Half Moon Street

by Anne Perry

  “I could have tried!” The words were angry, grating.

  “And made it worse for yourself,” Caroline pointed out. “To go was brave—but to stay and make the best of it you could for your children, that was brave too.”

  A tiny spark lit in the old lady’s black eyes, a flare of hope.

  They had cordially disliked each other for years, living under the same roof, circling around each other with chill, occasionally open, hostility. Now all that seemed unimportant. This was a consuming reality which overrode all the past. The moment was now, in a new light, with new knowledge.

  “No, it wasn’t. I was afraid to go.” The old lady said the words carefully, looking at Caroline all the time.

  Caroline spoke honestly. It was not difficult, which surprised her.

  “Perhaps Alys was afraid to stay?”

  The old lady hesitated. It was obvious she had not thought of that. In her mind Alys had always been the one who was brave, the one who did the right thing. This was hope from a quarter she had never expected.

  Caroline smiled very faintly, just an instant. “It takes strength to endure and tell no one, never to run away, simply give up. Did you ever allow Edward or Suzannah to know?”

  The old lady stiffened. “Of course not! What a monstrous question.”

  “You hid it from them for yourself . . . but for them also.”

  “I . . . I hid it . . .” The struggle for honesty was so plain it was painful. “I don’t know. I hid it for myself. . . . I couldn’t bear my children to know I had . . . I had been . . . to see me like . . .” At last the tears spilled over onto her cheeks and she began to shudder uncontrollably.

  Caroline was horrified. For a moment she was paralyzed. Then pity swept away everything else. She could not like the old woman—there was too much cruelty, too many years of criticism and complaint to forget—but she could feel the wrenching sorrow inside her, the guilt and the self-loathing, the unbearable loneliness. She leaned forward and put her arms around the old woman’s shoulders and held her gently.

  They stayed like that, motionless, neither one of them speaking, until Caroline felt a kind of peace settle over them, perhaps no more than a temporary emotional exhaustion. Then she let go, and sat back in her own chair for a moment.

  Was there something else she should say of comfort, or honesty, something which if left silent now could not be recaught later? Should they agree on some story to tell Joshua? He had to know.

  For a moment she was cold, frightened.

  She looked at the old woman in front of her, head still bent, face hidden. How could she explain the letter? It had to have been someone in the house using her name. She and Samuel had never been seen together in public, except at the theatre the night they met. No woman in Samuel’s life, presuming there was one, could be jealous enough to do such a thing. Caroline was his brother’s widow. Who more natural for him to call on in a strange city?

  But she must explain yesterday to Joshua. That was insistent, at the front of her mind.

  She looked at the old lady, and pity ground hard with a unique pain, but she had brought that upon herself; her own actions had made it inevitable. Caroline was not going to wound Joshua, and herself, to save Mariah Ellison. She could not believe Alys could have told her son something so terrible. But even if he knew, Samuel had not behaved towards them as if he knew. Joshua would remain. What should she say?

  Her own decision was made. She rose to her feet and went quietly out of the room, closing the door. In the hall she saw the maid.

  “Mrs. Ellison would like a little time alone,” she said to the girl. “Please see that she is not disturbed for a while, half an hour at least. Unless, of course, she rings for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Caroline went upstairs deep in thought. It would be very difficult to tell Joshua. Perhaps she could avoid the details. She had never kept a secret from him before. She had been used to discretion all her married life with Edward, but Joshua was different . . . or he had been, before this.

  Perhaps she could tell him that there was an agonizing, humiliating secret but not what it was? Maybe he would not ask.

  She crossed the landing to her bedroom. She had no particular purpose in going there, simply to be alone. Her mind was in far too much turmoil to be concentrated on any household task, and there was none outstanding that mattered.

  She closed the door and sat down in the dressing chair with its pretty chintz flowers. She loved this room. It was what she had wanted for years, in Edward’s time, but he would have disliked it. He would have found the flowers too large, too bright, and the whole thing not dignified enough.

  She tried to remember him clearly, bring back his presence into her mind, everything that was good and gentle about him, the reality of his feelings. How he had grieved for Sarah. He had disliked Pitt so much, to begin with. He had never really come to know him well. But then like a lot of men, he had loved his daughters deeply, even if he had not often shown it, and no man was good enough to marry them and care for them as they should have been. Emily’s first husband had had the money and the breeding, but Edward had always worried that he would not necessarily be faithful to her.

  And of course Pitt had no money to speak of, and no social background at all. How could he ever give Charlotte all Edward thought she was worthy of ?

  And how Dominic had treated his beloved Sarah was an old pain best forgotten now. Sarah was dead, and nothing could retrieve that.

  Then her thoughts skipped to Edward himself, and Mrs. Attwood, whose lovely face Caroline could still picture quite easily, even after all these years. She remembered exactly how she had felt when she had first realized she was Edward’s mistress, not the invalid widow of an old friend, as he had claimed. She had discovered a part of Edward she had not known. What else might there have been that she never knew?

  She was beginning to feel a coldness inside her. Her hands were trembling. She had been totally duped by her father-in-law. She had seen him only as the dignified man she met in the withdrawing room, or presiding at the dining table, saying the family prayers. The other man, the creature Mrs. Ellison described, was a monster living in the same skin, and she had neither seen nor felt anything of him at all. How could she be so utterly blind, so insensitive?

  What else was she blind to? It was not only that she had been wrong about her father-in-law, it was that she had been so wrong about herself ! All that cruelty, that misery and humiliation, even physical pain, had been there behind the daily masks, and she had seen nothing of them.

  In who else’s face had she seen only what she wanted to? What had Edward asked of Mrs. Attwood that he had never asked of Caroline? How much did she really know about anyone? Even Joshua . . . ?

  She did not feel in the least like going out that evening, but it was the first night of Joshua’s new play. Normally she would be there, whatever the circumstances. Not to go would make a statement she could never retrieve.

  She ate a light supper alone—the old lady remained upstairs— then she dressed with great care in a magnificent royal blue gown. She added the cameo pendant that Joshua had given her, and a long velvet cloak, then took the carriage to the theatre, feeling cold, shivering and uncertain. Joshua could not be more afraid of this evening than she was. He could not have as much riding in its success or failure.

  For a while the buzz of excitement carried her along and she had no chance to think of anything other than greeting friends and those who wished her well. They congratulated her for Joshua and were filled with anticipation of the audience’s reaction. She desperately wished him to succeed, to be praised, and yet not to portray any of the disturbing passions she saw in Cecily Antrim.

  At last the lights dimmed, the audience fell silent, and the curtain rose.

  The play was superb, subtle, intelligent, and funny. Many times she found herself laughing aloud. During the first interval she glanced across and saw Mr. and Mrs. Marchand, smiling and at ease.
She was too far away to read their expressions in detail, but their gestures made their pleasure evident.

  Suddenly Caroline was aware of hurt, even defensiveness. She did not want them to be disturbed; she liked them and understood them, she wanted their friendship and perceived both its values and its limitations. And yet complacency was a kind of death. Something that did not stir thought, awaken new emotions or challenge preconceptions was agreeable, but no more than that. And she knew that Joshua would despise himself if that was all he did. He did not wish merely to entertain. That was at least in part why he admired Cecily Antrim so profoundly. She had the courage to say what she believed, whether one agreed with it or not.

  The second act was swifter moving, and it was almost over before she realized there were deeper emotions drawn from her than in the first, and becoming more complex. It was painful, and it was also a kind of relief. She began to think again of Mariah Ellison and how the sudden knowledge of her suffering and anger over all these years had changed her own life.

  Twenty-four hours ago she would not have believed that civilized people would even think of the things the old lady had said Edmund Ellison had forced on her most nights of her married life. And yet even sitting here in this exquisite theatre, watching drama so perfectly performed, acted, pretended with consummate skill, surrounded in the half dark by hundreds of exquisitely dressed people, she did believe it. That darkness might lie behind any number of these calm, smoothly groomed faces. She would never know.

  She thought of the old lady sitting in growing terror every time Samuel called, then at last planning her terrible, destructive escape. Had she thought that if Joshua left Caroline, threw her out for immorality, just what that would mean? Surely she had. And yet she had known nothing but bitterness and humiliation in marriage, and she could not live with the thought that her family, to whom she had perpetuated the lie for so many years, would at last know that.

  What terrible isolation, what loneliness and fear all the time that Caroline had never guessed, horror that had never entered her imagination.

  Perhaps some of these things needed to be said, emotions stirred and disturbed, painful questions asked, so a thread of understanding could be woven between people who would never experience for themselves the things that tortured others who sat only a few feet away.

  She leaned forward to watch the third and final act of the play.

  Afterwards she went backstage to his dressing room, as she always did after a major performance. She was as nervous as if she herself was about to step out in front of the audience and she did not know her lines.

  She had rehearsed a dozen times what she was going to say to him, but what if he would not see her? What if he would not listen? She would have to make him . . . insist. She could be as determined as Cecily Antrim or anyone else. She loved Joshua, wholly and completely, and she was not going to lose him without fighting with every skill and strength she possessed.

  The dressing room door was closed. She could hear laughter inside. How could he laugh, when he had left her in the morning without speaking?

  She knocked. She would not go in uninvited. She might see something she would prefer not to. That thought was like ice inside her. It made her feel sick.

  There were footsteps and the door opened. Joshua stood there in a robe, half changed from his costume. He looked startled, then his face softened a little. He pulled the door wide without saying anything. There were two other people inside, a man and a woman.

  Relief flooded over Caroline, and guilt. He had not been alone with anyone.

  They were actors she knew from other plays, and they welcomed her. She congratulated them all on the performance, quite honestly. She could hardly believe how normal her voice sounded.

  They seemed to talk endlessly. Would they never leave? Could she say anything to suggest they did? No . . . that would be unforgivably rude.

  Then the words were out. “I’m so glad I came, it was so much richer than I could have guessed,” she said distinctly. “There is something about a first night that can never be repeated exactly. And I nearly didn’t.” She avoided Joshua’s eyes. “My mother-in-law is staying with us at the moment, and she was not at all well today. Something . . . happened . . . which distressed her more than I would have thought possible.”

  The others expressed their concern.

  “Should you be home early?” the man asked.

  Caroline looked at Joshua at last.

  “Is she ill?” he said. His voice was unreadable.

  The other two excused themselves, graciously, and left.

  “Is she?” Joshua repeated.

  “No,” Caroline replied. He was tired, and the mood was too fragile between them to play with words. “She did something wicked, and today I discovered it, and when I faced her she told me why.”

  He looked puzzled. He did not really want to know. He tolerated the old lady because he felt he should, perhaps for Caroline’s sake.

  “Wicked?” he said dubiously.

  She must continue. “Yes, I think so. She wrote a very forward letter to Samuel Ellison, inviting him to call yesterday afternoon, and signed it with my name.” Why did he not say something? She hurried on. “When he arrived she deliberately left the room, which she has never done before, then sent Joseph to fetch you.”

  “Why?” he said slowly. “I know she disapproves of me because I am an actor and a Jew, but as much as that?”

  The tears stung her eyes and she felt her throat ache. “No!” She wanted to touch him, but it would be wrong now. He might see it as pity. “No! It has nothing to do with you. She is afraid that Samuel knows something about his own mother which was true about Mariah also, something dreadful, of which she was so ashamed she could not bear anyone else to know. She worried that he would tell me, and so she wanted you to throw him out so he would never return. Then her secret would be safe. She was so terrified of it she did not care if she ruined my happiness. She would do anything to stop me knowing, and of course the rest of the family as well. She felt she could not live if we did.”

  He stared at her in amazement. He was very pale, but it was not anger in his face, it was horror.

  “I know what it is,” she said quietly. “And I think I can forgive her for what she has done. If you don’t mind, I would rather not tell you what she suffered, but I will if I must.”

  His face relaxed. He was too tired, perhaps too shaken to smile, but there was a gentleness in him she did not mistake.

  “No,” he said softly. “No, I don’t want to know. Let her keep her secret.”

  The tears spilled down her cheeks and she found herself sniffing and swallowing hard. “I love you,” she whispered, and sniffed again.

  He stood up and reached out a little tentatively. Suddenly she realized how much he had been hurt. He had doubted . . . feared.

  She put her arms around him and held him so hard she felt him wince. “I’m sorry I didn’t behave so you knew that,” she said into his shoulder.

  His arms tightened until he was holding her just as closely as she held him. He did not say anything, just moved his lips over her hair, slowly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Pitt and Tellman still pursued the matter of Henri Bonnard and his quarrel with Orlando Antrim. Frankly, Pitt was not certain that they would learn anything useful from it, even if they were to discover the entire truth of the matter. If Bonnard had disappeared of his own volition it might well be worrying, and extremely irritating to the French Embassy, but it was not a police matter. The only real connection with Cathcart’s death was photography. Their resemblance to one another was coincidental and he could see no importance in it. He was perfectly certain that the body found at Horseferry Stairs was Cathcart and that it was Bonnard with whom Orlando Antrim had quarreled.

  “Do you think it was really about pictures?” Tellman said dubiously as they rode in a hansom towards Kew, where they had been told the camera club was photographing interesting foliage in the
tropical glasshouses. “Would anyone really commit murder over a photograph? I mean,” he added hastily, “a photograph that wasn’t of somebody doing something they shouldn’t.”

  “I doubt it,” Pitt admitted. “But I suppose it could have been the start of a quarrel which got out of hand.”

  Tellman sat forward morosely. “I think I’m just getting to understand people and know why they do what they do, then I get on a case like this, and I feel as if I know nothing.”

  Pitt looked at his angular shoulders and dour, lantern-jawed face and saw the confusion in him. Tellman had such set ideas about society and people, about what was just and what was not. They sprang from the poverty of his youth, the underlying anger that fueled his desire to change things, to see labor rewarded and find some greater equality among people who worked and those who, as far as he could see, did not and yet possessed so much. Investigating the private tragedies of their lives constantly upset his preconceptions and obliged him to feel a pity and an understanding he did not wish to, where it would have been so much easier, and more comfortable, simply to have hated.

  Now the photographs, which these privileged young men obviously cared about so much, seemed to him both beautiful and trivial, but not a comprehensible motive for murder.

  Pitt was inclined to agree with him. But at the moment they had little better to pursue. No one in the area where Cathcart lived had observed anything helpful, and Lily Monderell was telling nothing more about the photographs she had removed and sold almost immediately at such an excellent profit. Once again they were back to photographs. It seemed the motive lay somewhere within them.

  They traveled the rest of the way to Kew Gardens and went in to find the tropical house, a magnificent tower of glass containing giant palm trees with fronds more than a yard across, exotic ferns, trailing vines with flowers, and bromeliads blooming in pale, lustrous colors.

  Tellman drew in his breath deeply, smelling the heat and the damp, the rich humus. He had never experienced anything like it before.