more beautiful than that of most men for whom English was their mother tongue.

Caroline stood in the middle of the road, her skirt still held in her hand. She swallowed before she spoke, and her voice was rather high.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric. A very pleasant day. I don’t think you have met my daughter Mrs. Pitt.”

For an instant he hesitated, his eyes meeting Charlotte’s very directly while a host of memories flashed through her mind—memories of fear and conflicting passions. Then he bowed very slightly, the decision made.

“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt.”

“I am quite well, thank you, Monsieur,” she replied levelly. “Although I was distressed at the tragedy that has so recently happened.”

“Mrs. Spencer-Brown.” His face wiped clean of polite trivia and his voice dropped. “Yes. I’m afraid I can think of no answer which is not tragic. I have been struggling within myself to find any reason for such an ugly and useless thing to have happened, and I cannot.”

Compulsion drove Charlotte to pursue it, even though good taste might have demanded that she say something sympathetic and change the subject.

“Then you do not think it could have been an accident?” she asked. Caroline was beside her now, and she was acutely conscious of her, of the tight muscles of her body, of her eyes fixed on Alaric’s face.

There was gentleness in him, and something like a light of bitter humor, as if for a second her candor had aroused some other emotion in him.

“No, Mrs. Pitt,” he said. “I wish I could. But one does not take a dose of medicine that has not been prescribed for one, nor drink from an unlabeled bottle, unless one is very foolish, and Mrs. Spencer-Brown was not foolish in the least. She was an extremely practical woman. Do you not think so, Mrs. Ellison?” He turned toward Caroline and his face softened into a smile.

The color rose up Caroline’s cheeks. “Yes, yes, indeed I do. In fact, I cannot recall ever knowing of Mina doing anything—ill-considered.”

Charlotte was surprised; she had not received the impression that Mina was especially intelligent. Indeed, the conversation they had had, as she recalled it, had been mostly trivial, concerned with things of the utmost unimportance.

“Really?” she said with rather more skepticism than she had intended. She did not wish to be rude. “Perhaps I did not know her well enough. But I would have thought it quite possible her mind could have been occupied with some other concern, and she might have made an error.”

“You are confusing intelligence with common sense, Charlotte,” Caroline said spiritedly. “Mina was not fond of study, nor did she concern herself with some of the very odd affairs that you do.” She was too discreet to name them, but a slight lowering of her eyelids and a sidelong glance made Charlotte decide that she was referring to her political convictions with regard to Reform Bills in Parliament, Poor Laws and the like. “But she was well aware of her own skills,” Caroline continued, “and how best to use them. And she had far too much native wit to make mistakes—of any sort. Do you not think so, Monsieur Alaric?”

He glanced down the street over their shoulders into some distance they could not see before turning to face Charlotte.

“We are looking for a genteel way of saying that Mrs. Spencer-Brown had a very fine instinct for survival, Mrs. Pitt,” he replied. “She knew the rules, she knew what could be said and what could not—what could be done. She was never careless, never moved by passion before sense. She did appear trivial on occasion, because that is the socially acceptable way. To talk intelligently of serious subjects is not considered attractive in a woman.” He smiled fleetingly; Caroline could not know they had talked before. “At least not by most men. But underneath the prattle Mina was a skilled and prudent woman, who knew precisely what she wanted and what she could have.”

Charlotte stared at him, trying to control her thoughts.

“You make that sound a little sinister,” she said slowly. “Calculating?”

Caroline took her arm. “Nonsense. One has to use some sense in order to survive! Monsieur Alaric means only that she was not flighty, the sort of silly creature who does not take any care what she is doing. Is that not so?” She looked at him, her face glowing in the cool air, her eyes bright. Charlotte was surprised— and jarringly afraid—to see how lovely she still was. The color, the brilliance, the blood under the skin had nothing to do with the March wind; it was the presence of this man, with his dark head and strong, straight back, standing in the road talking gently about death, and his pity for the tragedy around it.

“Then I fear it may have been suicide!” Charlotte said suddenly and rather loudly. “Perhaps the poor woman got herself into an affaire of the heart, became involved with someone other than her husband, and the situation was unbearable to her. I can see very easily how that could happen.” She did not have the boldness to look at either of them, and there was absolute silence in the street, not even the sound of a bird or of distant hooves.

“Such adventures very often end in disaster,” she continued after a harsh breath. “Of one sort or another. Maybe she preferred death to the scandal that might have accompanied such a thing becoming public!”

Caroline stood frozen.

“Do you think either she, or any man, would allow such a matter to become public?” Alaric asked with an expression Charlotte could not fathom.

“I have no idea,” she said with defiance she instantly regretted, but she plunged on. He had always had the ability to make her speak incautiously. “Perhaps an indiscreet letter, or a love token? People who are infatuated are often very foolish, even normally sensible people!”

Caroline was so rigid Charlotte could feel her behind her shoulder like a column of ice.

“You are right,” Caroline said in a low voice. “But death seems a terrible price to pay for such a folly.”

“It is!” For the first time Charlotte looked fully at her; then she turned to Alaric and found his eyes dark and bright, and unreadable, but understanding her as clearly as if they could see inside her head.

“But then when we embark on such affaires,” Charlotte continued with a tightening of her throat, “we seldom see the price at the end until it is time to pay.” She swallowed and suddenly tried to sound light, as if it were all just speculation, and nothing to do with anything real. “At least so I have observed.” Surely he must also be remembering Paragon Walk and their first meeting? Did he still live there now?

His face relaxed fractionally and his lips moved in the smallest smile. “Let us hope we are wrong and there is some less desperate explanation. I would not care to think of anyone suffering so.”

She recalled herself. All that was long past. “Nor I. And I am sure you would not either, Mama.” She closed her hand over Caroline’s. “We had better be returning home, now that we have paid our duty calls. Papa will be expecting us for tea.”

Caroline opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again; but even so Charlotte had to pull her.

“Good day, Monsieur Alaric,” Charlotte said briskly. “I am delighted to have made your acquaintance.”

He bowed and raised his hat.

“And I yours, Mrs. Pitt. Good afternoon, Mrs. Ellison.”

“Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric.”

They walked a few paces, Charlotte still pulling Caroline uncomfortably by the arm.

“Charlotte, I despair of you sometimes!” Caroline shut her eyes to block out the scene.

“Do you!” Charlotte said tartly without relaxing her pace. “Mama, there is no need for a great deal of words between us that will only hurt. We understand each other. And you do not need to tell me that Papa is not at home either. I know that.”

Caroline did not reply. The wind was sharper and she tucked her head down into her collar.

Charlotte knew she had been abrupt, even cruel, but she was very badly frightened. Paul Alaric was not some light affaire, a man full of pretty phrases and little gestures to please, a taste of romance to brighten the monotony of a thirty-year marriage. He was hard and real; there was power in him and emotion, a suggestion of things beyond reach, exciting and perhaps infinitely beautiful. Charlotte herself was still tingling from the meeting.

Chapter Five

CHARLOTTE DID NOT tell Pitt of her feelings regarding Paul Alaric and Caroline, or indeed that he was someone she had known previously; in fact, she could not have put it into words had she desired to. The encounter had left her more confused than ever. She remembered the heat of emotion and the jealousies he had engendered in Paragon Walk, the disquiet he had awoken even in her. She could understand Caroline’s infatuation easily. Alaric was far more than merely charming, a handsome face upon which to build a dream; he had a power to surprise, to disturb, and to remain in the memory long after parting. It would be blind to dismiss him as a flirtation that would wear itself out.

She could not explain it to Pitt, and she did not wish to have to try.

But of course she had to tell him that Tormod and Eloise Lagarde planned to leave Rutland Place the following day, so that if he wished to speak to them about Mina’s death, he would have to do so immediately.

Since they had been the last people he knew of to see Mina alive, there was a great deal Pitt wished to ask them, although he had not yet formed in his mind any satisfactory way of wording his thoughts, which were still confused, conscious only of unexplained tragedy. But chance allowed him no time to juggle with polite sympathies and suggestions. At quarter past nine, the earliest time at which it would be remotely civil to call, he was on the icy doorstep facing a startled footman, whose tie sat askew and whose polished boots were marred with mud.

“Yes, sir?” the man said, his mouth hanging open.

“Inspector Pitt,” Pitt said. “May I speak with Mr. Lagarde, if you please? And then with Miss Lagarde when it is convenient?”

“It ain’t convenient.” In his consternation the footman forgot the grammar the butler had been at pains to instill in him. “They’re going down to the country today. They ain’t—they is not receiving no one. Miss Lagarde aren’t well.”

“I’m very sorry Miss Lagarde is unwell,” Pitt said, refusing to be edged off the step. “But I am from the police, and I am obliged to make inquiries about the death of Mrs. Spencer-Brown, who I believe was known to Mr. and Miss Lagarde quite closely. I am sure they would wish to be of every assistance they could.”

“Oh! Well—” The footman had obviously not foreseen this situation, nor had the butler prepared him for anything of this sort.

“Perhaps it would be less conspicuous for me to wait somewhere other than on the doorstep,” Pitt said, glancing back into the street with the implicit suggestion that the rest of the Place knew his identity, and therefore his business.

“Oh!” The footman realized the impending catastrophe. “Of course, you’d best come into the morning room. There’s no fire there—” Then he recollected that Pitt was the police, and explanations, let alone fires, were unnecessary for such persons. “You just wait in there.” He opened the door and watched Pitt go in. “I’ll tell the master you’re here. Now don’t you go a-wandering around! I’ll come back and tell you what’s what!”

Pitt smiled to himself as the door closed. He bore no rancor. He knew the boy’s job depended on his proper observance of social niceties, and that an irritable butler, ill-served, could cost him very dear. There would be no recourse, no opportunity for explanations, and little tolerance of mistakes. To have the police in the house was most unfortunate, but to keep them at the front door arguing for all the world to see would be unpardonable. Pitt had seen a good deal of life belowstairs, beginning with his own parents’ experience when his father had been gamekeeper on a large country estate. As a boy, Pitt had run through the house with the master’s son, an only child glad of any playmate. Pitt had been quick to learn, to ape the manners and the speech, and to copy the school lessons. He knew the rules on both sides of the green baize door.

Tormod came quickly. Pitt had barely had time to look at the gentle landscape paintings on the walls and the old rosewood desk with its marquetry inlays before he heard the step on the polished floor outside the room.

Tormod was rather what he had expected: broad-shouldered, wearing a beautifully cut coat, his collar a little high. He had dark hair swept back from a broad white brow and a full mouth with a wide lower lip.

“Pitt?” he said formally. “Don’t know what I can tell you. I really haven’t the faintest idea what can have happened to poor Mina—Mrs. Spencer-Brown. If she had any anxiety or fear, unfortunately she did not confide it to either my sister or myself.”

It was a blank wall, and Pitt had no idea how he was going to make the slightest impression on it. Yet this was the only human clue he had.

“But she did call on you that last day, and left within an hour or so of her death?” he said quietly. His mind was racing, searching for something pertinent to ask, anything that might crack the smooth composure and reveal a hint of the passion that must have been there—unless it really had been only a chance and ridiculous accident.

“Oh, yes,” Tormod said with a rueful little shrug. “But even with the wisdom of hindsight, I still cannot think of anything she said which would point to why she should take her own life. She seemed quite composed and in normally good spirits. I have been trying to think what we talked of, but only commonplaces come back to me.” He looked at Pitt with a half smile. “Fashion, menus for the dinner table, some silly Society jokes—all the most ordinary things one talks about when one is passing the time and has nothing real to say. Pleasant, but one only partially listens.”

Pitt knew the type of conversation perfectly well. Life was full of just such pointless exchanges. The fact that one spoke was what mattered; the words were immaterial. Could it really be that Mina had had no idea whatsoever that she had less than an hour left to live? Had accident occurred like lightning out of a still sky? No storm, no rumble of far thunder, no oppression mounting before? Murder was not like that. Even a lunatic had reasons for killing: insanity built its slow heat like spring thawing the long winter snows, till suddenly the one more gallon became too much and the dams burst with wild, destructive violence.

But Pitt had seen death caused by madmen, and they did not use poison—not on a woman alone in her own withdrawing room, neatly laid on the chaise longue.

If this was murder, it was perfectly sane—and there was sane reason behind it.

“I wonder,” he said aloud, reverting back to the subject. “Could Mrs. Spencer-Brown have had some trouble on her mind and desired to confide it to you but, when faced with the necessity of expressing it in words, have found herself unable to? Might she have spoken only of commonplaces for just that reason?”

Tormod appeared to consider the possibility, his eyes blank as he examined his memory.

“I suppose so,” he said at last. “I don’t believe it myself. She did not seem other than her usual self. I mean, she was not agitated, as far as I can recall, or unconcerned with the conversation, as one might be if one were seeking an opportunity to speak of something else.”

“But you said yourself that you were only half listening,” Pitt pointed out.

Tormod smiled, pulling his face into a comic line.

“Well”—he stretched his hands out, palms up—“who listens to every word of women’s conversation? To tell the truth, I had intended to be out, but my plans had been canceled at the last moment, or I should not even have been at home. One has to be civil, but how interested can one be in what color Lady Whoever wore to the ball or what Mrs. So-and-So said at the soirée? It’s women’s concern. I just didn’t feel that it was anything different from usual. I heard no change of tone, caught nothing of anxiety—that’s what I mean.”

Pitt could only sympathize. It must have required hard discipline to remain courteous throughout. Only the rigid doctrine of good manners above all—from nanny’s knee, through tutors and public school—had instilled a pattern of self-control that would allow Tormod to do so with apparent grace. All the same, Pitt took the opportunity it gave him.

“Then perhaps your sister may have observed something, heard some nuance that only a woman would understand?” he asked quickly.

Tormod raised his eyebrows a little, whether at the suggestion or at Pitt’s use of words.

He hesitated. “I would rather you did not trouble her, Inspector,” he said slowly. “The death has been a severe shock to her. In fact, I am taking her away from Rutland Place for a little while, to recover. The associations are most unpleasant. My sister and I are orphans. Death has hit us hard in the past, and I’m afraid Eloise still finds it difficult to bear. I suppose it may be that Mina did confide something to her that day. I was not present all the time. It may be that Eloise feels she should have understood how desperate the poor woman was, and done something, and that grieves her additionally. Although, in truth, if someone is determined to take their own life, one cannot do anything to prevent them—only put off the time of the inevitable.”

Then he brightened. “I’ll tell you what—I shall ask Eloise. She will confide in me if there is anything—that I promise you—and I shall report it to you if it has any bearing whatsoever on Mina’s death. Will you accept that? I’m sure you would not wish to distress anyone more than is absolutely necessary.”

Pitt was torn. He remembered all the white, stricken faces he had ever seen of people who had encountered death, especially sudden and violent death. Those faces came back to him each time it occurred again: the surprise, the hurt, the slow acceptance that one cannot evade truth as the shock wears off and the reality remains, like growing cold, creeping deeper and deeper.

But he could not afford to let Tormod Lagarde make his judgments for him.

“No, I’m afraid that won’t do.”

He saw Tormod’s face change, the mouth set hard and the eyes chill.

“I’m quite happy that you should be present,” Pitt continued without changing his own expression or his voice. A smile remained fixed on his lips. “In fact, if you prefer to ask her yourself, I’m quite agreeable. I understand your concern that she should not be harassed or reminded of other tragedies. But since I know facts that you cannot know about Mrs. Spencer-Brown’s death, I must hear Miss Lagarde’s answers for myself, and not as you interpret them to me with the best intention in the world.”

Tormod met his eyes, stared at him for a few moments in surprise, then took a step backward and, with a swing of his arm, reached for the bell rope.

“Ask Miss Lagarde to come into the morning room, will you Bevan?” he said when the butler appeared.

“Thank you,” Pitt said, acknowledging the concession.

Tormod did not reply, turning instead to look out of the window at the gray drizzle that was beginning to thicken the air and dull the outlines of the houses across the Place. The laurel leaves outside hung glistening drops from their points.

When Eloise arrived, she was pale but perfectly composed. She kept her shawl close around her, and met Pitt’s gaze candidly.

As soon as the door opened, Tormod went to her, putting his arm around her shoulders.

“Eloise, darling. Inspector Pitt has to ask you some questions about poor Mina. I’m sure you understand that since we were the last people to see her, he feels we may know something of her state of mind just before she died.”

“Of course,” Eloise said calmly. She sat down on the sofa and regarded Pitt steadily, only the bare interest of courtesy in her face. The reality of death was seemingly greater than any curiosity.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Tormod said to her gently.

“Afraid?” She seemed surprised. “I’m not afraid.” She lifted her head to look at Pitt. “But I don’t think I can tell you anything that is of value.”

Tormod glanced at him warningly, then back at Eloise.

“Do you remember I left you for a while?” he asked her, his voice very soft, almost as if encouraging a child. “You had been speaking of little things until then—fashion and gossip. Did she confide any other matter to you when you were alone? Anything of the heart? A love, or a fear? Perhaps someone she was becoming fond of?”

Eloise’s mouth moved in a fraction of a smile. “If you mean did she love someone other than her husband,” she said without expression in her voice, “I have no reason to think so. She certainly did not speak of it to me—then or at any other time. I’m not sure if she believed in love of the storybook kind. She believed in passions—lust and pity, and loneliness—but they are quite different things, not really love. They pass when the hunger is satisfied, or the need for pity removed—or when one grows exhausted with loneliness. These things are not love.”

“Eloise!” Tormod’s arm tightened around her and his hand held the flesh of her arm so hard it made white marks on her skin that Pitt could see even through the muslin of her dress. “I’m so sorry!” His voice was soft, a whisper. “I had no idea Mina would speak of such things to you or I would never have left you alone with her.” He swung around to stare at Pitt. “There’s your answer, Inspector! Mrs. Spencer-Brown was a woman who was disillusioned in some tragic way, and she wished to unburden herself of it to someone. Unfortunately she chose my sister, an unmarried girl—which I find hard to forgive, except that she must have been desperate! God have pity on her!

“Now I think you have learned enough from us. I’m taking Eloise away from here, away from Rutland Place, until the worst of the shock is over, and she can rest in the country and put this from her mind. I don’t know what Mrs. Spencer-Brown indicated to her about her private agonies, but I will not permit you to press her any further. It is obviously a—an intimate and extremely painful subject. I trust you are gentleman sufficient to understand that?”

“Tormod—” Eloise began.

“No, my dear, the Inspector can discover whatever else he needs to know in some other fashion. Poor Mina seems unquestionably to have taken her own life. There was nothing you could have done about it, and I will not have you blame yourself in any way at all! We may never know what it was that she could no longer bear, and perhaps it is better that we should not. A person’s most terrible griefs should be buried decently with them. There are things that lie so close to the heart of a person, every decency of man or God demands they remain private!” He lifted his head and glared at Pitt, defying him to contend.

Pitt looked at them sitting side by side on the sofa. He would get nothing more from Eloise, and in truth he was inclined to agree that Mina’s suffering, whatever it was, deserved to be buried with her, not turned over, weighed, and measured by other hands, even the impersonal ones of the police.

He stood up. “Quite,” he said succinctly. “Once I am sure that it was simply a tragedy and there has been no crime, even of negligence, then it would be far better if we all left the matter to be forgotten in kinder memories.”

Tormod relaxed, his shoulders easing, the fabric of his coat falling back to its natural lines. He stood up also and extended his hand, holding Pitt’s in a hard grip.

“I’m glad you see it so. Good day to you, Inspector.”

“Good day, Mr. Lagarde.” Pitt turned a little. “Miss Lagarde. I hope your stay in the country is pleasant.”

She smiled at him with uncertainty, something that struck her with doubt, even a presage of fear.

“Thank you,” she said in little more than a whisper.