Cardington Crescent (36 page)

“You what?” he shouted involuntarily.

She closed her eyes, her face tight. “Don’t shout, Thomas.”

He strode forward and took her by the arm, pulling her away from the door and around to face him in the center of the room. He was hurting her and he knew it.

“You what?” he repeated fiercely. The very fact that she had remained by the door instead of coming to him and kissing him, that she had not replied with any righteous anger of her own, meant that she was conscious of her guilt. “You followed her!” he accused with certainty.

Her eyes opened wide and there was no apology in them.

“I had to find out where she went,” she explained. “And it was perfectly all right—she goes to help deliver babies! A lot of poor women, or unmarried women—girls—can’t afford a midwife. That’s why so many die. Thomas, it’s a wonderful thing she’s doing, and the people love her.”

He was too angry at the idiotic risk she had taken to be relieved that Tassie’s conduct was so innocent, where he had feared such horror. Without realizing it he was shaking Charlotte.

“You followed her to some woman’s home, alone, at night?” He was still shouting. “You ... you fool! You imbecile! She could have taken you anywhere! What if she had been responsible for the woman whose body was found in bloody pieces in Bloomsbury? You might have been the next one!” He was so furious he could have slapped her, as one does a beloved child who has just escaped falling under the carriage wheels. In the rush of relief one dares to imagine all the possible dangers so narrowly missed. Memory of Clarabelle Mapes and the appalling labyrinth he had so lately left were stronger in him than this comfortable, civilized house. “You stupid, irresponsible woman! Do I have to lock you up before I can leave the house safely and be sure you’ll behave yourself like an adult?”

What had begun as guilt in her was now overridden by a sense of injury. He was being unjust and she was correspondingly angry in her own right. “You are hurting me,” she said coldly.

“You deserve to be thrashed!” he retaliated without altering his grip in the slightest.

She answered by kicking him sharply in the shins with the toe of her boot. He was so surprised he let go of her with a gasp and she stepped back smartly.

“Don’t you dare treat me like a child, Thomas Pitt!” she said furiously. “I am not one of your dainty ladies who do nothing all day and can be ordered to their rooms whenever you don’t like what they say. Emily is my sister, and she’s not going to be hanged for killing George if there is anything at all that I can do to help it. Tassie is in love with Mungo Hare, Beamish’s curate—he helps her with the deliveries—and she is going to marry him.”

He clung to the only other example of male reason and dominion he could think of.

“Her father won’t let her. He’ll never allow it.”

“Oh, yes, he will!” she retorted. “I’ve promised him you won’t tell anyone about his affair with Sybilla if he agrees, and if he doesn’t I shall make thoroughly sure all Society knows of it in detail. He’ll give Tassie his blessing, I assure you.”

“Do you?” He was incensed. “You take a great deal for granted! And what if I don’t choose to honor this promise you gave so freely on my behalf?”

She hesitated, swallowing hard, then met his eyes. “Then Tassie will not be able to marry the man she loves, because he is not socially suitable and has no money,” she said bluntly. “She’ll remain single and live here in bondage to that selfish old woman, keeping her company till she dies, and then doing the same for her father. Either that or she’ll have to marry someone she doesn’t love.”

She did not need to add that that was what might well have happened to her, had her father not been of a more amenable disposition than Eustace, and had her mother not pleaded her cause with force. Pitt was aware of it, and the knowledge robbed him of the justification he wanted. She had done exactly what he would have wished; it was the fact that he had been preempted that enraged him, not the act. But to say so aloud would be ridiculous—in fact, the complaint was ridiculous.

He chose to change the subject entirely, and play his best card. “I have solved the murder of the corpse in the Bloomsbury churchyard,” he said instead. “And captured the murderess, after a chase, with enough evidence to hang her.”

Charlotte was impressed, and she let her amazement and admiration show in her face. “I didn’t think that would be possible,” she said honestly. “How did you do it?”

He sat down sideways on the arm of one of the hide chairs. He was stiff after the bruising he had taken chasing Clarabelle Mapes, and he was surprisingly sore.

“It was a woman who kept a baby farm.”

She frowned. “A what?”

“A baby farm.” He hated having to tell her of such things, but she had chosen to know. “A woman takes out discreet advertisements saying that she loves children and will be happy to care for any infant whose mother, due to circumstances of ill health or other commitment, is unable to care for it herself. Often they add that sickly children are particularly welcomed and will be nursed as if their own. A small financial provision is required, of course, for necessities.”

Charlotte was puzzled. “There must be many women only too glad to avail themselves of such a service. It sounds like a charitable thing to do. Why do you say it with such disgust? Too many women have to work and can’t care for their children, especially if they are in domestic service, and the child is illegitimate—” She stopped. “Why?”

“Because most of them, like Clarabelle Mapes, take the fee from their mothers and then let the sickly ones starve—or actually murder them—rather than spend money on caring for them. The strong or pretty ones they sell.” He saw her face. “I’m sorry. You did ask.”

“Why the Bloomsbury murder?” she asked after a moment’s silence. “Was she the mother of one of the children who was murdered, and discovered the truth?”

“One who was sold.”

“Oh.” She sat down without moving for several minutes, and he did not touch her. Then at last he put out one hand gently. “Why did you go there?” she asked at last.

“The address was in Sybilla’s book.”

She was startled. “The baby farm? But that’s ridiculous. Why?”

“I don’t know. I never found out. I presume Sybilla found it for a servant, one of her own maids or a friend’s. I can’t imagine any of her own circle wanting such a service. Even if they had an illegitimate child, they would find some other provision; a relative in the country, a family retainer in retirement with a daughter.”

“I suppose it was a maid,” Charlotte agreed. “Or else she knew the woman for some other reason. Poor Sybilla.”

“It doesn’t help me any further towards finding out who killed her, or why.”

“You asked the woman, of course?”

He gave a sharp, guttural little laugh. “You didn’t see Clarabelle Mapes, or you wouldn’t ask.”

“Have you no idea who killed George?” She faced him, eyes dark with anxiety, fear heavy at the back of them. He realized again how tired she was, how very troubled.

He touched her cheek gently, slowly. “No, my love, not much. There are only William, Eustace, Jack Radley, and Emily left; unless it was the old woman, which I would dearly like to think, but I know of no reason she would. I can’t even imagine one—and believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You include Emily!”

He closed his eyes, opening them slowly, unhappily. “I have to.”

There was no point in arguing; she knew it to be true. A knock on the door saved her from the necessity of replying.

“Come in,” Pitt said reluctantly.

It was Stripe, looking apologetic and holding a note in his hand.

“Sorry, Mr. Pitt, sir. The police surgeon sent this for you. It don’t make no sense.”

“Give it to me.” Pitt reached out and grabbed it, opening the single sheet and reading.

“What is it?” Charlotte demanded. “What does it say?”

“She was strangled,” he replied quietly, his voice dropping. “By her hair, quick and hard. Very effective.” He saw Charlotte shiver and, out of the corner of his eye, saw Stripe bite his lip. “But she wasn’t carrying a child,” he finished.

Charlotte was stunned. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” he said irritably. “Don’t be idiotic. This is from the surgeon who did the postmortem. You can hardly mistake such a thing!”

Charlotte screwed up her face as if she had been physically hurt, and bent her head into her hands. “Poor Sybilla. She must have miscarried, and she dared not tell anyone. How she must have hated Eustace going on and on about how marvelous it was she was going to give William an heir after all this time. No wonder she looked at him with such loathing. And that dreadful old woman haranguing about family! Oh, God, what wounds we inflict on people!”

Pitt looked at Stripe, who was obviously embarrassed at such an intimate subject and hurt by the pity he felt but only half understood. He realized this was a whole sea of pain he did not comprehend.

“Thank you,” Pitt nodded. “I don’t think it helps us, and I see no reason to tell the family. It will only cause unnecessary distress. Let her keep her secret.”

“Yes, sir.” Stripe withdrew, something like relief in his face.

Charlotte looked up and smiled. She did not need to praise him; he knew it was there in all the unsaid words between them.

Luncheon was as miserable as breakfast had been, and Emily sat at the dining room table more in defiance than because of any delusion that it would be more endurable than eating alone in her room. An additional incentive was the growing conviction that the ring was tightening round her, and unless she could find her own escape she was going to be charged with murder.

Charlotte had told her about following Tassie and discovering the secret of her midnight excursions and the blood on her dress. A difficult delivery could be a very messy affair; the afterbirth could look, in the glare of lamplight, like the gore of a butchery. And no wonder Tassie had worn such a look of calm delight! She had witnessed the beginning of a new life, the last act in the creation of a human being. Could anything at all be further from the madness of which they had suspected her?

Thomas had been here this morning, had spoken to Charlotte and left again, without explanation or, apparently, any further investigation. Although, to be fair to him, Emily could think of nothing else for him to ask.

She looked round the table at them from under her lashes, so no one would notice, while she pushed a lump of boiled chicken round her plate. Tassie was sober, but there was a glow of happiness inside her that no awareness of others’ distress could extinguish. Emily found most of her could honestly be pleased for her; only a tiny core, one she would willingly have quenched, was sharp with envy. Then she felt an unclouded sense of relief that there was no reason on earth to suspect Tassie of any kind of guilt, either in George’s death or Sybilla’s. Emily had never wanted to think there was; it was a necessity forced on her by Charlotte’s extraordinary account of the episode on the stairs. Now that was explained in a way better than she could have dreamed.

At the foot of the table, with its snowfield of a cloth and fine Georgian silver, but flowerless in spite of the blaze in the garden, the old woman sat, dour-faced, in black, her fish-blue eyes staring straight ahead of her. Presumably she had not been told either about Tassie’s intention of marrying the curate or of Eustace’s capitulation in allowing her, still less of his reason. And most assuredly she had not learned of Tassie’s midnight excursions. If she had, there would be far more in her present mood than a cold dislike and, perhaps, at the back of that chill expression and the petty angers, a suffocated fear. After all, it was someone in this house who had murdered twice. Even Lavinia March could not pretend to herself it was a foreign force invading her home; it was something within—a part of them.

But she seemed to remain alone in whatever mourning she suffered; it had not driven her to any softening of heart, any understanding of the fear in anyone else. Emily was aware somewhere in the back of her mind that that was perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, far beyond the need to receive pity—the inability to feel it. And yet she could not evoke in herself compassion for those who gave none themselves.

She would dearly have liked to believe the old woman responsible for murder, but she could think of no reason why she should be, nor any evidence whatsoever which suggested that she was. Mrs. March was the only one in the house whose guilt would cause Emily no unhappiness at all. She racked her brain to find anything to support it, and failed.

As if conscious of her thoughts, the old woman looked up from her plate and gazed at her icily. “I imagine after the funeral tomorrow you will be returning to your own house, Emily,” she said with lifted eyebrows. “Presumably the police will equally easily be able to find you there—although most else seems to be beyond them!”

“Yes, certainly I shall,” Emily answered tartly. “It is only for the convenience of the police that I have stayed here so long—and to show some family solidarity. There is no need for the rest of Society to know how little we find each other’s company agreeable, or seem able to offer each other any comfort.” She took a sip of her wine. “Although I don’t know why you think the police are unable to solve the murders.” She used the ugly word deliberately and was pleased to see the old woman wince with distaste. “They undoubtedly know a great deal that they have not chosen to tell you. They will hardly confide in us. After all, it is one of us whom they will arrest.”

“Really!” Eustace said angrily. “Remember yourself, Emily! That kind of remark is quite unnecessary.”

“Of course it is one of us, you fool!” the old woman snapped at him, her hand shaking so hard her wine slopped over the rim of her glass and ran down onto the cloth. “It is Emily herself, and if you do not know that you are the only one here who doesn’t!”

“You are talking nonsense, Grandmama.” William spoke for the first time since they had come into the dining room. In fact, as far as either Emily or Charlotte could recall, he had not spoken at breakfast either. He looked ghostlike, as if Sybilla’s death had taken all his own vitality as well. Charlotte had said earlier that she was afraid he might collapse at the funeral, so gaunt did he seem.