Farriers' Lane

“The relationship between Mama and Joshua Fielding.”

“Is she going to be very upset if he is implicated in the Farriers” Lane murder?” he asked. He liked his mother- in-law, although he was more than a little in awe of her, and he certainly would not wish her to be hurt. However, being disappointed now and then was part of caring, and the only way to avoid it was to care about no one, which was a kind of death. “I don’t see why he should be,” he went on. “Everything I have found out indicates it was Aaron Godman, just as the original trial decided.”

She pulled a face. “I almost wish he were involved.”

“You aren’t making sense.” He was confused.

Her face screwed up even farther, and she closed her eyes. “Thomas, I think she is really in love with him. I know that’s absurd—but—but I think it’s true.”

“It is absurd,” he said, eager to dismiss it. He slid lower in the chair till his ankles were on the fender and his feet so close to the fire the soles of his slippers were hot. “She is a very respectable society widow, Charlotte. He is an actor, a Jew, and twenty years younger than she. You are exaggerating out of all proportion. She is probably bored, as Emily is half the time, and looking for something to become involved in. This is more colorful, and more dramatic, than tea parties and fashion. She will forget it once she has seen him cleared.”

“Do you think so?” Charlotte looked hopeful, her eyes wide and very dark.

Her expression, far from cheering him, suddenly made him consider the matter properly. He recalled Caroline’s face as she had looked at Joshua Fielding, the heightened color, the altered tone in her voice, the frequency with which she mentioned his name. And Charlotte was much more sensitive to such delicate changes than he was. Women understood other women in a way a man never could.

“You don’t, do you?” Charlotte challenged, almost as if she read his thoughts.

He hesitated, on the edge of denying it, then the honesty between them won.

“I don’t know—perhaps not. It seems absurd, but then I suppose love very often is. I thought I was absurd falling in love with you.”

Suddenly her face was radiant, as if the sun had illuminated it.

“Oh, you were,” she said happily. “Quite ridiculous. So was I.”

And for a while Caroline was forgotten, and her pain or her foolishness put aside.

    However, to Mrs. Ellison senior, it was the most urgent matter in the world, and excluded everything else: the weekly edition of the London Illustrated News, the latest escapades of the Prince of Wales and his various lady friends, the opinions of the Queen, such as were known or guessed, the sins of the government, the vagaries of the weather, the general inadequacies of the domestic servants, the decline of good manners and morals, even her own various illnesses and their symptoms. Nothing was as important, or as potentially disastrous, as Caroline’s infatuation with this wretched actor person. An actor. Of all the absurdities. How grossly unsuitable. In fact unsuitable was far too mild a word for it—it was unacceptable—that is what it was. And as for his age … He was twenty years her junior—or fifteen at least, in a good light. And that was more than bad taste: it was disgusting.

She must tell her so. It was her duty as her erstwhile mother-in-law.

“Thank heaven poor Edward is dead and in his grave,” she said purposefully, as soon as Caroline arrived at the dinner table. The dining room table once had Caroline, Edward, their three daughters and their son-in-law, Dominic Corde, around it, as well as Grandmama. It was now set merely for the two of them, and they were marooned at either end of it, staring down the long oaken expanse at one another. They each required a cruets set; it was too far to pass them.

“I beg your pardon?” Caroline forced her attention to this extraordinary remark.

“I said, thank heaven Edward is dead and in his grave,” the old lady repeated loudly. “Are you losing your hearing, Caroline? It can happen as one gets older, you know. I have noticed your sight is not as good as it used to be. You squint at things nowadays. It is unbecoming. It causes wrinkles where one does not wish them. Not, I suppose, that there is anywhere one does. But it cannot be helped at our age.”

“I am not your age,” Caroline said tartly. “I am nowhere near it.”

“Rudeness will not help,” Grandmama said with a sickly smile. The conversation was well in her command. “You are moving towards it. Nothing stays the hand of time, my dear. The young often imagine it will somehow be different for them, but it never is, believe me.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Caroline said tersely, putting salt into her soup, and discovering it did not require it. “I am not young, nor am I your age. You are my mother-in-law, and Edward was several years older than I.”

“An excellent arrangement,” Grandmama said, nodding her head. “A man should be a little older than his wife. It makes for responsibility and domestic accord.”

“What absolute balderdash.” Caroline peppered the soup and found it did not need that either. “If a man is irresponsible, marrying a younger woman will do nothing to cure him. In fact more probably the opposite. If she has no sense either, then they will both be in debt.”

Grandmama disregarded that. “If a man is a little older than his wife,” she said, sipping her soup noisily, “then she will obey him the more easily, and there will be peace and happiness in the home. An older wife may be headstrong.” She sipped her soup again. “And on the other hand, she may be so foolish as to allow him to lead, when he has no maturity and no judgment—and certainly no authority. Altogether it will be a disaster, and end in ruin.”

“What complete tarradiddle.” Caroline pushed her soup away and rang the bell for the butler to remove it. “A woman with any sense at all will go entirely her own way, and allow her husband to think it is his. That way they will both be happy, and the best judgment will prevail.” The butler appeared. “Maddock, please serve the next course. I have changed my mind about the soup. Tell Cook it was excellent, if you have to tell her anything at all.”

“Yes ma’am. Will you be taking fish?”

“Yes, please, but only a very small portion.”