Cardington Crescent (16 page)

“Yes,” Sybilla agreed dryly, “but you don’t have to explain.” There was no anger visible in Sybilla’s face, only a tightness, a consciousness of both irony and tragedy.

Charlotte was furious with herself and entangled in confusion. This woman had taken Emily’s husband—whether intentionally or not, in front of the whole house—and perhaps directly caused his death. She wanted to hate her with an unfettered, clean violence. Yet she could so easily imagine herself with similar feelings, and she was unable to sustain rage against anyone the moment she comprehended the capacity for pain. It ruined her judgment and tied her tongue.

“Thank you.” The words came out clumsily; it was not at all what she had meant for this interview. But she must try to salvage something out of it. “Do you know Mr. Radley well?”

“Not very,” Sybilla replied with a faint smile. “Papa-in-law wishes him to marry poor Tassie, and he is here for everyone to come discreetly to some arrangement. Although there is not much discreet about Jack—nor, I gather, has there ever been.”

“Is Tassie in love with him?” She felt a stab of shame for Emily. If she were, and being engineered into a marriage while Jack Radley quite openly humiliated her by displaying his attraction to Emily, then how she must have suffered. Were there any possibility of mistake, Charlotte would have supposed the poison intended for Emily.

Sybilla was smiling slightly. She reached out and touched the camellia petals. “Now I suppose they will go brown,” she remarked. “They do if you touch them. No she wasn’t, in fact. I don’t think she wanted to marry him at all. She’s something of a romantic.”

In that one phrase she summed up a host of things: a world of both regret and contempt for girlish innocence, a wry affection for Tassie, and the knowledge that Charlotte must be of a lower social class than herself to ask such a question at all. People like the Marches married for family reasons—to accumulate more wealth, to consolidate trade empires or ally with competitors, above all to breed strong sons to continue the name—never for emotional fancies like falling in love. It passed too quickly and left too little behind. What was falling in love anyway? The curve of a cheek, the arch of a brow, a trick of grace or flattery, a moment of sharing.

But it was hard to commit oneself to such an intimate and permanent tie without something of the magic, even if it was very often an illusion. And sometimes it was real! Most of the time Charlotte took Thomas for granted, like a profound friendship, but there were many moments when her heart beat in her throat and she still knew him in a crowded street among hundreds by the way he stood, or recognized his step with a lift of excitement.

“And Mr. Radley, I take it, is a realist?” she said aloud.

“Oh, I think so,” Sybilla agreed, looking back at Charlotte and biting her lip very slightly. “I don’t think circumstances have allowed him a choice.”

Charlotte opened her mouth to ask if he might not have become obsessed with Emily all the same, then realized that the question was anything but helpful. Tassie March might inherit a pleasing sum from both her grandparents, but it would pale beside the Ashworth fortune that would now be Emily’s alone. Why look for a motive of love of any degree when that of money was so apt?

They were at the doorway of the conservatory, and there was nothing more to say. Charlotte excused herself and escaped inside. She had learned nothing that she had not already surmised, except that instinctively she felt an empathy for Sybilla March which threw all her budding theories into turmoil again.

Luncheon yielded nothing but platitudes. Afterwards, Charlotte spent an hour with Emily, ever on the brink of pressing her for answers and, seeing her white face, changing her mind. Instead she went to find William March, who was still painting in the conservatory. She knew perfectly well that she was interrupting him and he would hate it, but there was no time to nurse her own sensibilities.

She found him in the studio that had been cleared for him beyond the lilies and vines. He stood with the angular grace of someone who uses his body and is unaware of being observed. There was nothing posed about him: his elbows stuck out, his head was to one side, and his feet were apart. Yet his balance was perfect. The top window was open and there was a whispering of wind in the leaves like water through pebbles on a shore. He did not hear Charlotte’s approach, and she was almost beside him when she spoke. Ordinarily she would have felt a crassness that would chill her stomach to speak to him, but after talking with Sybilla she was even more conscious of the danger in which Emily stood. To any unbiased observer she must look guilty. There was only her word that George had quarreled with Sybilla, whereas everyone had seen George’s affair—and had seen Emily accept attention from Jack Radley. If there was a reason anyone else in the family was involved, she had not yet found it.

“Good afternoon, Mr. March,” she said with forced cheerfulness. She felt like a fool and a philistine.

He was startled and the brush jerked in his hand, but she had chosen a moment when it was still far from the canvas. He turned to look at her coldly. His eyes were surprisingly dark gray, and deep-set under the red brows.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt. Are you lost?” It was plain to the point of rudeness. He resented being disturbed and still more being placed where he was obliged to conduct a pointless conversation with a woman he did not know.

She lost any hope of fooling him. “No, I came here on purpose, because I wished to talk with you. I realize I am preventing your work.”

He was surprised; he had expected some silly excuse. He still held the brush in the air and his face was tight with concentration. “Indeed?”

She looked past him at the picture. It was far cleverer than she had foreseen; there was a shivering in the leaves—an impression more than an outline—and just beyond the brightness of sunlight there was ice, wind that cut the skin, a sense of isolation and pain. It was as much the tail end of winter, with sudden frost that kills, as it was a herald of spring, and she felt it in the mind as well as the eye.

“It’s very fine,” she said sincerely. She thought it was far too good for someone who merely wanted a representation of his possessions and would be blind to the artist’s voice illuminating it like flame. “You should exhibit it before you hand it over. It has the cruelties of nature, as well as the loveliness.”

He flinched as though she had hurt him. “That’s what Emily said.” His voice was quiet; it was more a reflection to himself than a remark to her. “Poor Emily.”

“Did you know George well?” She plunged straight in, watching his eyes and the curious, chiseled mouth. But she saw no alteration but sadness, no evasion.

“No,” he said quietly. “He was a cousin, so naturally I have met him from time to time, but I cannot say I knew him.” He smiled very slightly. “We had few interests in common, but that is not to say I disliked him. On the contrary, I found him very agreeable. He was almost always good-natured, and harmless.”

“Emily thought he was in love with Mrs. March.” She was franker than she might have been with someone else, but he seemed too intelligent to dupe and too perceptive to misunderstand her.

He stared at the painting. “In love?” He turned the phrase over in his mind. “I suppose that is as good a term as any—it covers almost whatever you like. It was an adventure, something daring and different. Sybilla is never a bore—she has too much unknown in her.” He began to wipe the paint off his brush, not looking at Charlotte. “But he would have forgotten her after he left here. Emily is a clever woman, she knew how to wait. George was childish, that’s all.”

Charlotte had known George for seven years, and what William March said was precisely true, and he had seen it as clearly as she.

“But someone killed him,” she persisted.

His hands stopped moving. “Yes, I know. But I don’t believe it was Emily, and it certainly wasn’t Sybilla.” He hesitated, still watching the spread-out hairs of the brush. “I would consider Jack Radley, if I were you. Emily is now a young and titled widow with a considerable fortune, and a most attractive woman. She has already shown him some favor, and he might be vain enough to fancy it could increase.”

“That would be vile!”

He looked up at her, his eyes bright. “Yes. But vileness exists. It seems we can think of nothing so appalling that someone somewhere hasn’t thought of it too—and done it.” His mouth twitched, and with difficulty he controlled it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pitt. I beg your pardon. I did not wish to offend you.”

“You haven’t, Mr. March. As I am sure you could not have forgotten, my husband is a policeman.”

He swung round, letting the brush drop, and stared at her as if part of him wanted to laugh at the joke on Society. “You must have great courage. Were your family horrified?”

She had been too much in love to take a great deal of notice of anyone else’s feelings, but that seemed a peculiarly insensitive thing to say now to this man, whose wife had responded so fully and so publicly to George. Instead, she told him the easiest lie.

“They were so pleased with Emily marrying Lord Ashworth they tolerated me really quite well.”

But mention of George and Emily only brought back the sharp contrast with Emily’s present loss. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, and turned back to the cruel, sensitive painting.

She was dismissed, and this time she accepted it, walking slowly back through the jungle of growth to the rest of the house.

In the afternoon they were visited by the pink-faced curate. He made an embarrassed and rather abrupt apology for the vicar who, apparently, was unable to come in person due to some emergency, the nature of which was unclear.

“Indeed!” Vespasia said with unconcealed skepticism. “How unfortunate.”

The curate was a large young man of obvious West Highland origin. With the bluntness of youth, and perhaps some judgment of his own, he made no effort to embellish the excuse. Charlotte warmed to him immediately and was not surprised to observe that Tassie also seemed to find him agreeable.

“And when do we expect this crisis to pass?” Mrs. March inquired coldly.

“When our reputation is restored and we are not the seat of scandal anymore,” Tassie said instantly, and blushed as soon as the words were out.

The curate took a deep breath, bit his lip, and colored as well.

“Anastasia!” Mrs. March’s voice cracked like a whip. “You will excuse yourself to your room if you cannot guard your tongue from uncharitableness, let alone impertinence. No doubt Mr. Beamish has his reasons for not calling upon us to give us his comfort in person.”

“I expect Mr. Hare will do rather better anyway,” Vespasia murmured to no one in particular. “I find the vicar peculiarly tedious.”

“That is beside the point!” Mrs. March snapped. “It is not the vicar’s function to be amusing. I always felt you did not understand religion, Vespasia. You never knew how to behave in church. You have had a tendency to laugh in the wrong places as long as I have known you.”

“That is because I have a sense of the absurd, and you have not,” Vespasia replied. She turned to Mungo Hare, balanced on the edge of one of the hard-backed, withdrawing room chairs and trying to compose his face to display the appropriate mixture of piety and solicitude. “Mr. Hare,” she continued, “please convey to Mr. Beamish that we understand his reasons quite perfectly, and that we are very satisfied that you should take his place.”

Tassie sneezed, or that is what it sounded like. Mrs. March made a clicking noise with her tongue, excessively irritated that Vespasia should have contrived to insult the vicar more effectively than she herself had. How dare the wretched, cowardly little man send a curate in his place to call upon the Marches? And Charlotte remembered with renewed vividness why she had liked Aunt Vespasia from the day they had met.

Mungo Hare duly unburdened himself of the condolences and the spiritual encouragement he had been charged with; then Tassie accompanied him upstairs to repeat it all to Emily, who had chosen to spend the afternoon alone.

Charlotte meant to go up later and see if she could tap Emily’s memory for some observation, however minor, which would betray a weakness, a lie, anything which could be pursued. But as she was crossing the hall Eustace emerged from the morning room, straightening his jacket and coughing loudly, thus making it impossible for her to pretend she had not seen him.

“Ah, Mrs. Pitt,” he said with affected surprise, his round little eyes very wide. “I should like to talk with you. Perhaps the boudoir? Mrs. March has gone to change for dinner, and I know it is presently unoccupied.” He was behind her, hands wide, almost as if he would physically shepherd her in the direction he wished her to go. Short of being unexplainably rude, she could not refuse.

Charlotte found the room one of the ugliest she had ever seen. It exemplified the worst taste of the last fifty years, and she felt suffocated by everything it symbolized as much as by the sheer weight of the furniture, the hot color, and the wealth of ornaments and drapings. It seemed to be expressive of a prudery that was vulgar in its very consciousness of the things it sought to cover—an opulence that was lacking in any real richness. It was difficult to keep the distaste from showing in her face.

For once Eustace did not fling open the windows in his customary manner, and it was the only time when she would willingly have done it for him. He seemed too preoccupied with the burden of framing his thoughts.

“Mrs. Pitt. I hope you find yourself as comfortable as may be, in these tragic circumstances?”

“Quite, thank you, Mr. March.” She was confused. Surely he had not brought her to this room to ask her in private such a trivial question?

“Good, good.” He rubbed his hands together and remained looking at her. “Of course, you do not know us very well. Nor perhaps anyone like us. No, no you wouldn’t. We must seem alien to you. I should explain, so that we do not add confusion as well to your natural grief for your sister. If I can help you at all, in the least way, my dear ... ?”

Charlotte opened her mouth to say that she was no more confused than anyone else would be, but he hurried on, drowning her protest.