Bethlehem Road (18 page)

Pitt felt a sense of awe at the city’s sheer teeming enormity as he sat in his carriage watching the rows and rows of houses rush past him, grimed with the flying steam and smuts of innumerable trains just like his. Nearly four million people lived here, from those ashen-faced waifs who perished of cold and hunger to the richest, most talented and beautiful people in all a civilized nation. It was the heart of an empire which spanned the world—the fount of art, theater, opera and music hall, laughter, law, and abuse and monumental greed.

He ate his sandwiches of cold meat and pickle and was glad to get out and stretch his cramped legs at last when he arrived at Grantham in midafternoon. It took him another hour and a half to travel by a branch line and then a hired pony and trap to the country home of the late Vyvyan Etheridge. The door was opened by a caretaking manservant, whom Pitt had some difficulty in persuading of his errand, and that it was legitimate.

It was after four o’clock when he finally stood in the waning light in Etheridge’s study, another sumptuous and elegant room lined with books, and began to search through the papers. He was reading by lamplight and hunched up with cold an hour later when he finally found what he had come for.

The first letter was very simple and dated nearly two years ago.

Dear Mr. Etheridge,

I appeal to you as my member of Parliament to assist me in my present distress. My story is a simple one. I married at nineteen at my parents’ arrangement, to a man several years older than myself and of a nature most grim and autocratic. I endeavored to please him and to find some happiness, or at least to learn it, for twelve years. During that time I bore him three children, one of whom died. The other two, a boy and a girl, I cared for and loved with all my heart.

However, in time my husband’s manner and his unyielding domination of my life, even in the smallest things, made me so wretched I determined to live apart from him. When I broached the subject he was not at all unwilling, indeed I think he had grown quite tired of me and found the prospect of his release from my company without disgrace to himself an agreeable solution.

He insisted that my son remain with him, in his sole custody, and that I should have no influence upon him nor say in his future life. My daughter he permitted to come with me.

I asked no financial provision, and he made none either for me or for our daughter, Pamela, known to us as Pansy, then aged six. I found lodgings and some small labor with a woman of reasonable means, and all was well, until this last month my husband has suddenly demanded the custody of our daughter again, and the thought of losing my child is more than I can bear. She is well and happy with me and wants for none of the necessities of life, nor does she lack regarding her education and moral welfare.

Please defend me in this matter, as I have no other to turn to.

I remain most sincerely yours,

Florence Ivory

There followed a copy of Etheridge’s response.

My dear Mrs. Ivory,

I am most touched by your plight, and will look into the matter immediately. It seems to me that your original agreement with your husband was a most reasonable one, and since you asked of him no support, he has acted less than honorably and can have no claim upon you, still less to remove so young a child from her mother.

I shall write to you again when I have further information.

Until then I remain yours sincerely,

Vyvyan Etheridge

The next letter was also Etheridge’s own copy of one he had written to Florence Ivory, dated two weeks later.

My dear Mrs. Ivory,

I have inquired further into your situation, and I see no cause for you to distress yourself, or fear for yourself or your daughter’s happiness. I have spoken with your husband and assured him that he has no grounds for his demand. A child of Pansy’s tender years is far better in the care of her natural mother than that of some housekeeper or hired nurse, and as you have stated, she does not lack for any of the appurtenances of health, education, and a sound moral upbringing.

I doubt that you will be troubled further in the matter, but if you are, please do not hesitate to inform me, and I will see that legal counsel is obtained and a decision handed down that will ensure you are not threatened or caused anxiety again.

I remain yours sincerely,

Vyvyan Etheridge

This was followed by a letter in a quite different hand.

Dear Mr. Etheridge,

Further to our discussion on the 4th day of last month, I think perhaps you are not aware of the conduct and character of my wife, Mrs. Florence Ivory, who somewhat misrepresented herself to you when seeking your intervention to prevent my receiving custody of my daughter, Pamela Ivory.

My wife is a woman of violent emotions and sudden and immature fancies. She has unfortunately little sense of what is fit, and is most self-indulgent of her whims. It pains me to say so, but I cannot consider her a suitable person to undertake the upbringing of a child, most especially a girl, whom she would imbue with her own wild and unbecoming ideas.

I do not wish to have to inform you, but circumstances compel me. My wife has taken up several socially contentious and radical causes, including that of desiring the parliamentary franchise for women. She has taken her support for this extraordinary cause so far as publicly to visit and be seen with Miss Helen Taylor, a most fanatic and revolutionary person who parades herself wearing trousers!

She has also sought the company and expressed considerable admiration for a Mrs. Annie Bezant, who has also left the home of her husband, the Reverend Bezant, and employs herself stirring up industrial ill-will among match girls and the like employed in the factory of Bryant and Mays. She is fomenting unrest and advocating strikes!

I am sure you can see from this that my wife is no fit person to have the custody of my daughter, and I therefore request that you offer her no further assistance in the matter. It can only lead to distress for my daughter, and if her mother should prevail, to her ruin.

Your obedient servant,

William Ivory

And Etheridge’s copy of his reply:

Dear Mr. Ivory,

Thank you for your letter regarding your wife, Florence Ivory, and the custody of your daughter. I have met with Mrs. Ivory and found her a strong-willed woman of forcible and perhaps ill-found opinions regarding certain social issues, but her behavior was perfectly seemly, and she is obviously devoted to her daughter, who is well cared for, in good health, and progressing with her education in a most satisfactory manner.

While I agree with you that Miss Taylor’s behavior is quite extreme and cannot possibly profit her cause, I do not believe that your wife’s support of her constitutes sufficient ill judgment to make her unfit to care for her child, and as you know, the law now allows a woman, if widowed, to be sole guardian of her children. Therefore I feel in this instance that so young a girl as Pansy is best cared for by her mother, and I hope that this will continue to be the case.

Yours sincerely,

Vyvyan Etheridge

Here, as was clear from the handwriting of the letter which followed, a fourth voice joined the correspondence.

Dear Vyvyan,

I hear from William Ivory, a good friend of mine, that you have befriended his unfortunate wife in the matter of the custody of their daughter Pamela. I must tell you that I feel you are ill-advised in the matter. She is a headstrong woman who has publicly espoused some highly contentious and undesirable causes, including the parliamentary franchise for women, and worse than that, industrial militancy among some of the most unskilled labor in the city.

She has openly expressed her sympathy with the match girls at Bryant and Mays and encouraged them to withdraw their labor!

If we support such people, who knows where the general dissension and upheaval may end? You must be aware that there is unrest in the country already, and a strong element that desires the overthrow of the social order, to be replaced with God knows what! Anarchy, by the way they speak.

I must strongly recommend that you give no further aid of any sort to Florence Ivory, indeed that you assist poor William to obtain custody of his unfortunate child forth-with, before she can be further injured by the eccentric and undisciplined behavior of her mother.

I remain yours in friendship,

Garnet Royce, M.P.

Garnet Royce! So the civilized and arbitrary Garnet Royce, so solicitous of his sister’s affairs, so concerned to be helpful, was the one who had sided with convention, and robbed Florence Ivory of her child. Why? Ignorance—conservatism-returning some old favor—or simply a belief that Florence did not know how to care for her own child’s welfare?

He turned back to the copy of Etheridge’s next letter.

Dear Mrs. Ivory,

I regret to inform you that I am looking further into the matter of your husband’s plea for the custody of your daughter. I find that the circumstances are not as I first surmised, or as you led me to believe.

Therefore I am obliged to withdraw my support from your cause, and to put my weight behind your husband’s effort to give his guardianship and care to both his children, and to raise them in an orderly and God-fearing home.

Yours faithfully,

Vyvyan Etheridge

Mr. Etheridge,

I could hardly believe it when I opened your letter! I called upon you immediately, but your servant would not admit me. I felt sure that after your promises to me, and your visit to my home, that you could not possibly so betray my trust.

If you do not help me I shall lose my child! My husband has sworn that if he obtains custody I shall not ever be permitted to see her, much less talk and play with her, teach her what I love and believe, or even assure her that it is not my will that we part, and that I shall love her with all my strength as long as I live!

Please! Please help me.

Florence Ivory

You do not reply! Please, Mr. Etheridge, at least hear me. I am not unfit to care for my child! What offense have I committed?

Florence Ivory

And from the last one, written in a scrawl ragged with emotion:

My child is gone. I cannot put my pain into words, but one day you will know everything that I feel, and then you will wish with all the power of your soul that you had not so betrayed me!

Florence Ivory

Pitt folded the note and put it together with the rest of the correspondence in a large envelope. He stood up, banging his knee against the desk without feeling it. His mind was in the darkness on Westminster Bridge, and with two women in a room in Walnut Tree Walk, a room full of chintz and sunlight, and pain that spilled out till it soaked the air.

I
T WAS THE DAY
after Pitt went to Lincolnshire that Charlotte received a hand-delivered letter a little before noon. She knew immediately when she saw the footman with the envelope in his hand that it was from Great-aunt Vespasia; her first dreadful thought was that some illness had befallen the old lady, but then she saw that the footman was in ordinary livery, and his face bore no mark of grief.

Charlotte bade him wait in the kitchen. Hurrying into the parlor, she tore open the paper and read Vespasia’s thin, rather eccentric hand:

My dear Charlotte,

An old friend of mine, whom I am perfectly sure you would like, is greatly afraid that her favorite niece is suspected of murder. She has come to me for help, and I come to you. With your experience and skill we may be able to discern the truth—at least I intend to try!

If you are able to accompany my footman to visit me and begin a plan of campaign this afternoon, please do so. If you are not, men write and let me know the soonest that you will have a moment to spare. Already it grows late, and time is short.

Yours affectionately,

Vespasia Cumming-Gould

P.S. There is no need to dress glamorously for the occasion. Nobby is the least formal of people and her anxiety far outweighs her sense of occasion.

There was only one possible reply. Charlotte knew very well what it is like to have someone very dear to you suspected of murder, and to feel all the fear of arrest, imprisonment, trial, even hanging racing nightmarishly through your mind. She had known it with Emily so very recently. Aunt Vespasia had stood by them then. Of course she would go.

“Gracie!” she called as she walked back from the parlor towards the kitchen. “Gracie, I have been called away, to help someone in trouble. Please give the children their lunch, and their tea if necessary. This is an emergency; I shall return when the matter is in hand.”

“Oh yes, ma’am!” Gracie turned her attention from the footman and the cup of tea she was passing him. “Is it illness, ma’am, or”—she tried to keep the light of excitement out of her eyes, and failed—“is it ...” She could not find the right word for the mixture of peril and adventure dancing on the edge of her imagination. She knew of Charlotte’s battles with crime in the past, but she did not dare speak of them openly now.

Charlotte smiled wryly. “No Gracie, it is not illness,” she conceded.

“Oh, ma’am!” Gracie breathed out a sigh of exquisite anticipation. Dark and wonderful adventures raced through her mind. “Do be careful, ma’am!”

Forty minutes later Charlotte alighted from the carriage, assisted by the footman, and climbed the stairs to the front door of Great-aunt Vespasia’s town house. It opened before she raised her hand to the knocker, indicating that she was expected, indeed awaited, but she was surprised to see that it was the butler himself who stood in the entrance, grave and elegant.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pitt. Lady Cumming-Gould is in the withdrawing room, if you care to go through. Luncheon will be served presently in the breakfast room.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte handed him her cape and followed him across the parquet floor of the hallway. He opened the door for her, and she passed into the withdrawing room.