“No, not at all,” Charlotte replied thoughtfully. “In fact she was about the darkest woman I have ever seen who was still English. But she could make you feel she was the most beautiful woman in the world when she wanted to. She really had a presence. Everyone else looked pallid and washed out beside her. She seemed to burn inside, as if other people were half alive—but not ostentatious, if you know what I mean?”
“No, ma’am,” Gracie admitted. “Oss what?”
“Oh—outwardly showy.”
“Oh.” Gracie climbed down, her skirts and apron in a bunch, and went to the tap to wash her cloth. “I can’t imagine a woman like that—but I’d like to. She sounds real exciting.” She wrung out the cloth with small, thin, very strong hands, and clambered back up onto the dresser. “Why was it you didn’t enjoy the drama, then, ma’am?”
“Because there was a murder in the next box,” Charlotte replied, tipping out more flour onto the sultanas.
Gracie stopped in midair, one hand on the top shelf, the other brandishing a sauceboat. She turned very slowly, her sharp little face alight with excitement.
“A murder? Really? Are you joshing me, ma’am?”
“Oh no,” Charlotte said seriously. “Not at all. A very eminent judge was killed. Actually I exaggerated a little; it wasn’t the next box, it was about four boxes away. He was poisoned.”
Gracie screwed up her face, ever practical of mind. “How can you poison anyone in a theater? I mean on purpose—I ate some eels once wot made me sick—but nobody did it intentional, like.”
“In his whiskey flask,” Charlotte explained, kneading out the last lump from the sultanas and putting them all into the colander ready to wash them under the tap in order to remove the grit before she searched them for odd stalks.
“Oh dear—poor gentleman.” Gracie resumed wiping the shelves. “Was it ’orrible?”
Charlotte took the colander to the sink.
“No, not really. He just sort of sank into a coma.” Charlotte turned on the tap and flushed the water through the fruit. “I was sorrier for his wife, poor soul.”
“She weren’t the one wot done it?” Gracie asked dubiously.
“I don’t know. He was a judge of the appeal court, and he had started to look into a case he dealt with several years ago—a very dreadful murder. The man who was hanged for it was the brother of the actress I told you about.”
“Cor!” Gracie was now totally absorbed. She put the sauceboat back on the wrong shelf, without its dish. “Cor!” she said again, pushing her cloth into her apron pocket and standing quite still on the dresser, her head almost to the airing rail just below the ceiling. “Was it a case the master was on?”
“No—not then.” Charlotte turned the tap off and took the fruit back to the kitchen table, tipped it out onto a soft cloth and patted it dry, then began to look for stalks. “But he will go into it all now, I expect.”
“Why’d they kill the judge, then?” Gracie was suddenly puzzled. “If ’e were goin’ ter look inter the case again, in’t that what she’d want? Oh! O’ course! You mean whoever really did the murder was scared as ’e’d find out it were them. Cor—it could be anybody, couldn’t it? Were it very ’orrible?”
“Yes, very. Much too horrible to tell you about. You’ll have bad dreams.”
“Garn,” Gracie said cheerfully. “Won’t be worse ’n I already ’eard!”
“Possibly not,” Charlotte agreed ruefully. “It was the Farriers’ Lane murder.”
“I never ’eard o’ that.” Gracie looked disappointed.
“You wouldn’t,” Charlotte agreed. “It was five years ago. You were only twelve then.”
“That were before I could read,” Gracie agreed with considerable pride. Reading was a real accomplishment, and placed her considerably above her contemporaries and previous social equals. Charlotte had taken time in which they should both have been employed in domestic chores in order to teach her, but the reward had been enormous, even if she was quite sure Gracie spent much of her reading time with penny dreadfuls.
“The master’s goin’ ter investigate it?” Gracie interrupted her thoughts. “Actresses and judges. ’e’s gettin’ ever so important, in’t ’e?”
“Yes,” Charlotte agreed with a smile. Gracie was so proud of Pitt her face shone when she mentioned his name. Charlotte had more than once overheard her speaking to tradesmen, telling them precisely who she worked for, whose house this was, and that they had better mind their p’s and q’s and provide only the very best!
Gracie began wiping the lower shelves of the dresser and replacing the dishes and pans. Twice she stopped to hitch up her skirt. She was so small that skirts were always a bit too long for her, and she had not taken this one up sufficiently. Charlotte spread out the fruit on a baking tray and put it into the warm oven, which was well damped down to keep it from getting any hotter for the time being.
“Of course it may have been his wife,” Charlotte said, referring back to the murder of Stafford. “Or her lover.” She went to the pantry and took out the butter to wash away the salt, then wrap it in muslin and squeeze out any water or buttermilk.
Gracie hesitated for a moment, working out whether Charlotte meant the original murder in Farriers’ Lane or the death two nights ago in the theater. She made the right choice.
“Oh.” She was disappointed. It seemed too simple, not adequate to test Pitt’s skills. It offered no adventure, and certainly nothing in which she herself could help. She swallowed. “I thought as you was a little worried, ma’am. I s’pose I got it wrong.”
Charlotte felt a pang of guilt. She was touched by a considerable anxiety, just in case it had been something to do with Joshua Fielding. If it were the Blaine/Godman case, then he was implicated, and that would distress Caroline, the more so since she had actually met him.
“I shouldn’t like it to be the actor,” she explained. “My mother found him most pleasing, and when she met him …” She tailed off. How would she explain to the maid that her mother was enamored of a stage actor at least
