replied foolishly it would reflect on Pitt. Honesty was the only course open to her.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she smiled at him as charmingly as she could, although she did not feel it in the least. ‘I was daydreaming and I did not hear you. I’m so sorry.’ She made herself meet his eyes warmly, as if she liked him.
He was flattered; she could see it in the sudden ease in his face. ‘The theatre is the place for dreams,’ he replied. ‘I was asking if you agree with your sister’s opinion of the leading actress’s last performance.’
‘As Lady Macbeth,’ Emily put in helpfully.
Charlotte remembered reading a critic’s response to it and hesitated, wondering if she could get away with quoting them. She would look such a fool, so much too eager to impress, if she were caught. ‘I read it was rather too melodramatic,’ she replied. ‘But I didn’t see it.’
‘Because of what the critic said?’ Talbot asked curiously.
‘Actually that would have made me more inclined to look for myself,’ she replied without hesitation. Then she remembered what Emily had said of the performance. ‘And Emily did tell me a few other performances were …’ She shrugged slightly, not willing to repeat the negative opinion.
‘And of course you believed her?’ Talbot said with a smile.
‘I had a sister too,’ Ailsa said quietly, her voice tight with a strain she could not disguise. ‘But she was younger than I. I would still have taken her word for anything …’
Charlotte saw Emily’s face and the shock of realisation in it. Jack was startled, then embarrassed. Clearly he had no idea what to say.
It was Pitt who broke the silence. ‘Unfortunately my wife lost her elder sister many years ago. It is a memory we don’t go back to, because it was very painful circumstances.’
‘My sister also,’ Ailsa said, looking at him with interest, almost challenge. ‘Forgive me for having raised the subject. It was clumsy of me. Perhaps we should go into the theatre and find our seats.’
The following day Charlotte put off a dressmaker’s appointment and went instead to visit her great-aunt Vespasia or, to be more accurate, Emily’s late husband’s great-aunt. She could think of no one in the world she liked better, or trusted more. February was still winter, in spite of the slightly lengthening afternoons, and they sat in front of the fire while rain beat against the windows out on to the garden. Charlotte put her feet as close to the fender as she could in the hope of drying out her boots and the hem of her skirt.
Vespasia poured the tea and offered the plate of wafer-thin egg and cress sandwiches. ‘So you did not enjoy your visit to the theatre,’ she observed, after Charlotte had mentioned it.
Charlotte had long since abandoned prevarication with Vespasia. In fact, she was more honest with her than with anyone else. She felt none of the emotional restrictions that she had with her mother, or with Emily. Even with Pitt she was sometimes a little more careful.
‘No,’ she said, accepting the tea and trying to judge how soon she could sip it and let its warmth slide down inside her. Certainly she would burn herself with it now. ‘The conversation lurched from the edge of one precipice to the edge of another, and finally, for Emily, toppled over into the abyss.’
‘It sounds disastrous,’ Vespasia responded. ‘Perhaps you had better tell me the nature of this abyss?’
‘That she isn’t funny or wise or beautiful any more. And, more specifically, that Jack is no longer in love with her. I suppose it is the sort of thing we all have nightmares about some time or other.’
Vespasia looked very serious. She did not even pick up her cup. ‘Possibly,’ she replied. ‘But usually we do not tell other people, because it comes more like a realisation that it is dusk, not a sudden nightfall. Has something happened to Emily?’
‘I don’t think so. But she is restless — bored, I think. We used to be involved in so much, not always as exciting or pleasant as it seemed, looking back on it now. I know that, and I think Emily does too. But being a good Society wife, and an attentive mother to children who need you less and less, hardly exercises the imagination. And it is certainly not exciting …’ She saw the understanding in Vespasia’s expression and stopped. ‘I think at the heart of it she is very aware that she will soon be forty, and a part of life is slipping out of her grasp,’ she added.
‘And Jack?’ Vespasia enquired.
‘Jack is as handsome as ever, in fact I think more so. A few added years suit him. He is not so … shallow.’
‘Ooh!’ Vespasia gave a tiny wince, so small as to be almost invisible.
Charlotte blushed. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘Don’t be.’ Vespasia picked up her cup at last and took a sip, then offered Charlotte the sandwiches again before taking one herself. ‘Which particular precipice did you fall over yesterday evening?’
‘Someone assumed that Emily was my older sister.’
‘Oh dear.’ Vespasia sipped her tea again. ‘Sibling rivalry is a snake you can never quite kill. I’m afraid Emily has been used to being a step ahead for rather too long. She is finding it hard to adjust to being a step behind.’
‘She isn’t behind!’ Charlotte said instantly.
Vespasia merely smiled.
‘Well … she needs something to do, I mean something that matters,’ Charlotte tried again. ‘The way we used to when we could help with Thomas’s cases, before they were secret.’
‘Be careful,’ Vespasia warned.
Charlotte thought of denying that the affair of Kynaston and the missing maid was in her mind, but she had never deliberately lied to Vespasia, and their friendship was too precious to begin now, even to defend Emily.
‘I will be,’ she said instead. It was half-way to the truth.
‘I mean it, my dear,’ Vespasia’s voice was very grave again. ‘I know Thomas is inclined to believe that Dudley Kynaston is not unfortunately involved with this missing maid, and possibly even that the body in the gravel pit was not hers. He may be right. That does not mean that Kynaston has nothing to hide. Be very careful what you do … and perhaps even more careful what you arrange for Emily to do. Her mind is filled with her own misgivings: her fear of boredom, and thus of becoming boring herself. Her beauty, to which she has been accustomed, is beginning to lose its bloom. She will have to learn to rely on character and charm, style, even wit. It is not an easy adjustment to make.’ She smiled with deep affection. ‘Especially when your older sister has never relied on her looks and has already learned wit and charm, and now at the age when other women are fading, she is coming into bloom. Be gentle with her, by all means, but do not be indulgent. None of us can afford the errors that come with carelessness, or desperation.’
Charlotte said nothing, but she thought about it very deeply as she took the last sip of her tea. Regardless of Vespasia’s advice, and the wisdom she knew it held, she was going to involve Emily, she had to.
Chapter Seven
Stoker stood in front of Pitt’s desk, his face bleak, and oddly bruised-looking.
‘How did you find it?’ Pitt asked, looking at the sodden wet tangle of felt and ribbon on his desk. It was barely recognisable as a hat. It was impossible to tell what colour it had been, except from the tiny flash of red on what was left of a feather.
‘Anonymous tip-off, sir,’ Stoker said quietly. ‘Tried to trace who it came from, but no luck so far. Just a note in with the post.’
‘What did it say, exactly?’ Pitt asked. He was pursuing it as a matter of course. He did not seriously think it would prove of any value.
‘Just that the sender had been out walking in the early morning and sat down on a frozen log, then seen this odd-looking mass of what looked like fabric. He poked it with a stick, and then realised that it was a hat. He knew there’d been a body found up near there, and wondered if it might have any connection.’
‘Those words?’ Pitt said curiously.
‘No, I’m elaborating a bit.’ Stoker grimaced. ‘Word for word, it was more like “Was sitting on a log up the gravel pit where that woman got found. Thought this might have something to do with it, like maybe it was
