Murder on the Serpentine

by Anne Perry

  Daniel and Jemima had already eaten and gone to separate parties given by their friends. Pitt and Charlotte took a light supper to the sitting room and sat before the open French doors.

  Charlotte could see that Pitt had been outside quite a long time; the sun had caught his face and there was a warm glow to his skin. But it did not hide the anxiety, even deeper than before. She understood something of the issues far more deeply than she had only a few days ago. If Halberd had been involved with the possible war in South Africa, then his death could be infinitely more than a miserable, but very ordinary, scandal.

  That brought it back to Special Branch again and explained why Pitt was involved so deeply. And she could not put out of her mind what she had heard said about Narraway.

  Was Pitt just as afraid as she was that Victor Narraway had used methods that even he was ashamed of? He would not have wanted them to know, but Pitt had to. Knowledge was the material of his profession. Understanding people was essential in his work, not merely interesting, curious, uncomfortable. It was so much easier to allow yourself to believe what you wanted to and leave your own dreams undamaged.

  Pitt could not afford that. Perhaps Narraway could not have either.

  Was Pitt going to lose the part of himself that she loved most dearly, the gentleness, the understanding and even pity for those who had betrayed themselves and lost sight of everything but the darkness within? She remembered past cases, in which people had done terrible things and yet he had felt deep, twisting sorrow for them rather than rage. He took no joy in their punishment.

  Was he going to lose that? Knowing frailty in people you love is part of growing up. Seeing weakness in everyone is cynicism, and it is poisonous.

  “Thomas…” she said.

  He looked up, and she saw the tiredness in his eyes. If he had spent the day using his knowledge in a way he dreaded, she should allow him to do it without having to show her. He still needed her to believe in him, and to discover this part of his duty only when he was ready. Maybe even spend all her life looking slightly away, as if she did not see it.

  He was waiting.

  Now she had to think of something to say, but it must not sound contrived.

  “There was another letter from Aunt Vespasia. They are going south, by train, all the way to Sicily,” she told him.

  He smiled slightly. “Sicily is an island; they’ll have to go the last bit by sea. Did she sound well? Happy?”

  In a letter one can sound however one wishes, but Charlotte did not say that. “Yes. Italy is marvelously beautiful, if one picks the places to look at. And the weather is perfect.”

  The question of Narraway hung between them, unspoken. She wished now that she had been able to think of some other subject to mention, but it was too late. Neither of them said so, but they were both wondering about Narraway. Perhaps he had changed. People could, but then, too few actually did.

  Would Pitt change too? Charlotte had cared about Narraway very much, but Pitt was woven into every thread of her life, and that was totally different. It could not be unpicked.

  If she had changed, begun to lose what was best in her, would he intrude, regardless, and try to save her? She knew the answer—of course he would.

  But then, she would never be doing anything as important as he was. Nobody else’s life would depend on what she said. Was that a good thought, or a bad one? Women didn’t affect much, except their own children. And perhaps their husbands, or perhaps not.

  She thought about the ladies’ club that Emily had taken her to. Pity she might not be welcome there again. Was there really a battle to be fought in which women could gain the vote? It could change a lot of things. If as many women voted as men—which of course was not at all likely, she knew—if members of Parliament actually needed women’s votes in order to be elected, then the possibilities were considerable! She allowed her mind to explore the thought for a while. It was far more comfortable than wondering what Pitt was thinking, feeling shut out and helpless.

  —

  IN THE MORNING CHARLOTTE telephoned Emily and was pleased to hear her voice. Emily, of course, also cared for Vespasia, so she would have been turning over in her mind the little she knew of Narraway’s involvement in Sir John Halberd’s life and death.

  They knew each other well enough not to need prevarications, and clearly Emily had been thinking about the subject, and perhaps about their standing in the ladies’ club.

  “I’m sorry,” Charlotte began. “I shouldn’t have been so outspoken. Have I damaged your reputation with them? You could always promise never to bring me again.” It was an apology she had to make, but the thought was painful, an exclusion she did not want.

  “On the contrary,” Emily said, full of energy, “I will probably be allowed in only if I do bring you. You have no idea how boring some people’s lives are.”

  It was a flattering thought, if slightly absurd, but she found herself laughing at it. “Really?”

  “Charlotte!” Emily said impatiently. “We must do something. Maybe we cannot help Thomas’s case, but we must find out about Victor Narraway.”

  “Do you really think he was involved with Delia?” Charlotte asked. “They seemed to be implying that she had some kind of affair with him. Even that he was the father of her child…”

  “I know that’s what they said,” Emily agreed, “but I think that’s just vicious tongues. In purely practical terms, Delia and Narraway are both very dark indeed. Before he was gray, Narraway’s hair was as black as ink. Apparently Delia’s daughter is fair…like the Prince of Wales!”

  Charlotte winced, but this was no time for squeamishness. She must face the truth, even about friends.

  “Then you mean that he used the situation, that he is far more manipulative and without conscience than we thought? And to what end?”

  “Is that what you think we will find?” Emily’s voice wavered a little.

  Charlotte thought of everything she knew about Narraway, about their trip to Ireland. She had learned a lot about him then, both his emotions and his regrets. But he had still said little about his family, home, or early life before Special Branch. He had mentioned the army, but never in detail.

  “No,” she said to Emily, not entirely honestly. “I just don’t know…”

  “Then we must make a plan,” Emily said. “We must find out what really happened with Delia.”

  “How on earth are we going to do that? I don’t know anyone who knows Delia Kendrick and is likely to even speak to either of us, let alone tell us anything.”

  “Don’t be so feeble!” Emily snapped. “Pull yourself together and get ready. I shall pick you up in an hour.”

  “Ready for what?” Charlotte was stung because she felt a stab of truth in Emily’s accusation.

  “I don’t know. Just look…ordinary.” And with that the telephone clicked.

  Charlotte put it back in its cradle.

  —

  AN HOUR LATER CHARLOTTE and Emily sat in Emily’s boudoir drinking tea and eating chocolate cake, which was highly unsuitable at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “When you don’t want to have a certain discussion, but you must, it is a good idea to indulge in something you really like.” Emily excused it, and Charlotte entirely agreed. In fact she reached forward and took a second piece.

  “We need to find someone who knows as much as possible,” she observed.

  “Of course, that’s obvious.” Emily took a second piece as well.

  “And who is willing to tell us,” Charlotte added. “That makes it much more complicated. I think Lady Felicia Whyte has known Delia for years…”

  “And hates her,” Emily agreed. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean she would be willing to talk about her. She would need to have a reason, so she could feel she was doing it justifiably…Maybe even to help, which doesn’t seem likely.”

  Charlotte had a sudden idea, or at least part of one.

  “Perhaps we could merely ask her t
o reminisce? If we can get her to recall that time, Delia is bound to come into it.”

  “Excellent,” Emily said enthusiastically. “But of course, if she knows any secrets about Delia she would have told them already. And I really don’t want to be known as a gossip…” she bit her lip, “…if it’s avoidable. And people who gossip about people they don’t like very seldom tell the unvarnished truth. Which is what we need. If we can find anyone who even knows it.”

  “Servants,” Charlotte replied without hesitation. “And if they ever want to work again, they don’t repeat it.”

  Emily sighed and stared through the windows at the sunlight outside. “You’re right. Especially lady’s maids. They know more about you than you know about yourself. If my lady’s maid was to gossip, I’d be ruined!”

  “Then we need a servant who has retired,” Charlotte reasoned.

  “And is not dependent on a pension from her past employer,” Emily added. “A word about gossip and that would disappear like snow in a rainstorm.”

  “Don’t you mean sunshine?” Charlotte asked.

  “No. Sun doesn’t necessarily melt snow, but rain always sweeps it away. You must come out to the country more often. Where do we start?”

  “With snow? Hardly at this time of year.”

  “With finding someone who will talk to us about Delia! Pay attention.”

  “I loathe doing this.”

  “I know,” Emily said more gently. “The only thing worse would be not doing it. Nasty things don’t go away just because you don’t look at them. Are you so afraid that we’ll find something dreadful?”

  “I’m afraid of what being in Special Branch, in charge of it all, can do to people.”

  Emily put down her cup and looked at Charlotte very gravely. “That’s part of what women are supposed to do: be strong enough to make a place where sanity and kindness always matter.” She looked at Charlotte’s expression. “Not deny everything,” she said quickly, “just keep proportion. Believe the good is better and can win in the end, even if that’s not always true.”

  Charlotte straightened up. “What is it we want to know, exactly? Eventually, who killed Halberd and why, but before that, what Narraway did for Delia that she was so grateful for, and that Felicia thinks was somehow dishonest. And whether they are connected or two quite separate things? Delia’s daughter was born about twenty years ago. We should find out when she got married, where, to whom, what was odd about it, and what Narraway had to do with it. Also, maybe how Felicia Whyte knows anything about it.”

  “Yes,” Emily agreed. “It’s not easy to be subtle, is it!” Then she smiled widely. “Not that, as far as I know, you have ever tried.”

  “Then it’s going to be up to you, isn’t it?” Charlotte had the perfect riposte, and she saw it in Emily’s face immediately.

  Emily shrugged. “Oh, sometimes I am so subtle I don’t even know what I’m doing myself,” she said with a short laugh. “We will begin immediately with the most difficult part. I happen to know where Lady Felicia will be taking luncheon.”

  “Oh, no! Emily…”

  But Emily had risen to her feet and was already halfway to the door, beckoning Charlotte to follow her.

  The lightness and a few words of teasing were only to disguise the real fear underneath, and Charlotte knew that. They were both uncertain how to proceed without doing real damage, not sure what they would find that might hurt more deeply than they could take. And the disillusion would be not only for them but also for those they loved. Still, once the seed of doubt is sown, it has to be plucked, however sharp the thorns.

  —

  THEY SPOTTED LADY FELICIA quite easily. Her bright, fair hair and her distinctive clothes marked her in any crowd. Charlotte felt a stab of pity. To take the trouble to stand out in such a way was brave, and possibly a mark of desperation.

  Believing that Felicia might wish the scene at the ladies’ club had never happened, Emily behaved as if it had not.

  “Marvelous hat,” she said quietly, sitting down beside Felicia at the small table as if she had been invited, leaving Charlotte to find her own place. “Of course, you need to be tall to look so graceful,” she went on, although there were only a couple of inches’ difference between them.

  “Thank you,” Felicia murmured. One had to acknowledge such compliments, otherwise it might discourage any more.

  People were moving around them. At any moment they could be interrupted. Emily quite shamelessly introduced the conversation she wished.

  “I so admire your grace,” she said quietly, her face absolutely serious. “I enjoy hearing you reminisce about your days at the court. I know you were presented to the Queen at your coming out.” She regarded Felicia a trifle wistfully, and Charlotte wondered for a moment what it would be like to have belonged to the class of young lady who “came out” around the age of eighteen. One was officially welcomed into the adult world, and was open to being wooed by appropriate young gentlemen. There were balls, parties, dinners, trips to the theater, where one was seen by all society that mattered. As the daughter of a marquess, Felicia had enjoyed all these privileges and duties. She had probably had little choice in the matter.

  Charlotte would have hated it. But Emily might not at all. She had married Lord George Ashworth anyway. And Charlotte had married a policeman, which at the time was the social equivalent of a rat-catcher or a bailiff, at least in some people’s eyes. The status of the police was higher now, twenty years later, and Pitt was no longer junior, but a far more powerful figure. Respect, at least outwardly, was more easily given. What people actually thought was a different matter. And she knew that Pitt was perfectly aware of it.

  Felicia was delighted to recall what had been her happiest years. Her face lit and there was a softness in it as she spoke.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied easily. “At the time it seemed ages, days and nights going by like a dream, but of course one’s first season is actually so short, and if you have not had an offer, you feel such a failure.”

  Charlotte knew that the pressure was unbearable. She imagined buying horses, each animal paraded up and down to be chosen—or not! The horses had no say in it at all. She wondered how much say the young women had.

  Emily and Felicia were still talking. Charlotte managed to look as if she were listening with admiration. Actually, the pleasure in her face was relief that it had not happened to her. She had been married in what was to others a social disaster, but to her at the time had been an impossible romance and, in her middle years, brought far more happiness than most women ever knew.

  She interrupted them, knowing they could be cut off by any of the other people passing by, nodding and smiling.

  “Did you get to dance with the Prince of Wales?” she asked eagerly. “He must have been younger then, of course, and so charming.” She tried to sound ingenuous and was not sure if she succeeded.

  Emily gave her a quick glance, and then looked away. There was a faint flush on Felicia’s cheeks. “Once or twice,” she said. “It was far later than that, when I was in my twenties, that I knew him better.”

  There was a moment’s complete silence. It was Emily who broke it.

  “Oh!” She stared at Felicia with wonder. “Do you mean…?”

  Felicia glowed. She lowered her eyes. “I suppose it’s not really a secret anymore, and you are friends. Yes, I knew him…very well.” Something in the angular lines of her face softened. “You are right. When he is allowed to be himself, not stared at by everyone, not expected to be a diplomat or a prince, he’s funny and generous and…and a man one cannot help liking.” She used the word quite clearly as a euphemism for a feeling far deeper.

  Charlotte wondered if it had been love, or if that was merely how Felicia liked to remember it. The prince had had many mistresses, as far as she knew always married women. Like many men of high rank, he conducted his romances with discretion, although in his case everyone knew about them, but it was said that he never took a
girl’s virginity or risked getting her with child. Whether he did that out of morality or self-preservation did not matter.

  “Is that why Delia Kendrick is so envious of you?” Charlotte asked. “Clearly she is!”

  Felicia gave a secret little smile, sweet as if she were sucking on honeycomb.

  “How quick of you to see that. Yes, I’m afraid it is. She was his…favorite…before I was. She did not take gracefully to being superseded. Very foolish. It could never have been more than…fun, and affection. I think she imagined something…” She left the word unsaid, for the imagination to fill in. “It was like expecting the same butterfly to be there next summer. Of course they are still as pretty and as brief, but they are different, for all that.”

  Charlotte looked at her with a surge of pity for a woman who saw so clearly and yet missed the laughter and the joy that mattered, the moments of beauty. No wonder the years had marked her unkindly. She wanted to say something gentle.

  “Most of us are never butterflies at all,” she pointed out. “I believe tortoises live for a hundred years—but who wants to be a tortoise?”

  Felicia gave the first totally genuine laugh Charlotte had heard from her. There was no time to follow it up: a moment later they were interrupted.

  —

  “IT’S A PLACE TO begin,” Emily said hours later when they were back in her home. “But where does it connect with Narraway?”

  “We can find out,” Charlotte replied, making herself more comfortable in the boudoir chair. The windows were open and the scents of the garden blew in. There was a bowl of yellow roses on the small table between them. “It will take work but it will be possible. We can find out which year Felicia was having her affair with the Prince of Wales, and when she replaced Delia. That could be when it started, whatever it is. Where was Victor Narraway twenty years ago? That was long before he was head of Special Branch.”

  “You don’t know?” Emily looked slightly surprised.

  “No, I don’t!” Charlotte held her temper back. It should not have mattered to her so much to realize how little she knew of Narraway before he had been Pitt’s superior. “But what we really need is someone who knew Delia Kendrick then. I wonder when her daughter was born.”