The Hyde Park Headsman (11 page)

“You will need a gardener,” she observed. “At least twice a week. Thomas will never have time to attend to it. How is he taking to his new position? It was past time he was promoted.”

It would not have occurred to Charlotte to tell her anything but the truth.

“Very well, for the most part,” she replied. “But some of his men can be trying. They resent the fact that he was preferred over others who consider themselves just as good. Micah Drummond they could understand. He was a gentleman and it was to be expected, but they find it hard to take orders from Thomas.” She smiled briefly. “Not that he says a great deal to me, I just know it from the odd remark here and there, and sometimes from what he doesn’t say. But no doubt it will mend … in time.”

“Indeed.” Vespasia took a few steps forward over the grass. “What of this latest matter—the wretched man who was beheaded in the park? The newspapers did not say so, but I assume Thomas is in charge of it?”

“Yes, yes he is.” Charlotte looked at her questioningly, waiting for the explanation of her interest.

Vespasia continued to stare at the trees at the far end of the lawn.

“I daresay you remember Judge Quade?” She began quite casually, as if the matter were of no consequence.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied equally nonchalantly. The judge’s sensitive, ascetic face leapt to her mind, and all her emotions crowding in on her, the fierceness of his integrity in the Farriers’ Lane case, the memories he brought with him of a past Charlotte had not even guessed at, and above all the change in Vespasia, her sudden vulnerability, the way she blushed (a thing Charlotte had never seen before), and the laughter and shadows in her eyes.

“Yes, of course I remember him,” she said again. She was
about to ask how he was, then stopped just before the words were out. Vespasia was not one with whom she could play such trivial games. It was better to wait in silence for her to say what it was she wished.

“He is very well acquainted with Lord and Lady Winthrop,” Vespasia explained, walking a little farther onto the grass, her skirts catching on the longer, uncut stems.

Charlotte was obliged to follow in order to continue the conversation.

“Is he?” She was surprised. Thelonius Quade was a man of high intelligence and quiet wit. From what Emily had said, Lord Winthrop was quite the opposite. “Socially?” she asked.

Vespasia smiled, her silver eyes light with amusement.

“Hardly professionally, my dear. Marlborough Winthrop does nothing useful whatsoever; but that is not a crime, or half the aristocracy would be up before the bench. Of course, socially, which I imagine was not of Thelonius’s choosing. The man is a monumental bore, and his wife is worse. She has violent opinions, all of which she has borrowed from someone else. She contracts them as some people contract diseases.”

“Did he know Captain Winthrop?” Charlotte asked with mounting interest.

“Only slightly.” Vespasia was standing in the middle of the lawn now, the breeze ruffling the pale green silk of her skirt. Her blouse was of a delicate ivory in the light, and the heavy pearls around her neck hung low across the bosom. Charlotte wondered if she would ever look quite so effortlessly elegant herself.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said quietly. “He must be distressed for them.”

“Of course.” Vespasia accepted and dismissed the subject with a small gesture of her head. She moved a few steps farther across the lawn. “The funeral was a family affair, but they will be holding a memorial service for him tomorrow. Thelonius will attend. I thought I would go with him.” She turned and looked at Charlotte with the first gleam of a smile in her eyes. “I wondered if you would care to accompany us?”

It would be indelicate, and quite unnecessary, to ask Vespasia’s purpose in such an invitation. It was not the Winthrops she was thinking of, nor Thelonius Quade, and certainly not herself. In the past she had been involved in many social crusades, and worked with tireless passion. She had several times exhibited the same energy and devotion to meddling
in Pitt’s cases, assisting Charlotte and Emily in places and with people they could not reach alone. It would be clumsy to say she enjoyed it; it was both different and more than that. But there was no mistaking the light in her eyes now.

“It is very ugly,” Charlotte said tentatively, catching up with her and looking at the slender daffodil spears under the trees.

“There is a note of stridency in the newspapers,” Vespasia added. “It is imperative that Thomas establish himself in his new position as early as possible. This is an extraordinary case, or at least it has all the appearance of being so. We must do what we can.”

“The newspapers are speaking of a madman loose,” Charlotte agreed unhappily.

“Balderdash!” Vespasia dismissed the idea. “If there was a lunatic capering around Hyde Park cutting people’s heads off we should have heard more of him by now.”

“Someone he knew?” Charlotte asked, her attention sharpening. She forgot the daffodils, and was only dimly aware of the wind in the branches and the brilliant sprays of forsythia in bloom.

“That seems an inevitable conclusion,” Vespasia agreed. “Thelonius informs me he was not robbed. Or so Lord Winthrop says.”

Charlotte’s imagination began to race. She started with what seemed to be to her the obvious.

“His wife has a lover? Or he has a mistress, and her husband …”

“Oh really!” Vespasia said impatiently. “Oakley Winthrop might not have been an imaginative man, but neither was he a cretin. If you have the misfortune to be taking a midnight stroll in the park and to meet your wife’s lover carrying a cutlass, you do not go and climb into a pleasure boat with him. To discuss what? The equitable division of her favors?”

Charlotte smothered a giggle but held her ground. “Perhaps he was an acquaintance anyway, and Winthrop did not know of the arrangement,” she suggested. “If it was his wife’s lover, she may have been discreet. After all, Captain Winthrop will have been away a good deal of the time. It may never have occurred to him that she could have considered any other man.”

“Then if he was unaware of the situation, why on earth would the wretched man murder him?” Vespasia asked, her eyebrows arching even higher. “That seems absurd, and quite unnecessary.”

“Then perhaps it was his mistress’s husband?” Charlotte thought aloud. “He may have been a very jealous man.”

“Then why should Winthrop sit down in a boat with him in the middle of the night?” Vespasia whisked a long stem of grass with her stick.

“Perhaps he didn’t …” Charlotte started, then realized it was foolish before she finished.

“His mistress was an innocent?” Vespasia said with a smile both tolerant and amused. “I doubt it. Not so innocent as to be unaware of her husband’s nature.” She turned and began to walk back up the long lawn towards the house. “No, the more one looks at this, the more bizarre it appears. I think Thomas may need such assistance as we can give him.” She kept her expression almost without enthusiasm, but not even her strength of will could entirely disguise the inner energy that burned at the thought.

“Then I shall most certainly come with you to the memorial service,” Charlotte accepted without further hesitation. “At what time shall I be ready?”

“I shall send a carriage for you at a quarter past ten,” Vespasia said immediately. “And my dear, the next time you buy a new outfit, I should make it black if I were you.” Her eyes gleamed. “It seems to be de rigueur for your husband’s occupation.”

Actually Charlotte sent an urgent message to Emily to request that she might borrow something suitable. She really had no extra money above that which was needed for the house. With new plasterwork, new finials, and several new fire tiles to be purchased, among a number of other things, every halfpenny must be put to the best use.

Emily was very happy to oblige, on condition, not open to negotiation, that Charlotte tell her every single detail of the case and include her in all future efforts. For this she would be willing to lend her any garment she liked throughout the duration of the endeavor.

Therefore at ten o’clock the next morning Charlotte was looking radiant, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright, when Caroline Ellison arrived in a whirl of chocolate-and-gold-colored silks and a hat reminiscent of a turban.

“Good morning, Mama!” Charlotte said in surprise, both at the hat and at Caroline’s unheralded arrival. It would be quite
needless to ask if there were anything wrong; Caroline’s face was shining with well-being.

“Good morning, my dear,” Caroline responded, looking around Charlotte’s bedroom, where they were as Charlotte put the finishing touches to her hair. “You look very well, but I am afraid a little funereal. Could you not put a touch of something brighter, at least around your neck? All this somberness may be fashionable, but it is a little extreme, don’t you think?”

“It’s not in the least fashionable,” Charlotte said with astonishment. “Total black—in April!”

Caroline brushed it aside with a wave of her hand. “I have quite lost touch with fashion lately. Anyway, it still needs a little color. What about something different, unexpected? When I think of it, red is rather ordinary.” She glanced around. “What about—oh, what do people not put with black?” She held up her hand against interruption while she thought. “I know—saffron. I have never seen anyone with black and saffron.”

“Not anyone with a looking glass, anyway,” Charlotte agreed.

“Oh! You don’t like it? I thought it would be rather different.”

“Completely different, Mama. And as I am going to a memorial service, I think the family might well be offended. I hear they are rather conventional anyway.”

Caroline’s face fell. “Oh—I didn’t know. Who is it? Do I know them? I hadn’t heard …”

“You would have read the newspapers.” Charlotte put the last pin in her hair and surveyed the effect.

“I don’t read obituaries anymore.” Caroline perched on the edge of the bed, her skirts draped beautifully.

“No, I expect you read the theater notices and reviews,” Charlotte said with a shade of asperity. She was delighted to see her mother so brimming with life and so obviously happy, but she was never able to banish for long the fear of the misery when it all ended, as it would have to. What about trying to regain the old life then? But she had already said all these things before, as had Emily. This was not the time to pursue it again, especially when she was about to leave in a few moments and could not even try to see the subject to a decent end.

“They are a great deal more uplifting to begin the day than a list of the people one knows who are dead,” Caroline said with a half apology. “And even more so than of those one did not know. Obituaries tend to be rather repetitive.”

“This one wasn’t.” Charlotte enjoyed the drama. “He had his head cut off in Hyde Park.”

Caroline let out her breath in a gasp.

“Captain Winthrop! But you didn’t know him—did you?”

“No, of course not. But Great-Aunt Vespasia’s friend, Mr. Justice Quade, did.”

“You mean Thomas is on the case,” Caroline interpreted.

“I mean that also,” Charlotte admitted, standing up from her dressing table. “It really is very complicated and difficult. I might learn something of use. Anyway, I am going.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Why did you call, Mama? Was there some special reason?” She began looking through her top drawer for small things she might need, a lace handkerchief, perfume, a hat pin.

“None at all,” Caroline replied. “I have not seen you for several weeks, and I thought you might care to come to luncheon. I thought we could dine out at Marcello’s.”

“A restaurant?” Charlotte looked around in amazement. “Not at home?”

“Certainly a restaurant. It is very good indeed. You should try Continental cuisine some time, Charlotte. It is most broadening to the mind to experience such things.”

“And to the waist, I imagine,” Charlotte agreed without looking at her mother’s figure. She closed the drawer.

“Rubbish,” Caroline said scornfully. “Not if you take the occasional ride or long walk in the park.”

“You don’t ride,” Charlotte replied with a laugh.

“Yes I do! It is an excellent recreation.”

“But you never …”

“I didn’t while your father was alive. I do now!” Caroline rose to her feet. “Anyway, I can see that you are otherwise engaged today. I am not at all sure that a memorial service will be more entertaining, but you are committed to it and cannot possibly change your mind at this point.” She smiled warmly. “We shall go to luncheon another day, when I am free.” She kissed Charlotte lightly on the cheek. “In any case, my dear, at least put a piece of white lace on that dress, or lavender if you have it. You look as if you were the chief mourner. You must not outshine the widow—she has enough to put up with. She should be the center of attention today. People will forget quickly enough, and the poor soul will have to spend the rest of her life in weeds—unless she is pretty, and fortunate.” And
quite forgetting that she herself was a widow, she swept out with a smile on her face and a look of blissful optimism.

Charlotte arrived at the church in Vespasia’s carriage and alighted with the assistance of the footman. She felt more than a little self-conscious, since she had not been invited and knew not a soul among the people milling around, greeting acquaintances, nodding gravely and making dire predictions about the state of society. The sooner she found Vespasia and Thelonius, the better. However, she looked extremely handsome in Emily’s black silk, and she knew it. It gave her more confidence than she would otherwise have had in such surroundings. Even the hat, also Emily’s, was extraordinarily becoming, a sweeping brim, wildly asymmetrical, and decorated with pluming black feathers. She saw several glances towards it, admiring from men, envious from women.

Where on earth was Great-Aunt Vespasia? She could not stand here indefinitely without speaking to someone and inevitably explaining herself. She began to look around curiously, partly out of genuine interest, but mostly to appear as if she were expecting someone. Some of these people would be the friends of the late Captain Winthrop, others would be here as a matter of social duty. Was one of them, dressed decently in black, carrying his hat in his hand, the one who had murdered him and left him so absurdly on the Serpentine?