Paragon Walk tp-3

by Anne Perry

  She found Charlotte expecting her, and busy preparing tea. The house was smaller than she had remembered, the carpets older, but it had an air of being lived in that made it pleasant, along with the smell of wax polish and roses. It did not occur to her to wonder whether the roses had been bought specially for her.

  Jemima was sitting on the floor, crooning to herself, as she built a precarious tower out of colored blocks. Thank heaven it seemed as if she were going to look like Charlotte rather than Pitt!

  After the usual greetings, which she meant most sincerely-in fact she was coming to value Charlotte’s friendship more and more lately-she launched straight into news of the Walk.

  “No one else even talks of it!” she said heatedly. “At least not to me! It’s as if it had never happened! It’s like a dinner table where someone has made a personal noise-a moment’s embarrassed silence, then everyone begins to talk again a little bit more loudly, to show that they haven’t noticed.”

  “Don’t the servants talk?” Charlotte was busy with the kettle. “Servants usually do, among themselves. The butler wouldn’t know. Maddock never did.” She recalled Cater Street vividly for a moment. “But ask one of the maids, and they’ll tell you everything.”

  “I never thought of asking the maids,” Emily admitted. It was a stupid oversight. At Cater Street she would have done so without the need for Charlotte to tell her. “Perhaps I’m getting too old now. Mama never knew half as much as we did. They were all afraid of her. I think perhaps my maids are afraid of me. And they’re terrified of Aunt Vespasia!”

  That Charlotte could well believe. Quite apart from Aunt Vespasia’s personality, no social climber was more impressed by a title than the average housemaid. There were the exceptions, of course, those who saw the trivialities and the flaws behind the polished front. But these servants were usually not only perceptive but also awake enough to their own advantage not to allow their perception to be known. And there was always loyalty. A good servant regarded his master or mistress almost as an extension of himself, his property, the mark of his own status in the hierarchy.

  “Yes,” she agreed aloud. “Try your lady’s maid. She’s seen you without your stays or your hair curled. She’s the least likely to be in awe of you.”

  “Charlotte!” Emily banged the milk jug on the bench. “You say the most appalling things!” It was an undignified and uncomfortable reminder, especially of her increasing weight. “In your own way you are as bad as Fulbert!” She drew breath quickly. Then as Jemima began to whimper at the sharp noise, she swung around and picked her up, jiggling her gently till she began to gurgle again. “Charlotte, he’s been going around in the most awful way, letting out little jibes at people, nothing you could exactly say was accusing, but you know from their faces that the people he’s talking about know what he means. And inside himself he’s laughing all the time. I know he is.”

  Charlotte poured the water onto the tea and put on the lid. The food was already on the table.

  “You can put her down now.” She pointed at Jemima. “She’ll be all right. You mustn’t spoil her, or she’ll want holding all the time. Who is he talking about?”

  “Everyone!” Emily obeyed and put Jemima back with her bricks. Charlotte gave her daughter a finger of bread and butter, which she took happily.

  “All of the same things?” Charlotte said in surprise. “That seems a little pointless.”

  They both sat down and waited for tea to brew before eating.

  “No, all different things,” Emily answered. “Even Phoebe! Can you imagine? He implied that Phoebe had something she was ashamed of and one day all the Walk would know. Who could be more innocent than Phoebe? She’s positively silly at times. I’ve often wondered why she doesn’t hit back at Afton. There must be something she could do! On occasions he is quite beastly. I don’t mean he strikes her or anything.” Her faced paled. “At least, good heavens, I hope not!”

  Charlotte chilled as she remembered him, his cold, probing eyes, the impression he gave of a bitter humor, and a contempt.

  “If it’s anybody in the Walk,” she said with feeling. “I sincerely hope it’s him-and that he is caught!”

  “So do I,” Emily agreed. “But somehow I don’t think it is. Fulbert is perfectly sure it isn’t. He keeps saying so, and with great pleasure, as if he knew something horrid that amused him.”

  “Perhaps he does.” Charlotte frowned, trying to hide the thought, and failing. It would come out in words. “Perhaps he knows who it is-and it is not Afton.”

  “It’s too disgusting to think of,” Emily shook her head. “It will be some servant or other, almost certainly someone hired for the Dilbridges’ party. All those strange coachmen milling about, with nothing to do but wait. No doubt one of them refreshed himself too much, and, when he was in liquor, he lost control. Perhaps in the dark he thought Fanny was a maid, or something. And then, when he discovered she wasn’t, he had to stab her to keep her from giving him away. Coachmen do carry knives quite often, you know, to cut harness if it gets caught, or get stones out of horses’ hooves if they pick them up, and all sorts of things.” She warmed to her own excellent reasoning. “And after all, none of the men who live in the Walk, I mean none of us, would be carrying a knife anyway, would we?”

  Charlotte stared at her, one of her carefully cut sandwiches in her hand.

  “Not unless they meant to kill Fanny anyway.”

  Emily felt a sickness that had nothing to do with her condition.

  “Why on earth would anyone want to do that? If it had been Jessamyn, I could understand. Everyone is jealous of her because she is always so beautiful. You never see her put out, or flustered. Or even Selena, but no one could have hated Fanny-I mean-there wasn’t enough of her to hate!”

  Charlotte stared at her plate.

  “I don’t know.”

  Emily leaned forward.

  “What about Thomas? What does he know? He must have told you, since it concerns us.”

  “I don’t think he knows anything,” Charlotte said unhappily. “Except that it doesn’t seem to have been any of the regular servants. They can all pretty well account for themselves. And none of them have a past trouble he can find. They wouldn’t, would they? Or they wouldn’t be employed in Paragon Walk!”

  When Emily returned home, she wanted to talk to George, but she did not know how to begin. Aunt Vespasia was out, and George was sitting in the library with his feet up, the doors open to the garden, and a book upside down on his stomach.

  He looked up as soon as she came in and put the book aside.

  “How was Charlotte?” he asked immediately.

  “Well.” She was a little surprised. He had always liked Charlotte, but in a rather distant, absent way. After all, he very seldom saw her. Why the keenness today?

  “Did she say anything about Pitt?” he went on, moving to sit upright, his eyes on her face.

  So it was not Charlotte. It was the murder and the Walk he was thinking about. She felt that intense moment of reality when you know a blow is coming but it has not yet landed. The pain is not quite there, but you understand it as surely as if it were. The brain has already accepted it. He was afraid.

  It was not that she thought he had killed Fanny; even in her worst moments she had never believed that. She did not know or sense in him the capability for such violence or, to be honest, for the fierceness of emotion to ignite such a train of events. If she were honest, he was not stirred by great tides. His worst sins would be indolence, the unintentional selfishness of a child. His temper was easy; he liked to please. Pain distressed him; he would go to much trouble to avoid his own and, as much as he had energy for, that of others. He had always possessed worldly goods without the need to strive for them, and his generosity frequently bordered on the profligate. He had given Emily everything she wanted and taken pleasure in doing so.

  No, she would not believe he could have killed Fanny- unless it were in the heat of panic, and he would
have given himself away immediately, terrified as a child.

  The blow she felt was that he had done something else that Pitt would uncover in searching for the killer, some thoughtless gratification, not intended to hurt Emily, just a pleasure taken because it was there, and he liked it. Selena-or someone else? It hardly mattered who.

  Funny, when she had married him, she had seen all that so clearly and accepted it. Why did it matter now? Was it her condition? She had been warned it might make her oversensitive, weepy. Or was it that she had come to love George more than she had expected to?

  He was staring at her, waiting for her to answer the question.

  “No.” She avoided his eyes. “It seems as if most of the servants are accounted for, but that’s all.”

  “Then what in hell is he doing?” George exploded, his voice sharp and high. “It’s damn near a fortnight! Why hasn’t he caught him? Even if he can’t arrest the man and prove it, he ought at least to know who it is by now!”

  She was sorry for him because he was frightened, and sorry for herself. She was also angry because it was his stupid thoughtlessness that had given him cause to fear Pitt, self-indulgence he had had no need to take.

  “I only saw Charlotte,” she said a little stiffly, “not Thomas. And, even if I had seen him, I could hardly have asked him what he was doing. I don’t imagine it is easy to find a murderer when you have no idea where to begin, and no one can prove where they were.”

  “Dammit!” he said helplessly. “I was miles away from here! I didn’t come home until it was all over, finished. I couldn’t have done anything or seen anything.”

  “Then what are you upset about?” She still did not face him.

  There was a moment’s silence. When he spoke again his voice was calmer, tired.

  “I don’t like being investigated. I don’t like half London being asked about me, and everyone knowing there is a rapist and murderer in my street. I don’t like the thought that he’s still loose, whoever he is. And, above all, I don’t like the thought that it could be one of my neighbors, someone I’ve known for years, probably even liked.”

  That was fair. Of course, he was hurt. He would have been callous, even stupid, not to have been. She turned and smiled at him at last.

  “We all hate it,” she said softly. “And we’re all frightened. But it might take a long time yet. If he’s one of the coachmen or footmen, he won’t be easy to find, and if it’s one of us-he will have all sorts of ways of hiding himself. After all, if we’ve lived with him all these years and have no idea, how can Thomas find him in a few days?”

  He did not reply. Indeed, there was no argument to make.

  Still, regardless of tragedy, there were certain social obligations to be honored. One did not abandon all discipline simply because there had been loss, still less if the loss had been accompanied by scandalous circumstances. It would be unseemly to be observed at parties quite so soon, but afternoon calls, discreetly made, were an entirely different matter. Vespasia, prompted by interest and justified by duty, called upon Phoebe Nash.

  She had intended to convey sympathy. She was genuinely sorry for Fanny’s death, although the idea of dying did not appall her as it had in her youth. Now she was resigned to it, as one is to going home at the end of a long and splendid party. Eventually it must happen, and, perhaps by the time it did, one would be ready for it. Though doubtless that could hardly have been the case for Fanny, poor child.

  Her real sympathy for Phoebe, however, was for her misfortune in having made an excessively trying marriage. Any woman obliged to live under one roof with Afton Nash was deserving at the least of commiseration.

  She found the visit more trying to her patience. Phoebe was more than ordinarily incoherent. She seemed forever on the edge of some confidence which never actually formed itself into words. Vespasia tried concerned interest and appreciative silence in turn, but on every occasion Phoebe dived off into some altogether unrelated subject at the final moment, twisting her handkerchief in her lap until the thing was not fit to stuff a pincushion.

  Vespasia left as soon as duty was fulfilled, but outside in the blistering sun she walked very slowly and began to reflect on what might be causing Phoebe such distraction of mind. The poor woman seemed unable to keep her wits on anything for more than a moment.

  Was she so overcome with grief for Fanny? They had never appeared especially close. Vespasia could not recall more than a dozen occasions when they had gone calling together, and Phoebe had never accompanied her to any balls or soirees, or held any parties for her, even though this was her first Season.

  Then a new and very unpleasant thought occurred to her, so ugly she stopped in the middle of the path, quite unaware of being stared at by the gardener’s boy.

  Was Phoebe aware of something from which she guessed who it was that had raped and murdered Fanny? Had she seen something, heard something? Or more likely, was it some episode remembered from the past that had led her to understand now what had happened, and with whom?

  Surely the idiot woman would speak to the police. Discretion was all very well. Society would disintegrate without it, and everyone naturally disliked having anything to do with something as distasteful as the police. Still, one must recognize the inevitable. To fight against it only made the final submission the more painful-and obvious.

  And why should Phoebe be prepared to protect any man guilty of such a horrendous crime? Fear? It hardly showed sense. The only safety lay in sharing such a secret, so it could not die with you!

  Love? Unlikely. Certainly not for Afton.

  Duty? Duty to him, or to the Nash family, perhaps even duty to her own social class, paralysis in the face of scandal. To be the victim was one thing-it could be overlooked in time-to be the offender, never!

  Vespasia started to walk again, head down, frowning. All this was speculation; the reason could be anything, even as simple as the dread of investigation. Perhaps she had a lover?

  But it was beyond doubt in her mind now that Phoebe was profoundly frightened.

  To call upon Grace Dilbridge was unavoidable, but it was a dreary task and consisted of the usual almost ritual commiserations over Frederick’s bizarre friends and their incessant parties and the indignities to which Grace felt herself subjected, as she was excluded from gambling and whatever else unmentionable went on in the garden room. Vespasia rather overdid the vehemence of her sympathy and excused herself, just as Selena Montague was arriving, brilliant-eyed and quivering with life. She heard Paul Alaric’s name mentioned before she was quite out of the door and smiled to herself at the obviousness of youth.

  It was necessary, of course, to call upon Jessamyn. Vespasia found her very composed and already out of total black. Her hair shimmered in the sun through the French windows, and her skin had the delicate bloom of apple blossom.

  “How good of you, Lady Cumming-Gould,” she said politely. “I’m sure you would like some refreshment-tea or lemonade?”

  “Tea, if you please,” Vespasia accepted, sitting down. “I still find it pleasant, even in the heat.”

  Jessamyn rang the bell and gave orders to the maid. After she had gone, Jessamyn walked gracefully over toward the windows.

  “I wish it would cool down.” She stared out at the dry grass and dusty leaves. “This summer seems to be going on forever.”

  Vespasia was so practiced in the art of small conversation that she had an appropriate remark for any circumstance, but, faced with Jessamyn’s composure and delicate, stiff body, she knew she was in the presence of powerful emotion, and yet she did not fathom precisely what it was. It seemed far more complex than simple grief. Or perhaps it was Jessamyn herself who was complex.

  Jessamyn turned and smiled. “Prophecy?” she inquired.

  Vespasia knew immediately what she meant. It was the police investigation she was thinking of, not the summer weather. Jessamyn was not a person with whom to be evasive; she was far too clever, and too strong.

  “Y
ou may not have intended it as such when you spoke.” Vespasia looked straight back at her. “But I dare say it will be the case. On the other hand, summer may slide quite imperceptibly into autumn, and we shall hardly notice the difference until one morning there is a frost, and the first leaves fall.”

  “And it is all forgotten,” Jessamyn came back from the window and sat down. “Just a tragedy from the past that was never fully explained. For a while we shall be more careful about the manservants we hire, and then presently even that will pass.”

  “It will be replaced by other storms,” Vespasia corrected. “There must always be something to talk about. Someone will make or lose a fortune; there will be a society marriage; someone will take a lover, or lose one.”

  Jessamyn’s hand tightened on the embroidered arm of the sofa.

  “Probably, but I prefer not to discuss other people’s romantic affairs. I find them a quite private matter, and not my concern.”

  For a moment Vespasia was surprized, then she recalled that she never had heard Jessamyn gossiping of loves or marriages. She could only remember conversation of fashion, parties, and even on rare occasions matters of weight like business or politics. Jessamyn’s father had been a man of considerable property, but naturally it had all gone to her younger brother, since he was the male. It had been said at the time the old man died, years ago, that the boy had inherited the money, and Jessamyn the brains. He was a young fool, so far as she heard. Jessamyn had the better part.

  The tea came, and they swapped polite reminiscences of the previous Season and speculations as to what the next turn of fashion might be.

  Presently she took her leave and met Fulbert at the gateway to the drive. He bowed with amused grace, and they exchanged greetings, hers decidedly cool. She had had enough visiting and was about to continue on her way home when he spoke.

  “You’ve been calling upon Jessamyn.”

  “Obviously!” she replied tartly. Really, he was becoming fatuous.

  “Most entertaining, isn’t it?” His smile widened. “Everyone is rushing back to their own private sins, to make sure they are still covered. If your policeman, Pitt, were the least interested in voyeurism, he would find this better than a peepshow. It is rather like undoing one of those Chinese boxes; each comes apart in a different way, and nothing is what it seems.”