Maisie exchanged glances with Billy.
“So she ran to her mother’s house, no doubt to complain about her terrible father. I tell you, where I come from, there’s women who’d give their eye teeth to have someone to drive them instead of walking five miles to the shops pushing a pram with a baby inside, a couple of nippers on top, and the shopping bags hanging off the handle!”
“And the second time?”
“Oh, she was engaged to be married and wanted to get out of it. The one before this last one. Just upped and moved into The Ritz, if you please. Nice home here, and she wants to live at The Ritz. I went and got her back myself.”
“I see.” Maisie imagined the embarrassment of a woman being frog-marched out of The Ritz by her angry father. “So in your opinion Charlotte has a tendency to run away when she is faced with a confrontation.”
“Aye, that’s about the measure of it,” replied Waite. “So what do you think of your little ‘further conversation’ when Charlotte returns now, eh, Miss Dobbs, considering the girl can’t even look her own father in the eye?”
Maisie was quick to respond. “My terms remain, sir. Part of my work in bringing Charlotte home will be to listen to her and to
Waite scraped back his chair, pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, and walked to the window. He looked up at the sky for just a moment and took out a pocket-watch. “I agree to your terms. Send your contract to me by nine tomorrow morning. Miss Arthur will take care of any deposit required, and will settle your account and expenses upon receipt. If you need me to answer more questions, Miss Arthur will schedule an appointment. Otherwise I expect your progress report by Friday. In person and at the same time—that is, should you fail to have found her by then. I’m a busy man, as I’ve said, Miss Dobbs.” He turned to leave.
“Mr. Waite?”
“Yes?”
“May we see Charlotte’s rooms, please?”
“Miss Arthur will call Mrs. Willis to show you the rooms. Good afternoon.”
Mrs. Willis was instructed to show Maisie and Billy to Charlotte’s suite. They were escorted up the wide staircase to the second floor, where they turned right along a spacious landing. Mrs. Willis lifted her hand to knock at the door and then, remembering that there was no need, took a bunch of keys from her pocket, selected one, and unlocked the door to reveal a large sitting room with additional doors on either side that Maisie thought would lead to a bathroom and bedroom respectively. The sash windows were open to a broad view of the perfect lawns at the front of the house, with stripes of light and dark green where gardeners had worked with mowers and rollers to give an immaculate finish.
Mrs. Willis beckoned them into the rooms, which were aired by a light breeze that seemed to dance with the cabbage-rose-printed curtains, flicking them back and forth. Though appointed with the most expensive furniture and linens, Maisie felt the rooms to be cold and spartan. There was none of the ornamentation she had expected: no photographs in frames, no mementos, no books on the bedside table, no exotic perfume bottles set on top of the dressing table. Maisie walked through into the bedroom, and back into the sitting room. Like the Queen Anne chairs beside the fireplace, the rose-printed curtains were traditional, but the dressing table and wardrobe were modern, constructed of solid dark wood with geometric lines. The dressing table mirrors were triangular, a jagged icy triptych that unsettled Maisie. Her skin prickled as if pierced by tiny needles. The design of the dressing table itself was matched by that of the wardrobe, with its center mirror set into the wood. It seemed to Maisie that no rest was to be had in this room unless one stared out of the window or at the curtains.
“It’s a lovely suite, isn’t it? We only changed the draperies last week—she has pale green velvets in winter. Lined with a special combed cotton, they are, to keep the rooms warmer. The dressing table suite was made ’specially to Mr. Waite’s specifications.”
Maisie smiled and nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Willis. We may need to ask you some more questions in a while. At the moment we just need to look around.”
Mrs. Willis pursed her lips, hesitating. “Of course. I’ll come back in about twenty minutes, but if you need me in the meantime, just press this button.” She indicated one of three brass buttons on a panel beside the door.
Sensing that Waite had given instructions that they were to be escorted at all times, Maisie smiled and nodded. She suspected that Mrs. Willis had enough on her plate to worry about in the house without chaperoning private investigators.
As the door closed, Billy turned to Maisie. “It looks as if nobody ever set foot in these rooms, dunnit?”
Maisie made no reply, but set her document case down on a chair with coverings that matched the curtains and, in the bedroom, even the counterpane on Charlotte’s bed. Maisie’s work with Maurice Blanche had taught her that a person speaks not only with the voice but with those objects she chooses to surround herself. That photographs tell a story is well accepted, but the way furniture is positioned in a room tells something about its occupant; the contents of a larder reveal desire and restraint, as most surely does the level of liquid in a decanter.
“What are we lookin’ for, Miss?”
“I don’t know, Billy, but I will when we find it.”
They worked together, carefully and systematically searching through drawers, in the wardrobe, and in every nook and cranny of the room. Maisie asked Billy to search carefully under the bed and behind furniture, to pull out cushions from the chair, and to list all items in the medicine cabinet in the white-tiled bathroom. She, in turn, would investigate the contents of the dressing table, wardrobe and writing desk.
Though she was troubled by the design of the furniture, Maisie was even more intrigued by Charlotte’s clothing. Instead of suits, dresses and gowns from the houses of Worth, Schiaparelli or Molyneux, as would befit a woman of Charlotte’s station, there were just a few plain gray and brown skirts and jackets bought from Debenham & Freebody. A long black gown protected by a sheet of fine muslin was Charlotte’s one concession to evening wear, and there was also a black afternoon dress in a style fashionable several years earlier, with a low waistband and below-the-knee hemline. Charlotte’s blouses were equally plain and it seemed as if she had bought several of similar design at the same time. Had she taken more colorful and frivolous clothing with her, leaving behind a life that lacked color in search of something more vibrant?
It was in the writing desk, to the right of the window, that Maisie found an address book. At first, she thought that she would find no other personal papers, no letters, nothing that gave away anything of Charlotte Waite’s character or hinted at the cause of her distress, but as she opened the second drawer, underneath a collection of
