Cardington Crescent (6 page)

Tassie bent her head a little lower over her toast and preserves. The pinkness deepened in her face, a reflection of a mixture of frustration at being patronized and embarrassment because her father’s reference to her was obviously infinitely more indelicate than anything she had meant.

But Eustace was relentless; he pursued the subject obliquely throughout breakfast. To food and health were added delicacy of upbringing, discretion, obedience, an even temper, and the appropriate skills in conversation and household management. The only attribute not touched upon was wealth, and that of course would have been vulgar. And it was a matter of some sensitivity to him; his mother was of a fine family who had squandered its means, obliging her either to reduce her style of life or marry into a family which had made its fortunes in the Industrial Revolution in the mines and mills of the North. The “Trade.” She had chosen the latter, with some distaste. The former was unthinkable.

He nodded his head in satisfaction as he spoke. “When I think of my own happiness with my beloved wife, may heaven rest her, I realize how much all these things contributed to it. Such a wonderful woman! I treasure her memory—you have no notion. It was the saddest day of my life when she departed this vale of tears for a better place.”

Emily glanced across at William, whose head was bent to hide his face, and accidentally caught Jack Radley’s eyes, filled with amusement. He rolled them very slightly and smiled at her. It was a bright, disturbing look, and she knew without doubt that although the monumental effort she had made over the last three days might have failed with George, it had succeeded brilliantly with him. It was a bitter satisfaction, and worth nothing—unless unintentionally she should finally provoke George to jealousy.

She smiled back at him, not warmly, but with at least a shred of conspiracy.

George was drawn in, curiously enough, by Eustace. Eustace spoke to him with friendliness, seeking his opinion, expressing an admiration for him, which Emily found singularly inopportune. At the moment George was the last person in the house anyone should have consulted about married bliss. But Eustace was pursuing his own interests with Jack Radley and Tassie, and oblivious of anyone else’s feelings, least of all their possible embarrassment.

Emily spent the morning writing letters to her mother, a cousin to whom she owed a reply, and to Charlotte. She told Charlotte everything about George; her pain, the sense of loss which surprised her, and the loneliness that opened up in a gray, flat vastness ahead. Then she tore it up and disposed of it in the water closet.

Luncheon was worse. They were back in the heavy, rust red dining room and everyone was present except Great-aunt Vespasia, who had chosen to visit an acquaintance in Mayfair.

“Well!” Eustace rubbed his hands and looked round at all their faces in turn. “And what do we plan for the afternoon? Tassie? Mr. Radley?”

“Tassie has errands to do for me!” Mrs. March snapped. “We do have our duty, Eustace. We cannot be forever playing and amusing ourselves. My family has a position—it has always had a position.” Whether this remark was purely a piece of personal vanity or a reminder to Jack Radley that they were quite unarguably his social equals was not clear.

“And Tassie always seems to be the one keeping it up,” George said with a waspishness surprising in him.

Mrs. March’s eyes froze. “And why not, may I ask? She has nothing else to do. It is her function, her calling in life, George. A woman must have something to do. Would you deny her that?”

“Of course not!” George was getting cross, and Emily felt a lift of pride for him in spite of herself. “But I can think of a lot more amusing things for her to do than upholding the position of the Marches,” he finished.

“I daresay!” The old lady’s voice would have chipped stones—tombstones by the look on her face. “But hardly what one would wish a young lady even to hear about, much less to do. I will thank you not to injure her mind by discussing it. You’ll only upset her and cause her to have ideas. Ideas are bad for young women.”

“Quite,” Eustace added soberly. “They cause heat in the blood, and nightmares.” He took an enormous slice of chicken breast and put it on his plate. “And headaches.”

George was caught between his innate good manners and his sense of outrage; the conflict showed in his face. He glanced at Tassie.

She put her hand out and touched his arm gently. “I really don’t mind going to see the vicar, George. He’s awfully smug, and his teeth are wet and stick out, but he’s really quite harmless—”

“Anastasia!” Eustace sat bolt upright. “That is no way to speak of Mr. Beamish. He is a very worthy man, and deserving of a great deal more respect from a girl of your age.”

Tassie smiled broadly. “Yes, Papa, I am always very nice to Mr. Beamish.” Then sudden honesty checked her. “Well, nearly always.”

“You will go to call upon him this afternoon,” Mrs. March said coldly, sucking at her teeth, “and see if you can be of assistance. There must be several of the less fortunate who need visiting.”

“Yes, Grandmama,” Tassie said meekly. George sighed and, for the time being, gave up.

Emily spent the afternoon with Tassie, doing good works. If one cannot enjoy oneself, one might as well benefit someone else. As it turned out it was really quite agreeable, since Emily liked Tassie more and more each time she saw her, and their visit with the vicar’s wife was actually very brief. Considerably more time was taken up in the company of the curate, a large, soft-spoken young man called Mungo Hare, who had chosen to leave his native western Inverness-shire to seek his living in London. He was full of zeal and very forthright opinions, which were demonstrated by his acts rather than his words. They did indeed offer some real comfort to the bereaved and to the lonely, and Emily returned to Cardington Crescent with a sense of accomplishment. Added to this was the knowledge that Sybilla had spent the time paying afternoon calls with her grandmother-in-law, and must have been bored to distraction.

But Emily did not see George on her return, nor when she changed for dinner. There was no sound from the dressing room except the valet coming in and then leaving, and the feeling of desolation returned.

At the dinner table it was worse. Sybilla looked marvelous in a shade of magenta no one else would have dared to wear. Her skin was flawless, with just a touch of pink on the cheekbones, and she was still as slender as a willow in spite of her condition. Her eyes were hazel; at times they seemed brown, at others, golden, like brandy in the light. Her hair was silken, black and thick as a rope.

Emily felt washed out beside her, a moth next to a butterfly. Her hair was honey fair, softer, delicate rather than rich, her eyes quite ordinary blue; her gown was very fashionable in cut, but by comparison the color was pallid. It took all the courage she possessed to force the smile to her lips, to eat something which tasted like porridge although it appeared to be sole, roasted mutton, and fruit sorbet.

Everyone else was gay, except old Mrs. March, who had never been anything so trivial. Sybilla was radiant; George could hardly take his eyes off her. Tassie looked unusually happy, and Eustace held forth with unctuous satisfaction on something or other. Emily did not listen.

Gradually the decision hardened in her mind. Passivity was not succeeding: It was time for action, and there was only one course of action that she could think of.

There was little she could begin until the gentlemen rejoined them after the meal was over. The conservatory stretched the full length of the south side of the house, and from the withdrawing room there were glass doors under pale green curtains, which opened onto palms, vines, and a walk quite out of sight between exotic flowers.

Emily’s patience was totally exhausted. She moved to sit beside Jack Radley and took the first opportunity to engage him in conversation, which was not in the least difficult. He was only too delighted. In other circumstances she would have enjoyed it, for against her will she liked him. He was too good-looking, and he knew it, but he had wit and a sense of the absurd. She had seen it gleaming in those remarkable eyes a dozen times over the last few days. And, she thought, there was no hypocrisy in him, which in itself was enough to endear him to her after three weeks at Cardington Crescent.

“Mrs. March seemed very nervous of you,” he said curiously. “When you mentioned the word ‘detecting,’ I thought she was going to take a fit and slide under the table.” There was a shadow of laughter in his comment, and she realized just how much he disliked the old lady; a whole region of unhappiness opened a fraction to her guess. Perhaps family and circumstances were pressing him into a marriage for money. Perhaps he wanted such a union no more than the young women who were so mercilessly maneuvered by their mothers into marrying for position, so as not to be left that most pathetic of all social creatures, the unmarried woman past her prime, with neither means to support herself nor vocation to occupy her years.

“It is not my ability which alarms her,” she said with the first smile she had genuinely felt. “It is the way I came by it.”

“Came by it?” His eyebrows rose. “Was it something frightful?”

“Worse.” Her smile increased.

“Shameful?” he pursued.

“Terribly!”

“What?” He was on the edge of outright laughter now.

She bent closer to him and held up her hand. He leaned over to listen.

“My sister married appallingly beneath her,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear, “to a detective in the police!”

He shot upright and turned to face her in amazement and delight. “A detective! A real one, a peeler? Scotland Yard, and all that?”

“Yes. All that—and more.”

“I don’t believe it!” He was enjoying the game enormously, and there was a touch of reality in it that made it all the better.

“She did!” Emily argued. “Didn’t you see Mrs. March’s face? She’s terrified I’ll mention it. It’s a disgrace to the family.”

“I’ll bet it is!” He chortled with delight. “Poor old Eustace—he’ll never recover. Does Lady Cumming-Gould know?”

“Aunt Vespasia? Oh, yes. In fact if you doubt me, ask her. She knows Thomas quite well, and what’s more, she likes him, in spite of the fact that he wears clothes that don’t fit him and perfectly dreadful mufflers of most violent and unseemly colors, and his pockets are always bulging with notes and wax and matches and bits of string and heaven knows what else. And he’s never met a decent barber in his life—”

“And you like him too,” he interrupted happily. “You like him very much.”

“Oh, yes, I do. But he’s still a policeman, and he gets involved in some very gruesome murders.” The memory of them sobered her for a moment; he saw it in her face, and immediately took her mood.

“You know about them?” Now he was truly intrigued. She had his total attention, and she found it exhilarating.

“Certainly I do! Charlotte and I are very close. I’ve even helped sometimes.”

His bright eyes clouded with skepticism.

“I have!” she protested. It was something she was obscurely proud of: it had, really, something to do with life outside the suffocation of drawing rooms. “I practically solved some of them—at least, Charlotte and I did together.”

He was not sure whether to believe her or not, but there was no criticism in his face; his wide gaze was quite genuine. Were she a few years younger she could have lost herself in that look. Even now she was going to make the best of it. She stood up with a little twitch of her skirt.

“If you don’t believe me ...”

He was at her side immediately. “You? Investigating murders?” His voice was just short of incredulous, inviting her to convince him.

She accepted, walking half a step ahead of him towards the conservatory doors and the hanging vines and sweet smell of earth. Inside it was hot and motionless among the lilies, dim as a tropical night.

“We had one where the corpse turned up on the driving seat of a hansom cab,” she said deliberately. It was quite true. “After a performance of
The Mikado.”

“Now you are joking,” he protested.

“No, I’m not!” She turned her widest, most innocent look on him. “The widow identified it. It was Lord Augustus Fitzroy Hammond. He was buried in the family plot with all due ceremony.” She tried to keep her face straight and stare back into his eyes, with those incredible eyelashes. “He turned up again in the family pew in church.”

“Emily, you’re preposterous!” He was standing very close to her, and for the moment, George was not paramount in her mind. She knew she was beginning to smile, in spite of the fact that it was perfectly true. “We buried him again,” she said with a hint of a giggle. “It was all very difficult, and rather disgusting.”

“That’s absurd. I don’t believe you!”

“Oh it was—I swear! Very awkward indeed. You can’t expect Society to turn up to the same person’s funeral twice in as many weeks. It isn’t decent.”

“It isn’t true.”

“It is! I swear it! We had four corpses before we’d finished—at least I think it was four.”

“And all of Lord Augustus whatever?” He was trying to control his laughter.

“Of course not—don’t be ridiculous!” she protested. She was so close to him she could smell the warmth of his skin and the faint pungency of soap.

“Emily!” He bent and kissed her slowly, intimately, as if they had all the time in the world. Emily let herself go, stretching her arms up round his neck and answering him.

“I shouldn’t do this,” she said frankly after a few moments. But it was a factual remark, not a reproach.

“Probably not,” he agreed, touching her hair gently, then her cheek. “Tell me the truth, Emily.”

“What?” she whispered.

“Did you really find four corpses?” He kissed her again.

“Four or five,” she murmured. “And we caught the murderer as well. Ask Aunt Vespasia—if you’ve the nerve. She was there.”

“I just might.”

She disengaged herself with a shadow of reluctance—it had been nicer than it should have been—and began her way back past the flowers and the vines to the withdrawing room.