Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 10]

by Bethlehem Road

  “Is there anything left for me to do?” There was a slight edge to her voice, but not enough to be exceptional in the circumstances. Charlotte would have resented anyone else’s taking charge so completely, but perhaps she had become too independent since her marriage and her slide down the social scale. Garnet Royce was doing what he believed best for his sister—his face reflected decisive, practical goodwill—and Amethyst raised no objection, although for an instant a frown flickered across her brow, and she drew breath as if to say something contrary but changed her mind.

  “Thank you,” she said instead.

  Garnet went to the table, where Barclay Hamilton had left the papers he had delivered. “What are these?” He picked them up and turned them over. “Property deeds?”

  “Barclay brought them,” Amethyst explained, and again the shadow of anger and pain crossed her face.

  “I’ll look at them for you.” Garnet made as if to put them in his pocket.

  “I should be obliged if you would leave them where they are!” Amethyst snapped. “I am perfectly able to look at them myself!”

  Garnet smiled briefly. “My dear, you don’t know anything about them.”

  “Then I shall learn. It would seem an appropriate time,” she retorted.

  “Nonsense!” he said, good-natured but totally dismissive. “You don’t want to be bothered with the details and administration of the estate, and with learning new terms. Law is very difficult and complex for a woman, my dear. Allow your man of affairs to ascertain that everything is in order, as I am sure it is—Lockwood was meticulous about such things—and I will explain to you what it means, what you have, and advise you what steps to take, if any. I doubt there will be much to alter. You should have a holiday, get away from this tragedy, calm your mind and your spirits. It will be good for you in all ways. Believe me, my dear, I still remember my own bereavement clearly enough.” His face became shadowed with a memory he did not share except by implication, and Amethyst offered no sympathy. The loss must have been old, or crowded out by her own so current wound.

  “Spend a few weeks in Aldeburgh.” He looked at her, his distress replaced by solicitude again. “Walk by the sea, take the fresh air, visit with pleasant people and talk of country ways. Get away from London until all this business is over.”

  She turned away from him and looked out of the small space in the window that was clear beneath the blinds.

  “I don’t think I wish to.”

  “Be advised, my dear,” he said quite gently, putting the papers in his pocket. “After what has happened you need a complete change. I’m sure Jasper would say the same.”

  “I’m sure he would!” she said instantly. “He always agrees with you! That does not make him right. I do not wish to leave at the moment, and I will not be pushed!”

  He shook his head.

  “You are very stubborn, Amethyst. One might almost say willful; not an attractive quality in a woman. You make it very difficult to do what is best for you.”

  He reminded Charlotte of her father with his blind care, his determination to protect, and at the same time his complete unawareness of the root of one’s feelings, of what one might be thinking or dreaming that had nothing to do with the ordinariness of the conversation.

  “I appreciate your concern, Garnet,” Amethyst said, obviously struggling to keep her patience. “I am not ready to leave yet. When I am I shall ask you, and if your invitation is still open, then I shall be grateful to accept. Until then I am remaining here in Royal Street. And please put those deeds back. It is time I learned what they are and how to administer the properties myself. I am a widow and had better learn how to conduct myself like one.”

  “You conduct yourself excellently, my dear. Jasper and I will take care of your affairs and counsel you, and of course all legal and financial matters will be dealt with by people of those professions. And in time you may wish to marry again, and we shall keep suitable people in mind.”

  “I do not wish to marry again!”

  “Of course you don’t, now. It would hardly be seemly, even if it were desired. But in a year or two ...”

  She swung round to face him. “Garnet, for goodness’ sake listen to me for once! I intend to become familiar with my own affairs!”

  He was exasperated by her obduracy, her blind refusal to be sensible, but he maintained his even tone and composed expression in spite of all provocation. “You are being most unwise, but I daresay when you have had a little more time you will realize that. Naturally you are still suffering the first shock of your bereavement. I do know how you feel, my dear. Of course, Naomi died from scarlet fever”—his brow furrowed—“but the extraordinary sense of disbelief and loss is the same, whatever the cause.”

  For a moment Amethyst’s eyes opened wide in surprise, then some memory returned, confusing her further, and incredulity and pity filled her face. But he seemed to read none of it. He was absorbed with his own thoughts and plans.

  “I shall call again in a day or two.” He turned to Charlotte, recalling her presence. “Very courteous of you to have come, Mrs.—er, Miss Ellison. Good day.”

  “Good day, Sir Garnet,” she replied, standing up also. “I am sure it is time I was leaving.”

  “Did you come in a hansom?”

  “No, my carriage is outside,” she said without a flicker, exactly as if she were in the habit of having such an equipage at her disposal. She turned to Amethyst. “Thank you for giving me so much of your time, Lady Hamilton. I came to offer my condolences, and I find I have enjoyed your company more than most people’s. Thank you.”

  For the first time since Barclay Hamilton had been announced, Amethyst smiled warmly.

  “Please call again—that is, if you do not mind.”

  “I should be delighted to,” Charlotte accepted, without knowing if it would be possible, and without the faintest hope it would further the cause of Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell. In fact her visit had done nothing except confirm that Lockwood Hamilton was exactly what he seemed, and must surely have been killed in mistake for someone else, presumably Vyvyan Etheridge.

  She bade them good-bye and climbed into Aunt Vespasia’s carriage feeling that she had accomplished nothing, except possibly the elimination of a certain avenue of thought. She would find it very hard to believe Amethyst Hamilton had had anything to do with her husband’s death. She might ask Aunt Vespasia to inquire further about Barclay Hamilton; perhaps they might learn something of his mother. But it was a very slender thought. Sharper and blacker was the figure of Florence Ivory. The sooner she formed some personal impression of her, Charlotte felt, the better.

  “Walnut Tree Walk, please,” she instructed the coachman, before realizing she should not have said please; after all she was instructing a servant, not requesting a friend. She had forgotten how to behave.

  Zenobia Gunne sat in her own carriage with many of the same misgivings as Charlotte had had in Vespasia’s. She was not in the least afraid of Mary Carfax, but she did not like her, and she knew the feeling was returned with some fervor. It would take an extraordinary reason to bring Zenobia to call upon her unannounced, and Mary would believe nothing less. The last time they had met, at a ball in 1850, Mary had been an imperious and fragile beauty, betrothed satisfactorily but unromantically to Gerald Carfax. Zenobia was single. They had both fallen in love, in their wildly different ways, with Captain Peter Holland. To Mary he had been comely and dashing, and she had suddenly seen romance leaving her forever as she tied herself to Gerald; to Zenobia he had been a man too poor to afford a wife, but the most immense fun, full of laughter and imagination, his mouth always ready to smile, sensitive to the beautiful, and to the absurd, a brave, tender and funny man she had loved with all her heart. He had been killed in the Crimea, and she had never loved anyone since with the same depth, or without at some moment seeing Peter’s face in his and feeling all the old dreams return. And with every other man at all the best, the tenderest times, it was P
eter’s eyes she saw, Peter’s laughter she heard.

  It was after that that she had first gone to Africa, scandalizing her family, as well as Mary Carfax. But what did it matter, with Peter dead? Better to be alone than live a pretense with someone else.

  Now as the carriage sped through the spring streets towards Kensington she racked her brains for a credible tale. It would be hard enough even for a long-standing friend and confidante to learn anything useful that might throw light on the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge; she would learn nothing at all if she did not even get through the door! Did Mary remember that ball? Did she know that Peter had loved Zenobia, and that she would have persuaded him that she did not care about money or Society, had he not died on the battlefield of Balaklava? Or did Mary still imagine it might have been she he would have chosen, had he the freedom to choose anyone?

  Desperation was the element! She must use as much of the truth as possible. She must find a reason she could He about convincingly; emotions were far harder to stimulate. She was at her wits’ end ... and she needed to know—that was it! She needed to know the whereabouts of a mutual friend, someone from those far-off days, and her extremity had driven her to seek Mary Carfax. Mary would believe that. But who should she say she was searching for? It must not be someone in such current circulation that Zenobia should have found her for herself. Ah! Beatrice Allenby was just the person. She had married a Belgian cheesemaker and gone to live in Bruges! No one could be expected to know that as a matter of course. And Mary Carfax would enjoy relating that: it was a minor scandal, girls of good family might marry German barons or Italian counts, but not Belgians, and certainly not cheesemakers of any sort!

  By the time she alighted in Kensington she was composed in her mind and had her story rehearsed in detail. A small boy with a hoop and a stick ran down the pavement past her, and his governess hurried along, calling after him. Zenobia smiled and ascended the steps. She presented her card to the parlormaid, outstared the rather pert girl, and watched with satisfaction as she departed to take the news to her mishtress.

  She returned a few moments later and showed Zenobia into the withdrawing room. As she had expected, Mary Carfax’s curiosity was too sharp for her to wait.

  “How pleasant to see you again, Miss Gunne, after so very long,” she lied with a chill smile. “Please do take a seat.” Her concern was polite, but there was also a solicitude in it, a reminder that Mary was a fraction younger, which fact she had treasured even in their youth and now found too sweet to let pass. “Would you care for some refreshment? A tisane?”

  Zenobia swallowed the reply that came to her lips and forced the opening she had planned. “Thank you; most kind.” She sat on the edge of her chair, as manners dictated, not farther back, as would have been comfortable, and bared her teeth very slightly. “You look well.”

  “I daresay it is the climate,” Lady Mary answered pointedly. “So good for the complexion.”

  Zenobia, burned by the African sun, longed to make some withering reply but remembered her niece and forbore. “I am sure it must be,” she agreed with difficulty. “All the rain—”

  “We have had quite a pleasant winter,” Lady Mary contradicted. “But I daresay you have not been here to experience it?”

  Zenobia satisfied her.

  “No, no I returned only very recently.”

  Lady Mary’s rather straight eyebrows shot up. “And you came to call upon me?”

  Zenobia did not twitch a muscle. “I wished to call upon Beatrice Allenby, but I cannot find a trace of her. No one seems to know where she is presently staying. And remembering how fond you were of her, I thought perhaps you might know?”

  Lady Mary struggled, and the opportunity to relate a scandal won. “Indeed I do—although I hardly know if I should tell you!” she said with satisfaction.

  Zenobia affected surprise and concern. “Oh dear! Some misfortune?”

  “That is not the word I would have used for it.”

  “Good heavens! You don’t mean a crime?”

  “Of course I don’t! Really, your mind is—” Lady Mary caught herself just in time before she was openly rude. That would have been vulgar, and she disliked Zenobia Gunne far too much to be vulgar in front of her. “You have become more used to the unconventional behavior of foreigners. Certainly I do not speak of a crime—rather, a social disaster. She married beneath her and went to live in Belgium.”

  “Good gracious!” Zenobia let her amazement register fully. “What an extraordinary thing! Well, there are some very fine cities in Belgium. I daresay she will be happy enough.”

  “A cheesemaker!” Lady Mary added.

  “A what?”

  “A cheesemaker!” She let the word fall with all its redolence of trade. “A person who manufactures cheese!”

  Zenobia remembered a dozen such exchanges years ago—and Peter Holland’s face so full of laughter. She knew exactly what he would have thought, what he would have said in a snatched moment alone. She raised her eyebrows. “Are you perfectly sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure!” Lady Mary snapped. “It is not the sort of thing about which one makes mistakes!”

  “Dear me. Her mother must be distraught!” A very clear picture came into Zenobia’s mind of Beatrice Allenby’s mother, who would have been delighted with any husband, so long as Beatrice did not remain at home.

  “Naturally,” Lady Mary agreed. “Wouldn’t anyone? Although she had no one to blame but herself! She did not watch the girl as she should. One has to be vigilant.”

  It was the opening Zenobia had been waiting for.

  “Of course, your son married very nicely, didn’t he? But men I hear he was a fine-looking young man.” She had not heard anything of the sort, but no mother minded having her son referred to as handsome; in her eyes no doubt he was. There were many photographs round the room, but she was too shortsighted to see them clearly. They could have been of anyone. “And with such charm,” she added for good measure. “So rare. Good-looking young men are apt to be ill-mannered, as if the pleasure of looking at them were sufficient.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Lady Mary said with satisfaction. “He could have chosen almost anyone!”

  That was a wild exaggeration, but Zenobia let it pass. She recalled how sedate and pompous Gerald Carfax had been, and pictured Mary’s long boredom over the years, the brief dream of love fading at last, buried, because to remember it made the present unbearable.

  “Then he married with his heart?” she remarked. “How very commendable. No doubt he is very happy.”

  Lady Mary drew breath to declare that certainly he was, then she remembered Etheridge’s murder and realized that would be a highly unfortunate thing to say. “Ah, well ...”

  Zenobia waited with the question written large in her face.

  “His father-in-law died tragically a very short time ago. He is still in mourning.”

  “Oh dear—oh!” Zenobia affected sudden intelligence. “Oh, of course! Vyvyan Etheridge, murdered on Westminster Bridge. How perfectly wretched. Please accept my condolences.”

  Lady Mary’s face tightened. “Thank you. For one who has just returned from the outreaches of the Empire you are very well informed. No doubt you have missed Society. I must say, one would have considered oneself safe from such outrages in London, but apparently not! Still, no doubt it will all be solved and forgotten soon. It can have nothing whatsoever to do with us.”

  “Naturally,” Zenobia said with difficulty. She remembered acutely why she had disliked Mary Carfax so much. “It is hardly like marrying a cheesemaker.”

  Lady Mary was oblivious to sarcasm; it was outside her comprehension. “A great deal depends upon upbringing,” she said serenely. “James would never have done such a selfish and completely irresponsible thing. I would not have permitted him to entertain such an idea when he was young, and of course now he is adult he still respects my wishes.”

  And your purse strings, Zenobia thought, but she said nothing. />
  “Not that he is without spirit!” Lady Mary looked at Zenobia with a flash of dry disapproval that contained the trace of a smile. “He has many fashionable friends and pursuits, and he certainly does not permit his wife to intrude into his ... his pleasures. A woman should keep her place; it is her greatest strength, and her true power. As you would have known, Zenobia, if you had kept it yourself, instead of careering off quite unnecessarily to heathen countries! There is no call for an Englishwoman to go traipsing around on her own, wearing unbecoming clothes and getting in everyone’s way. Adventuring is for men, as are many other pursuits.”

  “Otherwise one ends up marrying a cheesemaker instead of an heiress!” Zenobia snapped. “I imagine James’s wife will inherit a fortune now?”

  “I have no idea. I do not inquire into my son’s financial affairs.” Lady Mary’s voice was tinged with ice, but there was a curl of satisfaction round her mouth just the same.

  “Your daughter-in-law’s affairs,” Zenobia corrected. “Parliament passed an act, you know; a woman’s property is her own now, not her husband’s.”

  Lady Mary sniffed, and her smile did not fade. “A woman who loved and trusted her husband would still give it into her husband’s charge,” she replied. “As long as he was alive. As you would know, if you had enjoyed a happy marriage yourself. It is not natural for women to concern themselves in such things. If we once start doing it, Zenobia, then men will cease to look after us as they should! For goodness’ sake, woman, have you no intelligence?”

  Zenobia laughed outright. She loathed Mary Carfax and everything to do with her, but for the first time since they had parted thirty-eight years go, she felt a glimmer of understanding toward her, and with it a kind of warmth.