drove a very fine barouche. And to be engaged secretly! So very romantic!
Dido smiled gratefully. It was refreshing to discover that Henry Lansdale had, at least, the good opinion of some of Richmond’s inhabitants. But then…
‘But Julia,’ murmured one of the young ladies in a lowered voice, ‘do you suppose… Is it possible that he did murder his aunt?’
The three heads pressed closer together. Dido listened hard. ‘Well, my dears, I hardly know. But… But you know how it is when a young man’s passions are inflamed.’ Julia cast a meaning look at the neat leather and gilt volume in her hand. ‘I do believe, you know, there is nothing a truly passionate man would not do to gain his ends.’
‘Oh!’ The girls all shivered happily in the sunshine that poured through the haberdasher’s window.
‘It is their mothers that are at fault,’ said Dido severely as she and Mrs Neville left the shop. ‘They should not allow them to read Mrs Radcliffe’s works.’
‘Oh?’ said Mrs Neville, looking a little bewildered by this outburst. ‘Do you not like Mrs Radcliffe’s books, my dear?’
‘Well,’ said Dido, fairly caught, ‘I would not say I did not enjoy them myself…but for young women…at least, for thoughtless young women…’ She gave up and turned the subject. ‘Have you had enough of shops for today, ma’am?’
‘Yes, yes I think that I have. I did not like that woman at all.’ She looked back over her shoulder at the beady-eyed haberdasher. ‘I did not like the way she watched me.’
They crossed the road and strolled over the green, Dido lost in thoughts and fears of what would happen now that the engagement was known.
And how had it got out?
However, there was one question answered by her overhearing. At least she knew now why Miss Prentice had looked so very unhappy as she left the shop.
They walked on rather briskly, for Mrs Neville seemed, all at once, anxious to be at home. As they walked, Dido worried at the old problem – should she continue to look for another explanation of Mrs Lansdale’s death? Perhaps the nephew was guilty after all. Unlike Flora, she was able to see beyond the handsome face and charming manner to the possibility of evil… But always she came back to those mysteries which his guilt left unexplained…
And there was this to consider too: murder would have been an extremely foolish act for a man in his situation. The suspicions of his neighbours could surely have been predicted. And, no matter what else he might be, Mr Lansdale was certainly no fool…
‘I beg your pardon, madam. May I speak with you a moment?’
Dido stopped. The haberdasher was hurrying across the green towards them – and her words had a particularly grating, ungracious sound. Her narrow cheeks were tinged with red; her even narrower lips were folded into a hard line.
‘If you please, madam, I would be obliged if you would both just step back into the shop with me.’
Dido looked at her in amazement. ‘Thank you, Mrs Pickthorne,’ she said, ‘but we have completed our errands for today.’
The woman’s cheeks became redder. She looked from Dido to Mrs Neville. ‘No madam,’ she said boldly. ‘I don’t think you have.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Mrs Neville said nothing, but her hold on Dido’s arm tightened. By now several passers-by had stopped to eye the three women curiously.
‘I think it would be better if you came back inside with me, madam,’ insisted Mrs Pickthorne. ‘Then we could talk things over more in private.’
‘We have nothing to talk about.’
‘But I think we have madam. There is the matter of what this lady,’ with a nod at Mrs Neville, ‘has in her bag.’
Dido opened her mouth to protest at the woman’s incivility, but Mrs Neville shook her head. ‘We had better go, my dear,’ she said in a very small voice.
So they turned back to the shop. Mrs Pickthorne took them to the dark counter at the back and asked that Mrs Neville open her reticule. ‘Or else,’ she said, her face becoming redder by the minute. ‘Or else I shall have to send for the constable.’
A memory stirred in Dido’s mind – something about Mrs Neville’s last airing – about it finishing with her talking to the constable. She looked rather fearfully at her friend who seemed all of a sudden to have become quite alarmingly small and frail. Then, turning to the shopkeeper, she demanded to know what she expected to find in the reticule.
‘Something that belongs to me, madam. Something this lady had no business taking away with her.’
Scarcely able to believe that this scene was taking place, Dido looked the shopkeeper in the eye and said – with all the dignity she could command – ‘Are you accusing us of stealing from you, Mrs Pickthorne?’
‘Not you, Madam, no,’ was the sturdy reply. ‘You weren’t by when she did it. You,’ she said, returning Dido’s level stare, ‘were at the front of the shop – listening to other folk talking.’ Dido blushed. ‘But, if the lady’d just open up the bag, you’ll see if I’m telling the truth.’
Without saying a word, Mrs Neville bent her head over her green and yellow knitted reticule and began to fumble with the bit of ribbon that held it closed. She pulled it open. And there, clear to see, even in the dark shop, was a length of the best white French lace.
‘Joseph!’ called the woman, leaning back into the darkness behind the counter. ‘Joseph, run out and fetch the constable.’
‘But,’ cried Dido in dismay. ‘I am sure it was a mistake. It must have been a mistake.’
‘Well Madam, we shall let the constable decide about that, shall we?’
Dido gripped the counter and experienced an alarming number of visions in the time that it took for Joseph to clatter down the stairs at the back of the shop. There was a vision of Flora crying, ‘A thief? You were caught in company with a thief?’ – And there was one of an assize court judge pronouncing sentence – And then one of Mrs Neville, in her crisp white cap, clutching her knitted reticule as she boarded a transport ship bound for Botany Bay…
‘Please,’ she said weakly, ‘please, there is no need to trouble the constable.’
Mrs Pickthorne made no reply. Mrs Neville only stood with her eyes upon the floor, saying nothing. And the shock seemed almost to have robbed Dido of her faculties: the only clear thought in her head being that this was an example of Mrs Neville’s ‘confusion’.
