“She did!” Emily argued. “Didn’t you see Mrs. March’s face? She’s terrified I’ll mention it. It’s a disgrace to the family.”
“I’ll bet it is!” He chortled with delight. “Poor old Eustace-he’ll never recover. Does Lady Cumming-Gould know?”
“Aunt Vespasia? Oh, yes. In fact if you doubt me, ask her. She knows Thomas quite well, and what’s more, she likes him, in spite of the fact that he wears clothes that don’t fit him and perfectly dreadful mufflers of most violent and unseemly colors, and his pockets are always bulging with notes and wax and matches and bits of string and heaven knows what else. And he’s never met a decent barber in his life-”
“And you like him too,” he interrupted happily. “You like him very much.”
“Oh, yes, I do. But he’s still a policeman, and he gets involved in some very gruesome murders.” The memory of them sobered her for a moment; he saw it in her face, and immediately took her mood.
“You know about them?” Now he was truly intrigued. She had his total attention, and she found it exhilarating.
“Certainly I do! Charlotte and I are very close. I’ve even helped sometimes.”
His bright eyes clouded with skepticism.
“I have!” she protested. It was something she was obscurely proud of: it had, really, something to do with life outside the suffocation of drawing rooms. “I practically solved some of them-at least, Charlotte and I did together.”
He was not sure whether to believe her or not, but there was no criticism in his face; his wide gaze was quite genuine. Were she a few years younger she could have lost herself in that look. Even now she was going to make the best of it. She stood up with a little twitch of her skirt.
“If you don’t believe me …”
He was at her side immediately. “You? Investigating murders?” His voice was just short of incredulous, inviting her to convince him.
She accepted, walking half a step ahead of him towards the conservatory doors and the hanging vines and sweet smell of earth. Inside it was hot and motionless among the lilies, dim as a tropical night.
“We had one where the corpse turned up on the driving seat of a hansom cab,” she said deliberately. It was quite true. “After a performance of
“Now you are joking,” he protested.
“No, I’m not!” She turned her widest, most innocent look on him. “The widow identified it. It was Lord Augustus Fitzroy Hammond. He was buried in the family plot with all due ceremony.” She tried to keep her face straight and stare back into his eyes, with those incredible eyelashes. “He turned up again in the family pew in church.”
“Emily, you’re preposterous!” He was standing very close to her, and for the moment, George was not paramount in her mind. She knew she was beginning to smile, in spite of the fact that it was perfectly true. “We buried him again,” she said with a hint of a giggle. “It was all very difficult, and rather disgusting.”
“That’s absurd. I don’t believe you!”
“Oh it was-I swear! Very awkward indeed. You can’t expect Society to turn up to the same person’s funeral twice in as many weeks. It isn’t decent.”
“It isn’t true.”
“It is! I swear it! We had four corpses before we’d finished-at least I think it was four.”
“And all of Lord Augustus whatever?” He was trying to control his laughter.
“Of course not-don’t be ridiculous!” she protested. She was so close to him she could smell the warmth of his skin and the faint pungency of soap.
“Emily!” He bent and kissed her slowly, intimately, as if they had all the time in the world. Emily let herself go, stretching her arms up round his neck and answering him.
“I shouldn’t do this,” she said frankly after a few moments. But it was a factual remark, not a reproach.
“Probably not,” he agreed, touching her hair gently, then her cheek. “Tell me the truth, Emily.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Did you really find four corpses?” He kissed her again.
“Four or five,” she murmured. “And we caught the murderer as well. Ask Aunt Vespasia-if you’ve the nerve. She was there.”
“I just might.”
She disengaged herself with a shadow of reluctance-it had been nicer than it should have been-and began her way back past the flowers and the vines to the withdrawing room.
Mrs. March was holding forth on the chivalry of the pre-Raphaelite painters, their meticulousness of detail and delicacy of color, and William was listening, his face pinched and pained. It was not that he disapproved, but that she totally misunderstood what he believed to be the concept. She missed the passion and caught only the sentimentality.
Tassie and Sybilla were so positioned that they were obliged either to listen or to be openly rude, and long habit precluded the latter. Eustace, on the other hand, was master of the house and owed no such courtesy. He sat with his back to the group and discoursed upon the moral obligations of position, and George had on his face his look of polite interest which masked complete absence of attention; he was gazing towards the conservatory doors. He must have seen Emily and Jack Radley.
Emily felt a sudden, rather alarming sense of excitement; it was a crisis provoked at last!
She walked a fraction ahead of Jack but was still conscious of him close behind her, of his warmth and the gentleness of his touch. She sat down next to Great-aunt Vespasia and pretended to listen to Eustace.
The rest of the evening passed in a similar vein, and Emily hardly noticed the time until twenty-five minutes to midnight. She was returning to the withdrawing room from the bathroom upstairs, passing the morning room door, when she heard voices in soft, fierce conversation.
“… you’re a coward!” It was Sybilla, her voice husky with anger and contempt. “Don’t tell me-”
“You may believe what you like!” The answer cut her off.
Emily stopped, almost falling over as hope and fear choked each other and left her shaking. It was George, and he was furious. She knew that tone precisely; he had had the same welling up of temper when his jockey was thrashed at the race track. It had been half his own fault then, and he knew it. Now he was lashing out at Sybilla, and her voice came back thick with fury.
The door of the boudoir swung open and Eustace stood with his hand on it. Any moment he would turn and see Emily listening. She moved on swiftly, head high, straining to catch the last words from the morning room. But the voices were too strident, too clashing to distinguish the words.
“Ah, Emily.” Eustace swiveled round. “Time to retire, I think. You must be tired.” It was a statement, not a question. Eustace considered it part of his prerogative to decide when everyone wished to go to bed, as he had always done for his family when they all lived here. He had decided almost everything and believed it his privilege and his duty. Before she died, Olivia March had obeyed him sweetly-and then gone her own way with such discretion he was totally unaware of it. Many of his best ideas had been hers, but they had been given him in such a way he thought them his own, and he therefore defended them to the death and put every last one into practice.
Emily had no will to argue tonight. She returned to the withdrawing room, wished everyone good sleep, and went gratefully to her room. She had undressed, dismissing her maid with instructions for the morning, and was about to get into bed when there was a knock on the dressing-room door.
She froze. It could only be George. Half of her was terrified and wanted to keep silent, pretend she was already asleep. She stared at the knob as if it would turn on its own and let him in.
The knock came again, harder. It might be her only opportunity, and if she turned him away she would lose it forever.
“Come in.”
Slowly, the door opened. George stood in the archway, looking tired and uncomfortable. His face was flushed-Emily knew why immediately. Sybilla had made a scene, and George hated scenes. Without thinking, she knew what to do. Above all, it would be disastrous to confront him. The last thing he wanted now was another emotional woman.
“Hello,” she said with a very small smile, pretending this was not an important occasion, a meeting that
