Cardington Crescent (30 page)

“But first I would like to speak with you, Mr. March.” Charlotte had one card to play, and the decision was made without hesitation. She met his eyes levelly. “We have something to discuss.”

“I—” He teetered on the edge of defying her, his mouth a thin line, his cheeks purple. But his nerve failed. “Go to your room, Anastasia!” he barked furiously.

Charlotte turned to her with a brief smile. “I’ll come and see you in a few minutes,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry.”

Tassie waited a moment, her eyes wide; then, seeing something in Charlotte’s face, she let go of the bannister, turned slowly, and climbed up the stairs and disappeared onto the landing.

“Well?” Eustace demanded, but his voice had a tremor, and the belligerence in his face was artificial.

Charlotte debated for an instant whether to try subtlety or to be so direct he could not possibly mistake her. She knew her limitations, and chose the latter.

“I think you should allow Tassie to continue with her work to help the poor,” she said, as calmly as she could, “and marry Mr. Hare as soon as it can be arranged without seeming hasty and causing unkind remarks.”

“Out of the question.” He shook his head. “Quite out of the question. He has no money, no family, and no prospects.”

She did not bother to argue Mungo Hare’s virtues; they would weigh little with Eustace. She struck at him where he was vulnerable.

“If you do not,” she said slowly and clearly, meeting his eyes, “I shall see that your affair with your son’s wife becomes public property. So far it is only with the police, and although it is disgusting, it is not a crime. But if Society were aware of it, your position would be untenable. Nearly everyone will turn a blind eye to a little discreet philandering, but seducing your son’s wife in your own house—over Christmas! And then continuing to force yourself on her—”

“Stop it!” The cry was dragged out of him. “Stop it!”

“The queen would not approve,” she went on mercilessly. “She is rather a prudish old lady, with an obsession about virtue, especially marital virtue and family life. There would be no peerage for you if she knew this. In fact, you would be wiped off every guest list in London.”

“All right!” The surrender was strangled in his throat, his eyes beseeching. “All right! She can marry the bloody curate! For God’s sake don’t tell anyone about Sybilla! I didn’t kill her—or George. I swear it!”

“Possibly.” She would give him nothing. “The police have the diary, and as long as you are guilty of no crime against the law, there is no reason why they should ever make it known. I shall ask my husband to destroy it—after the murder is solved. For William’s sake, not yours.”

He swallowed hard and spoke with difficulty, hating every word. “Do you give me your word?”

“I just did. Now, if you’ll excuse me I would like to go to bed; it has been a very long and arduous night. And I would like to tell Tassie the good news. She will be very happy. I think she loves Mr. Hare very much. An excellent choice. I shall not see you at breakfast—I think I will have it in bed, if you will be so kind as to order it for me. But I’ll see you at luncheon, and dinner.”

He made a stifled sound that she took for assent.

“Good night, Mr. March.”

“Ah—aaah!” he groaned.

W
HILE
C
HARLOTTE WAS
enjoying breakfast in bed and telling Emily about the night’s events, Pitt was reexamining the address book found in Sybilla’s vanity case. By late morning he and Stripe had accounted for all entries but one. They were addresses he would expect to find any Society woman making note of: relatives, mostly elderly; a number of cousins; friends—some of whom had married and moved to other parts of the country, particularly in the winter, out of the Season, others who were merely social acquaintances with whom it was advantageous to keep up some relationship; and the usual tradesmen—two dressmakers, an herbalist, a milliner, a corsetiere, a florist, a perfumer, and others in similar occupations.

The one he could not place was a Clarabelle Mapes, at 3 Tortoise Lane. The only Tortoise Lane he knew of was a grubby little street in St. Giles, hardly an area where Sybilla March would have occasion to call. Possibly it was a charity of some sort to which she gave her support, an orphanage or workhouse. It was a matter of diligence, overly fussy and probably a waste of time—his superior was certainly of that opinion and said so witheringly—but Pitt decided to call at 3 Tortoise Lane. It was just possible Mrs. Clarabelle Mapes might know something which would add to the close but still indistinguishable picture he had of the Marches.

Much of St. Giles was too narrow to ride through and he left his cab some half mile from Tortoise Lane and walked. The buildings were mean and gray, jettied stories overhung the streets, and there was a fetor of hot air and old sewage. Spindly clerks with stovepipe hats and shiny trousers hurried by clutching papers. A screever, wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose, shuffled aside to allow Pitt to pass. The sun was beating down from a flat, windless sky, and there was smoke strong in the air.

A one-legged man on a crutch hawked matches, a youth held a tray of bootlaces, a girl offered tiny homemade childrens’ clothes. Pitt bought something from her. It was too small for his own children, but he could not bear the pain of passing her by, even though he knew dozens would—if not today, then tomorrow—and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

A coster pushed a barrow of vegetables down the middle of the street, the wheels jiggling noisily over the cobbles. The girl went to him immediately and spent all the few coins Pitt had given her, disappearing with the vegetables in her apron.

Had Eustace March really murdered George to keep secret his affair with his daughter-in-law, and then murdered her when she realized his guilt? He would like to have believed it. Almost everything about Eustace offended him; his complacence, his willing blindness to other people’s need or pain, his unctuous overbearing manner, his virility and dynastic pride. But perhaps he was not wildly untypical of many socially ambitious patriarchs possessed of vigor and money. He was self-absorbed, insensitive rather than deliberately malicious. Most of the time he was convinced he was totally in the right about everything that mattered, and a lot that did not. Pitt had no awareness of a violence or fear in him that would drive him to commit a double murder, least of all in his own house.

Then there was Charlotte’s lurid story of Tassie creeping up the stairs splattered with blood. And in spite of her protestations, he was still not absolutely sure she had not walked in a nightmare—the whole idea was so absurd. Perhaps in the faint gaslight of the night lamps, ordinary water splashed on a dress, or even wine, might have looked to a frightened imagination like blood. Above all, there was no one who had been stabbed. Except, of course, the horrific murder in Bloomsbury—but there was no reason to believe that had any connection with Cardington Crescent.

The other possibility, occurring to him even as he walked along the miserable streets towards Tortoise Lane, was that this Clarabelle Mapes was an abortionist, and Sybilla had procured her address for Tassie—that it was after a hasty, ill-done operation that Charlotte had seen Tassie’s return in the night. And what she had mistaken for a look of joy had in fact been a grimace of pain, mixed with intense relief at being safe, back in her own house and relieved of an intolerable disgrace.

It was an unpleasant thought, and he hoped with surprising depth that this was not true. But he knew the frailties of nature well enough to accept that it was not impossible.

The other answer stemmed from George’s affair with Sybilla—William as the wounded husband, in spite of Eustace’s claim that he had wanted to divorce Sybilla until he knew of the child. But Pitt did not believe William March would have killed his unborn child, no matter how furious he was at his wife’s infidelity. And Pitt did not yet know how far that had gone. It could have been no more than vanity and a stupid exhibition of power.

Or was the child Eustace’s, and not William’s at all?

No. If that were so and William knew it, surely he would have killed Eustace, not George, and perhaps felt himself justified. And there would certainly be many who, whatever their public pronouncements, would privately agree with him.

And the pregnancy predated George’s arrival at Cardington Crescent, so he could not be blamed by anyone.

That left Emily and Jack Radley. They might have acted either together or separately, for love, or greed—or both. Emily he refused to think of until there was no other possibility and it was forced upon him; and if that happened, please God Charlotte would know it for herself and he would not have to be the one to tell her.

He turned the last corner and was in Tortoise Lane. It was as shabby and squalid as the others, indistinguishable except to those who understood the labyrinth and could smell and taste in the thick air their own familiar row of crooked jetties and angled roofs. There were two grubby children of about four or five years playing with stones outside number 3. Pitt stopped and watched them for a moment. They had scratched a pattern of squares on the pavement, including about ten of the slabs, and were skidding the marker stone to a chosen one, then doing an elaborate little dance in and out of the squares, bending gracelessly on one leg to pick up the stone when they were finished.

“Do you know the lady in there?” Pitt pointed to the door of number 3.

They looked at him with confusion. “Which lady?” the bigger one asked.

“Are there a lot of ladies?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know Mrs. Mapes?”

“Mrs. Mapes,” the child said soberly. “Course we do!”

“Do you live in there?” Pitt was surprised. He had already half decided it was an abortionist, and children did not fit his preconception.

“Yeah.” The older child answered; the smaller child was pulling at his sleeve, frightened, and Pitt did not want to get them into trouble for the crumb of information they might be able to give him.

“Thank you.” He smiled, touched the child’s matted hair, and went up to the door. He knocked gently, afraid that a peremptory rap would sound like authority and perhaps elicit no answer, or at best put them on their guard.

It was opened after a very few moments by a small, thin girl who might have been anywhere between twelve and twenty. She was wearing a brown stuff dress, taken in from several sizes larger, a mobcap that held back no more than half her hair, and an outsize apron. Her hands were wet and she carried a kitchen knife. Obviously Pitt had disturbed her at her chores.

“Yeah?” she said with a lift of surprise, her eyes washed-out china blue, already tired.

“Is Mrs. Mapes at home?” Pitt inquired.

“Yeah!” The girl swallowed, put the knife in her pocket, and wiped her hands on her apron. “Yer’d better come in.” Turning, she led the way through a dark, rush-matted corridor, past narrow stairs on which sat a child of about seven, nursing a baby and holding by the hand an infant just old enough to stand. But large families were common; what was less so was that so many within a few years of each other should have survived. Infant mortality was enormous.

The girl knocked on the last door, at the very end of the passage before it turned towards the huge kitchens he could see a dozen yards away.

“Come!” a throaty voice called from inside.

“Thank you.” Pitt dismissed the girl and pulled on the handle. It opened easily and soundlessly into a sitting room that was almost a parody of old Mrs. March’s boudoir. It was doubly startling for its contrast with the threadbare outside and the other rooms Pitt had glimpsed as he passed, and for its joke of familiarity.

The windows looked onto the blind walls of an alley rather than the March’s gracious garden, but it was curtained in a similar hectic pink, faded even by this mean and dirt-filtered light. Probably the curtains had hung unmoved for years. The mantel was draped as well, although in smarter houses fashion had freed the beauty of fine wood or stone from such ornate and destructive prudery. A piano was similarly covered, and every table was bristling with photographs. Lamp shades were fringed and knotted and plastered with mottoes; Home, Sweet Home, God Sees All, and I Love You, Mother.

Seated on the largest pink armchair was a woman of ample, fiercely corseted bosom and prodigious hips, swathed with a dress that on a woman half the size would really have been quite handsome. She had stubby, fat hands with strong fingers, and on seeing Pitt they flew to her face in a gesture of surprise. Her black hair was thick, her black eyes large and shining, her nose and mouth predatory.

“Mrs. Mapes?” Pitt asked civilly.

She waved him to the pink sofa opposite her, the seat worn where countless others had sat.

“That’s me,” she agreed. “An’ ’oo are you, sir?”

“Thomas Pitt, ma’am.” He did not yet intend to tell her his office. Policemen were not welcome in places like St. Giles, and if she had some illegal occupation then she would do everything to hide it, probably successfully. He was in hostile territory, and he knew it.

She regarded him with an experienced eye, seeing immediately that he had little money; his shirt was ordinary and far from new, his boots were mended. But his jacket, in spite of its worn elbows and cuffs, had originally been of fine cut, and his speech was excellent. He had taken his lessons with the son of the estate on which his father worked and never lost the timbre or the diction. She summed him up as a gentleman on hard times, but still considerably better off than herself, and perhaps with prospects.

“Well, Mr. Pitt, wot can I do for yer? This ain’t where you live, so wot you ’ere for?”

“I was given your address by a Mrs. Sybilla March.”

Her black eyes narrowed. “Was yer now? Well, Mr. Pitt, me business is confidential, like. I’m sure yer understands that.”

“I take it for granted, Mrs. Mapes.” He was hoping that if he continued he would learn something from her, however tenuous, that he might pursue. Even a clue as to Mrs. Mapes’s occupation might yield something about Sybilla he had not known. At least she had not denied the acquaintance.