by Anne Perry
“What has that got to do with it?” Charlotte asked, trying to look as if she were genuinely enquiring.
“What? What did you say?” The old lady was selectively deaf, and she was now choosing to make Charlotte repeat the remark in the hope it would cow her, or at worst leave time for her to think of a crushing answer.
“I asked you what that had to do with it,” Charlotte repeated with a smile.
“What has to do with what?” Grandmama demanded angrily. “What are you talking about, girl? Sometimes you are full of the most arrant nonsense. Comes from mixing with the lower classes who have no education, don’t know how to express themselves. I told you that would happen. I told your mother also—but does she ever listen to me? You are going to have to do something about her.”
“There is nothing I can do, Grandmama,” Charlotte said patiently. “I cannot make her listen to you if she does not wish to.”
“Now listen to me, you stupid girl. Really, sometimes you would try the patience of a saint.”
“I had not thought of you as a saint, Grandmama.”
“Don’t be impertinent!” The old lady flicked her stick sharply at Charlotte’s legs, but she was just too far away for it to do anything more than catch her skirts with a thwack.
“Is she expected home soon?” Charlotte asked.
The old lady’s faint eyebrows shot up almost to her gray hair.
“Do you imagine she tells me that?” Her voice was shrill with indignation. “She comes and goes all hours of the day—and night, for all I know! Dressed up like something out of a melodrama herself, stupid creature. In my day widows wore black—and knew their place. This is all totally indecent. Your father, poor man, hasn’t been dead five years yet, and here is Caroline careering around London like a giddy twenty-year-old trying to make a marriage in her coming-out year, before it is too late.”
“Did she say anything?”
“About what? She never tells me anything important. Wouldn’t dare, I should think.”
“About when she will be home.” Charlotte kept her voice civil with difficulty.
“And if she had, what do you suppose that is worth, girl? Nothing! Nothing at all.”
“What was it anyway?”
“Oh—that she had gone to the milliner, and would be back in half an hour. Stuff and nonsense. She could be anywhere.”
“Thank you, Grandmama. You look very well.” And indeed she did. She was bristling with energy, her skin was pink and her black, boot button eyes sharply alive. Nothing revived her like a quarrel.
“You need spectacles,” the old lady said viciously. “I am in pain—all over. I am an old woman and need care, and a life without worry or distress.”
“You would die of boredom without something to be offended by,” Charlotte said with a candor she would not have dared a few years ago, certainly not when her father was alive.
The old lady snorted and glared at her. She only remembered to be deaf when it was too late.
“What? What did you say? Your enunciation is getting very slipshod, girl!”
Charlotte smiled, and a moment later heard her mother’s steps in the hall outside. She rose to her feet, excused herself briefly, and leaving the old lady complaining about being excluded from everything, she arrived in the hallway just as her mother was halfway up the stairs.
“Mama!”
Caroline turned, her face alight with pleasure.
“Mama.” Charlotte started up the stairs towards her. Caroline wore a very beautiful hat, its broad brim decorated with feathers and silk flowers. It was lush, extravagant, and totally feminine. Charlotte would have adored such a hat herself, but then she had nowhere to which she could wear it anyway.
“Yes?” Caroline said eagerly. “Have you heard something?”
“Not a great deal, I am afraid.” She felt guilty for raising hopes ever so little, and an intense desire to protect such an openness to pain. “But at least it is a place to begin.”
“There is something we can do?” Caroline turned on the step as if to come down already. “What have you heard? From whom—Thomas?”
“Aunt Vespasia, but it is not a great deal, really.”
“Never mind! What can we do to help?”
“Learn more about them, the people involved, in case there is some other crime, or personal secret, as you suspected, which someone feared Judge Stafford might uncover.”
“Oh, excellent,” Caroline said quickly. “Where shall we begin?”
“Perhaps with Devlin O’Neil,” Charlotte suggested.
“But what about Mrs. Stafford, and Mr. Pryce?” Caroline’s face was pinched with concern, and a certain guilt because she was wishing them into such tragedy.
“We don’t know them,” Charlotte pointed out reasonably. “Let us begin where we can. At least Miss Macaulay or Mr. Fielding may help us there.”
“Yes—yes, of course.” Caroline looked Charlotte up and down. “You are dressed very becomingly. Are you ready to leave now?”
“If you think we may go without first obtaining an invitation?”
“Oh yes, I am sure Miss Macaulay would receive us if we go this morning. They rehearse in the afternoons, and that would be inconvenient.”
“Do they?” Charlotte said with surprise and a touch of sarcasm. She had not realized Caroline was so well acquainted with the daily habits of actors and actresses. With difficulty she refrained from remarking on it.
Caroline looked away and began to make arrangements, calling to the footman to send for the carriage again, and informing the staff that she would be out for luncheon.
Several of the cast of the theater company rented a large house in Pimlico, sharing it among them. The manager, Mr. Inigo Passmore, was an elderly gentleman who had been a “star” in his day, but now preferred to take only character parts. His wife also had been an actress, but she seldom appeared on the stage these days, enjoying a place of honor and considerable power, directing the wardrobe, properties and, when it was required, music. They had the ground floor of the house, and thus the garden.
Joshua Fielding had the rooms at the front of the next floor, and a young actress of great promise, Clio Farber, the rooms at the back. The third floor was occupied by Tamar Macaulay and her daughter.
“I didn’t know she had a child,” Charlotte said in surprise as Caroline was remarking on the arrangements to her during their carriage ride from Cater Street to Pimlico. “I didn’t know she was married. Is her husband in the theater?”
“Don’t be naive,” Caroline said crisply, staring straight ahead of her.
“I beg your pardon? Oh.” Charlotte was embarrassed. “You mean she is not married? I’m sorry. I did not realize.”
“It would be tactful not to mention it,” Caroline said dryly.
“Of course. Who else lives there?”
“I don’t know. A couple of ingenues in the attic.”
“A couple of what?”
“Very young actresses who take the part of innocent girls.”
“Oh.”
They said no more until they arrived at Claverton Street in Pimlico, and alighted.
The door was opened to them by a girl of about sixteen, who was pretty in a fashion far more colorful than that of any parlormaid Charlotte had encountered before. Added to which she did not wear the usual dark stuff dress and white cap and apron, but a rather flattering dress of pink, and an apron that looked as if it had been put on hastily. There was no cap on her thick, dark hair.
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Ellison,” she said cheerfully. “You’ll be to see Mr. Fielding, I daresay. Or is it Miss Macaulay? I think they’re both at home.” She held the door wide for them.
“Thank you, Miranda,” Caroline said, going up the steps and into the hallway. Charlotte followed immediately behind her, startled by the familiarity with which the girl greeted Caroline.
“This is my daughter, Charlotte Pitt,” Caroline introduced her. “Miranda Passmore. Mr. Passmore is
the manager of the company.”
“How do you do, Miranda,” Charlotte replied, hastily collecting her wits and hoping it was the correct thing to say to someone in such an extraordinary position. Nowhere else had she met a haphazard parlormaid who was the daughter of a manager of anything at all.
Miranda smiled broadly. Perhaps she had met the situation many times before.
“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt. Please go on up. Just knock on the door when you get there.”
Charlotte and Caroline obeyed, crossing the hall in which Charlotte at least would have liked to have remained for several minutes. Like the room in the theater where she had been too busy to look, it was entirely decorated with old theater posters, and she saw wonderful names that conjured images of limelight and drama, ringing voices and the thrill of passion and drama: George Conquest, Beerbohm Tree, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a marvelous, towering figure of Sir Henry Irving as Hamlet, and another of Sarah Bernhardt in magnificently dramatic pose. There were others she had no time to see, and she followed Caroline reluctantly.
On the first landing were more posters, these for the Gilbert and Sullivan operas Iolanthe and Patience and The Yeomen of the Guard. Caroline was uninterested; not only had she seen them before, but she was intent upon her mission, and drama behind the footlights held no magic for her in comparison. She hesitated only a moment on the first landing, and then continued on up the steps to the second. This was decorated only with one large poster of the dynamic and sensitive face of Sarah Bernhardt.
She knocked on the door, and after a few moments it was opened by Tamar Macaulay herself. Charlotte had expected her to look different in the harsher light of morning, and with no performance in the immediate future. But on the contrary she looked startlingly the same. Her hair was dead black, without the usual touches and lights of brown that even the darkest English hair so often possesses, and her eyes were deep and vivid with a flash of amusement in spite of the tension and the awareness of pain. She was dressed very plainly, but instead of being dull it merely emphasized the drama of her face.
“Good morning, Mrs. Ellison, Mrs. Pitt. How pleasant to see you.”
“Good morning, Miss Macaulay,” Caroline replied. “Forgive my coming without warning, and bringing my daughter with me, but I feel the matter is important, or may be, and there is little time to fritter away.”
“Then you had better come in.” Tamar stepped back to allow them to pass her and go into the large, open room. It was furnished as a sitting room, although perhaps it had originally been a bedroom when the house was occupied by a single family. There was an interesting mixture of styles. On one side stood an old Chinese silk screen which had once been of great beauty, now faded, its wooden frame scratched in places, but it still held an elegance that gave it charm and a comfortable grace. There was a Russian samovar on a side table, Venetian glass in the cabinet, a French ormolu clock on the mantel shelf above the fireplace, and a late Georgian mahogany table of total simplicity and cleanness of line which to Charlotte was the loveliest thing in the room. The colors were pale, creams and greens, and full of light.
Caroline was endeavoring to explain their errand.
Charlotte’s eyes continued to wander around, looking for evidence of the child Caroline had mentioned. There was a casual untidiness, as of a place which is the center of the life in a house, a shawl laid down, an open book, a pile of playbills and a script on a side table, cushions in a heap, disordered. Then she saw the doll, fallen off the sofa and half hidden by the flowered frill. She felt a sudden and unreasonable sense of sadness, so sharp it caught her breath and her throat ached. A child without a father, a woman alone. Was it conceivable Tamar Macaulay had truly loved Kingsley Blaine? Or was that just a fancy, leaping ahead of fact? She had no reason to suppose he was the father. It could be anyone—even Joshua Fielding. Please heaven, not him. Caroline would find it intolerable.
“Of course,” Tamar was saying. “Please sit down, Mrs. Pitt. Thank you for concerning yourself in the matter. We have struggled long enough with it alone, and now it looks as if it has become more dangerous, we may badly need help. It appears someone has been frightened, and reacted with violence—again.” Her face was bleak.
Charlotte had not heard the conversation, but she guessed at its meaning. She accepted the invitation to sit.
“We were there when Judge Stafford died,” she said with the shadow of a smile. “It is natural we should feel an involvement in finding the person who killed him, and being absolutely sure it is the right person, and not a miscarriage of justice.”
The expression in Tamar’s face was a mixture of irony, anger and pain, and a bitter humor. If there was still hope in it, it was beyond Charlotte’s vision to see it. How had this woman kept courage all these years, after such a fearful bereavement? The death of someone you know is always hard, but public disgrace, the hatred, the slow torture of the person by the law is immeasurably worse. And then there was the knowledge that at a certain hour of a set day, they would come to take that person, still young, still in health, and break his neck on the end of a rope, deliberately, to satisfy a cheering crowd! How must he feel the night before? Does the darkness seem endless—or only too short? Could one dread daylight more?
Tamar was staring at her.
“Are you thinking of Aaron?” she said with total bluntness.
Charlotte was taken aback for a moment, then she realized how much easier it would be to speak frankly rather than skirt around such an agonizing subject, seeking a way to convey the meaning without actually using the words, and understand what someone meant beneath the layers of euphemisms.
“Yes.” She allowed the shadow of a smile across her face.
“You allow the possibility there was an injustice?” Tamar asked.
“Of course,” Charlotte agreed warmly. “I have known for a certainty of innocent men who would have been hanged but for chance. It could easily happen, and I am sure it has at times. I wish it were impossible, but it is not.”
“That is a dangerous thought,” Tamar said wryly. “People do not like it. They cannot live with the idea that we may be guilty of such a mistake. It is much better to convince yourself he was guilty and go to sleep.”
“I did not have any part in it, Miss Macaulay,” Charlotte pointed out. “I have no guilt in thinking he may have been innocent, only grief. The guilt will come if I do not do what I can now to find out the truth, both of the death of Kingsley Blaine and the death of Judge Stafford.”
Tamar smiled openly for the first time. It was a gesture full of charm, lighting her face and changing its whole aspect.
“What an extraordinary creature you are. But then I suppose you would have to be, to have married a policeman.”
Charlotte was surprised. She had not realized Tamar would have any appreciation of her affairs, or what they involved.
“Oh—Joshua told me,” Tamar explained with amusement. “I gather your mother told him.” She glanced around and saw that Caroline had left them. “I imagine that is where she has gone now. Possibly tact—or …” She lifted her slight shoulders expressively, but said nothing more.
Charlotte had a moment of discomfort, wondering if Caroline were making a fool of herself, being too bold, but there was no way in which she could retrieve it now without making her situation even worse. There was nothing she could profitably do but pursue the case.
“Do you know anything about the death of Kingsley Blaine that did not come out in court?” she asked bluntly. “Anything you told Judge Stafford which could have caused him to reopen the matter?”
Tamar shook her head. “Nothing that wasn’t in the appeal. The medical evidence was shaky. Humbert Yardley, the examiner, began by saying that the wound which killed Kingsley …” Her face tightened, the soft skin around her mouth almost white. She kept her voice level with an effort. “… Was caused by something longer than a farrier’s nail. Then later he said it could have been an unusual nail.”
“Was such a nail found?”
“No, but the police said he could have disposed of it anywhere—down the nearest drain. It was only the uncertainty on which we raised the appeal. We tried other things; the coat which no one found, the necklace. But they were explained away. They said the coat was picked up by a tramp, and that I kept the necklace.”
“Didn’t the flower seller also change her mind?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes—but only before the trial, not once they put her on the witness stand. God help her, she was only a simple person, and once it was fixed in her mind, she was too afraid of the police to argue.”
“Miss Macaulay”—Charlotte looked at her gently, trying to convey in her face that she was asking only because she had to—“apart from love for your brother, why do you believe, in the face of so much, that he was innocent?”
“Because Aaron had no reason to kill Kingsley,” Tamar replied, her eyes brilliant, wry, candid. “They said that Kingsley had seduced me and was playing with my affections, and Aaron killed him in revenge for me. But that was nonsense. Kingsley loved me, and was going to marry me.” She said it quite quietly, as if it were a simple matter of fact and she did not care if Charlotte believed her or not.
Charlotte was shaken with total surprise, and yet her immediate reaction was not disbelief. Had Tamar been more emotional, more urgent to convince her, she might have doubted, but her simple statement, as of something long familiar to her, left her with no instinct to fight against it.
“But he was already married,” she said, not to disprove it, but to seek explanation. “What was he going to do about that?”
Tamar bit her lip, for the first time shame in her face. “I did not know that then.” She lowered her eyes. “To begin with I did not take him seriously.” She shrugged. “One doesn’t. Young men with time to spare and a roving eye come to the theater in hundreds. They only want a little entertainment, a little excitement, and then to go home to their wives as society expects of them. It was months before I could believe Kingsley was different. By then I had learned to love him, and it was too late to alter my feelings.” She looked up quickly, her expression defensive. “Of course you will say I should have asked if he was married, and so I should. But I didn’t want to know.”