“Oh quite,” Freddie agreed. “Can’t expect chaps like that to understand.”
“Wouldn’t do any of us any good,” Reggie went on. “Scandal, and so on. Give the square a bad name: we’d all suffer. Rubs off. Mud sticks, you know?”
“Oh quite,” Freddie’s face clouded as he realized precisely what Reggie meant, and the disadvantages to all of them. “Yes.”
Reggie wondered whether Freddie had thought of the harm to his burgeoning professional career, which depended so much on a reputation for uprightness and discretion. Would it be necessary to put it in words for him? He prodded delicately.
“Trouble is, everybody that matters knows everybody else. Damn women, spend all afternoon talking-”
“Yes,” Freddie’s pleasant face screwed up. “Yes. Better to prevent it happening in the first place. Little care, save a lot of talk and they’ll be without a position. Perhaps it would be a good idea to prime the butler, and see that he is with any female servant questioned by this Pitt fellow in the future.”
Relief flooded through Reggie.
“What a damned good idea, Freddie old chap. That’s the answer. I’ll have a word with Dobson, see that none of the women is-” he smiled a little, “harassed, what? Thanks Freddie, you’re a decent fellow.”
“Not at all,” Freddie smiled up at him from the back of his chair. “Have some more port?”
Reggie settled down and filled his glass.
The following evening he thought it would be a good idea to further consolidate the position by having a discreet word with Garson Campbell as well. After all, Campbell was a man of the world, man of affairs, knew how to conduct things. It was a bitter night, sleeting hard, and several times he looked out of the window at the turbulent darkness, the wet, thrashing leaves, and pavement glistening in the gaslight, then back at the fire and thought that tomorrow would do well enough. Then he remembered that tomorrow that wretched policeman might come sneaking round the servants’ halls again, and goodness knows what could be said, and too late to do anything about it by then.
With a last reluctant look at the comfort of his chair, he drank two fingers of brandy, collected his coat from the footman, and set out. It was less than two hundred yards, but by the time he reached the shelter of Campbell’s doorway he was already shivering, perhaps more from the expectation in his mind of cold than from the actuality.
The Campbells’ footman opened the door and Reggie stepped in smartly, easing his coat off his shoulders almost before the man could get to it to take it from him.
“Mr. Campbell in?” Reggie asked.
“I’ll inquire, sir.” It was a stock answer. Of course the man would know whether Campbell was in or out, it was whether he wished to see Reggie that he had to discover. He was shown into the morning room where there were still the embers of a fire, and he stood with his back to it, warming his legs, until the footman returned and told him Campbell would see him.
He was received in the main withdrawing room. Campbell was standing by a blaze that burned halfway up the chimney; he was a heavy-chested man with rather a long nose, not ill-looking, but yet certainly not handsome. Such charm as he had lay in a dignity of bearing and a fastidiousness both of manner and of person.
“Evening, Reggie,” he said cordially. “Must be urgent to get you away from your fireside on a night like this. What is it, run out of port?”
“Sack a butler who’d let me do that,” Reggie replied, joining him over by the fire. “Filthy night. Hate winter in London, ’cept it’s a damn sight worse in the country. Civilized men should go to France, or somewhere. ’Cept the French are a lot of barbarians, what? Don’t know how to behave. Paris the weather’s as bad as here, and the south there’s nothing to do!”
“Ever thought of hibernating?” Campbell raised his eyebrows sardonically.
Reggie wondered vaguely if he were being laughed at; but it did not worry him. Campbell had a habit of jeering slightly at most things. It was part of his manner. Who knew why? People cultivated manners for a variety of reasons, and Reggie was hard to offend.
“Frequently,” he said with a smile. “Unfortunately things tend to need prodding and probing every so often, y’know. Like this wretched business of the bodies in the square; filthy mess.”
“Quite,” Campbell agreed. “But hardly our concern. Nothing we can do about it, except be more careful about servants in the future. Always give the girl some sort of help, I suppose, if it turns out the child was born dead. Find her a place in the country, where no one would know about it. That what you want? I’ve loads of relatives who could be prevailed upon.”
“Not quite,” Reggie sidled closer to the fire. Why on earth couldn’t the miserable fellow offer him a drink? He glanced at Campbell’s wry face, and found the blue eyes on him. Damn fellow knew he wanted a drink, and was deliberately not offering one. Nasty sense of humor, the honorable Garson Campbell.
“Oh?” Campbell was waiting.
“Bit anxious about the police,” Reggie avoided his stare and assumed an attitude of concentration, as if he knew something Campbell did not. “Nosing around the servants’ halls, you know. Don’t know quite how responsible these police are. Ordinary sort of chap, working class, naturally. Could start a lot of silly gossip, without realizing the harm it could do. Freddie agrees with me.”
Campbell turned his head to look at him more closely.
“Freddie?”
“Saw him yesterday,” Reggie said casually. “Pointed out what a nuisance it could be, for all of us, if the square got the reputation for loose behavior, immoral servants, general bad taste, and so on. Not good, you know. Don’t want to be the butt of a lot of gossip, even if it’s all supposition.”
Campbell’s mouth turned down at the corners.
“Take your point,” he said with a slight rasp. “Could be difficult. Even if people don’t believe it, they’ll pass it on. Find ourselves snubbed in clubs, laughed at.” His face darkened fiercely. “Bloody damned nuisance! Some idiotic girl who-” his anger died out as suddenly. “Way of the world. Poor little bitch. Still, what did you come to me about, except to commiserate?”
Reggie drew a deep breath.
“Commiseration’s not much use-”
“None at all,” Campbell agreed.
“Better to prevent it before it happens.”
Campbell’s face betrayed interest for the first time.
“What are you suggesting, Reggie?”
“A discreet word, with the butler or housekeeper, to speak to the rest of the servants. See that one or the other of them is present every time this police fellow interviews any of them. Get them to make sure nothing- foolish-is said. Natural enough, what? Not to let a young servant be bullied. Got to protect them, eh?”
Campbell smiled with harsh amusement.
“Why, Reggie, I never suspected you of such subtlety-or such common sense.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“My dear idiot, my household is already aware that loose talk would cost them their livelihoods: but I admit it would be an added protection to make sure a butler or housekeeper is present if this, what’s-his-name-Pitt-comes back again. Personally I think they’ll probably drop it after a reasonable show of trying. After all, to whom does it really matter if some servant girl has two children stillborn? It’s hardly worth raising hell in an area like this. He’ll know that he’ll find out nothing that matters, and offend a lot of people who could make life damned difficult for him, if he gives them cause. Don’t get yourself upset, Reggie. They’ll run around to give the impression of intent, then quietly let it die. Do you want a glass of port?”
Reggie took a moment for the idea to seep through him with its relief: then he realized Campbell had offered him the port at last.
“Yes,” he accepted graciously. “Thank you, very civil of you.”
“Not at all,” Campbell smiled to himself and walked away to the side table to fetch the decanter.
Augusta had noticed Christina’s indisposition; and at first she had thought nothing of it, beyond a natural sympathy. It was easy enough to eat or drink something which did not agree with one. Then on the appalling discovery of Christina in the arms of the wretched footman, Max, the incident came back to her mind with rather more anxiety. When the indisposition occurred again a week later, and she heard from the lady’s maid that Christina
