expected her to look different in the harsher light of morning, and with no performance in the immediate future. But on the contrary she looked startlingly the same. Her hair was dead black, without the usual touches and lights of brown that even the darkest English hair so often possesses, and her eyes were deep and vivid with a flash of amusement in spite of the tension and the awareness of pain. She was dressed very plainly, but instead of being dull it merely emphasized the drama of her face.
“Good morning, Mrs. Ellison, Mrs. Pitt. How pleasant to see you.”
“Good morning, Miss Macaulay,” Caroline replied. “Forgive my coming without warning, and bringing my daughter with me, but I feel the matter is important, or may be, and there is little time to fritter away.”
“Then you had better come in.” Tamar stepped back to allow them to pass her and go into the large, open room. It was furnished as a sitting room, although perhaps it had originally been a bedroom when the house was occupied by a single family. There was an interesting mixture of styles. On one side stood an old Chinese silk screen which had once been of great beauty, now faded, its wooden frame scratched in places, but it still held an elegance that gave it charm and a comfortable grace. There was a Russian samovar on a side table, Venetian glass in the cabinet, a French ormolu clock on the mantel shelf above the fireplace, and a late Georgian mahogany table of total simplicity and cleanness of line which to Charlotte was the loveliest thing in the room. The colors were pale, creams and greens, and full of light.
Caroline was endeavoring to explain their errand.
Charlotte’s eyes continued to wander around, looking for evidence of the child Caroline had mentioned. There was a casual untidiness, as of a place which is the center of the life in a house, a shawl laid down, an open book, a pile of playbills and a script on a side table, cushions in a heap, disordered. Then she saw the doll, fallen off the sofa and half hidden by the flowered frill. She felt a sudden and unreasonable sense of sadness, so sharp it caught her breath and her throat ached. A child without a father, a woman alone. Was it conceivable Tamar Macaulay had truly loved Kingsley Blaine? Or was that just a fancy, leaping ahead of fact? She had no reason to suppose he was the father. It could be anyone—even Joshua Fielding. Please heaven, not him. Caroline would find it intolerable.
“Of course,” Tamar was saying. “Please sit down, Mrs. Pitt. Thank you for concerning yourself in the matter. We have struggled long enough with it alone, and now it looks as if it has become more dangerous, we may badly need help. It appears someone has been frightened, and reacted with violence—again.” Her face was bleak.
Charlotte had not heard the conversation, but she guessed at its meaning. She accepted the invitation to sit.
“We were there when Judge Stafford died,” she said with the shadow of a smile. “It is natural we should feel an involvement in finding the person who killed him, and being absolutely sure it is the right person, and not a miscarriage of justice.”
The expression in Tamar’s face was a mixture of irony, anger and pain, and a bitter humor. If there was still hope in it, it was beyond Charlotte’s vision to see it. How had this woman kept courage all these years, after such a fearful bereavement? The death of someone you know is always hard, but public disgrace, the hatred, the slow torture of the person by the law is immeasurably worse. And then there was the knowledge that at a certain hour of a set day, they would come to take that person, still young, still in health, and break his neck on the end of a rope, deliberately, to satisfy a cheering crowd! How must he feel the night before? Does the darkness seem endless—or only too short? Could one dread daylight more?
Tamar was staring at her.
“Are you thinking of Aaron?” she said with total bluntness.
Charlotte was taken aback for a moment, then she realized how much easier it would be to speak frankly rather than skirt around such an agonizing subject, seeking a way to convey the meaning without actually using the words, and understand what someone meant beneath the layers of euphemisms.
“Yes.” She allowed the shadow of a smile across her face.
“You allow the possibility there was an injustice?” Tamar asked.
“Of course,” Charlotte agreed warmly. “I have known for a certainty of innocent men who would have been hanged but for chance. It could easily happen, and I am sure it has at times. I wish it were impossible, but it is not.”
“That is a dangerous thought,” Tamar said wryly. “People do not like it. They cannot live with the idea that we may be guilty of such a mistake. It is much better to convince yourself he was guilty and go to sleep.”
“I did not have any part in it, Miss Macaulay,” Charlotte pointed out. “I have no guilt in thinking he may have been innocent, only grief. The guilt will come if I do not do what I can now to find out the truth, both of the death of Kingsley Blaine and the death of Judge Stafford.”
Tamar smiled openly for the first time. It was a gesture full of charm, lighting her face and changing its whole aspect.
“What an extraordinary creature you are. But then I suppose you would have to be, to have married a policeman.”
Charlotte was surprised. She had not realized Tamar would have any appreciation of her affairs, or what they involved.
“Oh—Joshua told me,” Tamar explained with amusement. “I gather your mother told him.” She glanced around and saw that Caroline had left them. “I imagine that is where she has gone now. Possibly tact—or …” She lifted her slight shoulders expressively, but said nothing more.
Charlotte had a moment of discomfort, wondering if Caroline were making a fool of herself, being too bold, but there was no way in which she could retrieve it now without making her situation even worse. There was nothing she could profitably do but pursue the case.
“Do you know anything about the death of Kingsley Blaine that did not come out in court?” she asked bluntly. “Anything you told Judge Stafford which could have caused him to reopen the matter?”
Tamar shook her head. “Nothing that wasn’t in the appeal. The medical evidence was shaky. Humbert Yardley, the examiner, began by saying that the wound which killed Kingsley …” Her face tightened, the soft skin around her mouth almost white. She kept her voice level with an effort. “… Was caused by something longer than a farrier’s nail. Then later he said it could have been an unusual nail.”
“Was such a nail found?”
