Charlotte drew in her breath to say something crushing.
“I have not called to see Mr. Carvell,” Pitt said politely, “but Mrs. Arledge. She is expecting me, and I should be distressed if she thought I had declined her invitation.”
“Oh.” The butler was clearly taken aback. “I see, sir. Of course. If you would be pleased to come in.”
“Thank you.” Pitt invested his thanks with only the faintest touch of sarcasm, and giving Charlotte his arm, he led her inside to the large reception room where already there was a considerable crowd gathered.
The table was spread with all manner of delicacies and presumably Carvell had hired extra staff for the occasion, because there were at least half a dozen maids and footmen in livery that Charlotte could see, standing discreetly ready to attend to everyone’s wishes.
There was a small group of men standing together in the doorway to the next room and as she and Pitt came in they turned. One of them took a step forward, his highly intelligent face filled with a mixture of pain, apprehension and hope. She did not need to ask Pitt if it were Carvell, the power of feeling in him could only belong to the man Pitt had described. It was the same man she had seen at the service, and whose grief had so moved her.
Pitt glanced at her, realized her perception, and smiled before going towards Carvell.
“Good day, Superintendent,” Carvell said with his eyes searching Pitt’s face. “Is there some …” He saw from Pitt’s eyes that there was nothing. “Oh, I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me. I beg your pardon. Should I say how good of you to come, or is that naive?” He did not seem to have realized that Charlotte was with Pitt. Curiously, she felt in no way slighted. Closer to, his face was uglier, the pockmarks on his skin showed very clearly, and yet it was also more intensely alive. In spite of knowing his relationship with Arledge, and her imagination of what it must have cost Dulcie, and the very real possibility that he was guilty of murder, she found herself curiously partisan on his behalf. Perhaps it was the sheer depth of his feeling and its reality she could not doubt. There was nothing indifferent in him.
“It is not news in the slightest,” Pitt replied sincerely. “I have come because Mrs. Arledge invited me, and I am grateful to be permitted to pay my respects to a man I believe I would have admired very much, had I had the opportunity to know him.”
Carvell bit his lip and swallowed hard. “You are very gracious, Superintendent. No one could have said that more generously and still have told the absolute truth. You have learned nothing more so far, and your duty brings you here, as well as your natural inclination. I do understand.”
“I would not say there is nothing further,” Pitt argued. “But the little there is leads to no conclusion. Mr. Carvell, may I present you to my wife?”
“Oh!” Carvell was completely taken aback. “Oh, I am sorry, ma’am. I beg your pardon for my complete rudeness. I had assumed—really, I am not sure what I had assumed. Forgive me.” He bowed very slightly. “How do you do, ma’am.”
He made no movement towards her.
“How do you do, Mr. Carvell,” she said with a smile. “Please accept my sympathies for your loss. It is an inexpressibly bitter thing to lose one’s dearest friend.”
He stared at her, surprise in his eyes, then a moment of embarrassment, and at last a spontaneous warmth.
“How kind of you.” They were very formal words, and yet she knew he meant them.
Before any of them could pursue the matter further and search for some easier subject of conversation, there was a stirring of movement at the doorway behind them, a murmuring of voices, a slither and brush of fabric as people moved against one another. Then as Pitt and Charlotte turned they saw a solitary woman enter the room, dressed in pretty and feminine black decorated with exquisite discreet mourning jewelry, lace at her wrists and throat. She was not a large woman, nor yet a strikingly beautiful one, but she commanded an immediate attention. Her features were well proportioned, her mouth gently curved. The delicate color of her skin was not marred, nor was her hair dressed less than gracefully; only her blue eyes betrayed the sleeplessness and the anxiety.
Charlotte felt Pitt stiffen and looked up quickly at him. There was an admiration in his face, and a profound gentleness which she had not seen in a long time, not even for Jerome Carvell. She did not need Pitt to tell her that this was Dulcie Arledge.
Dulcie looked around the room for an instant, her eyes resting on one person, then another. She did not hesitate at Mina Winthrop; apparently she did not recognize her, nor, it would seem, Bart Mitchell standing beside her. She smiled at Sir James Lismore and at Roderick Alberd. Several others earned a slight movement of her head and a shadow of a smile. Her glance slid over the graceful figure of Landon Hurlwood, a fraction taller than those surrounding him, but she gave no sign of acknowledgment.
Victor Garrick was sitting in an alcove with his cello cradled in his arms, waiting for the time when he was asked to play. His fair hair gleamed in the light from the gas bracket above him, and there was a look of peace in his face, as if he dreamed of something remote and uniquely lovely.
Dulcie inclined her head towards him, and pleasure softened his concentration in acceptance, and then the distant gaze returned.
Dulcie’s eyes finally came to rest on Pitt and a delicate smile curved her mouth. She moved forward, nodding, exchanging a word here and there, until she was only a few feet away from him.
Pitt waited and Charlotte did not speak. She was startled by the depth of feeling she sensed in Pitt, not only for Dulcie’s loss, and the dreadful disillusion she must be suffering with such dignity, but also a regard for her which held a tenderness and a respect he would almost certainly remember long after the case was over.
Charlotte admired him for it. She would not have wanted him to be incapable of such emotions; and yet it also stirred a twinge of unease in her, a consciousness that they had not shared this case, a recollection of the number of times that she had been absent when he had come home tired and worried, confused and needing to speak. She had been so full of her plans to make the new house beautiful, and to do it within an acceptable cost, that she had had room for little else in her mind. Now she was touched by a whisper of jealousy, soft, but unmistakable.
“Good morning, Superintendent,” Dulcie said, smiling up at Pitt. There was a distinct hesitation before she turned to Charlotte. “How do you do. You must be Mrs. Pitt. How gracious of you to have come as well. Most sensitive of you.”
Charlotte had to struggle to keep her answering smile sweet and think of something equally pleasant to reply. The slightest slip would be perceived and understood. She had only to meet Dulcie’s eyes to know that nothing
