Cardington Crescent (14 page)

She began with the painful, practical help she knew was the only way to move to any real healing. She rang the bell by the bed.

“I don’t want anything,” Emily said numbly.

“Yes, you do.” Charlotte was firm. “You want a cup of tea, and so do I.”

“I don’t. If I take anything I shall be sick.”

“No, you won’t. But if you go on crying you will. It’s enough for now. We have things to do.”

Suddenly Emily was furious; all her shock and fear exploded in resentment because Charlotte was still safe, wrapped up in her own marriage, and this was just one more adventure for her. She was sitting on the bed with a businesslike complacency in her face, and Emily hated her for it. George had been carried away, white and cold, only an hour ago, and Charlotte was busy! She should have been shattered and frozen inside, as Emily was.

“My husband was murdered this morning,” she said in a tight, hard voice. “If all you can do is exercise your curiosity and self-importance, then I’d feel a lot better if you’d go back home and get on with your housework, or whatever it is you do when you haven’t got anyone else’s life to meddle in.”

For a moment Charlotte felt as if she had been slapped. The blood burned in her face, and her eyes stung. The retort stopped on her lips only because she could find no words for it. Then she took a deep breath and remembered Emily’s pain. Emily was younger; all the protective feelings of childhood came back in a tumble of images, always Emily the smallest, the last to achieve any milestone to maturity. Emily had envied her, admired her, and tried desperately to keep up, just as she herself was always a step behind Sarah.

“Who murdered George?” she asked aloud.

“I don’t know!” Emily’s voice rose dangerously.

“Then don’t you think we had better find out—very quickly, before whoever it is makes it look even more as though you did?”

Emily gasped, and her face looked even grayer than before.

At that moment the door opened and Digby came in. As soon as she saw Charlotte her expression hardened.

But Charlotte had not forgotten all her early years in her parents’ home, when she was accustomed to having a lady’s maid, and the habit returned automatically.

“Will you be kind enough to bring us a tray of tea,” she said to Digby. “And perhaps something sweet to eat with it.”

“I don’t want anything,” Emily repeated.

“Well, I do.” Charlotte forced the outline of a smile to her lips and nodded a dismissal to Digby, who retired obediently, but obviously she deferred judgment upon Charlotte.

Charlotte sat down facing Emily. “Do you want me to tell you again how deeply I grieve for you, how sorry I am, how horrified?”

Emily looked at her grudgingly. “No, thank you, there would hardly be any point.”

“Then help me to learn at least enough of the truth to prevent another tragedy. Because if you think someone who would murder George would then be averse to seeing that you were blamed for it, you are dreaming.”

“I didn’t do it,” Emily whispered.

Charlotte controlled herself with a difficulty so sharp for a moment the breath caught in her chest with a stab and tears prickled in her eyes.

“I know,” she said with a quiver in her voice, and she coughed to try to cover it up. “Have you any idea who did? What about this Sybilla? Could they have quarreled? Or her husband—you didn’t tell me his name. Or did she have another lover?”

She saw concentration overtake anger in Emily’s face, then grief again, and unrestrained tears. Charlotte waited, forcing herself not to lean forward and put her arms round her. Emily did not need sympathy now, she needed practical help.

“Yes,” Emily said at last. “They quarreled last night, just before we went to bed.” She blew her nose fiercely, and again a second time, and stuffed the handkerchief under the pillow and reached for another. Charlotte passed her own.

The door opened and Digby came in with a tray bearing a flowered china teapot, a dish of warm, crumbly scones, and butter and strawberry jam. She set it down carefully.

“Shall I pour, ma’am?” she asked with guarded eyes.

Charlotte accepted. “Yes, please. And if you can find some handkerchiefs, bring them.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Digby’s face relaxed. Perhaps Charlotte was not as bad as she feared.

Charlotte passed Emily a steaming cup, and buttered a scone and spread jam on it. “Eat it,” she advised. “Slowly. And chew it well. We are both going to need all our strength.”

Emily took it obediently. “His name is William,” she continued, answering the question as soon as Digby was out the door. “And I suppose he could have killed George, but he didn’t seem to care about Sybilla. I don’t even know whether he really noticed how far it had gone. Maybe Sybilla always behaves like that.”

“Do you know?” Charlotte hated the question, but it would hover on the edge of their minds until it was answered.

Emily hesitated only a moment. “I can guess. But it was over! He came into my room before he went to bed, and we talked.” She took a shivery breath, but this time she did not lose control. “It was going to be all right, if—if he hadn’t been killed.”

“So it could have been Sybilla.” Charlotte made it a statement rather than a matter open to doubt. “Is she that kind of woman? Has she enough vanity, enough hate?”

Emily’s eyes widened. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t be silly! She was trying to take George away from you—you know everything about her that you possibly can! Now
think,
Emily.”

There were several minutes of silence while Emily sipped her tea and ate two scones, surprising herself.

“I don’t know,” she said again, at last. “I really don’t. I’m not sure whether she loved him, or just found him fun and enjoyed the attention. It might be that if it wasn’t George it would have been someone else.”

Charlotte did not find that in the least helpful, but she realized that it was all Emily could give. She left it for a moment.

“Who else is there?”

“Nobody,” Emily said quietly. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She looked up, eyes wide and hollow, too hurt to think.

Charlotte reached out and touched her gently. “All right. I’ll judge for myself.” She took another scone and ate it absently.

Emily sat up a little, her shoulders stiff, pulling the thin fabric of her wrap round her. It was almost as though she expected some kind of a blow and was tensed to ward it off.

“I really don’t know what George felt for Sybilla.” She stared down at the embroidered hem of the sheet between her fingers. “For that matter, I’m not as sure as I used to be precisely what he felt for me, even before we came here. Perhaps I didn’t know him so very well. It’s funny, when I look back on Cater Street and all the things that happened there towards the end—I thought I’d never make all those mistakes myself, like Sarah, and Mama. Taking things for granted, assuming you know someone, just because you see them every day coming and going in the house, even sleep in the same bed with them sometimes, touch them ...” She hesitated a moment, grasping her self-control hard. “Assume that you know them, that you understand. But perhaps that’s exactly what I did. I assumed a lot of things about George, and maybe I was wrong.” She waited without looking up.

Charlotte knew she was half hoping for a contradiction, and yet she would not have believed one had it been offered.

“We never do know anyone else completely,” she said instead. “And nor should we—it would be an intrusion. And I daresay, at times it would be painful and destructive. And perhaps boring. How long would you stay in love with someone you could look through like glass, and see everything? One has to have mystery somewhere ahead left to explore, or why go on?” She crept a hand forward and took Emily’s gently. “I’d hate Thomas to know everything I thought or did—some of the weak and selfish things. I’d rather fight them on my own, and then forget them. I couldn’t do that if he knew—I’d wonder at all the wrong times if he remembered. He’d never find it so easy to forgive me if he knew some of the thoughts in my mind. And there are some things about people it is better not to know, just because if you did, you couldn’t ever completely dismiss them.”

Emily looked up, her face angry. “You think I flirted with Jack Radley, that I led him to expect something!”

“Emily, I never even heard of him until just now.” Charlotte met her eyes frankly. “You are accusing yourself, either because Thomas has said something, or you think he will, or because there is a thread of truth in it.”

“You’re damnably pious about it!” Emily suddenly lost her temper again and snatched her hand away. “You sit there as if you’d never flirted in your life! What about General Ballantyne?
³
You lied to him just to do your detecting—and he adored you! You used that! I never treated anyone like that!”

Charlotte burned at the memory, but there was no time for the self-indulgence of guilt or explanation now. Not that there was an explanation—the charge was true. Emily’s anger hurt, but Charlotte understood, even though her feelings made her want to lash back that it was unfair, and had nothing to do with the problem now. But more powerful than that superficial abrasion was the deep hurt for Emily, the knowledge of a loss more profound than she had ever felt herself. Sometimes when Pitt had followed thieves into the dark alleys of the rookeries, Charlotte had feared for his life till she was cold and sick. But it had never been a reality, something that did not finally end in the overwhelming warmth of his arms and the certainty that, until next time, it was all a mirage, a nightmare vanished with the day. There would be no sunlit awakening for Emily.

“Some people are incredibly vain,” she said aloud. “Could Mr. Radley have imagined you might offer him more than friendship?”

“Not unless he’s a complete fool,” Emily said less harshly. She seemed about to say something more, then lost the words.

“Then we are left with William and Sybilla, or someone else in the family who has a reason we haven’t even guessed at.”

Emily sighed. “It doesn’t make much sense, does it? There must be something very important—and very ugly—that I don’t know. Something I haven’t even imagined. It makes me wonder how much of my safe and pretty life was all a lie.”

Charlotte had met no one on her arrival except Great-aunt Vespasia, and her only briefly. She knew she was going to be given the dressing room where George had slept, partly because it was immediately next to Emily, but also because no one else intended to give up their own accommodations for her. George’s body was laid out, silent and white-wrapped, in one of the old nurserymaids’ rooms in the servants’ wing. Charlotte dreaded lying in the same bed that George had died in only a few hours ago, and yet there was no alternative. The only way in which she could bear it would be in refusing to allow the thought into her mind.

Her few dark clothes suitable for summer mourning had already been unpacked for her. She blushed as she remembered how worn they were, how plain the underwear, even mended in places, and her dresses adapted from last year to look a little less unfashionable. She had only two pair of boots, and neither of them was really new. At another time she would have been angry at the embarrassment of it, and stayed away rather than cause Emily to be ashamed for her. Now there was no time for such petty emotions. She must change from traveling clothes, wash her face and do her hair, and present herself for the evening meal, which was bound to be appallingly grim, perhaps even hostile. But someone in this house was guilty of murder.

On the way downstairs for dinner she had reached the lowest step, past the dark paneling and rows of muddy oil paintings of Marches of the past, when she came almost face to face with an elderly woman in fierce black, jet beads glinting in the gaslight on her neck and bosom. Her gray-white hair was screwed back in a fashion more than twenty years out of date. Her cold blue marble eyes fixed Charlotte with immovable distaste.

“I presume you are Emily’s sister?” She looked her up and down briefly. “Vespasia said she sent for you—although I do think she might have informed us first and invited an opinion before taking matters into her own hands! But perhaps it is just as well you are here. You may be of some use—I’m sure I don’t know what to do for Emily. We’ve never had anything like this in the family.” She regarded Charlotte’s gown and the toes of her boots, which showed beneath the hem. They were not of the quality she was accustomed to. Even the maids had one new pair every season, whether they needed them or not, for the sake of appearances. Charlotte’s had obviously seen several seasons already.

“What’s your name?” she demanded. “I daresay I’ve been told, but I forget.”

“Charlotte Pitt,” Charlotte answered her coldly, her eyebrows raised in question as to who the asker might be herself.

The old lady stared at her irritably. “I am Mrs. March. I presume you are”—she hesitated almost imperceptibly and glanced again at Charlotte’s boots—“coming in to dinner?”

Charlotte swallowed the retort that rose to her lips—this was not the time for self-indulgent rudeness—and forced herself to assume an expression far meeker than she felt. She accepted as though it had been an invitation. “Thank you.”

“Well, you are early!” the old lady snapped. “Don’t you have a timepiece?”

Charlotte felt her cheeks burn; she understood with a passion how so many girls marry anyone who will have them, simply to leave home and put away forever the specter of living out the rest of their lives at the beck and call of an overbearing mother. There must have been a million loveless marriages contracted for just such reasons. Please heaven they did not contract such a mother-in-law instead!

She swallowed hard. “I thought I might have the opportunity of meeting the family first,” she replied quietly. “They are all strangers to me.”

“Quite!” the old lady agreed meaningfully. “I am going to my boudoir. I daresay you will find someone in the withdrawing room.” And with that she walked off, leaving Charlotte to find her own way through the dining room, set for the meal but as yet unoccupied, and through the double doors into the cool, green withdrawing room beyond.