Paragon Walk

by Anne Perry

  “Few of us have, my dear,” Miss Lucinda was warming to this new show of interest. “And I most sincerely hope you never have the misfortune to be one of us!”

  “Oh, so do I!” Charlotte put a great deal of feeling into it. She deliberately creased her brow in anxiety. “But then there is the question of duty,” she said slowly. “Evil will not go away because we choose not to look at it.” She took a deep breath and faced Miss Lucinda squarely, meeting her rather round eyes. “You will never know how much I admire you for your conduct, your determination to get to the bottom of the circumstances here, whatever they may be.”

  Miss Lucinda flushed with satisfaction.

  “How kind of you, and how very wise. I know few women of such sense, especially among the young.”

  “Indeed,” Charlotte continued, ignoring a nudge from Emily. “I admire you for coming here today at all,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “knowing what we have heard about parties here!”

  Miss Lucinda blushed, remembering her previous remarks about Freddie Dilbridge and his dissolute gatherings. She struggled for an excuse for her presence.

  With increasing delight, Charlotte gave it to her.

  “It must require a lot of self-sacrifice,” she said soberly. “But I do appreciate that you are determined, at any cost to yourself in embarrassment or even positive danger, that you must discover whatever dreadful thing it was you saw that night.”

  “Yes, yes, quite.” Miss Lucinda fastened onto it eagerly. “It is a matter of Christian duty.”

  “Has anyone else seen it?” Emily managed to say something at last.

  “If they have,” Miss Lucinda said darkly, “they have not said so.”

  “Maybe they were too frightened?” Charlotte tried to get to her actual purpose at last. “What did it look like?”

  Miss Lucinda was surprised. She had forgotten the actuality. Now she tried to picture it again.

  “Evil,” she began, wrinkling her face. “Most evil. It had a green face, like a creature half man and half beast. And there were horns on its head.”

  “How appalling,” Charlotte breathed out, suitably impressed. “What manner of horns? Like a cow, or a goat, or—”

  “Oh, like a goat,” Miss Lucinda said immediately. “Curling back.”

  “And what manner of body?” Charlotte went on. “Did it have two legs like a man, or four like a beast?”

  “Two, like a man, and it ran away and leapt over the hedge.”

  “Leapt over the hedge?” Charlotte tried not to sound disbelieving.

  “Oh, it’s quite a low hedge, just ornamental.” Miss Lucinda was not as impractical as she appeared. “I could have jumped it myself, when I was a girl. Not that I would have, of course!” she added hastily.

  “Of course not,” Charlotte agreed, struggling desperately to keep a straight face. The picture of Miss Lucinda taking a flying leap at the garden hedge was too delicious to be denied. “Which way did it go?”

  Miss Lucinda did not miss the point.

  “This way,” she said firmly. “Down the Walk, toward this end.”

  Emily saw Charlotte’s face and rushed to rescue with noises of sympathy and horror.

  It took them some time to break away without obvious discourtesy, and when at last they did, with an excuse that they must speak to Selena, Emily turned to Charlotte, pulling her back by the sleeve, in case they were upon Selena before having an opportunity to speak to each other in private.

  “What on earth was it?” she hissed. “I thought at first she was inventing most of it, but now I really do believe she saw something. She isn’t lying. I would swear to that.”

  Charlotte had already made up her mind.

  “Someone dressed up to frighten her,” she answered under her breath, not wanting any passerby to overhear them. Phoebe was only a few yards away, standing with a wan smile, listening to Grace’s misfortunes.

  “Away from what?” Emily smiled dazzlingly at Jessamyn as she floated past. “Something here?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.” Charlotte added a gesture of greeting. “I wonder if Selena knows,” she went on to Emily.

  “We’ll find out.” Emily sailed forward, and Charlotte was obliged to follow. She still disliked Selena, in spite of the admiration for her courage. She faced the unpleasant possibility that her feeling was mainly provoked because Selena had said it was Paul Alaric who had assaulted her. Charlotte most intensely did not wish that to be true. Alaric was here this afternoon. She had not spoken to him yet, but she knew precisely where he was, and that at the moment Jessamyn was drifting casually over toward him in a froth of water-blue lace.

  “How pleasant to see you again, Mrs. Pitt,” Selena said coolly. If she was indeed pleased, there was nothing of it in her voice, and her eyes were as remote and chilly as a winter river.

  “And in so much more fortunate circumstances.” Charlotte smiled back. Really, she was getting to be a total hypocrite! Whatever was happening to her?

  Selena’s face became even colder.

  “I am so happy for you that the entire matter is over,” Charlotte continued, goaded on by the profound dislike inside her. “Of course, it was a tragedy, but at least the fear is past, no more mystery.” She allowed her voice to be as cheerful as was decent. “No one need fear anyone else from now on. All is explained and in the open—such a relief.”

  “I had not realized you were afraid, Miss Pitt!” Selena looked at her with a distaste that suggested her fear was quite ungrounded, since she could have been in no possible danger.

  Charlotte rose to the occasion.

  “Of course, I was, and for Emily too. After all, if a woman of decorum and position such as yourself could be molested, who on earth could count themselves safe?”

  Selena struggled to think of an answer that was not blatantly rude, and failed.

  “And such a relief for the gentlemen,” Charlotte went on relentlessly. “None of them are under suspicion anymore. We know now that not any of them were in the least way guilty. It must be a sad and distressing situation, to be obliged to suspect one’s friends.”

  Emily’s fingers were digging into Charlotte’s arm, and she was shaking so hard with suppressed laughter she had to pretend to have a sneezing fit.

  “The heat,” Charlotte said sympathetically. “It really is most oppressive. I shouldn’t be surprised if the weather breaks soon and we have a thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms, don’t you?”

  “No,” Selena said flatly. “I find them vulgar. Exceedingly so.”

  Emily sneezed again violently, and Selena backed away. Algernon Burnon was passing with a sherbet in his hand, and she seized the chance to escape.

  Emily came up from her handkerchief.

  “You are absolutely appalling!” she said happily. “I’ve never seen her better confounded.”

  Charlotte’s mind knew at last what it was that troubled her about Selena.

  “You were the first to see her after she was attacked, weren’t you?” she asked soberly.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What happened—exactly?”

  Emily was slightly surprised.

  “I heard her scream. I ran out through the front of the house and saw her. I went to her, naturally, and took her inside. What do you mean? What is it, Charlotte?”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Look like? Like a woman who has been assaulted of course! Her dress was torn open, and her hair was all over the place—”

  “How was her dress torn?” Charlotte insisted.

  Emily tried to picture it in her mind. Her hand went up to the left side of her own dress and made as if to rip it.

  “Like that?” Charlotte said quickly. “And was it muddy?”

  “No, not muddy. There was probably dust, but I didn’t notice. It was hardly the time.”

  “But you told me she said it had happened on the grass,” Charlotte pointed out, “by the rose beds.”

  “I
t’s a hot dry summer!” Emily waved her hands. “Anyway, what does it matter?”

  “But those flower beds are watered,” Charlotte persisted. “I’ve seen the gardeners doing it. If she had been thrown to the ground—”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t there! Maybe it was on the path. What are you trying to say?” Emily was beginning to understand.

  “Emily, if I tore my dress open and pulled my hair out, then came screaming along the road, how would I look different from the way Selena looked that night?”

  Emily’s eyes were very clear blue.

  “Not at all different,” she said, as perception dawned.

  “I don’t think anyone attacked Selena,” Charlotte framed her words with deliberation. “She made it up, to draw attention to herself and to get even with Jessamyn. Only Jessamyn guessed the truth. That was why she pretended to be so sorry for her, and yet it didn’t trouble her at all. She knew Paul Alaric had never touched Selena!”

  “And neither did Hallam?” Emily answered her own question with the tone of her voice.

  “Poor man.” Tragedy overtook farce again, and Charlotte felt the chill of real terror and real death. “No wonder he was confused. He swore he didn’t attack Selena, and it was the truth.” Anger hardened inside her, for the mischief Selena had caused, albeit some of it unknowingly. Still, it was a selfish and callous thing to do. She was a spoiled woman, and part of Charlotte wanted to punish her, at least to let her know that someone else knew what had really happened.

  Emily understood immediately. A look passed between them, and there was no need for explanations. In time, Emily would allow Selena to perceive very precisely both her anger and her contempt.

  “We’ve still got to find out what is going on here,” Emily began again after a few moments. “That is only one small mystery solved. It doesn’t tell us what Miss Lucinda saw.”

  “We’ll just have to ask Phoebe,” Charlotte answered.

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried that?” Emily was exasperated. “If it were so easy, I would have known the answer weeks ago!”

  “Oh, I know she won’t tell us intentionally,” Charlotte was not upset. “But she might let something slip.”

  Obediently, but without any expectations, Emily led her to where Phoebe was sipping a lemonade and talking to someone neither of them knew. It took ten minutes of innocuous pleasantries before they could get Phoebe on her own.

  “Oh, dear,” Emily said with a sigh. “What a tedious creature. If I hear one more word about her health, I shall be positively rude.”

  Charlotte seized her chance.

  “She doesn’t realize how fortunate she is,” she said, looking at Phoebe. “If she had been obliged to endure the strain that you have, she would not make such an issue of a few sleepless nights.” She hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase the question she intended so as not to be obvious. “When you know something dreadful has happened, and suspicion is directed at those in your own family, it must be a nightmare!”

  Phoebe’s face was vacant for a moment with unfeigned innocence.

  “Oh, I was not worried over much. I did not think Diggory would do anything so cruel. He is not in the least unkind, you know? And I knew it could not have been Afton.”

  Charlotte was stunned. If ever there was an innately cruel man, it was Afton Nash. She would have suspected him still, if there were any crime unsolved, but, of all crimes, rape seemed to satisfy his character best.

  “How can you know?” she said without thought. “He was alone some of that evening.”

  “I—” To Charlotte’s amazement, Phoebe blushed scarlet, the color burning painfully up her face to the very roots of her hair. “I—” She blinked, and her eyes filled with tears and looked away. “I had confidence it could not be him—that—that is what I meant to say.”

  “But you do know there is something wrong in the Walk!” Emily took advantage of the moment, and Charlotte’s sudden silence.

  Phoebe stared at her, her eyes widening as her mind flooded with a great question.

  “You know what it is?” she breathed.

  Emily hesitated, unsure which was best, to lie, or to admit ignorance. She compromised.

  “I know something. And I mean to fight it! Will you help us?”

  It was masterly. Charlotte looked at her with admiration.

  Phoebe took her arm, squeezing it till the pressure made her wince.

  “Oh, don’t, Emily! You can’t realize what you are doing! The danger isn’t over, you know. There will be more, and worse! Believe me!”

  “Then we must fight it!”

  “We can’t! It is too big, and too dreadful. Just wear a cross, say your prayers every night and morning; and don’t go out at night. Don’t even look out of your windows. Just stay at home and don’t inquire into anything! Do as I say, Emily, and maybe it won’t come after you.”

  Charlotte wanted to say more, but she was hurt inside by such fear. She grasped Emily.

  “Perhaps that is good advice.” She swallowed her feelings. “If you will excuse us, we must speak to Lady Tamworth. We have not even acknowledged her yet.”

  “Of course,” Phoebe murmured. “But, do be careful, Emily! Remember what I said.”

  Emily gave her a weak smile and walked reluctantly toward Lady Tamworth.

  It was another half hour before they had the opportunity to fade behind the rosebeds and disappear, unobserved, into the private part of the garden. They were in a herbaceous walk, backed by an even taller hedge of beach, quite impenetrable.

  “Where now?” Charlotte asked.

  “Behind that,” Emily answered. “There has to be a way around it or else a gate.”

  “I hope it isn’t locked.” Charlotte was annoyed at the thought. It would stop them completely. Oddly enough, it had not occurred to her before, because she never locked doors herself.

  They walked along side by side, searching the thick leaves till they found the door, almost overgrown.

  “It looks as if it isn’t used!” Emily said in disbelief. “This can’t be it.”

  “Wait a minute.” Charlotte looked at it more closely, studying the hinges. “It opens the other way. It must be all cleared on the other side, for it to swing. Try it.”

  Emily pushed. It did not move.

  Charlotte felt her heart sink. It was locked.

  Emily pulled a pin out of her hair and pushed it into the lock.

  “You can’t do it with that.” Charlotte let all her disappointment into her voice.

  Emily ignored her and went on poking. She took the pin out and straightened it, making a loop on one end, then tried again.

  “There,” she said with satisfaction, and pushed the flat surface of the door gently. It swung open without a sound.

  Charlotte was staggered.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” she demanded.

  Emily grinned. “My housekeeper’s always taking the keys with her, even to bed, and I hate being obliged to ask her to get into my own linen cupboard. I thought it was rather a nice trick. Come on, let’s see what is through there.”

  They tiptoed through the door and swung it shut behind them. At first it was disappointing, just a large garden room set out in paved walkways with little plots of green herbs between. They went all the way round it, but there was nothing else.

  Emily stopped, disgusted.

  “Why on earth bother to lock the gate to this?” she said angrily. “There’s nothing here!”

  Charlotte bent to touch one of the herb leaves and crush it between her fingers. It smelled bitter and aromatic.

  “I wonder if it is some sort of drug,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Nonsense!” Emily brushed it aside. “Opium comes from poppies, and they grow in Turkey, or China, or somewhere.”

  “There are other things.” Charlotte refused to give up. “What a peculiar shape this garden is, I mean the way the stones are laid out. It must have taken someone an awful lot of work.”


  “It’s only star-shaped,” Emily replied. “I don’t think it’s very attractive. It’s uneven.”

  “A star!”

  “Yes, the other points are over there, and behind the room. Why?”

  “How many points altogether?” Something was beginning to form in Charlotte’s mind, a memory of a case Pitt had been working on more than a year ago, and a scar he had spoken of.

  Emily counted.

  “Five. Why?”

  “Five! That means it is a pentacle!”

  “If that’s what you call it.” Emily was not impressed. “What does it matter?”

  “Emily,” Charlotte turned to her, the idea hard, frightening inside her. “Pentacles are the shapes people use when they practice black magic! Maybe that’s what they do here, at their parties?” Now she remembered when Pitt had mentioned the scar—on the body of Fanny—on the buttock. The place of most mockery.

  “That’s why Phoebe is so terrified,” she went on. “She thinks they have begun by playing but have conjured up real devils!”

  Emily screwed up her face.

  “Black magic?” she said incredulously. “Isn’t that a little far-fetched? I don’t even believe in it!”

  But it made sense, and the more Charlotte thought of it, the more sense it made.

  “You haven’t got any proof,” Emily went on. “Just because the garden is set out in a star shape! Lots of people might like stars.”

  “Do you know any?” Charlotte demanded.

  “No—but—”

  “We’ve got to get inside that room.” Charlotte stared at it. “That’s what Miss Lucinda saw, someone dressed up in black magic robes, with green horns.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Bored people sometimes do ridiculous things. Look at some of your Society friends sometime!”

  Emily squinted at her.

  “You don’t believe in black magic, do you, Charlotte?”

  “I don’t know—and I don’t want to. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t.”

  Emily gave in.

  “Then I suppose we had better see if we can get inside that room, if you think Miss Lucinda’s monster could be in there.” She led the way across the bitter herbs and took out her hairpin again, but this time there was no need. The door was not locked. It swung open easily, and they stood staring into a large rectangular room with a black carpet and black curtained walls with green designs on them. The sun streamed in through a totally glassed roof.