Southampton Row

by Anne Perry

  “Emily, how nice to see you,” he said with such natural pleasure it was possible to believe for a moment that he was oblivious of the atmosphere. He came towards her, touching Rose on the arm in a gesture of affection as he passed her. “You are standing,” he observed to Emily. “I hope that means you have just arrived, not that you are just leaving? I am feeling a trifle bruised around the edges, like an overripe dessert peach that too many people have picked up and then decided against.” He smiled ruefully. “I had no idea how terribly tedious it would be arguing with people who are really not listening to a word you say, and have long since decided what you mean, and that it is nonsense. Have you had tea?”

  He looked around for signs of a tray or any other evidence of recent refreshment. “Perhaps it’s too late. I think I’ll have a whiskey.” He reached for the bell cord to fetch the butler. A flash in his eye betrayed that he knew he was talking too much to cover the silence, but he went on anyway. “Jack did warn me that most people have already made up their minds what they believe, which will be either the same as their fathers before them—and grandfathers, too—or in a few instances the direct opposite, and that argument of any sort is so much wind in the trees. I admit I thought he was being cynical.” He shrugged. “Give him my apologies, Emily. He is a man of infinite sagacity.”

  Emily forced herself to smile back at him. She disagreed with Aubrey over a score of things, mostly political, but she could not help herself from liking him, and none of this was his fault. His company was sharp, immediate and very seldom unkind. “Just experience,” she answered him. “He says people vote with their hearts, not their heads.”

  “Actually, he meant their bellies.” Laughter lit Aubrey’s eyes and then vanished. “How can we ever improve the world if we think no further than tomorrow’s dinner?” He glanced at Rose, but she remained grimly silent, still half turned away from Emily as if refusing to acknowledge her presence anymore.

  “Well, if we don’t have tomorrow’s dinner we won’t survive into this wonderful future,” Emily pointed out. “Nor our children,” she added more soberly.

  “Indeed,” Aubrey said quietly. Suddenly all levity vanished. They were talking about things for which they all cared intensely. Only Rose stood still rigid, her inner fear not swept away.

  “More justice would bring more food, Emily,” Aubrey said with passionate gravity. “But men hunger for vision as well as bread. People need to believe in themselves, that what they do is better than simply toil in return for enough to survive, and barely that for many.”

  In her heart Emily wanted to agree with him, but her brain told her he was dreaming too far ahead. It was bright, even beautiful. It was also impractical.

  She glanced at Rose and saw the softness in her eyes, the tenderness in her mouth and how very pale she was. Emily could smell lilies and steam rising from the watered earth and feel the heat of the sunlight on the stone floor, but she could sense fear as if it overrode all else. Knowing how fiercely Rose shared Aubrey’s beliefs, perhaps was even ahead of them, Emily wondered what did Rose need to know so much that she would now seek another spirit medium, even after what had happened to Maude Lamont?

  And what had happened to Maude Lamont? Had she tried political blackmail one time too many, one secret too dangerous? Or was it a domestic tragedy, a lover betrayed, a jealousy over some man’s attention stolen or misdirected? Had she promised to relay a command from the next world, perhaps about money, and then reneged on it? There were a hundred possibilities. It did not have to have anything to do with Rose—except that Thomas was there not from Bow Street but from Special Branch!

  Could the unknown man have been some politician, a lover, or wished to be? Perhaps he had conceived a passion for her which she had rejected, and in his humiliation he had turned on her and killed her?

  Surely, Pitt would have thought of that, wouldn’t he?

  She looked across at Aubrey now. His expression seemed at a glance to be earnest, but the ghost of humor always hovered in his eyes, as if he could see some enormous comic joke and knew himself a bit player, no more or less important than anyone else, no matter how intensely he might feel. Perhaps that was the greatest reason she liked him.

  Rose was still half turned away. She had been listening to Aubrey, but the rigidity of her shoulders made it clear she had not forgotten her quarrel with Emily; she hid it because she would not explain it to him.

  Emily gave her light, warm, social smile and said how nice it was to see them both. She wished Aubrey success and reaffirmed her support for him, and Jack’s also, even though she was less certain of it, and then took her leave. Rose went as far as the hall with her. She was polite, her voice cheerful, her eyes cold.

  On the ride home, sitting in her carriage as it fought its way through the crush of hansoms, coaches, landaus and a dozen other kinds of vehicles, Emily wondered what she should tell Pitt, or if she should speak to him at all. Rose expected her to, and that in itself made her angry, as if she had deceived already, at least in intent. It was untrue, and unfair.

  And yet she did instinctively think to tell Pitt all that might be of use to him, all that would explain what had happened, as much for Rose’s own sake as anyone else’s!

  No it wasn’t. It was for truth, and for Jack. As she sat and puzzled over the medium’s death it was Jack’s face that was in her mind all the time, his presence with her as if he were at her shoulder, barely out of sight. She liked Aubrey, she wanted him to win, not only for the good he could do, but intensely, for himself. But it was the fear that he would drag Jack down which drove her to pursue the truth.

  She had never seriously considered before that Jack might lose. She had thought only of the opportunities ahead, the privileges and the pleasures. Now she realized with a chill as the carriage lurched forward again, and the shouting of irate drivers cut the warm air, that if he lost there would be a bitter change to get used to, just as harsh as that which Charlotte faced now. Invitations would be different, parties immeasurably more tedious. How would she go back to the idleness of society after the thrill in the blood of politics, the heady dream of power? And sharp and very real, how could she hide her own humiliation that she no longer had anything worthwhile to do?

  The resolve that Jack must win tightened in her. She was perfectly aware of her own motives, and it made no difference what-ever. Reason did not touch emotion any more than sunlight touches the deep-sea currents. She must do all that was within her ability to help.

  She needed someone else to talk to. Charlotte was in Dartmoor; she did not even know precisely where. Her mother, Caroline, was on tour with her second husband, Joshua, an actor presently playing the lead in one of Mr. Wilde’s plays in Liverpool.

  But even had they been at home, her first choice for confidante would have been Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, a great-aunt of her first husband who had remained one of her dearest friends. Therefore she now leaned forward and commanded her coachman to take her to Vespasia’s house, even though she had never written or left a card, which was a complete break of etiquette. But then Vespasia had never allowed rules to prevent her from doing what she believed to be right, and would almost certainly forgive Emily for doing the same.

  Emily was fortunate in that Vespasia was in and had half an hour since said good-bye to her last visitor.

  “My dear Emily, what a pleasure to see you,” Vespasia said without rising from her seat by the window of the sitting room. It was all pale colors and full of sunlight. “The more especially at this extraordinary hour,” she added, “since it must be something of great interest or urgency which brings you. Do sit down and tell me what it is.” She waved impassively at the chair opposite her own, and then regarded Emily’s costume with a critical eye. She was stiff-backed, silver-haired, and still had the marvelous eyes and bones which had made her the greatest beauty of her generation. She had never followed fashion, she had always led it. “Very becoming,” she gave her approval. “You have been calling u
pon someone you wish to impress . . . a woman who takes her clothes very seriously, I imagine.”

  Emily smiled with a sharp sense of pleasure, and relief at being in the company of someone she liked without shadow or equivocation. “Yes,” she agreed. “Rose Serracold. Do you know of her?” Vespasia would not be socially acquainted with Rose, since there were the best part of two generations, a gulf of social status, and a considerable degree of wealth, even though Aubrey was more than comfortable, between them. Emily had no idea whether Vespasia would approve of Rose’s political opinions. Vespasia could be very extreme herself on occasions, and had fought like a tigress for the reforms in which she believed. But she was also a realist, and fiercely practical. She could very easily see the Socialist ideals as ill-based in the realities of human nature.

  “And what in Mrs. Serracold’s visit brought you here, rather than home to change for dinner?” Vespasia asked. “Is she related to Aubrey Serracold, who is standing for Lambeth South, and according to the newspapers has expressed some rather foolish ideals?”

  “Yes, she is his wife.”

  “Emily, I am not a dentist to be extracting information from you, like teeth!”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said contritely. “It all seems so absurd now I come to put it into words.”

  “Many things do,” Vespasia observed. “That does not mean they are not real. Is it to do with Thomas?” There was a sharp note of concern in her voice, and her eyes were shadowed.

  “Yes . . . and no,” Emily said quietly. Suddenly it was not ridiculous at all. If Vespasia were afraid, too, then the cause of it was real. “Thomas and Charlotte were going on holiday to Dartmoor, but Thomas’s leave was canceled—”

  “By whom?” Vespasia interrupted.

  Emily swallowed. With a jolt of pain and embarrassment she realized Thomas had not told Vespasia of his dismissal from Bow Street the second time. But she would have to know. Silence was only delaying what was inevitable. “By Special Branch,” she said huskily, her voice choked with anger, and now fear as well. She saw the surprise, and then the hardening in Vespasia’s face. “He was dismissed from Bow Street again,” she went on. “Charlotte told me when she came to pick up Edward to take him with her to Dartmoor. Pitt had been sent back to Special Branch, and his leave rescinded.”

  Vespasia nodded so fractionally it was barely visible. “Charles Voisey is standing for Parliament. He is head of the Inner Circle.” She did not bother to explain any further. She must have seen in Emily’s face that she understood the enormity of it.

  “Oh God!” Emily said involuntarily. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, my dear, I am perfectly sure.”

  “And . . . Thomas knows it!”

  “Yes. That will be why Victor Narraway has canceled his leave and no doubt ordered him to do all he can to block Voisey’s path, although I doubt he will be able to. Only once has anyone ever beaten Voisey before.”

  “Who was that?” Hope flowed up inside Emily, making her heart pound in her chest.

  Vespasia smiled. “A friend of mine named Mario Corena, but it cost him his life. And he had a little assistance from Thomas and myself. Mario is beyond Voisey’s reach, but Voisey will not have forgiven Thomas, and perhaps not me, either. I think it would be wise, my dear, if you did not write to Charlotte while she is away.”

  “Is the danger really so . . .” Emily found her mouth dry, her lips stiff.

  “Not as long as he does not know where she is.”

  “But she cannot stay in Dartmoor forever!”

  “Of course not,” Vespasia agreed. “But by the time she returns the election will be over, and perhaps we will have found a way to tie Voisey’s hands.”

  “He won’t win, will he? It’s a safe Liberal seat,” Emily protested. “Why is he fighting for that, and not for a Tory seat? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You are wrong,” Vespasia said very quietly. “It is simply sense that we have not yet understood. Everything Voisey does makes sense. I don’t know how he will defeat the Liberal candidate, but I believe he will.”

  Emily was cold in spite of the sun pouring through the windows into the quiet room. “The Liberal candidate is a friend of mine. I came because of his wife. She was one of the last clients of Maude Lamont, the spirit medium who was murdered in Southampton Row. She was there that night. Thomas is investigating it, and I think I may know something.”

  “Then you must tell him.” There was no hesitation in Vespasia’s voice, no doubt at all.

  “But Rose is my friend, and I learned those things only because she trusted me. If I betray a friend, what have I left?”

  This time Vespasia did not answer straightaway.

  Emily waited.

  “If you have to choose between friends,” Vespasia said at last, “and both Rose and Thomas are such, then you must choose neither, but follow your own conscience. You cannot place one set of obligations or loyalties before another with regard to people, their closeness to you, the depth of their hurt, their innocence or their vulnerability, or the degree of their trust in you. You must do what your own conscience dictates to be right. Serve your own truth.”

  She had not said so, but Emily had no doubt in her mind that Vespasia meant that she should tell Thomas all she knew.

  “Yes,” she said aloud. “Perhaps I knew that, it was just hard to acknowledge it, because then I have to do it.”

  “Do you believe Rose may have killed this woman?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I do.”

  They sat without speaking for several minutes, then finally discussed other things: Jack’s campaign, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, the extraordinary phenomenon of Keir Hardie and the possibility that one day he might actually succeed in reaching Parliament. Then Emily thanked Vespasia again, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and bade her good-bye.

  She reached home and went upstairs to change into a suitable gown for dinner, even though she was not going out. She was in her own sitting room when Jack came in. His face was tired and there was a pale film of dust around the bottoms of his trousers, as if he had walked outside on the pavements for some distance.

  She stood up to greet him with unaccustomed haste, as if he brought news, although she did not expect anything but the trivia of the campaign, much of which she could gain from the daily papers, had she considered it of sufficient importance.

  “How is it progressing?” she asked him, searching his eyes, which were wide and gray with the remarkable lashes she had always admired. She saw in them pleasure at the sight of her, a warmth she had long known and held so dear it still startled her. But too close beneath it for safety she saw anxiety, deeper than before. She said quickly, “What’s happened?”

  He was reluctant to answer. The words did not come readily to him, and usually they did so easily; that in itself chilled her.

  “Aubrey?” she whispered, thinking of Vespasia’s warning. “He might lose, mightn’t he? Are you going to care very much?”

  He smiled, but it was deliberate, a gesture to reassure her. “I like him,” he said honestly, sitting down in the chair opposite her, relaxing with his legs out. “And I think with a little more practicality he’d be a fine member. Anyway, we need a few dreamers.” He gave a slight shrug. “It would balance out the journeymen who want office only for what it can profit them.”

  She knew he was hiding the real hurt it would be if Aubrey failed. It was Jack who had encouraged him in the beginning, even opened up much of the pathway for his nomination, and supported him after it. He had made it seem casual, as he did so many things, still keeping that instinctive manner of a man who took things lightly, who dabbled more than he worked, to whom nothing mattered so much as comfort, popularity, good food and good wine, and graciousness around him. He had always appreciated beauty and to flirt was as natural to him as drawing breath. The finality of marriage to a woman who would never turn the other way, or refuse to see what was uncomfortable to her, was the hardest decision
he had ever made, and at times he also knew it was the best.

  Emily had been careful never to tell him that she was very adept at seeing only what was prudent. She had done it with her first husband, George Ashworth, and when she had thought he had betrayed her, not simply physically but with love of the heart, it had wounded her more deeply than all her sophistication had led her to expect. She had no intention of allowing Jack to think he could do the same. She knew the strength in him and the hunger for a purpose as consuming as that which drove Pitt. It was the fear he would not match up to it which made him appear to treat it so lightly. She realized now with a startling pain that she would do anything in her power to protect him from failure.

  “Rose was at the house of the spirit medium the night she was murdered,” she said guardedly. “Thomas went to question her. She’s terrified, Jack!”

  His face darkened. This time he could not hide the tension tightening inside him. He straightened up in the chair, the ease gone. “Thomas! Why Thomas? He’s not in Bow Street anymore.”

  It was not the response she had expected, but now that she heard it, it was the one she feared. The rest, the questions, the criticism for lack of thought, for selfishness, would come later.

  “Emily?” His voice was harsher, afraid she knew something she was not telling him, and for once she did not.

  “I don’t know!” she said, meeting his eyes squarely. “Charlotte won’t tell me. I have to suppose it’s political, otherwise Thomas wouldn’t be there.”