Paragon Walk (27 page)

“What?” Charlotte blinked. Somehow all this seemed at once unreal, and yet as if it had been inevitable. All her vague unease was focused now. “What did she say?”

“That all the things that had happened had concentrated the evil in the Walk, and there was no way we could exorcise it now. She hardly dared to imagine what abominable thing would happen next.”

“Do you think perhaps she is mad, too?”

“No, I don’t!” Emily said firmly. “At least not mad the way you mean. She is silly, of course, but she knows what she’s talking about, even if she won’t tell anyone.”

“Well, how are we going to find out?” Charlotte said immediately. The thought of not trying to discover never occurred to her.

Emily had also taken it for granted.

“I’ve worked it out, from all the things everyone has said.” She got down to business now, decisions made in her mind. “And I’m almost certain it is something to do with the Dilbridges, at least, with Freddie Dilbridge. I don’t know who is involved and who isn’t, except that Phoebe knows, and it terrifies her. But the Dilbridges are having a garden party in ten-days’ time. George doesn’t approve, but I mean to go, and you are coming, too. We shall break away from the party without being noticed and explore the house. If we are clever enough, we shall find something. If there is real wickedness in that place, it will have left something behind. Maybe we’ll discover whatever it was that Miss Lucinda saw? It has to be there.”

Memories of Fulbert’s charred body slithering down the chimney flashed into Charlotte’s mind. It would be a long time before she wished to poke into other people’s rooms in search of answers, but then, on the other hand, neither could she possibly leave the question unanswered.

“Good,” she said firmly. “What shall I wear?”

C
HARLOTTE WENT TO
the garden party feeling marvelous. Emily, high on the wave of her own well-being, had given her a new dress, all white muslin and lace, with tiny pin tucks at the yoke. She felt like daisies in the wind of a summer field, or the white foam of a mountain stream, inexpressible, shimmeringly clean.

Everyone in the Walk was there, even the Misses Horbury, as though they were making a determined effort to put everything sordid or tragic behind them, firmly in the past, and for a hot, still afternoon totally to forget it.

Emily was gowned in spring green, her best color, and she positively radiated delight.

“We are going to find out what it is,” she said softly to Charlotte, gripping her by the arm as they walked across the grass toward Grace Dilbridge. “I haven’t made up my mind yet whether she knows or not. I’ve been listening very carefully to everyone the last few days, and I rather think Grace doesn’t wish to know, so she has made sure not to find out by accident.”

Charlotte remembered what Aunt Vespasia had said about Grace and her enjoyment in being put upon. Perhaps if she discovered the secret, it would be too appalling for her to find any pleasure in it anymore. After all, if one’s husband sinned in an average way, only slightly more openly than most, one could be expected to endure it gracefully and be sympathized with. One’s social position would not be jeopardized. But if the sin were extraordinary, something unacceptable, then one would be required to take action, even perhaps to leave—and that was altogether another matter. A woman who leaves her husband, for whatever reason, is not only financially a disaster, but socially quite beyond condoning. Invitations simply cease.

They were now in front of Grace Dilbridge, who was looking rather a poor color, in a purple that did not suit her. It was far too hot a shade for such a heavy day. There were tiny thunder flies in the air, and it was difficult not to forget one’s manners and brush them away quite violently, as they itched the skin and caught in one’s hair in a most unpleasant sensation.

“How charming to see you, Mrs. Pitt,” Grace said automatically. “I’m so delighted you were able to come. How well you look, Emily, my dear.”

“Thank you,” they both replied together, then Emily went on, “I had no idea your garden was so large. How lovely it is. Does it extend beyond that hedge also?”

“Oh, yes, there is a herbaceous walk, and a small rose garden.” Grace waved an arm. “I have sometimes wondered if we should try growing peaches on that south facing wall, but Freddie won’t hear of it.”

Emily’s elbow poked Charlotte, and Charlotte knew she was thinking of the garden room. It must be somewhere behind that hedge.

“Indeed,” Emily said with polite interest. “I do love peaches. I should insist, if I had such a place. There is nothing like a fresh peach, in the season.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Grace looked uncomfortable, “Freddie would be most angry. He gives me so many things, he would think me most ungrateful if I were to make an issue of such a small matter.”

This time it was Charlotte who poked Emily discreetly, with her foot, under the clouds of her skirt. She did not want Emily to press too hard and make their interest obvious. They had already learned enough. The garden room was behind that hedge, and Freddie did not want peaches anywhere near it.

They excused themselves, after again saying how delighted they were to be there.

“The garden room!” Emily said as soon as they were out of earshot. “Freddie does not want her going there to pick peaches at awkward moments. He has his private parties out there, I’ll wager you anything.”

Charlotte did not take her up.

“But parties are not much,” she said slowly, “unless something quite awful goes on. What we need to know is who goes to them. Do you think Miss Lucinda recalls with any clarity at all what she saw? Or will it be so embroidered over with imagination by now that it isn’t any use? She must have told it umpteen times.”

Emily bit her lip in irritation.

“I really should have asked her when it happened, but I was so annoyed by her, and so delighted that someone had given her a good fright, that I deliberately avoided her. And I didn’t want to pander to her vanity. She was sitting up on the chaise lounge, you know, with smelling salts, an embroidered cushion with Chinese dragons behind her, so Aunt Vespasia said, and a whole jugful of lemonade, receiving callers like some duchess and insisting on telling the whole story right from the beginning to every one of them. I simply could not have been civil to her. I should have burst into laughter. Now I wish I’d had more self control.”

Charlotte was not in a position to criticize, and she knew it. Without replying, she looked around the rose-hung garden to see if she could find Miss Lucinda. She was bound to be with Miss Laetitia, and they were always in the same color.

“There!” Emily touched her arm, and she turned. This time they were in forget-me-not blue, and it was far too young for either of them. The touches of pink only made it worse, like some confection that had become overheated.

“Oh dear!” Charlotte said under her breath, stifling a gasp of laughter.

“It’s got to be done,” Emily replied severely. “Come on!”

Side by side, they attempted to look casual as they drifted over toward the Misses Horbury, hesitating on the way to compliment Albertine Dilbridge on her gown and exchange a greeting with Selena.

“How did she take it?” Charlotte asked the moment they were away from her.

“Take what?” Emily was for once confused.

“Hallam!” Charlotte said impatiently. “After all, it’s a bit of a letdown, isn’t it? I mean to be ravished in overwhelming passion by Paul Alaric is rather romantic, in a disgusting sort of way, but to be molested by Hallam Cayley when he was too drunk and wretched to know what he was doing and didn’t even remember it afterward is just terrible”—she stopped, and all the mockery drained out of her—“and very tragic.”

“Oh!” Emily obviously had not thought of it. “I don’t know.” Then the idea began to interest her. Charlotte saw it in her face. “But now that I consider it, she has rather gone out of her way to avoid me ever since then. Once or twice I have thought she was going to speak to me, then at the last moment she had suddenly found something else more pressing.”

“Do you suppose she knew it was Hallam all the time?” Charlotte asked.

Emily screwed up her face.

“I’m trying to be fair.” She was finding it an effort, and it showed. “I don’t know what I think. I don’t suppose it matters now.”

Charlotte was not satisfied. Some small doubt, a question unresolved, gnawed at the back of her mind. But she suffered it to remain for the moment. They were approaching the Misses Horbury, and she must compose herself to pry discreetly and with grace. She fixed an interested smile on her face and plunged in before Emily had the opportunity.

“How nice to see you again, Miss Horbury,” she gazed at Miss Lucinda with something like awe. “I do admire your courage after such an appalling experience. I am only beginning now fully to appreciate what you must have been through! So many of us lead sheltered lives, we have no imagination of the dreadful things there are so close to us— if only we knew!” She mentally kicked herself for being a hypocrite, the more so because she was rather enjoying it.

Miss Lucinda was too steeped in her own convictions to recognize a complete turn of character. She puffed herself out with satisfaction, reminding Charlotte of a pastel-colored pouter pigeon.

“How perceptive of you, Mrs. Pitt,” she said solemnly. “So many people don’t understand what dark forces there are at work, and how near to us they are!”

“Quite.” For a moment Charlotte’s nerve failed her. She caught sight of Miss Laetitia, her pale eyes wide, and was not sure whether there was laughter in them, or if it was only a reflection of the light. She took a deep breath. “Of course,” she continued, “you must know better than the rest of us. I have been fortunate. I have never been brought face to face with pure evil.”

“Few of us have, my dear,” Miss Lucinda was warming to this new show of interest. “And I most sincerely hope you never have the misfortune to be one of us!”

“Oh, so do I!” Charlotte put a great deal of feeling into it. She deliberately creased her brow in anxiety. “But then there is the question of duty,” she said slowly. “Evil will not go away because we choose not to look at it.” She took a deep breath and faced Miss Lucinda squarely, meeting her rather round eyes. “You will never know how much I admire you for your conduct, your determination to get to the bottom of the circumstances here, whatever they may be.”

Miss Lucinda flushed with satisfaction.

“How kind of you, and how very wise. I know few women of such sense, especially among the young.”

“Indeed,” Charlotte continued, ignoring a nudge from Emily. “I admire you for coming here today at all,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “knowing what we have heard about parties here!”

Miss Lucinda blushed, remembering her previous remarks about Freddie Dilbridge and his dissolute gatherings. She struggled for an excuse for her presence.

With increasing delight, Charlotte gave it to her.

“It must require a lot of self-sacrifice,” she said soberly. “But I do appreciate that you are determined, at any cost to yourself in embarrassment or even positive danger, that you must discover whatever dreadful thing it was you saw that night.”

“Yes, yes, quite.” Miss Lucinda fastened onto it eagerly. “It is a matter of Christian duty.”

“Has anyone else seen it?” Emily managed to say something at last.

“If they have,” Miss Lucinda said darkly, “they have not said so.”

“Maybe they were too frightened?” Charlotte tried to get to her actual purpose at last. “What did it look like?”

Miss Lucinda was surprised. She had forgotten the actuality. Now she tried to picture it again.

“Evil,” she began, wrinkling her face. “Most evil. It had a green face, like a creature half man and half beast. And there were horns on its head.”

“How appalling,” Charlotte breathed out, suitably impressed. “What manner of horns? Like a cow, or a goat, or—”

“Oh, like a goat,” Miss Lucinda said immediately. “Curling back.”

“And what manner of body?” Charlotte went on. “Did it have two legs like a man, or four like a beast?”

“Two, like a man, and it ran away and leapt over the hedge.”

“Leapt over the hedge?” Charlotte tried not to sound disbelieving.

“Oh, it’s quite a low hedge, just ornamental.” Miss Lucinda was not as impractical as she appeared. “I could have jumped it myself, when I was a girl. Not that I would have, of course!” she added hastily.

“Of course not,” Charlotte agreed, struggling desperately to keep a straight face. The picture of Miss Lucinda taking a flying leap at the garden hedge was too delicious to be denied. “Which way did it go?”

Miss Lucinda did not miss the point.

“This way,” she said firmly. “Down the Walk, toward this end.”

Emily saw Charlotte’s face and rushed to rescue with noises of sympathy and horror.

It took them some time to break away without obvious discourtesy, and when at last they did, with an excuse that they must speak to Selena, Emily turned to Charlotte, pulling her back by the sleeve, in case they were upon Selena before having an opportunity to speak to each other in private.

“What on earth was it?” she hissed. “I thought at first she was inventing most of it, but now I really do believe she saw something. She isn’t lying. I would swear to that.”

Charlotte had already made up her mind.

“Someone dressed up to frighten her,” she answered under her breath, not wanting any passerby to overhear them. Phoebe was only a few yards away, standing with a wan smile, listening to Grace’s misfortunes.

“Away from what?” Emily smiled dazzlingly at Jessamyn as she floated past. “Something here?”

“That’s what we have to find out.” Charlotte added a gesture of greeting. “I wonder if Selena knows,” she went on to Emily.

“We’ll find out.” Emily sailed forward, and Charlotte was obliged to follow. She still disliked Selena, in spite of the admiration for her courage. She faced the unpleasant possibility that her feeling was mainly provoked because Selena had said it was Paul Alaric who had assaulted her. Charlotte most intensely did not wish that to be true. Alaric was here this afternoon. She had not spoken to him yet, but she knew precisely where he was, and that at the moment Jessamyn was drifting casually over toward him in a froth of water-blue lace.