The Hyde Park Headsman (3 page)

“It will have to be replastered, then repapered,” Emily pointed out, “before you can begin to choose new fixtures and fittings.”

“I know that.” Charlotte sniffed, wiped the tears away with her hand. “That will be half the pleasure. I will have reclaimed a disaster and made it into something fine.”

“How very feminine of you, my dear,” Emily said with a broad smile. “So many women I know spend their lives trying to do that—and not only with houses: mostly with husbands. But the trouble with that is you cannot move if it doesn’t work!” She stood up again, absently straightening her skirts. “Show me the rest of this catastrophe. I promise I will try to see what a noble thing it may become. By the way, there has been a fearful murder in Hyde Park, did you know?”

“No, when?” Charlotte led the way to what would become the dining room. “How do you know? Was it in the morning newspapers?”

“No.” Emily shook her head. “I gather the body was only found this morning, on the Serpentine in one of those little boats.” She gazed around her. “This room has nice proportions, except it needs a larger mantel. But you could replace that one quite easily, and put it in the bedroom perhaps? It is too narrow for here. I heard it as we stopped for traffic at the Tottenham Court Road. The newsboys were shouting about it. Some naval officer had his head cut off.”

Charlotte had started towards the window and stopped abruptly, swinging around to face Emily. “His head cut off!”

“Yes. Unpleasant, isn’t it? I suppose Thomas will be in charge of it, because he was a captain, and his parents are Lord and Lady Winthrop.”

“Who are they?” Charlotte asked with sharper interest. She and Emily had first met Pitt when he had investigated the murder
of their elder sister, Sarah, and ever since then they had both involved themselves in his more serious cases as much as opportunity permitted, and frequently a great deal more than Pitt would have allowed, had he been consulted before rather than informed when it was too late.

“Oh, neither old money nor new,” Emily replied dismissively. “Not really very colorful, but connected to half the Home Counties in one way or another, and very aware of it.” She shrugged. “You know the sort of person? Never achieved anything in particular, but always wanted to be important. No imagination, absolutely sure they know what they believe about everybody and everything, quite kind in their own way, as honest as the day, and no sense of humor whatsoever.”

“Deadly,” Charlotte said succinctly. “And all the harder because you cannot really dislike them, just be infuriated and bored.”

“Exactly,” Emily agreed, moving towards the door. “You know, I can’t even remember quite what Lady Winthrop looks like. She might be fairish and a little stout, or else she might be that darkish woman who is too tall. Isn’t it silly? Or she might even be the pigeon-chested one whose face I can’t place at all. I’m not usually like that. I can’t afford to be, with Jack hoping to be in Parliament.” She pulled a face. “Just imagine if one addressed the wrong person as the Prime Minister’s wife!” She pulled an even worse face. “Disaster! Even the Foreign Office wouldn’t consider you after that.”

They were in the hallway, and she stopped with a little sigh of appreciation. “I do like your stairs. Now that is really very elegant, Charlotte. This newel post is one of the handsomest I’ve seen. My goodness, it must have taken some carving.” She tilted her head back and followed the line of the banister upwards to the newel at the top, and then along the landing. “Yes, very gracious. How many bedrooms are there?”

“I told you, five, and plenty of space in the attic for Gracie,” Charlotte replied. “Really nice rooms. She can have two, and I’ll keep the box room and a spare one, just in case.”

Emily grinned. “In case what? Another resident servant?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Why not—one day? Do you know anything about the man who was murdered?” She was thinking of Pitt.

“No.” Emily opened her eyes very wide and bright. “But I could find out.”

“I don’t think you should say anything to Thomas yet,” Charlotte said cautiously.

“Oh, I know,” Emily agreed, nodding her head and leading the way up the stairs, caressing the banister rail as she went. “That’s really very nice.” She stopped for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s nice too. I do like coffering. None of that plasterwork is broken. All it needs is a little paint. Yes, I know to be careful, Thomas is so much more important these days.” She turned and gave Charlotte a radiant smile. “I’m so glad. I like him enormously, I hope you know that.”

“Of course I know that,” Charlotte said warmly. “I’m glad you like the ceiling too. I thought it was rather fine. It gives the hall dignity, don’t you think?”

They reached the landing at the top and began looking at the bedrooms. Emily was joining in the spirit and ignoring the broken tiles in the fireplaces and the peeling paper on the walls.

“Have they set the date for the by-election yet?” Charlotte inquired.

“No, but we know who is standing for the Tories,” Emily replied with a frown. “Nigel Uttley. Highly respected and very powerful. I’m not sure just how much of a chance Jack has, realistically. Of course I don’t tell Jack that.” She smiled ruefully. “Especially after last time.”

Charlotte said nothing. Last time had been so fraught with other pains and tragedies that political failure had seemed almost incidental. Jack had withdrawn, refusing to be compromised or to join the secret society known as the Inner Circle, which would have ensured his acceptance as candidate and the support of a vast hidden network of men with influence, money and an unbreakable bond. But there was also the covenant of secrecy, the preferments offered to members at the expense of outsiders, the promises of protection, lies to conceal, and ostracism and punishment for transgressors. Above all what appalled Jack and frightened Pitt was the secrecy—the doubt, suspicion and fear sown by not knowing who were members, whose loyalties were already spoken for in a dark covenant, which consciences were in bondage even before the choices were framed.

“I assume this is going to be your room?” Emily asked, gazing around the large bedroom with its wide window over the garden. “I like this. Is this the biggest room, or is the front one a trifle wider?”

“I think it is, but it doesn’t matter. I’d sacrifice size for that
window,” Charlotte replied without hesitation. “And that room”—she indicated the door to her left—“as a dressing room for Thomas. The front one will do well for a nursery for Daniel and Jemima, and they can have the smaller ones for bedrooms.”

“What color?” Emily looked at the walls, by now totally ignoring the stains and tears.

“I’m not sure. Maybe blue, maybe green,” Charlotte said thoughtfully.

“Blue will be cold,” Emily answered. “Actually, so will green.”

“I like it anyway.”

“What direction are we facing?”

“Southwest,” Charlotte replied. “The afternoon sun comes in the French doors below us in the dining room.”

“Then I daresay it’ll be all right. Charlotte …”

“Yes?”

Emily stood in the middle of the floor, her face puckered. “I know I was rather hard on you when I came back from the country, in fact possibly even unfair …”

“About Mama? You certainly were,” Charlotte agreed. “I don’t know what you expected me to do!”

“I wasn’t there,” Emily said reasonably. “I don’t know what could have been done, but surely something. For heaven’s sake, Charlotte, the man’s not only an actor—and a Jew—but he’s seventeen years younger than Mama!”

“She knows that,” Charlotte agreed. “He’s also charming, intelligent, funny, kind, loyal to his friends, and he seems to care for her very much.”

“I expect all that’s true,” Emily conceded. “But to what end? She can’t possibly marry him! Even supposing he asked her.”

“I know that!”

“She’ll ruin her reputation if she hasn’t done so already,” Emily went on. “Papa will be turning over in his grave.” She swiveled around very slowly. “You could have blue in here if you didn’t have dark furniture.” She looked back at Charlotte. “What are we going to do about her now? Grandmama is beside herself.”

“She’s been in a rage for months,” Charlotte said without concern. “If not years. She enjoys it. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else.”

“But this is different,” Emily protested, her face puckered
with concern. “This time she’s right! What Mama is doing is absurd and dangerous. She could find herself quite outside society when it’s all over. Have you even thought about that?”

“Yes, of course I have. And I’ve told her till I’m blue in the face—but it doesn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference. She knows it all, and she considers it worth the price.”

“Then she isn’t thinking clearly,” Emily said tartly, hunching her shoulders a little. “She can’t mean it.”

“I think I would.” Charlotte spoke not so much to Emily as to the view beyond the window. “I think I would rather have a brief time of real happiness, and take the chance, than an age of gray respectability.”

“Respectability isn’t gray!” Emily retorted. Then suddenly her face crumpled into a giggle. “It’s—brown.”

Charlotte shot her a look of swift appreciation.

“All the same,” Emily went on, her eyes steady in spite of her laughter. “The lack of respectability can be very unpleasant, especially when you are older. It can be very lonely to be shut out, whatever color the inside is.”

Charlotte knew it was true, and why Emily had said it. Perhaps in her mother’s place she too would have opted for a brief, painful and glorious romance, but she was not unaware of the bitter price.

“I know,” she said quietly. “And Grandmama will never let her forget it, even if everyone else does.”

Emily gazed around the room thoughtfully.

Charlotte read her thought.

“Oh no!” she said decidedly. “Not here! We haven’t room!”

“No, I suppose not,” Emily agreed reluctantly, then suddenly she smiled again. “Were you thinking of Mama or Grand-mama?”

“Grandmama, of course,” Charlotte responded. “Mama would remain in Cater Street, naturally. It is her house. I’m not sure which would be worse, living with Grandmama goading and complaining all the time, or all by yourself with no one to talk to at all. Sitting every day wondering if anyone will call, and if you dare call on someone else, or if they will all send polite messages to the door that they are not at home, even when you can see the carriages in the drive and know perfectly well that they are—and they know you know.”

“Don’t.” Emily winced as if she had been struck. “I can’t bear to think of it. We’ll simply have to do something!” She looked at Charlotte. “Have you tried appealing to him? If he
cares for her at all, he must realize what will happen. Is he a complete fool?”

“He’s an actor.” Charlotte shrugged in a sort of exasperation. “It’s a different world. He may not understand …”

“Well, have you tried to explain to him?” Emily demanded. “For goodness sake, Charlotte!”

“No I haven’t! Mother would never forgive me. Telling her is one thing; telling him is quite another. We have no business to do that.”

“We have every business!” Emily argued heatedly. “For her own sake. Someone’s got to look after her.”

“Emily! Can you hear yourself?” Charlotte demanded. “How would you feel if someone else, whatever their motives or however much they thought it was for your good, stepped in and tried to warn Jack not to marry you for your well-being?”

“That’s quite different.” Emily’s eyes were bright and sharp. “Jack married me. Joshua Fielding won’t marry Mama.”

“I know he did, but Emily, my dearest, Mama might have thought Jack married you for your very considerable fortune.”

“That’s not true!” The hot color burned up Emily’s face.

“I never believed it was,” Charlotte said quickly. “I think Jack is a charming and honest man, but if Mama had thought otherwise, would it have been right for her to interfere—believing it was for your sake?”

“Ah—oh.” Emily stood motionless. “Well …”

“Precisely.” Charlotte led the way to the second bedroom.

“It’s not the same,” Emily said behind her. “There isn’t any possible happy outcome to Mama’s romance.”

“It’s still not right for us to go to Joshua,” Charlotte insisted. “We’ll just have to keep on trying with her. Maybe she’ll listen to you. She certainly took no notice at all of me.” They stopped just inside the doorway. “I think I’ll do this room in yellow. It would be nice and warm. Daniel and Jemima could play up here in the winter, and on wet days. What do you think?”

“Yellow would be very nice,” Emily agreed. “You could put a little green with it to stop it being too sweet.” She looked across the room. “That fireplace needs a lot of mending. In fact you should get rid of it altogether and get another one. Those tiles are dreadful.”

“I told you, I agreed I will move the one up from the withdrawing room.”

“Oh yes, so you did.”

“You will find out about Captain Winthrop, won’t you?”

“Of course.” Emily smiled again with sudden optimism. “I wonder if it will be a case with which we can help. I have missed all the excitement. It seems like ages since we did anything important together.”

By mid-afternoon Pitt could no longer bear being on the sidelines. He collected his hat from the elegant stand by the door. He adjusted his jacket without making it hang any better, and decided he should take out of his pockets at least a ball of string which he no longer needed, two pieces of sealing wax and a rather long pencil, then he went out onto the landing and down the stairs.

“I’m going to see the widow,” he informed the desk sergeant. “What is the address?”

The sergeant did not need to ask him which widow he meant. The whole station had been buzzing with the news since morning.

“Twenty-four Curzon Street, sir,” he said immediately. “Poor lady. I wouldn’t like to ’ave bin the sergeant wot ’ad ter tell ’er. Any death is bad enough, but that’s the kind o’ shock no one should ’ave ter take.”

“No,” Pitt agreed, ashamed of himself for being so grateful he had not been the one to bring the news. That was one benefit of promotion. Now Tellman would do the wretched duties that had been his only a few months ago. Then he shuddered. Tellman’s lantern face was not the one he would have wished bearing tidings of bereavement. He looked too much like an undertaker himself, at the best of times. Perhaps Pitt should have gone after all.