Rutland Place (10 page)

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.”

C
HARLOTTE 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.”