Paragon Walk (6 page)

Charlotte was waiting anxiously for Pitt all afternoon. From the time she had put Jemima upstairs for her afternoon sleep, she found herself repeatedly glancing at the old brown clock on the dining room shelf, going up to it to listen for the faint tick to make sure it was still going. She knew perfectly well it was foolish, because he could not return before five at the very earliest, and more likely six.

The reason for her concern was Emily, of course. Emily was newly with child, her first, and, as Charlotte could remember only too well, those first months could be very trying. Not only did one feel a natural unsureness at one’s new condition, but there were nausea and the most unreasonable depressions to overcome.

She had never been to Paragon Walk. Emily had invited her, naturally, but Charlotte was not sure if she had really wished her to go. Ever since they were girls, when Sarah had been alive, and they had lived in Cater Street with Mama and Papa, Charlotte’s lack of tact had been a social liability. Mama had found umpteen suitable young men for her, but Charlotte had had no ambitions, like the others, to make her curb her tongue and seek to impress. Of course, Emily loved her, but she was also aware that Charlotte would not be comfortable in the Walk. She could not afford the clothes, nor the time from her household tasks. She knew none of the gossip, and her life would soon be seen to be utterly different.

Now she wished she could go, to see for herself that Emily was quite well and not afraid because of the appalling crime. Of course her sister could always remain at home, go out only with a servant, and in daylight, but that was not the real terror. Charlotte refused to remember or think of that.

It was after six when she finally heard Pitt at the door. She dropped the potatoes she was straining in the sink and knocked over the salt and pepper on the edge of the table running out to meet him.

“How’s Emily?” she demanded. “Have you seen her? Have you discovered who killed that girl?”

He closed her in a hard hug. “No, of course I haven’t. I’ve barely begun. And yes, I saw Emily, and she seemed quite well.”

“Oh.” She pulled away. “You haven’t discovered anything! But you know at least that George had nothing to do with it, don’t you?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but she saw the indecision in his eyes before he found the words.

“You don’t!” It came out as an accusation. She was aware even as she said it, and she was sorry, but there was no time to apologize now. “You don’t know! Why haven’t you found out where he was?”

He moved her aside gently and sat down at the table.

“I asked him,” he said. “I haven’t had time to check yet.”

“Check?” she was at his elbow. “Why? Don’t you believe him?” Then she knew that was unfair. He did not have the choice of belief, and anyway belief was not what she needed, not what Emily needed. “I’m sorry.” She touched his shoulder with her hand, feeling the hardness of it under his coat. Then she moved away back to the sink and picked up the potatoes again. She tried to keep her voice casual, but it came out ridiculously high. “Where did he say he was?”

“At his club,” he replied. “Most of the time. He can’t remember how long he was there, or precisely which other clubs he went to.”

She went on mechanically dishing the potatoes, the fine-chopped cabbage and the fish she had been so careful to bake in cheese sauce. It was something she had only just learned how to make successfully. Now she surveyed its perfection without interest. Perhaps it was foolish to be afraid. George might be able to prove exactly where he had been all the time, but she had heard about men’s clubs, the games, the conversations, people sitting around drinking, or even asleep. How could anyone remember who had been there at a particular time, or even a particular evening? How was one evening different from another to recall it with surety?

It was not that she thought George might have killed the girl, nothing so appalling as that, but she knew from the past what damage even suspicion can do. If George was telling the truth, he would resent it if Emily did not utterly and immediately believe him. And if he had evaded the truth, left out something, like a flirtation, a foolish party, some excess in drink, then he would feel guilty. One lie would lead to another, and Emily would become confused and in the end perhaps suspect him even of the crime itself. The truth could be full of so many uglinesses. It was unforeseeably painful to strip away the small deceits that made life comfortable and allowed you not to see what you preferred to pretend you did not know.

“Charlotte,” Pitt’s voice came from behind her. She forced the fear out of her mind and served the food. She set it on the table in front of him.

“Yes?” she said innocently.

“Stop it!”

It was no use trying to deceive him, even with a thought. He read her too easily. She sat down with her own plate.

“You will prove it wasn’t George as soon as you can, won’t you?” she asked.

He stretched out his hand across the table to touch hers.

“Of course, I will. As soon as I can, without making it look as if I suspect him.”

She had not even thought of that! Of course—if he pursued George first of all, it would make it even worse. Emily would think—oh goodness only knew what Emily would think.

“I shall go and call on Emily.” She speared a potato with her fork and sliced it hard, unconsciously making the pieces smaller than usual, as if she were already dining in Paragon Walk. “She is often inviting me.” She started to think which of her dresses she could possibly make suitable for the occasion. If she called in the morning, her dark gray would be well enough. It was a good muslin and not too obviously last year’s cut. “After all, one of us should go, and Mama is busy with Grandmama’s illness. I think it is an excellent idea.”

Pitt did not answer her. He knew that she was talking to herself.

C
HARLOTTE HAD ALREADY
worked out in her mind exactly what she meant to do, and, as soon as Pitt had gone, she tidied the kitchen and then dressed Jemima in her second-best clothes, cotton, trimmed with lace Charlotte had carefully salvaged from one of her own old petticoats. When she was all ready, Charlotte picked her up and took her out into the warm, dusty street and over to the house opposite. The net curtains were twitching behind a dozen windows, but she refused to turn her head and betray that she knew it. Balancing Jemima on one arm, she knocked on the door.

It opened almost immediately, and a gaunt little woman in a plain, stuff pinafore stood on the mat just inside.

“Good morning, Mrs. Smith,” Charlotte said with a smile. “I just heard yesterday evening that my sister is unwell, and I feel I should go and see her. Perhaps I can help.” She did not want to lie so directly as to imply that Emily had no one else to care for her, as might have been her own situation, but she did want to suggest a certain urgency. Her feelings conflicted; she was faintly ashamed on this woman’s doorstep, looking at the shabby hall and knowing that Emily could ring a bell and have a maid come if she were ill, or send a footman for a doctor. Yet she needed to make the summons seem important.

“Would you be good enough to look after Jemima for me today?”

The woman’s face lit in an answering smile, and she held out her arms. Jemima hesitated for a moment, drawing back a little, but Charlotte had no time for tears or cajolings today. She gave her a quick kiss and passed her over.

“Thank you very much. I expect I shall not be long, but, if things are worse than I fear, I may not be home until the afternoon.

“Don’t you worry, love.” The woman cuddled Jemima easily, setting her weight on her bony hip, as she had done with countless bundles of laundry and with all eight of her own children, except the two who had died before they were old enough to sit at all. “I’ll take care of ’er, give ’er ’er dinner. You just go and see to your sister, poor soul. I ’ope as it isn’t anything bad. I always reckons this ’ot weather’s to blame for a lot. Ain’t natural.”

“No,” Charlotte agreed hastily. “I like the autumn best myself.”

“More like furrin’ weather, I should think,” Mrs. Smith went on. “Leastways from what one ’ears. I ’ad a brother what was a sailor. Terrible places ’e’s bin to. Well, you go and see to yours sister, dear. I’ll take care o’ Jemima till you comes back.”

Charlotte gave her a dazzling smile. It had taken her a long time to learn any sort of ease with these people, who were so different from those she had known before her marriage. Of course, there had been working people before, but the only ones she had known personally had been servants, as familiar in the house as the furniture or the pictures, as much accommodated to the family’s ways, and as easy to regard or ignore. They had brought nothing of their own lives into the drawing room or upstairs. Their families were known of, naturally, as part of their references, but they were no more than names and reputations; there were no faces, and still less any ambitions or tragedies, and feelings.

Now she had to accommodate herself to them, learn to cook, to clean, to shop wisely—above all to need and be needed. Neighbors were everything through the long days while Pitt was away; they were laughter, the sound of voices, help when she did not know how to manage things, when Jemima was cutting teeth and she had no idea what to do. There were no nursery maids to call, no nanny, only Mrs. Smith with her old woman’s remedies and years of practice. Her ordinariness, her passive resignation to hardship and obedience infuriated Charlotte, and yet her patience soothed her, that and her sureness of what to do in the daily small crises that Charlotte had never been taught to handle.

To begin with, the whole street had thought Charlotte arrogant, aloof to the point of coldness, not realizing she was as shy of them as they of her. It had taken nearly two years for them to accept her. The annoying thing was that in their own way they were just as prim as Mama and her friends, just as full of genteel expressions to avoid a truth that offended and every whit as conscious of social differences in all the subtlest of shades. Charlotte had quite unintentionally outraged them with her opinions, spoken in total innocence.

Mama’s withdrawing room seemed a long time ago: the afternoon teas, the polite visits, exchanging gossip, trying to learn something about eligible young men, other people’s social and financial affairs, always in the most circumlocutory manner, of course.

Now she must try to recapture at least the semblance of grace again, sufficient not to embarrass Emily.

She hurried home and changed into the gray muslin with white spots. Last year she had saved from the housekeeping for it, and the style was so plain as to have dated little. Of course that was why she had chosen it, that, and so as not to seem above herself to the rest of the street.

The day was already hot by ten o’clock when she dismounted from the cab in Paragon Walk, thanked the cabbie and paid him, then crunched her way slowly up the gravel to Emily’s door. She was determined not to stare; someone would see her. There was always someone about, a housemaid bored with dusting, daydreaming out of a window, a footman or coachman on an errand, a gardener’s boy.

The house was large, and after her own street it seemed positively palatial. Of course, it was built for a full staff of servants as well as the master and mistress, their children and whatever relatives might care to come up for the Season.

She knocked on the door, and then suddenly felt terribly afraid that she would let Emily down, that their lives had become so separate since Cater Street that they would be strangers. Even that business at Callander Square was more than a year ago now. They had been close then, sharing danger, horror, even a sort of excitement. But that had not been in Emily’s home, among her friends.

She was wrong to have thought the gray muslin was all right; it was dull, and there was a tear near the hem that showed where she had mended it. She did not think her hands were red, but she had better keep her gloves on just in case. Emily would be bound to notice; Charlotte’s hands had always been beautiful, one of the things she had been proud of.

The maid opened the door, surprise in her face at seeing a stranger.

“Good morning, ma’am?”

“Good morning,” Charlotte stood very straight and forced herself to smile. She must speak slowly; it was idiotic to be nervous calling upon one’s own sister, and one’s younger sister at that. “Good morning,” she repeated. “Will you be good enough to inform Lady Ashworth that her sister, Mrs. Pitt, has called?”

“Oh.” The girl’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes, ma’am. If you’d like to come in, ma’am, I’m sure as her ladyship’ll be pleased to see you.”

Charlotte followed her in and waited in the morning room for only a few minutes before Emily came bursting in.

“Oh, Charlotte! How marvelous to see you!” She threw her arms around Charlotte’s neck and hugged her, then stood back. Her eyes glanced over the gray muslin, then at Charlotte’s face. “You look well. I have been meaning to come and see you, but you must know what an awful thing has happened here. Thomas will have told you all about it. Thank heaven it is nothing to do with us this time.” She shuddered and shook her head in a little gesture of denial. “Does that sound terribly callous?” She turned back to Charlotte again with a wide, slightly guilty look.

Charlotte was honest as always.

“I suppose it does, but it is the truth, if we would all but admit it. There is a sort of thrill in horror, as long as it is not too close. People will talk about how dreadful it is and how the mere mention of it distresses them beyond conceivable opportunity.”

Emily’s face relaxed in a smile.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I dare say it is quite irresponsible of me, but I shall love to hear your opinions of the Walk, although I shall never be able to view them in the same way afterward. They are all so very careful, they bore me terribly at times. I’ve an awful feeling I have forgotten how to think frankly myself!”

Charlotte linked her arm in Emily’s, and they walked through the French doors and onto the lawn at the back. The sun was hot on their faces and dazzled from a peerless sky.