“He is very well acquainted with Lord and Lady Winthrop,” Vespasia explained, walking a little farther onto the grass, her skirts catching on the longer, uncut stems.
Charlotte was obliged to follow in order to continue the conversation.
“Is he?” She was surprised. Thelonius Quade was a man of high intelligence and quiet wit. From what Emily had said, Lord Winthrop was quite the opposite. “Socially?” she asked.
Vespasia smiled, her silver eyes light with amusement.
“Hardly professionally, my dear. Marlborough Winthrop does nothing useful whatsoever; but that is not a crime, or half the aristocracy would be up before the bench. Of course, socially, which I imagine was not of Thelonius’s choosing. The man is a monumental bore, and his wife is worse. She has violent opinions, all of which she has borrowed from someone else. She contracts them as some people contract diseases.”
“Did he know Captain Winthrop?” Charlotte asked with mounting interest.
“Only slightly.” Vespasia was standing in the middle of the lawn now, the breeze ruffling the pale green silk of her skirt. Her blouse was of a delicate ivory in the light, and the heavy pearls around her neck hung low across the bosom. Charlotte wondered if she would ever look quite so effortlessly elegant herself.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said quietly. “He must be distressed for them.”
“Of course.” Vespasia accepted and dismissed the subject with a small gesture of her head. She moved a few steps farther across the lawn. “The funeral was a family affair, but they will be holding a memorial service for him tomorrow. Thelonius will attend. I thought I would go with him.” She turned and looked at Charlotte with the first gleam of a smile in her eyes. “I wondered if you would care to accompany us?”
It would be indelicate, and quite unnecessary, to ask Vespasia’s purpose in such an invitation. It was not the Winthrops she was thinking of, nor Thelonius Quade, and certainly not herself. In the past she had been involved in many social crusades, and worked with tireless passion. She had several times exhibited the same energy and devotion to meddling in Pitt’s cases, assisting Charlotte and Emily in places and with people they could not reach alone. It would be clumsy to say she enjoyed it; it was both different and more than that. But there was no mistaking the light in her eyes now.
“It is very ugly,” Charlotte said tentatively, catching up with her and looking at the slender daffodil spears under the trees.
“There is a note of stridency in the newspapers,” Vespasia added. “It is imperative that Thomas establish himself in his new position as early as possible. This is an extraordinary case, or at least it has all the appearance of being so. We must do what we can.”
“The newspapers are speaking of a madman loose,” Charlotte agreed unhappily.
“Balderdash!” Vespasia dismissed the idea. “If there was a lunatic capering around Hyde Park cutting people’s heads off we should have heard more of him by now.”
“Someone he knew?” Charlotte asked, her attention sharpening. She forgot the daffodils, and was only dimly aware of the wind in the branches and the brilliant sprays of forsythia in bloom.
“That seems an inevitable conclusion,” Vespasia agreed. “Thelonius informs me he was not robbed. Or so Lord Winthrop says.”
Charlotte’s imagination began to race. She started with what seemed to be to her the obvious.
“His wife has a lover? Or he has a mistress, and her husband …”
“Oh really!” Vespasia said impatiently. “Oakley Winthrop might not have been an imaginative man, but neither was he a cretin. If you have the misfortune to be taking a midnight stroll in the park and to meet your wife’s lover carrying a cutlass, you do not go and climb into a pleasure boat with him. To discuss what? The equitable division of her favors?”
Charlotte smothered a giggle but held her ground. “Perhaps he was an acquaintance anyway, and Winthrop did not know of the arrangement,” she suggested. “If it was his wife’s lover, she may have been discreet. After all, Captain Winthrop will have been away a good deal of the time. It may never have occurred to him that she could have considered any other man.”
“Then if he was unaware of the situation, why on earth would the wretched man murder him?” Vespasia asked, her eyebrows arching even higher. “That seems absurd, and quite unnecessary.”
“Then perhaps it was his mistress’s husband?” Charlotte thought aloud. “He may have been a very jealous man.”
“Then why should Winthrop sit down in a boat with him in the middle of the night?” Vespasia whisked a long stem of grass with her stick.
“Perhaps he didn’t …” Charlotte started, then realized it was foolish before she finished.
“His mistress was an innocent?” Vespasia said with a smile both tolerant and amused. “I doubt it. Not so innocent as to be unaware of her husband’s nature.” She turned and began to walk back up the long lawn towards the house. “No, the more one looks at this, the more bizarre it appears. I think Thomas may need such assistance as we can give him.” She kept her expression almost without enthusiasm, but not even her strength of will could entirely disguise the inner energy that burned at the thought.
“Then I shall most certainly come with you to the memorial service,” Charlotte accepted without further hesitation. “At what time shall I be ready?”
“I shall send a carriage for you at a quarter past ten,” Vespasia said immediately. “And my dear, the next time you buy a new outfit, I should make it black if I were you.” Her eyes gleamed. “It seems to be de rigueur for your husband’s occupation.”
Actually Charlotte sent an urgent message to Emily to request that she might borrow something suitable. She really had no extra money above that which was needed for the house. With new plasterwork, new finials, and several new fire tiles to be purchased, among a number of other things, every halfpenny must be put to the best use.
Emily was very happy to oblige, on condition, not open to negotiation, that Charlotte tell her every single detail of the case and include her in all future efforts. For this she would be willing to lend her any garment she liked throughout the duration of the endeavor.
Therefore at ten o’clock the next morning Charlotte was looking radiant, her cheeks flushed and her eyes
