Paragon Walk

by Anne Perry

  Why? There was nothing she wanted so much as to talk, even if it was about nothing, simply to feel that he wished to be with her. He could not possibly know that the solution would be all right, that it would not go on hurting, and yet she wanted him to say so, to tell her all the comforting words. Then she could repeat them all to herself over and over, till they drove out reason and doubt.

  He was her husband. It was his child that made her feel so tired and lumpy and strangely excited. How could he sit there a few feet away and be totally unaware that she wanted him to speak, to say something foolish and optimistic to silence all the clamor inside her.

  “George!”

  He affected not to have heard.

  “George!” Her voice was growing higher and there was a thread of hysteria in it.

  He looked up. At first his brown eyes were innocent, as if his thoughts were still on the paper. Then slowly they clouded, and understanding could not be denied. He knew she was demanding something.

  “Yes?”

  Now she did not know what to say. Reassurance you have to ask for is no reassurance at all. It would have been better if she had said nothing. Her brain told her that, but her tongue would not keep still.

  “They haven’t found Fulbert yet.” It was not what she was thinking, but it was something to say. She could not ask him why he was afraid, what it was that Pitt might find out. Would it destroy her marriage? Not anything like divorce, no one divorced, at least, no one decent. But she had seen any number of empty marriages, polite arrangements to share a house and a name. When she had first determined to marry George, she had thought that friendship and acceptance would be enough—but they were not. She had grown used to affection, to shared laughter, little understanding secrets, long, comfortable silences, even habits that became part of the security and rhythm of life.

  Now all this was sliding away, like the tide going out, leaving stretches of empty shingle.

  “I know,” he replied, with a little frown of puzzlement. She knew he did not realize why she had made such an obvious and silly remark. She had to say something more to justify herself.

  “Do you think he’s run away completely?” she asked. “Like to France, or something?”

  “Why ever should he?”

  “If he killed Fanny!”

  His face fell a little. Obviously he had not really considered that.

  “He wouldn’t kill Fanny,” he said firmly. “I should think he’s probably dead himself. Maybe he went into town to gamble or something, and had an accident. People do sometimes.”

  “Oh, don’t be so stupid!” At last she lost her temper completely. It surprised and alarmed her that she should so suddenly snap. She had never dared speak to him like that before.

  He looked startled and the paper slid to the floor.

  Now she was a little frightened. What had she done? He was staring at her, his brown eyes very wide. She wanted to apologize, but her mouth was dry and her voice would not come. She took a very deep breath.

  “Perhaps you had better go upstairs and lie down,” he said after a moment. He spoke quite quietly. “You’ve had a very heavy day. Parties like that are exhausting. Maybe in this heat it was too much for you.”

  “I’m not sick!” she said furiously. Then to her horror the tears started to run down her face, and she found herself crying like a silly child.

  There was a second of pain in George’s face, then suddenly the solution washed over him with a wave of relief. Of course, it was her condition. She saw it in him as clearly as if he had spoken it. It was not true! But she could not explain. She allowed him to help her to her feet and gently out into the hallway and up the stairs. She was still boiling, words falling over themselves inside her, and dying before she could make them into sentences. But she could not control the tears, and it was warm to feel his arm around her, and so much better not to have to make all the effort herself.

  But when Charlotte called the next morning, largely to inquire how she was after the soiree, Emily was in an unusually sharp temper. She had not slept well and, lying awake in her bed, had thought she had heard George moving around in the next room. More than once she considered getting up and going to him, to ask him why he was pacing, what worried him so much.

  But she did not yet feel she knew him well enough to take the rather forward action of going into his room at two o’clock in the morning. She knew he would consider it ingenuous, even immodest. And she was not even sure she wanted to know. Perhaps most of all she was afraid he would lie to her, and she would see through the lies and be haunted by truths she only guessed at.

  So when Charlotte appeared looking slender and fresh, her hair shining, unbearably cool, although she was wearing only wash-cotton, Emily was in no mood to receive her graciously.

  “I suppose Thomas still knows nothing?” she said acidly.

  Charlotte looked surprised, and Emily knew what she was doing, but still could not hold her tongue.

  “He hasn’t found Fulbert,” Charlotte answered, “if that’s what you mean?”

  “I don’t really care whether he finds Fulbert or not,” Emily snapped. “If he’s dead, I can’t see that it matters a lot where he is.”

  Charlotte kept her patience, which only irritated Emily the more. Charlotte holding her tongue really was the last straw.

  “We don’t know that he is dead,” Charlotte pointed out. “Or, if he is, that he did not take his own life.”

  “And then hide his body afterward?” Emily said with withering contempt.

  “Thomas says that many bodies in the river are never found.” Charlotte was still being reasonable. “Or, if they are, they are unrecognizable.”

  Emily’s imagination conjured revolting pictures, bloated corpses with their faces eaten away, staring up through murky water. It made her feel sick.

  “You are perfectly disgusting!” She glared at Charlotte. “You and Thomas may find such conversation acceptable over the tea table, but I do not!”

  “You have not offered me any tea,” Charlotte said with a ghost of a smile.

  “If you imagine I shall, after that, you are mistaken!” Emily snapped.

  “You had better have something yourself, and try something sweet with it—”

  “If one more person makes another polite reference to my condition, I shall swear!” Emily said fiercely. “I do not want to sit down, or take a refreshing drink, or anything else!”

  Charlotte was beginning at last to become a little acid herself.

  “What you want and what you need are not always the same thing,” she said smartly. “And losing your temper will not help anything. In fact, you will say things you will wish afterward you had not. And if anyone should know the folly of that, I should! You were always the one who could think before you spoke. For goodness’ sake, don’t lose that now when you need it the most.”

  Emily stared at her, coldness in the pit of her stomach.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded. “Explain what you mean!”

  Charlotte stood perfectly still.

  “I mean that, if you let your fears drive you into suspicion now, or allow George to think you do not trust him, you will never be able to replace what you have destroyed, no matter how much you may regret it afterward, or how trivial it may all seem when you know the truth. And you will have to prepare yourself that we may never know who killed her. Not all crimes are solved.”

  Emily sat down sharply. It was appalling to think they might never know, that they might spend the rest of their lives looking at each other and wondering. Every affection, every quiet evening, every simple conversation, offer of company or help, would be marred by the dark stain of uncertainty, the sudden thought—could it have been he who killed Fanny, or she who knew about it?

  “They’ll have to find out!” she insisted, refusing to accept it. “Someone will know, if he is really one of us. Some wife, some brother, some friend will find a clue!”

  “Not necessarily.” Char
lotte looked at her with a little shake of her head. “If he has been secret so long, why not forever? Perhaps someone does know. But they do not have to say so, maybe not even to themselves. We do not always recognize things, when we do not wish to.”

  “Rape?” Emily breathed the word incredulously. “Why in the name of heaven would any woman protect a man who had—”

  Charlotte’s face tightened.

  “All kinds of reasons,” she replied. “Who wants to believe their husband, or brother, is a rapist, or a murderer? You can prevent yourself from seeing that forever, if you want to badly enough. Or convince yourself that it will never happen again, and it was not really his fault. You’ve seen for yourself, half the people in the Walk have already made up their minds that Fanny was a loose woman, that she invited her own fate, somehow she deserved it—”

  “Stop it!” Emily hauled herself up and faced Charlotte angrily. “You’re not the only one who can tell the truth about anything, you know! You’re so smug, sometimes you make me sick! We’re not all hypocrites here in the Walk, just because we have time and money and dress well, any more than all of you are in your grubbly little street, just because you work all day! You have your lies and your conveniences as well!”

  Charlotte was very pale, and instantly Emily regretted it. She wanted to put her hands out, put her arms around Charlotte, but she did not dare. She stared at her, frightened. Charlotte was the only person she could talk to, whose love was unquestioned, with whom she could share the secret fears and wants in every woman’s heart.

  “Charlotte?”

  Charlotte stood still.

  “Charlotte?” she tried again. “Charlotte, I’m sorry!”

  “I know,” Charlotte said very quietly. “You want to know the truth about George, and you’re afraid of it.”

  Time stopped. For motionless seconds Emily hesitated. Then she asked the question she had to ask.

  “Do you know? Did Thomas tell you?”

  Charlotte had never been any good at lying. Even though she was the elder, she had never been able to dupe Emily, whose sharp, practiced eye had always seen the reluctance, the indecision before the lie.

  “You do.” Emily answered her own question. “Tell me.”

  Charlotte frowned.

  “It’s all over.”

  “Tell me,” Emily repeated.

  “Wouldn’t it be better—”

  Emily just waited. They both knew that truth, whatever it was, was better than the exhaustion of sweeping from hope to fear, the elaborate effort to deceive oneself, the indulging in awful imagination.

  “Was it Selena?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Now that she knew, it was not so bad. Perhaps she had known before, but simply refused to say so to herself. Was that really all George was afraid of? How silly. How very silly. She would put a stop to it, of course. She would take that smug look off Selena’s face and replace it with something far less satisfied. She was not sure how yet, or even if she would allow George to know that she knew about it. She played with the idea of letting him go on worrying, allowing the fear to eat into him sufficiently so that he would not in a hurry forget how it hurt. Perhaps she would never tell him that she knew?

  Charlotte was looking at her, her eyes anxious, watching for her reaction. She turned back to the moment, smiling.

  “Thank you,” she said composedly, almost cheerfully. “Now I know what to do.”

  “Emily—”

  “Don’t worry.” She put her hand out and touched Charlotte, quite softly. “I shan’t have a quarrel. In fact, I don’t think I shall do anything at all, just yet.”

  Pitt continued his questioning in Paragon Walk. Forbes had dug up some surprizing information about Diggory Nash. Yet he should not have been surprized, and he was angry with himself, for having allowed his prejudice to form his opinions for him. He had looked at the outward grace, the comfort, and the money in the Walk and assumed that, because they all lived in the same manner, came to London for the Season, frequented the same clubs and parties, that they were all the same underneath their uniformly fashionable clothes, and behind their uniformly mannered behavior.

  Diggory Nash was a gambler with wealth he had not earned, and a flirt, almost by habit, with any woman who was pleasant and available. But he was also generous. Pitt was startled and ashamed of his own facile judgment when Forbes told him that Diggory subsidized a house that gave shelter to homeless women. God knew how many pregnant service girls were thrown out of sober and upright employment every year, to wander the streets and end up in sweatshops, workhouses or brothels. How unforeseen that Diggory Nash, of all people, should have given a meager protection to a few of them. An old wound of conscience speaking, perhaps? Or a simple pity?

  Either way, it was with a feeling embarrassment that Pitt waited in the morning room for Jessamyn. She could not know what his assumptions had been, but he knew himself, and that was enough to tie his usually easy tongue and to give him a rare self-consciousness. It was no salve to his mind that it was perfectly possible Jessamyn had no idea of Diggory’s actions.

  When she came in, he was amazed again at the emotional impact of her beauty. It was far more than a mere matter of color or the symmetry of brow and cheek. It was something in the curve of the mouth, the challenging blue blaze of her eyes, the fragile throat. No wonder she grasped for what she wanted, knowing it would be given her. And no wonder Selena could not come to terms with subordinacy to this supreme woman. It flickered through his mind, the moment before she spoke to him, to wonder what Charlotte would have made of her if there had ever been a true rivalry between them, if perhaps Charlotte had also wanted the Frenchman? Did any of them love the Frenchman, or was he merely the prize, the chosen symbol of victory?

  “Good morning, Inspector,” Jessamyn said coolly. She was dressed in pale summer green and looked as fresh and strong as a daffodil. “I cannot imagine what more I can do for you, but, if there is still something left to ask, of course I shall try to answer.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He waited until she sat down, then he sat also, as usual, allowing his coattails to fall where they may. “I’m afraid we have still found no trace of Mr. Fulbert.”

  Her face tightened a little, a very little, and she looked down at her hands.

  “I assumed you had not, or surely you would have told us. You cannot have come only to say that?”

  “No.” He did not wish to be caught staring, yet both duty and a natural fascination kept his eyes on her face. He was drawn to her as one is to a solitary light in a room. Whether one wills it or not, it becomes the focus.

  She looked up, her face smooth, eyes clear and brilliantly frank.

  “What else can I tell you? You have spoken to all of us. You must know everything we know about his last days here. If you have found no trace of him anywhere in the city, either he has eluded you and gone to the Continent, or he is dead. It is a painful thought, but I cannot escape it.”

  Before he set out, he had ordered in his mind the questions he meant to ask. Now they seem less ordered, even less useful. And he must not appear impertinent. She could so easily be offended and refuse all answers, and from silence he could learn nothing at all. Neither must he over-flatter; she was used to compliments, and he judged her far too intelligent, even too cynical, to be gulled by them. He began very carefully.

  “If he is dead, ma’am, it is most probable he was killed because he knew something which his killer could not afford to have him tell.”

  “That is the obvious conclusion,” she agreed.

  “The only thing we know that is so monstrous as that is the identity of the rapist and murderer of Fanny.” He must still not patronize her or let her once suspect he was leading her.

  Her mouth twitched in bitter amusement.

  “Everyone desires their privacy, Mr. Pitt, but few of us need it to the point where we will kill our neighbors to preserve it. I think it would be ridiculous, without evidence, to su
ppose there are two such appalling secrets in the Walk.”

  “Exactly,” he agreed.

  She gave a very small sigh.

  “So that brings us back to who raped poor Fanny,” she said slowly. “Naturally, we have all been thinking about it. We can hardly avoid it.”

  “Of course not, especially someone as close to her as you were.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Naturally, if you knew anything,” he went on, perhaps a bit hastily, “you would have told us. But maybe you have had thoughts, nothing so substantial as a suspicion, but, as you say—” He was watching her closely, trying to judge exactly how much he could press, what could be put into words, what must remain suggestion. “—as you say, you cannot dismiss the matter from your mind.”

  “You think I may suspect one of my neighbors?” Her blue eyes were almost hypnotic. He found himself unable to look away.

  “Do you?”

  For a long time she said nothing. Her hands moved slowly in her lap, unwinding some invisible knot.

  He waited.

  At last she looked up.

  “Yes. But you must understand it is only a feeling, a collection of impressions.”

  “Naturally.” He did not want to interrupt. If it told him nothing of anyone else, at worst it would tell him something of her.

  “I cannot believe anyone in their right mind, in their true senses, would do such a thing.” She spoke as if weighing each word, reluctant to speak at all, and yet pressed by obligation. “I have known everyone here for a long time. I have gone over and over in my memory all that I know, and I cannot believe such a nature could have been hidden from all of us.”

  He was suddenly disappointed. She was going to come up with some impossible suggestion about strangers.

  Her fingers were stiff in her lap, white against the green of her dress.