Rutland Place (11 page)

“Well, none of it seems worth anyone dying over.” Caroline stood up. “I think it is time we took luncheon. I asked for it to be ready at quarter to one, and it is past that now.”

Charlotte followed her obediently and they repaired to the breakfast room where the small table was set and the parlormaid ready to serve.

After the maid had gone, Charlotte began her soup, at the same time trying to recall some of the conversation that had taken place when she had met Mina a week ago. Mina had made a number of remarks about Ottilie Charrington and her death, possibly even implying that there was something mysterious about it. It was an ugly idea, but once it was in Charlotte’s mind it had to be explored.

“Mama, Mina had lived here for some time, had she not?”

“Yes, several years.” Caroline was surprised. “Why?”

“Then she probably knew everyone fairly well. Quite well enough that if she were the thief, and took something important, she might well understand its meaning, don’t you think?”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Ottilie Charrington’s death? She said a lot about it when she was here—almost as if she suspected there could be a secret, something the family would rather were not known.”

Caroline put her soup spoon back in the bowl. “You mean that it was not natural?”

Charlotte frowned uncertainly. “Not anything quite so awful as that. But perhaps she was not as respectable as Mr. Charrington, at least, would have liked. Mina said she was very high-spirited, and definitely implied she was also indiscreet. Maybe there would have been some sort of scandal if she had not died when she did?”

Caroline started to eat again, breaking a piece of bread.

“What an unpleasant thought, but I suppose you are right,” she said. “Mina did drop several hints that there was a lot more to know about Ottilie than most people realized. I never asked her, because I am so fond of Ambrosine I did not wish to encourage talk. But Mina did make me a little curious about Theodora as well, now that I come to remember.”

Charlotte was puzzled. “Who is Theodora?”

“Theodora von Schenck, Amaryllis Denbigh’s sister. She’s a widow with two children. I don’t know her very well, but I confess to liking her considerably.”

Charlotte found it hard to imagine liking anyone related to Amaryllis. “Indeed,” she said, unaware how skeptical she sounded.

Caroline smiled dryly. “They are not at all alike. For a start, Theodora does not appear to have any desire to marry again, even though she has very little means, as far as anyone knows. And, of course, people do know! In fact, when she came here a few years ago, she had nothing but the house, which she inherited from her parents. Now she has a new coat with a collar and trim right down to the ground I would swear is sable! I remember when she got it that Mina remarked about it. I am ashamed of myself, but I cannot help wondering how she came by it!”

“A lover?” Charlotte suggested the obvious.

“Then she is incredibly discreet!”

“It doesn’t seem very discreet to wear a sable collar out of the blue, with no explanation!” Charlotte protested. “She can hardly be naïve enough to imagine it would pass unnoticed! I would wager every woman in Rutland Place could price the garments of every other woman to within a guinea! And probably name the dressmaker who made them and the month in which they were cut!”

“Oh, Charlotte! That’s unfair! We are not so—so ill-disposed or so trivial-minded as you seem to think!”

“Not ill-disposed, Mama, but practical, and with an excellent eye to value.”

“I suppose so.” Caroline finished the last of her soup, and the maid reappeared to serve the next dish. The two women began to eat slowly. It was a delicate fish, and extremely well cooked; at any other occasion Charlotte would have enjoyed it.

“Theodora obviously has more money now than she used to,” Caroline went on reluctantly. “Mina once suggested that she did something quite appalling to earn it, but I was sure at the time that she was only being facetious. She had rather poor taste sometimes.” She looked up. “Charlotte, do you think perhaps it could have been true and Mina knew something about it?”

“Perhaps.” Charlotte weighed the idea. “Or perhaps on the other hand Mina was merely being spiteful—or saying something for the sake of making an effect. The stupidest stories get started that way sometimes.”

“But Mina wasn’t like that,” Caroline argued. “She very seldom talked about other people, except as everybody does. She was much more inclined to listen.”

“Then it begins to look as if it was something to do with Tormod,” Charlotte reasoned. “Or some other man we don’t know of yet. Or perhaps something to do with Alston that we do not know. Or else simply that she was the thief.”

“Suicide?” Caroline pushed her plate away. “What a dreadful thing it is that another human being, another woman you thought of as much like yourself, only a few houses away, could be so wretched as to take her own life rather than live another day—and you know nothing about it at all. You go about your own trivial little affairs, thinking of menus and seeing that the linen is repaired, and whom to call upon, exactly as if there were nothing else to do.”

Charlotte put her hand across the table to touch Caroline.

“I don’t suppose you could have done anything even if you had known,” she said quietly. “She gave no clue at all that she was so desperately unhappy—and one cannot intrude into everyone’s business to inquire. Grief is sometimes more easily borne for being private, and a humiliation is the last thing one wishes to share. The kindest thing one can do is to affect not to have noticed.”

“I suppose you’re right. But I still feel guilty. There must have been something I could have done.”

“Well, there isn’t anything now, except speak well of her.”

Caroline sighed. “I sent a letter to Alston, of course, but I feel it is too early to call upon him yet. He is bound to be very shocked. But poor Eloise is unwell also. I thought we might call there this afternoon and express our sympathy. She has taken the whole thing very badly. I think perhaps she is even more delicate than I had realized.”

It was not a prospect Charlotte looked forward to, but she could see it was quite plainly a duty. And if the Lagardes had been the last people, apart from Mina’s own servants, to see her alive, then perhaps something could be learned.

Charlotte was stunned when she walked behind Caroline into the Lagarde withdrawing room. Eloise looked so different from the woman she had seen the week before that for a moment she almost expected a new introduction. Eloise’s face was almost colorless, and she moved so slowly she might have been fumbling in her sleep. She forced herself to smile, but it was a small gesture. Death was in the Place, and the formality of the usual pretended delight was not expected now.

“How kind of you to call,” she said quietly, first to Caroline, then to Charlotte. “Please do sit, and make yourselves comfortable. It still seems to be quite cold.” She had on a heavy shawl over her dress and kept it closed around her.

Charlotte sat down in a chair across the room, as far as she could get with courtesy from the fire that roared up the chimney as if it had been midwinter. It was a pleasant spring day outside, bright though not yet warm.

Caroline appeared to be at a loss for words. Perhaps her own anxieties were too pressing for her to organize her thoughts into polite remarks. Charlotte rushed in with speech before Eloise should become aware of it.

“I’m afraid summer is always longer in coming than one hopes,” she said meaninglessly. “One fancies because the daylight hours are longer that the sun will be warmer, and it so seldom is.”

“Yes,” Eloise said, looking at the square of blue through the window. “Yes, it is easy to be deceived. It looks so bright, but one doesn’t know till one is in it quite how cold it is.”

Caroline recollected her manners and the purpose of their visit.

“We will not stay long,” she said, “because this is not a time for social visits, but both Charlotte and I were concerned to know how you were and if there was anything we could say or do to be of comfort to you.”

For a moment Eloise seemed almost not to understand her; then comprehension flooded her face.

“That is very kind of you.” She smiled at them both. “I cannot think that I feel it more deeply than we all do. Poor Mina. How very suddenly the whole world can alter! One minute everything is as usual, and the next enormous and dreadful changes have taken place and are as complete as if years had gone by.”

“Some changes are just the results of appalling accidents.” Charlotte dared not miss an opportunity to press for knowledge; it was too important. “But others must have been growing all the time. It is just that we did not recognize them for what they were.”

Eloise’s eyes widened, momentarily confused, seeking to understand Charlotte’s curious remark.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Charlotte hedged. She must avoid seeming to pry. “Only I suppose that if poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown took her own life, then it can only have been a tragedy that had been growing, unknown to us, for some time.” She had intended to be far more subtle, but Eloise was so candid herself that Charlotte could not play word games with her as she might have with someone more devious.

Eloise looked down at the folds of her skirt arranged over her knees.

“You think Mina took her own life?” She pronounced the words one by one, very clearly, weighing them. “That seems rather a cowardly thing to do. I always thought of Mina as stronger than that.”

Charlotte was surprised. She had expected more pity, and more understanding.

“We don’t know what pain she was faced with,” she said rather less gently. “At least I don’t.”

“No.” Eloise did not look up, a flash of contrition in her face. “I suppose we seldom even guess at anyone else’s pain—how big it is, how sharp, how often it cuts.” She shook her head. “But I still think that taking one’s life is a kind of surrender.”

“Some people grow too tired to fight anymore, or the wound is greater than they can overcome,” Charlotte persisted, wondering at the back of her mind why she was defending Mina so hard. She had not especially liked her; indeed she had felt a greater warmth for Eloise.

“We do not know that poor Mina took her own life,” Caroline said, intervening at last. “It may have been some sort of horrible accident. I cannot help believing that if there had been something distressing her so dreadfully, we would have been aware of it.”

“I cannot agree with you, Mama,” Charlotte replied. “Do you think that was what happened, Miss Lagarde? You knew her quite well, did you not?”

Eloise sat without answering for several seconds.

“I don’t know. I used to think I knew all the obvious things, and heard most of the gossip one way or another, and imagined I could evaluate its worth. Now . . .” Her voice trailed away and she stood up, turning her back to them, and walked over to the garden window. “Now I realize that I knew almost nothing at all.”

Charlotte was about to press her when the door opened and Tormod came in. His glance went immediately to Eloise at the window, then to Charlotte and Caroline. There was anxiety in his face, and his body was stiff.

“Good afternoon,” he said politely. “How kind of you to call.” His eyes went to Eloise again, dark and troubled. “I’m afraid Eloise has taken this appalling tragedy very hard. It has distressed her till she is quite unwell.” There was a warning in his face to be careful, choose their words, or they might add to the burden.

Caroline murmured understandingly.

“It is a very dreadful affair,” Charlotte said. “A person of sensibility would be bound to feel for everyone concerned. And I believe you were the last to see the poor woman alive.”

Tormod gave her a glance of profound appreciation. “Of course . . . and it cannot but distress poor Eloise to wonder if perhaps there might have been something we could have done. Naturally, her own servants actually—”

“Oh, servants,” Charlotte said, waving them away with a little gesture of her fingers. “But that is not the same as friends, whom one might have confided in.”

“Exactly!” Tormod said. “Unfortunately she did not. I really think it must have been some sort of accident, perhaps a wrong dosage of a medicine.”

“Perhaps,” Charlotte said doubtfully. “Of course I did not know her very well. Was she so absentminded?”

“No.” Eloise turned from the window. “She always seemed to know precisely what she was doing. If she did something so fatally foolish, then she must have been very distracted in her mind, or she would have noticed immediately that she had poured from a wrong bottle, or a wrong box, and disposed of it instead of drinking it.”

Tormod went to her and put his arm around her gently.

“You really must stop thinking about it, dear,” he said. “There is nothing we can do for her now, and you are distressing yourself. You will make yourself ill, and that will help no one, and it will hurt me very much. Tomorrow we shall go into the country, back to Five Elms, and think of other things. The weather is improving all the time. The first daffodils will be out in the wood, and we shall take the carriage and go driving to see them—perhaps even with a picnic basket, if it is warm enough. Wouldn’t you like that?”

She smiled at him, her face softening in gentle, melting pleasure, more as if she were comforting him than he supporting her.

“Yes, of course I should.” She put her hand over his. “Thank you.”

Tormod turned to Caroline. “It was most thoughtful of you to call, Mrs. Ellison, and you, Mrs. Pitt. We appreciate it. Such courtesies of friendship make these things easier to bear. And I am sure you must feel very shocked as well. After all, poor Mina was a friend of yours also.”

“Indeed, I am completely at a loss,” Caroline said a little ambiguously.

Charlotte was still pondering what she meant by that when the maid opened the door and announced Mrs. Denbigh. Amaryllis came in so close behind her there was no time to say whether the call was acceptable or not.

Eloise looked at her bleakly, almost through her. Tormod remained with his arm still around her and smiled politely.