Adelia was bubbling with fury but she had no choice but to follow. Me, make a scene? As if this is about me, she thought.
Charlotte looked as if she wanted to evade Adelia’s grasp as soon as they were inside. “Mama, just one moment, let me go and change...”
“No. You just stop there. You were talking to the man in the pointed hood. The same man that your husband and your father saw on the steps of the house when Digby Nettles was killed.”
Charlotte looked appalled. “No, mama, that is not true! What can you possibly be saying?” Tears sprang into her eyes and she went quite pale.
“It is true. That is what I saw. Explain yourself.”
“But I cannot, for there is nothing to explain,” Charlotte exclaimed, tears running freely down her cheeks now. She put her hands to her face and shook her head. “I wasn’t talking to anyone! Please!” She spun around and fled up the stairs, sobbing loudly. Too loudly. She cried like an actress.
Adelia stood stock still in the hallway. A maid hovered in the shadows, waiting in case she was to be useful.
“Yes,” said Adelia in answer to the unspoken question, and the maid came forward to take her cloak and hat. Adelia peeled off her gloves.
“Is there anything else, my lady?”
“A restorative hot drink, please, to be sent to my room.”
“Very good, my lady.” The maid melted away.
Asking for a restorative drink reminded Adelia that not an hour previously, she had been taken so ill that she had had to sit down and be revived by the shop staff in Harrods. She had been temporarily overcome and even briefly lost her vision.
Now she questioned herself. Had she seen someone with her daughter? Had she really? Could she honestly trust her own eyes? Because why on earth would Charlotte have been speaking to one of the main suspects in the murder case, and why would she now lie about it to her own mother?
Adelia’s head thumped. Suddenly weary, she trudged up the stairs to her room, and settled in a comfortable armchair to try not to mull things over. She didn’t want to dwell on it all. She just wanted Theodore to come back, and soon.
She had felt tired and dragged down before her trip to London. The parties and the excitement of the case had briefly perked her up. Now she felt even more weary than before.
SHE MUST HAVE SLEPT for some time because she awoke with a start to find her beef stock was untouched and the light was already fading in the room. Theodore had just crept in, by the looks of things, and he was halfway across the room with his shoes in his hand. He froze, like a burglar caught in the act.
“Bother! I was trying not to wake you. They told me you were indisposed. Are you feeling quite well?”
“I am, I think, now.” She felt her temples but the headache had not manifested. “I had a funny turn in Harrods but they looked after me and sent me home in a cab. I didn’t get the chance to call in on your mother. I feel as if I have wasted the day!”
“Not to worry. I believe she is to dine with us tonight anyway. And you must have needed to sleep. What sort of turn have you had?” Theodore, ever the doctor, dropped his shoes and came over to her side with concern all over his face. It took her quite a while to convince him that she was perfectly well, and then it was time to dress for dinner. He spent the time telling her about his afternoon; he had been closeted with Robert for most of the time, going over the myriad ways that Digby Nettles might have been committing criminal deals.
“At this rate, you will know enough to take on his business yourself,” she commented.
She did not have time to tell Theodore about her encounter with Charlotte and now that she had slept for a while, she was even more unsure about what she had actually seen that morning. But she resolved to watch her daughter very carefully indeed.
And she also resolved to stun Charlotte with a new revelation. But she bided her time and kept everything very light for most of the meal.
She didn’t unleash her surprise onto Charlotte until the main course plates were cleared away and the various puddings were carried in.
“I have decided to come, after all,” Adelia told her daughter with a bright smile.
“What’s that?” Charlotte smiled back, indulgently, almost patronising her mother. She had been particularly solicitous as to Adelia’s health all evening and it was beginning to grate on Adelia’s nerves. “Come where?”
“I mean to the party you have invited me to. Do you remember? You mentioned that I could meet Mariana da Costa, for example.”
“The salon? Oh!” said Charlotte and Adelia was sure a look of horror flickered over her face. What had changed? Adelia was curious.
No, maybe this was yet another thing Adelia was imagining.
“Yes, exactly so,” Adelia said. “You mentioned that there was one to be held tomorrow and you thought I might enjoy it. Well, I think so too. I will know a few people there, won’t I? Lady Purfleet often goes, does she not?”
Grace made a choking sound. “She’s hardly a reason to attend. She’s a reason to stay away.”
“Mother,” said Theodore warning.
Adelia was intrigued. “Just what lies at the root of your antipathy to Lady Purfleet? I confess I have only met her directly a handful of times but she has always struck me as a reserved and considerate person with perfect manners.”
“I knew her as a young woman and I knew her mother,
