forwarded?”
Tellman bit his lip. “I couldn’t be that direct, but I asked around about Mr. Garrick, and it seems he doesn’t have that many friends. He’s not good company. At least that’s what I understood.”
Gracie sniffed and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, then slid the chopped onions into the hot fat, and the sizzle blocked out her next words. “ ’E’s gotta ’ave somebody!” she repeated. “ ’E don’t work an’ ’e don’t stay ’ome, so where’d ’e go? Don’t nob’dy miss ’im?”
“Well, as far as I can make out, nobody sees him often enough to wonder where he’s gone,” Tellman replied, looking at Gracie, then turning in his chair to Charlotte. “He doesn’t seem to have the same sort of life as most young men his age from a family like that. He doesn’t go to a regular club, so nobody thought it odd not to see him. There’s nowhere he’s known, nobody he talks to, or plays any sport with, wagers with… nothing to make a… a life!” He cleared his throat. “I see the same people just about every day. If I wasn’t there they’d soon miss me, an’ there’d be questions asked.”
Charlotte frowned. It was worrying, but there was nothing specific yet to grasp. The subject that rose to her mind was indelicate, but the matter was too serious to pay deference to such things. However, she was aware of Tellman’s sensibilities, particularly in front of Gracie. “He is not married,” she said, feeling her way. “And apparently not courting anyone, so far as we know. Does he have…” Now she was not sure what to say.
“Couldn’t find anything,” Tellman said hastily, cutting her off. “As far as I could learn, he was an unhappy man.” He glanced at Gracie. “Much as you said. Drinks a lot and gets difficult. Lost most of his friends lately. They don’t seem to see him anymore. Not that I’ve had time to look very deep. But nobody’s seen him, and he doesn’t seem to have been planning to go anywhere, so wherever it is, he went in a hurry.”
“And took Martin Garvie with ’im?” Gracie said, stirring the onions without looking at them. “Then why didn’t the cook know? An’ Bella? Surely they’d ’ave ’eard? ’E didn’t go without cases an’ things. Gentlemen don’t.”
“No, they don’t,” Charlotte agreed. “And you didn’t answer about his letters. Are they forwarded to him, wherever he is? Someone would decline invitations, but surely he would want his letters?”
“His father?” Tellman suggested.
“Probably,” Charlotte agreed. “But does he take them to the postbox himself? Why? Most people like him have a footman to do that. Has Stephen gone somewhere so secret the household staff are not allowed to know? And why did Martin leave no message for Tilda?”
“Wasn’t time,” Tellman answered. “It was a sudden invitation… or at least a sudden decision on his part.”
“To somewhere from which Martin could not send a letter, if not to Tilda, then at least to someone who could let her know?” Charlotte said dubiously.
Gracie tipped the potatoes and cabbage into the pan to let them heat through, to mix with the onions and brown nicely. “It don’t sound right ter me,” she said quietly. “It in’t natural. I think as there’s summink wrong.”
“So do I.” Charlotte looked unblinkingly at Tellman.
Tellman gazed back at her without shifting his eyes even momentarily. “I don’t know how to take it any further, Mrs. Pitt. The police have got no reason to ask anyone. I got shown out pretty sharply more than once, as it was, and told to attend to my own affairs. I had to pretend it was to do with a robbery. Said that Mr. Garrick could have been a witness.” His face pinched up, showing his loathing for having allowed himself into the position of needing to lie. Charlotte wondered if Gracie knew just what cost he had paid to please her. She looked across at Gracie’s back, stiff and straight as she paid attention to the hot bubble and squeak in the frying pan, and very carefully lifted it on the slice to avoid breaking the crisp surface as she set it on the plate beside the cold mutton. Perhaps she did.
Tellman took the plate from her appreciatively. “Thank you.” He began to eat after only the slightest hesitation when Charlotte nodded to indicate he was welcome to begin.
“So wot are we gonna do, then?” Gracie asked, damping the fire down and filling the teapot. “We can’t jus’ leave it. ’E in’t gone inter thin air. If summink’s ’appened ter ’im it’s murder, whether it’s both of ’em or just Martin.” She turned to Charlotte. “D’yer reckon as Mr. Garrick ’ad one of ’is rages an’ ’it Martin, mebbe real ’ard, an’ ’e died? An’ they’re coverin’ it up ter save ’im? Send ’im orff inter the country, or summink?”
Charlotte was about to say “Of course not” when she realized that she was actually considering the possibility.
Tellman drew in his breath, but his mouth was full.
“I think we need to know a great deal more about the Garrick family,” Charlotte said, choosing her words carefully.
Gracie’s face tightened. “Yer gonna ask Lady Vespasia?” she said hopefully. She had not only heard of Vespasia’s help in other cases, she had actually met her and been spoken to on more than one occasion. Vespasia had visited Keppel Street. Gracie could not have been more impressed had it been the Queen herself. After all, the Queen was short and more than a little plump, whereas Vespasia was as regal and as beautiful as a queen should be. And more important than that, she was willing to help wholeheartedly in the solving of crimes. She might be a real lady, with all the unimaginable glamour that went with that, but she helped them detect, and that was the ultimate belonging. “She’d know,” Gracie added encouragingly.
Charlotte looked at Gracie’s eager face and then at Tellman, who hated aristocrats, and amateurs interfering with police business, especially women, and saw his eyes flicker, a shadow of self-mockery with the denial. She hesitated as if deferring to his opinion, then when he said nothing, she nodded.
“I can’t think of anything better. As we have already acknowledged, there is no police case to pursue, but there is almost certainly something wrong,” he conceded. “There’s no help for it.”
IT WAS FAR TOO LATE that evening to contact Aunt Vespasia, but in the morning Charlotte dressed in her best calling gown, albeit very definitely last year’s cut, which she had had no reason or incentive to alter yet. Since Pitt’s demotion from head of Bow Street into Special Branch, she had had absolutely no excuse, or opportunity, to attend social engagements of any importance. It was only now, looking at her overfamiliar wardrobe, that she realized it quite so forcefully.
However, there was no money to spare for unnecessary indulgences such as a fashionable gown when what she had was warm, becoming and perfectly adequate. It was not so very long ago that they had both worried as to whether there would be food and coal.
The thing that stung was that she had not had the opportunity to help Thomas, which would have been an important thing in itself, and as an added benefit would have given her the chance and the excuse to borrow something glamorous from Emily, or even from Aunt Vespasia herself, who, although two generations older, was of a more similar height.
Now she pulled out her plum-colored morning dress and changed into it, pleased that at least it still fit her very nicely. Finding the right hat was less easy, and she settled for black with a touch of soft reddish pink. She did not really like it, but she owned nothing better, and one could not call without wearing a hat of some sort. More important than her own feelings, if anyone else were calling upon Vespasia, she would not like to embarrass her. No one wishes for impecunious relatives, however distant, still less for ones with distressing taste in clothes.
Gracie saw her off with enthusiasm and last-minute advice and instruction. She would not have been so impertinent as to offer it had she thought first, but her eagerness overcame propriety.
“We gotta know wot that ’ouse’old is like,” she said with a frown. “They done summink to ’im. We gotta find out wot, an’ why.”
“I shall tell Aunt Vespasia the truth,” Charlotte answered her, standing on the front step and looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful day, bright but decidedly crisp.
“It in’t gonna rain,” Gracie said decisively.
“No, I can see that. I was just thinking it is the sort of day when everyone and their mothers will think to go out calling. I may be fortunate to find her alone, and it is really not the sort of conversation where I would care to be interrupted.”
“Well, we gotta try,” Gracie urged. “An’ I can’t think o’ no one better than Lady Vespasia. We don’t know nob’dy else, unless Mrs. Radley knows ’em?”
“Emily isn’t of much help,” Charlotte replied, stepping off onto the pavement. “She has not really been around long enough. I will be back when I can do no more. Good-bye.” And she set off with determination, now intent upon getting a hansom rather than saving money and losing time by taking a series of omnibuses. If she did the latter she would have to get off some considerable distance from Vespasia’s house. One could hardly arrive to call on Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould having alighted from a public omnibus.
