Now Susannah was totally confounded. She looked at Charlotte for help.
Charlotte decided to give it, and bear the consequences.
“Do you remember Mrs. Abernathy’s daughter, Chloe?” She did not wait for a reply. “She was murdered about six weeks ago, garotted, and her clothes ripped from her, her bosom wounded.”
“Charlotte!” Caroline glared at her daughter. “We will not discuss it!”
“We have been discussing it one way or another all afternoon,” Charlotte protested. Out of the corner of her vision she saw Emily stifle a giggle. “We have merely covered it in words.”
“It is better covered.”
Mrs. Winchester shuddered again.
“I can’t bear to think of it, the very memory makes me quite ill. She was found in the street, all huddled up on the footpath like a bundle of laundry. Her face was terrible, blue as-as-I don’t know what! And her eyes staring and her tongue poking out. Been lying in the rain for hours when they found her; all night, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Don’t disturb yourself!” Grandmama said tersely, looking at Mrs. Winchester’s excited face.
Mrs. Winchester remembered quickly to be distressed.
“Oh, terrible!” she wailed, screwing up her features. “Please, my dear Mrs. Ellison, let us not speak of it again. The whole subject is quite unbearable. Poor dear Mrs. Abernathy. I just don’t know how she bears it!”
“What else can she do but bear it?” Charlotte said quietly. “It has happened. There isn’t anything anyone can do now.”
“I suppose there never was,” Susannah stared at the tea. “Some madman, a robber no one could have foreseen.” She looked up, frowning. “Surely she was not alone in the street after dark?”
“My dear Susannah,” Caroline remonstrated, “it is dark from four o’clock on in the middle of winter, most especially on a wet day. How can one guarantee to be indoors by four o’clock? That would mean one could not even visit neighbours for tea!”
“Is that where she was?”
“She was setting out to take some old clothes to the vicar, for the poor.” Caroline’s face pinched with a sudden very real sorrow. “Poor child, she was barely eighteen.”
Without warning it became real, no longer a scandal to be toyed with, a titillation, but the real death of a woman like themselves: footsteps behind, sudden agony in the throat, terror, the struggle for breath, bursting lungs, and darkness.
No one spoke.
It was Dora coming in from the hallway who broke the silence.
Charlotte was still feeling depressed when her father returned to the house a little after six. The sky had darkened outside and now it was spattering the first heavy drops of rain on the roadway as the carriage drew up. Edward Ellison worked with a merchant banking house in the city, which provided him with a very satisfactory income and a social standing of at least acceptable middle class. Charlotte had been brought up to think perhaps rather more.
Edward came in now, brushing the raindrops off his coat in the few seconds before Maddock came to relieve him of it, and put his top hat gently in its place.
“Good evening, Charlotte,” he said pleasantly.
“Good evening, Papa.”
“I trust you have had a profitable day?” he enquired, rubbing his hands together. “I fear the weather is distressingly seasonal. We may well be in for a storm. The air has that oppressive feeling.”
“Mrs. Winchester came to tea.” She answered his question about the afternoon by implication. He knew she disliked her.
“Oh dear,” he smiled faintly. There was some understanding between them, even though it did not show itself as often as she would have liked. “I thought Susannah was expected?”
“Oh, she came too, but Mrs. Winchester spent the entire time either questioning her about the Willises, or talking about Chloe Abernathy.”
Edward’s face darkened. Charlotte realized that she had inadvertently betrayed her mother. Papa would expect her to control such talk in her own drawing room. It would meet with his considerable displeasure that she had not.
At that moment Sarah came out of the sitting room into the hall, the light behind her creating a halo around her fair hair. She was a pretty woman, more like Grandmama than Caroline, with the same porcelain skin and neat mouth, the same soft chin.
“Hello, Sarah, my dear,” Edward gave her a little pat on the shoulder. “Waiting for Dominic?”
“I thought you might have been he,” Sarah answered, the faintest flicker of disappointment in her voice. “I hope he arrives before the storm. I thought I heard thunder a few minutes ago.”
She stood back and Edward went into the sitting room, crossing immediately to the fire and standing with his back to it, blocking most of its heat from everyone else. Emily was sitting at the piano, flipping pages of music over idly. He surveyed his daughters with satisfaction.
There was another low rumble of thunder and the door closed sharply. All of them turned to the sitting room door automatically. There was a shuffle outside, the sound of Maddock’s voice, and then Dominic came in.
Charlotte felt her throat tighten. Really, she ought to be over this by now; it was ridiculous! He was slim and strong, smiling a little, his dark eyes first on Edward, as manners and breeding required in the patriarchal house, and then on Sarah.
“Hope you had a pleasant day,” Edward said, still standing by the fire. “As well you made it home before the storm. I think it might become quite violent within a quarter of an hour or less. Always afraid the horses will take fright and cause an accident. Becket lost his leg that way, you know?”
The conversation washed over Charlotte’s head; it was the usual comfortable family exchange, more or less meaningless, one of the small rituals of the day that established a pattern of life. Would it always be like this? Endless days of needlework, painting, house chores and skills, teas, Papa and Dominic coming home? What did other people do? They married and raised children, ran houses. Of course the poor worked, and society went to parties, rode in the park or in coaches, and presumably had families as well?
She had never met anyone round whom she could imagine centering her life-anyone except Dominic. Perhaps she should copy Emily and cultivate a few more friends like Lucy Sandelson, or the Hayward sisters. They always seemed to be beginning or ending a romance. But they all seemed so incredibly silly! Poor Papa. It was hard for him to have had three daughters, and no son.
“. . could, couldn’t you, Charlotte?”
Dominic was looking at her, his eyebrows raised, amusement in his elegant face.
“Daydreaming,” Edward commented.
Dominic smiled broadly.
“You could take on old Mrs. Winchester at her own game, couldn’t you, Charlotte?” he repeated.
Charlotte had no idea what he was talking about. The loss must have been obvious.
“Be just as inquisitive as she is,” Dominic explained patiently. “Answer all her questions with another question. There must be something she would rather not discuss!”
Charlotte was honest, as she always was with him. Perhaps that was why he loved Sarah?
“You don’t know Mrs. Winchester,” she said straight away. “If she doesn’t want to discuss a subject she will simply ignore you. There is no reason in her mind why her reply should be related to your question. She will say whatever she is thinking of.”
“Which today was poor Susannah?”
“Not really, it was
“In April?” Dominic was incredulous. “The wretched woman would freeze, and be bored stiff.”
Edward’s face darkened. Unfortunately at that moment Caroline came in.
“Caroline,” he said stiffly. “Charlotte tells me you have been discussing Chloe Abernathy this afternoon. I thought I had made myself plain, but perhaps I did not, so I will do so now. The death of that unfortunate girl is not to be a subject for gossip and speculation in this house. If you can be of some assistance to Mrs. Abernathy in her bereavement, then by all means do so; otherwise the matter is closed. I trust there can be no misunderstanding as to my wishes in this regard now?”
