The Hyde Park Headsman (40 page)

Sir Arthur stopped his conversation with a large man with white hair, and very slowly turned to face Gilbert.

“Are you addressing me, sir?”

Gilbert looked around carefully to see if there were anyone else in his immediate path, then faced Sir Arthur again.

“You have an excellent grasp of the obvious, sir,” he replied. “I see you have reduced the matter to its core in one leap of deduction. I am addressing you, sir. You are blocking the entrance to the church. Would you be so kind as to make way?”

“Can’t you abide your turn, sir, like a civilized man?” Sir Arthur’s eyebrows rose in an expression of disdain. “Must the whole of society stop its business and move aside so you may pass the instant you wish to?”

“I like a man with self-esteem, sir, but to regard yourself as the whole of society is to verge upon the ridiculous,” Gilbert replied.

Sir Arthur flushed a dull pink. The exchange had now made it impossible for him to move aside without losing face. He remained precisely where he was, right in Gilbert’s path.

It was Lady Lismore who saved the situation. She emerged from the shadow of the church doorway and addressed Sir Arthur.

“I do apologize for interrupting you, Sir Arthur, but I should greatly appreciate your assistance. We must have the music right for such an occasion, and I am not at all sure about the cellist.”

Sir Arthur looked irritated, as if he had actually had the perfect riposte on the edge of his tongue, but he went with her with some alacrity. “Of course, Lady Lismore. Any assistance I can offer …”

Mr. Gilbert smiled to himself and glanced sideways at the watching and listening assembly. But there was only the very faintest satisfaction in him as he went through the church doors and disappeared into the shade of the dim interior.

Charlotte let out her breath in a sigh.

“ ‘With a twisted cue and a cloth untrue, and elliptical billiard balls,’ ” Emily said cheerfully. “ ‘My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time …’ ”

“Ssh!” Charlotte frowned. “You can’t go into church for a Requiem service singing
The Mikado!”

Emily fell silent immediately, at least until they were shown into a pew rather nearer the back than they had wished. Pitt and Jack were somewhere to their left, Pitt well in the shadows of the support pillars.

“There are a lot of people here,” Emily said as soon as they were settled. “I suppose it is because he was murdered. I’ll wager half of them have only come out of curiosity.”

“So have you,” Charlotte pointed out.

“Don’t be spiteful. You know the campaigning is going very well. I really think Jack has a chance of being elected.”

“Good. Now be quiet! We are in church.”

“It hasn’t started yet,” Emily replied. “Aunt Vespasia said she was coming, but I haven’t seen her. Have you?”

“No. But I haven’t seen anyone else I recognize either.”

“Have you seen Mama lately?”

“No, I’ve been too busy with the house.”

Emily bent her head as if she were deep in prayer or contemplation.

“She is getting worse,” she hissed into her prayer book. “She was out on the river till dawn the other night.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw her.”

“So you were out too.”

“That’s different!” Emily was indignant. “Quite different. Really, sometimes you are obtuse.”

“No I’m not. I just don’t think there is any purpose in being upset about it. You can’t stop her.”

“If I saw her, then Heaven knows who else did!”

The woman in the pew in front turned around and glared at Emily, fanning herself with her order paper for the service.

“Are you unwell?” she said crisply. “Perhaps you should take a little air before the service begins.”

“How considerate of you,” Emily replied with a saccharine smile. “But if I were to leave, I doubt I should ever find my seat again, and then my poor sister would have to sit all by herself.”

Charlotte covered her face with her hands to hide her laughter and allow the woman to assume it was grief.

The woman turned back with a frown.

The organ music swelled and then suddenly fell silent. The vicar began to speak.

Charlotte and Emily devoted themselves to appearing to mourn.

The reception afterwards was a very different matter. Emily’s carriage deposited all four of them on the pavement in Green Street outside Jerome Carvell’s house, then drove away to allow a brougham to arrive and its passengers to alight also.

Emily took Jack’s arm and went up the steps to the door, where a tall, very upright butler with a high-boned face and magnificent legs examined Jack’s card and made his decision.

“Good morning, Mr. Radley, Mrs. Radley. Please come in.” He turned to Pitt. “Good morning, sir?” His expression had changed subtly; one could not say precisely how it was different, but the respect had drained away, his eyes were arrogant and disinterested.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pitt,” Pitt replied with corresponding chill.

“Indeed, sir.”

Charlotte felt her stomach tighten. She ached for Pitt in the face of the butler’s superciliousness, but she was horribly afraid he would retaliate and earn still further contempt. She forced herself to smile as if she were totally unaware of anything but the usual courtesy.

Pitt lifted his head a little higher, but before he could reply the butler spoke again.

“I regret, sir, but this is not a convenient time for you to see Mr. Carvell. As you may observe, this is a social occasion of some gravity, and sadness.”

Charlotte drew in her breath to say something crushing.

“I have not called to see Mr. Carvell,” Pitt said politely, “but Mrs. Arledge. She is expecting me, and I should be distressed if she thought I had declined her invitation.”

“Oh.” The butler was clearly taken aback. “I see, sir. Of course. If you would be pleased to come in.”

“Thank you.” Pitt invested his thanks with only the faintest touch of sarcasm, and giving Charlotte his arm, he led her inside to the large reception room where already there was a considerable crowd gathered.

The table was spread with all manner of delicacies and presumably Carvell had hired extra staff for the occasion, because there were at least half a dozen maids and footmen in livery
that Charlotte could see, standing discreetly ready to attend to everyone’s wishes.

There was a small group of men standing together in the doorway to the next room and as she and Pitt came in they turned. One of them took a step forward, his highly intelligent face filled with a mixture of pain, apprehension and hope. She did not need to ask Pitt if it were Carvell, the power of feeling in him could only belong to the man Pitt had described. It was the same man she had seen at the service, and whose grief had so moved her.

Pitt glanced at her, realized her perception, and smiled before going towards Carvell.

“Good day, Superintendent,” Carvell said with his eyes searching Pitt’s face. “Is there some …” He saw from Pitt’s eyes that there was nothing. “Oh, I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me. I beg your pardon. Should I say how good of you to come, or is that naive?” He did not seem to have realized that Charlotte was with Pitt. Curiously, she felt in no way slighted. Closer to, his face was uglier, the pockmarks on his skin showed very clearly, and yet it was also more intensely alive. In spite of knowing his relationship with Arledge, and her imagination of what it must have cost Dulcie, and the very real possibility that he was guilty of murder, she found herself curiously partisan on his behalf. Perhaps it was the sheer depth of his feeling and its reality she could not doubt. There was nothing indifferent in him.

“It is not news in the slightest,” Pitt replied sincerely. “I have come because Mrs. Arledge invited me, and I am grateful to be permitted to pay my respects to a man I believe I would have admired very much, had I had the opportunity to know him.”

Carvell bit his lip and swallowed hard. “You are very gracious, Superintendent. No one could have said that more generously and still have told the absolute truth. You have learned nothing more so far, and your duty brings you here, as well as your natural inclination. I do understand.”

“I would not say there is nothing further,” Pitt argued. “But the little there is leads to no conclusion. Mr. Carvell, may I present you to my wife?”

“Oh!” Carvell was completely taken aback. “Oh, I am sorry, ma’am. I beg your pardon for my complete rudeness. I had assumed—really, I am not sure what I had assumed. Forgive me.” He bowed very slightly. “How do you do, ma’am.”

He made no movement towards her.

“How do you do, Mr. Carvell,” she said with a smile. “Please accept my sympathies for your loss. It is an inexpressibly bitter thing to lose one’s dearest friend.”

He stared at her, surprise in his eyes, then a moment of embarrassment, and at last a spontaneous warmth.

“How kind of you.” They were very formal words, and yet she knew he meant them.

Before any of them could pursue the matter further and search for some easier subject of conversation, there was a stirring of movement at the doorway behind them, a murmuring of voices, a slither and brush of fabric as people moved against one another. Then as Pitt and Charlotte turned they saw a solitary woman enter the room, dressed in pretty and feminine black decorated with exquisite discreet mourning jewelry, lace at her wrists and throat. She was not a large woman, nor yet a strikingly beautiful one, but she commanded an immediate attention. Her features were well proportioned, her mouth gently curved. The delicate color of her skin was not marred, nor was her hair dressed less than gracefully; only her blue eyes betrayed the sleeplessness and the anxiety.

Charlotte felt Pitt stiffen and looked up quickly at him. There was an admiration in his face, and a profound gentleness which she had not seen in a long time, not even for Jerome Carvell. She did not need Pitt to tell her that this was Dulcie Arledge.

Dulcie looked around the room for an instant, her eyes resting on one person, then another. She did not hesitate at Mina Winthrop; apparently she did not recognize her, nor, it would seem, Bart Mitchell standing beside her. She smiled at Sir James Lismore and at Roderick Alberd. Several others earned a slight movement of her head and a shadow of a smile. Her glance slid over the graceful figure of Landon Hurlwood, a fraction taller than those surrounding him, but she gave no sign of acknowledgment.

Victor Garrick was sitting in an alcove with his cello cradled in his arms, waiting for the time when he was asked to play. His fair hair gleamed in the light from the gas bracket above him, and there was a look of peace in his face, as if he dreamed of something remote and uniquely lovely.

Dulcie inclined her head towards him, and pleasure softened his concentration in acceptance, and then the distant gaze returned.

Dulcie’s eyes finally came to rest on Pitt and a delicate smile curved her mouth. She moved forward, nodding, exchanging a word here and there, until she was only a few feet away from him.

Pitt waited and Charlotte did not speak. She was startled by the depth of feeling she sensed in Pitt, not only for Dulcie’s loss, and the dreadful disillusion she must be suffering with such dignity, but also a regard for her which held a tenderness and a respect he would almost certainly remember long after the case was over.

Charlotte admired him for it. She would not have wanted him to be incapable of such emotions; and yet it also stirred a twinge of unease in her, a consciousness that they had not shared this case, a recollection of the number of times that she had been absent when he had come home tired and worried, confused and needing to speak. She had been so full of her plans to make the new house beautiful, and to do it within an acceptable cost, that she had had room for little else in her mind. Now she was touched by a whisper of jealousy, soft, but unmistakable.

“Good morning, Superintendent,” Dulcie said, smiling up at Pitt. There was a distinct hesitation before she turned to Charlotte. “How do you do. You must be Mrs. Pitt. How gracious of you to have come as well. Most sensitive of you.”

Charlotte had to struggle to keep her answering smile sweet and think of something equally pleasant to reply. The slightest slip would be perceived and understood. She had only to meet Dulcie’s eyes to know that nothing passed her by.

“Thank you, Mrs. Arledge. I hope it is not an intrusion?”

“Of course not Please don’t think that for a second.” Dulcie turned to Carvell. Charlotte held her breath, then suddenly realized that of course Dulcie had no idea that he was anything more than another grieving friend, simply generous enough to have lent her his home for the occasion. She let out her breath again in a silent thanksgiving.

“Thank you, Mr. Carvell,” Dulcie said with a slight tilting of her head. “Your generous hospitality has made all the difference to me in what could well have been an almost unbearable situation. I assure you I appreciate it more than you can know.”

Carvell’s face flushed deep red and he stood as if transfixed to the spot Charlotte could only dimly guess at the storm of
emotions that must rage through him as he faced Arledge’s wife. He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice failed him.

Pitt was standing almost as stiffly himself.

Dulcie waited expectantly.

Surely Carvell would say something before he betrayed himself. Any second the thought must surely enter her mind. It had to be someone. The choice was not wide.

Pitt drew in his breath sharply.

The sound of it seemed to force Carvell back to reality.

“I am glad it is of some service,” he said awkwardly. “It seems such a—a small thing to do. Not enough—not at all enough—”

“I am sure it is a great help,” Charlotte interrupted, unable to bear the tension any longer. “Simply not to have to worry about practicalities, and to be free to leave when one cannot endure company any longer and would prefer solitude, that is a great gift.”

Dulcie looked at her. “How perceptive of you, Mrs. Pitt,” she observed. “Of course you are quite right. Your gift is great, Mr. Carvell. Please do not allow your modesty to belittle it.”