“Indeed.” His voice was very quiet. “I respect your purpose, Mrs. Pitt. I shall consider it gravely.”
She tried to smile, and failed. “Thank you.”
They said their formal farewells and walked to the entrance where the parlormaid was waiting, Alston having rung for her. Both doors were opened so that they might pass through without being forced into single file. Charlotte turned as they stepped into the hall and found to her considerable embarrassment that Paul Alaric was still facing them, and his eyes, wide and black, were not on Caroline, or Emily, who had also looked back, but upon herself.
The last thing she wanted was to look at Caroline, yet she found herself doing precisely that. The gaze that met hers was of one woman to another, no more; they might never have met before. The only element there was the sudden and complete knowledge of rivalry.
Chapter Seven
CHARLOTTE COULD HARDLY wait until Pitt returned. She made the easiest of meals, placed it in the oven to cook itself, and then flitted from one job to another, accomplishing nothing. It was quarter past six when at last she heard the front door open, and she instantly dropped the linen cloth in her hand and ran from the kitchen to meet him. Usually she forced herself to let him come to the warmth of the big cooking range, take off his coat, and sit down before speaking to him of the day, but this time she shouted as soon as his foot was in the passage.
“Thomas! Thomas, I saw Alston Spencer-Brown today, and I discovered something!” She ran down the corridor and grasped at both his hands. “I think I know something about Mina—perhaps why she was killed!”
He was wet and tired, and not in the best of moods. His superiors were still clinging to the belief that it must have been suicide while the balance of her mind was upset by some private distress. It could all be so much more decently disposed of, and without turning over a lot of people’s lives to investigate affairs that were far preferably left alone. Uncovering causes for enmity was always an ugly and unpopular occupation, and seldom profited the career of whoever undertook it—at least not if he was of a rank sufficiently advanced that there was no validity in the shield that he was merely following orders.
Pitt’s superior, Dudley Athelstan, was a younger son who had married well and had an ambition that fed on its own success. He had spent the latter part of the day trying to persuade Pitt that there was no case to investigate. There were any number of ways an unbalanced woman might come by sufficient poison to take her own life if that was what she had determined to do. When Pitt had left him, Athelstan had been in growing ill-humor because he could not convince even himself, let alone Pitt and Sergeant Harris, that the matter had been answered beyond reasonable doubt, for no chemist or apothecary could be found who had sold such a substance, and certainly no doctor had prescribed it, no matter how diligently they had searched.
Now Pitt started to undo his coat. It was dripping in the hallway, and the day before he had received a very wounded and sober criticism from Gracie about the amount of labor it took to get the floor to its degree of polish, without inconsiderate people spilling water all over it.
“Why did you go and see Alston Spencer-Brown?” he inquired a little sourly. “He’s surely nothing to do with you, or your mother?”
Charlotte could feel the irritation in him as if he had brought the cold in from the street, but she was too excited to take heed.
“The murder is to do with Mama,” she said briskly, taking the coat and putting it on a hook to drip further, instead of carrying it through to the kitchen to dry. “We have to get the locket back. Anyway, Emily wanted to visit Mama, and I went with her!” If the flame of the gas lamp in the hallway had been brighter, he might have seen her blush at the half-truth. She turned and walked smartly back to the kitchen and the fire. “Mama went to call upon him to express her sympathy,” she explained. “Anyway, that’s not important!” She swung around and faced him. “I know at least one good reason why Mina Spencer-Brown might have been killed—maybe two!” She waited, glowing with excitement.
“I can think of a dozen,” he said soberly. “But no proof for any of them. It never lacked possibilities, but they are not enough. Superintendent Athelstan wants the case closed. Suicide leaves them decently alone with their grief.”
“Not possibilities,” she burst out with impatience. “I mean real reasons! Do you remember I told you Mama said she felt as if she were being followed, watched all the time?”
“No,” he said honestly.
“I told you! Mama was aware of someone—most of the time! And Ambrosine Charrington said the same thing. Well, I believe it was Mina! She spied on people—she was what is called a Peeping Tom. Alston said so, in a roundabout sort of way— although of course he didn’t realize what he was meaning. Don’t you see, Thomas? If she followed someone with a secret, a real secret, she may have learned something that was worth killing over. And I know from Alston of at least two possibilities!”
He sat down and took off his wet boots. “What?”
“Don’t you believe me?” She had expected him to receive the news eagerly, and now he looked as if he were listening only to humor her.
He was too tired to be polite.
“I think your mother’s affaire is probably not as serious as you imagine. Plenty of people have a little flirtation, especially Society women who have little else to do. You should know that by now. I expect it’s all dropped handkerchiefs and bunches of flowers—about as real as a piece of embroidery. And I daresay if anyone was watching her, it was only out of boredom. You are making too much of it, Charlotte. If she were not your mother, you would take no notice.”
She restrained herself with great difficulty. For a moment she considered losing her temper, telling him that the outward show might be trivial but the feeling underneath was as real and as potentially violent as anything conducted in the back streets, or in less naturally restricted levels of Society. Then she realized how tired he was, how discouraged by Athelstan’s desire to hide or ignore what did not suit his ambition. Anger would communicate nothing.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said instead, looking at his wet feet and the white skin of his hands where the cold had numbed the circulation. Without waiting for an answer, she topped up the kettle and moved it from the back of the stove onto the front.
After a few moments’ silence while he put on dry socks, he looked up.
“What are these two possibilities?”
