“I fail to see what is funny!” Lady Mary said tartly.
“I’m sure.” Zenobia nodded through her mirth. “You always did.”
Lady Mary reached for the bell. “You must have other calls to make—please do not let me take all of your time.”
There was nothing Zenobia could possibly do but take her leave. She rose. The visit had been a total disaster, not a thing could be salvaged, but she would go with dignity.
“Thank you for passing on the news about Beatrice Allenby. I knew you would be the person who would know what had happened—and who would repeat it. It has been a charming afternoon. Good day to you.” And as the maid opened the door in answer to the bell, she swept past her, across the hall, and out of the front door as soon as it was opened. Outside in the street she swore fluently in a dialect she had learned from a canoeist in the Congo. She had achieved nothing to help Florence Ivory, or Africa Dowell.
Vespasia had by far the easiest task, but she was also the only person suited to perform it with excellence. She knew the political world as neither Charlotte nor Zenobia could possibly do; she had the rank and the reputation to approach almost anyone, and from her many battles for social reform she had gained the experience to know very well when she was being lied to or fobbed off with an edited version of the truth suitable for ladies and amateurs.
She was fortunate to find Somerset Carlisle at home, but had he been out she would have waited. The matter was far too urgent to put off. She had naturally not said so to Zenobia, but the more she heard of the details, the more she feared that at the very least the police could make an excellent case against Florence Ivory, and at most she was actually guilty. Had Zenobia not been the character she was—eccentric, courageous, lonely, and of deep and enduring affections—Vespasia would have avoided any involvement with the affair at all. But since she had agreed to help, the least cruel thing she could think of was that they should try to discover the truth as soon as they could. There was the remote possibility that they would find some other solution; if not, they would at least end Zenobia’s fearful suspense, the swings between the upsurge of hope and the plunges of cold despair as one piece of information surfaced after another. And as hard as any revelation was the gray silence of waiting, not knowing what could happen next, imagining, trying to argue in the mind what the police would be thinking.
Vespasia had experienced it all after George’s death and she knew what Zenobia would feel with an immediacy no outsider could.
Therefore she did not have the slightest qualm in sending for Charlotte and dispatching her on any errand that might prove useful. She would have sent Emily as well had she not been gallivanting round Italy. And she was perfectly happy to take up Somerset Carlisle’s time and employ his talents, should they prove to be of help.
He received her in his study. It was a smaller room than the withdrawing room, but immensely comfortable, full of old leather and old finely polished wood reflecting the firelight. The big desk was strewn with papers and open books, and there were three pens in the stand and half a stick of sealing wax and a scatter of unused postage stamps.
Somerset Carlisle was a man in his late forties, lean, with the look of one who has burnt up all his excesses of energy in relentless activity, a face where emotion and irony lay so close to the surface that only years of schooling kept them within the bounds of taste, not because he feared or believed the doctrine of others, but because he knew the impracticality of shocking people. However, as Vespasia knew very well from the past, his imagination was vivid and limitless, and he was equal to any act, no matter how bizarre, if he believed it right.
He was startled to see her, and immediately curious. A lady of her quality would never have called unannounced unless her reason were pressing; knowing Vespasia, it had probably to do with crime or injustice, about which she felt intensely.
He rose as soon as she came in, inadvertently spilling a pile of letters, which he ignored.
“Lady Cumming-Gould! It is always a pleasure to see you. But no doubt you have come for something more than friendship. Please sit down.” He rapidly pushed a great long-legged marmalade cat out of the other chair and brushed off the seat with his hand, plumping up the cushion for her. “Shall I send for tea?”
“Later perhaps,” she replied. “For the moment I need your assistance.”
“Of course. With what?”
The marmalade cat stalked over to the desk, jumped up onto it, and tried to climb behind a pile of books, not in alarm but from curiosity.
“Hamish!” Carlisle said absently. “Get down, you fool!” He turned back to Vespasia, and the cat ignored him. “Something has happened?”
“Indeed it has,” she agreed, remembering with a sharply sweet sense of comfort how much she liked this man. “Two members of Parliament have had their throats cut on Westminster Bridge.”
Carlisle’s winged and rather crooked eyebrows rose. “And that brings you here?”
“No, not of itself, of course not. I am concerned because it seems the niece of a very good friend of mine may be suspected by the police.”
“A woman?” he said incredulously. “Hardly a woman’s sort of crime—neither the method nor the place. Thomas Pitt doesn’t think so, surely?”
“I really have no idea,” she admitted. “But I think not, or Charlotte would have mentioned it, always assuming she knew. She has been somewhat preoccupied with Emily’s wedding recently.”
“Emily’s wedding?” He was surprised, and pleased. “I didn’t know she had married again.”
“Yes—to a young man of immeasurable charm and no money whatsoever. But that is not as disastrous as it sounds; I think, as much as one can ever be sure, that he cares for her deeply and has the quality of loyalty in even very trying times, a sense of adventure, and a very agreeable sense of humor, so it may well prove a happy situation. At least it has begun well, which is not always the case.”
“But you are concerned about your friend’s niece? Why on earth should she take to murdering M.P.s?” His face was full of visions of the absurd, but she knew that beneath it he understood fear very well, and his light tone did not mean he did not appreciate the gravity of the situation.
“Because the second victim promised to help her retain custody of her child, and then reneged on his word and assisted her husband, with the result that she lost the child and will in all probability not see her again.”
He was leaning forward towards her, tense now, concentrating. “Why? Why should a mother lose custody of her child?” he asked.
“She is deemed an unsuitable person to raise a girl because she has opinions. For example, she believes that women should have a right to vote for their representatives in Parliament and in local government, and she has associated herself with Mrs. Bezant and the fight for a decent wage and improved conditions for the match girls at Bryant and Mays. No doubt you are better aware than I of the numbers who the of necrosis of the jaw from the phosphorus and are bald before they reach the age of twenty from carrying boxes on their heads.”
His face looked suddenly bruised, as if had seen too much pain. “I am. Tell me, Vespasia,” he said, letting the formality drop without realizing it, “do you believe this woman could have killed the M.P.s?”
“I do,” she confessed. “But I have not met her yet. I may think otherwise when I have, though I doubt it: Nobby—Zenobia Gunne—thinks so too. But I have promised to help. Therefore I have come to ask you if there’s anything at all you can tell me about either Lockwood Hamilton or Vyvyan Etheridge which may conceivably be of any use in discovering who murdered them, whether it is Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell or someone else.”
“Two women?”
“Florence Ivory is the mother who lost her child; Africa Dowell is Nobby’s niece, with whom Mrs. Ivory shares a house.”
He stood up and went to the door, requested tea and sandwiches, and returned to sit down opposite Vespasia again, having to remove Hamish from his chair fir
st.
“Naturally, when I first heard of the murders it crossed my mind to wonder whether it was anarchists, a lunatic, or someone with a personal motive, although I admit, I thought the third far less likely after Etheridge was killed as well.”
“Didn’t they have anything in common?”
“If they did I don’t know what it was, beyond the things that are equally common to a couple of hundred other people!”
“Then we may have to assume that one was killed in mistake for the other,” she concluded. “Is that imaginable?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes. They both lived on the south side of the river not far from Westminster Bridge, a pleasant walk home on a spring night. They were both of medium build, with the conspicuous feature being silver hair, and both were pale, with rather longish faces. I have never mistaken one for the other, but it would be possible for someone who had only a slight acquaintance, and in the dark. That would mean that Etheridge was the intended victim, and Hamilton a mistake; one would hardly make the mistake second.”
“Tell me all you know about Etheridge.” Vespasia sat back and folded her hands in her lap, her eyes on his face.
For several seconds he sat in silence, ordering his thoughts, during which time the tea and sandwiches arrived.
“His career has been solid but unspectacular,” he began at last. “He has property in two or three counties, as well as in London, and is very well provided for indeed, but it is old money, not new. He did not make much of it himself.”
“Politics?” she interrupted.
His mouth turned down at the corners. “That is what is difficult to understand. He didn’t do anything controversial, tended to go with the party line on everything I know of. He is for reform, but only at the speed his peers approve. He’s hardly a radical or an innovator, nor, on the other hand, a die-hard.”
“You are saying he went whichever way the prevailing wind blew,” Vespasia said with some contempt.
“I don’t know that I would put it as cruelly as that. But he was very much in the mainstream. If he had any convictions, they were the same as most of his colleagues. He was against Irish Home Rule, but only on a vote; he never spoke about it in the House, so he was hardly a target for the Fenians.”
“What about office?” she said hopefully. “He must have trodden on somebody’s toes on the way up.”
“My dear Vespasia, he didn’t go far enough up to do anyone out of anything of importance—certainly nothing he’d get his throat cut for!”
“Well did he ravish someone’s daughter, or seduce someone’s wife? For heaven’s sake, Somerset, somebody killed him!”
“Yes I know.” He looked down at his hands, then up again into her eyes. “Don’t you think it may be either a lunatic simply run amok, or else your friend’s niece, as you fear?”
“I think it is probable, but not certain. And as long as there is any doubt one way or the other, I shall continue to pursue it. Perhaps the man had a lover, of either sex? Or he may have gambled; maybe someone owed him more than they could afford to pay, or perhaps it was Etheridge himself who was owing. He may have gained some knowledge, quite by chance, and he was murdered to silence him.”
Carlisle frowned. “Knowledge of what?”
“I don’t know! For heaven’s sake, man, you have been in the world long enough! Scandal, corruption, treason—there are more than enough possibilities.”
“You know it always amazes me how a woman of your immaculate breeding and impeccable life could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the sins and perversions of mankind. You look as if you’ve never seen a kitchen, much less a bawdy house.”
“That is how I intend to look,” she replied. “A woman’s appearance is her fortune, and what she seems to be will be the measure of what other people assume she is. If you had a trifle more practical sense you would know that. At times I think you are an idealist.”
“At times I probably am,” he agreed. “But I will scrape around and see what I can learn about Etheridge for you, although I doubt it will be of much help.”
So did Vespasia, but she would not give up hope.
“Thank you. Knowledge will be useful, whatever it is. Even if it merely allows us to eliminate certain possibilities.”
He smiled at her, and there was some tenderness as well as respect in his eyes. She felt faintly embarrassed, which was absurd; Vespasia was above embarrassment. But she was startled to find how much his affection pleased her. She took another sandwich—they were salmon and mayonnaise—and gave one as well to the cat, and then she changed the subject.
Charlotte alighted at Walnut Tree Walk and went straight up to the door. There was no point on this call in being anything but perfectly frank. She had not asked but she presumed Zenobia Gunne had told her niece that she would do all she could to help; why else would her niece have confided in her?
The door was opened by a maid, not in uniform but in a plain blue dress with a white apron and no cap.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Good afternoon. I apologize for calling so late,” Charlotte said with great aplomb. “But it is most important that I speak with Miss Africa Dowell. My name is Charlotte Ellison, and I have come from her aunt, Miss Gunne, on a matter of some urgency.”
The maid stepped back and invited her in, and as soon as Charlotte came into the hallway she liked the house. It was full of bamboo and polished wood, with plenty of light. Spring bulbs and flowers bloomed in green earthenware pots, and she could see chintz curtains in the dining room through the open door.
It was only a moment before the maid returned and showed her into a large sitting room, which seemed to be the one room in the house designed for receiving guests. The far wall was entirely taken up by windows and French doors, the seats were covered in flowered cushions, and on the bamboo-legged occasional table were bowls of flowers. However, Charlotte was aware of a hollowness in it, something she would not have expected from what she already knew of these women’s lives. It took her only a moment to realize what had given her the feeling: there were no photographs anywhere, even though there was plenty of space on the mantelshelf, the windowsill, the table and the top of the cabinet. Most especially, there were no pictures of the child, such as Charlotte herself had of both Jemima and Daniel. There were no mementos at all.
And though it was a woman’s room, there was no needlework in progress, no wool, no sewing basket, no embroidery. A sidelong glance at the bookshelf disclosed the heaviest of material, philosophy and political history, no humor, no romance, and certainly nothing a child would read.
It was as if they had expunged all trace of painful memory and of the desire to create the heart of a home. It was pitiful; she could understand it with a part of her mind, and yet it was also chilling.
The woman who stood in the center of the room was angular, even bony, and at the same time she had a kind of perverse grace. Her plain muslin dress was oddly becoming. Frills would have been absurd with that striking face, the very wide-set eyes, the dominant nose, and the mouth etched by lines of pain. She looked to be about thirty-five, and Charlotte knew she must be Florence Ivory. Her heart sank lower. A woman with a face like this could assuredly have been loved and hated enough to do anything!
Beyond her, sitting on the window seat, a younger woman with a face straight from Rossetti stared back at Charlotte watchfully, prepared to defend what she loved, both the woman and the ideal. It was a dreamer’s face, the face of one who would follow her vision, and the for it.
“How do you do,” Charlotte said after a moment’s hesitation. “I have spent some part of the morning in the company of Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, and your aunt, Miss Gunne. They invited me to take luncheon with them because they are deeply concerned about your welfare, and the possibility that you may be wrongly accused of a crime.”
“Indeed?” Florence Ivory looked bitterly amused. “And how does that involve you, Miss Ellison? You cannot possibly call upon every woman in Londo
n who faces some injustice!”
Charlotte felt a prickle of irritation. “I should not wish to, Mrs. Ivory, and certainly not upon all those who thought they had!” she answered equally tartly. “I call upon you because Miss Gunne has taken it upon herself to try to prevent this particular injustice which she fears, and has asked my Great-aunt Vespasia’s help, who has in turn asked me.”
“I fail to see what you can do.” Florence spoke from bitterness, but also from despair.
“Of course you fail to,” Charlotte snapped. “If you could see it you could probably do it yourself! You are not unintelligent.” Her mind flashed back to that public meeting and the intensity of determination. “And I have few resources that are not open to you or anyone else. I simply have some experience, some common sense and some courage.” She had not spoken so abruptly, or so arrogantly, to anyone as far back as she could remember! But there was an abrasive-ness and an anger in this woman which she at once understood, knowing her story, and found unnecessary and self-defeating.
Africa Dowell stood up and went to Florence Ivory. She was taller than Charlotte had realized, and although slender, she looked as if she might be of athletic build under the rosy cotton of her gown.
“You cannot be a detective, Miss Ellison, if Lady Cumming-Gould is your great-aunt. What is it you are proposing to do that might be of help to us?”
Florence gave her a withering look. “Really, Africa. The police are all men, and while some of them may have reasonable manners and even some imagination, it is futile to suppose they will come to any conclusion except the most obvious and convenient one! They are hardly going to suspect Miss Ellison’s family or associates, are they? Our best prayer is that some lunatic is caught before they can organize the evidence against me!”
Africa had more patience than Charlotte would have had.
“Aunt Nobby is really very good.” Her chin lifted a little higher. “When she was in her early thirties she began exploring. She went to Egypt, then south to the Congo. She traveled up the great river in a canoe; she was the only white person in her party. She’s had the courage to do things you would like to do, so don’t dismiss her.” She refrained from adding any criticism of Florence Ivory’s prejudice.
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