“I think you worry about Emily too much,” he observed. “She is far more practical than you credit. Ashworth may imagine he is calling the pace, but I think it will be Emily who will decide whether he marries her or not. A wife like Emily could be an advantage to a man in his position. She is far cleverer than he is, for a start, and wise enough to hide it sufficiently so that he may suspect it, but never be sure enough for it to make him feel in any way less superior. She will be right, but she will convince him that it was his idea.”
“You make her sound extremely-conniving.”
“She is.” He smiled. “She is in every way opposite from you. Where you charge headlong, Emily will outflank and come up behind.”
“And you make me sound stupid!”
His smile broadened into a grin. “Not at all. You could not win Ashworth, but then you also have the sense not to want him!”
She relaxed in spite of herself. “Indeed I do not. What have you come for, Mr. Pitt? Surely not to talk about Ashworth and Emily again? Are you really no nearer the hangman?”
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Once or twice I’ve thought we were almost onto him, but then we were proved wrong. If only we knew why! If we just knew why he did it, why those girls? Why not any of a hundred others? Was it no more than chance?”
“But surely-” she faltered, “if it were no more than that-how will you ever find him? He could be anyone at all!”
“I know.” He held out no false hope, no comfort, and for that she both praised and blamed him. She wanted comfort, and yet she wanted honesty as well. It seemed she could not have both.
“Is there no connecting link, no person they all knew who might have. .?”
“We are still looking. That is why I’ve come today. I would like to speak to Dora, if I may, and also to Mrs. Dunphy. I’ve heard that Dora was friendly with the Hiltons’ maid, more friendly than she has told us. Possibly she denied it out of fear. A lot of people hide information because they feel murder is scandalous, and even to know anything somehow rubs the scandal onto them. Guilt by association.” His mouth turned down at the corners.
“And Mrs. Dunphy? She might have held something back; she hates scandal.”
“I’m sure. All good servants do, even more than their masters, if such a thing were possible. But actually I only want her confirmation. It might serve to prevent Dora from being evasive again. Dora might lie to me, but if she is anything like most housemaids, she will not dare lie to the cook.”
Charlotte smiled. It was perfectly true.
Then another thought occurred to her. Was that all he wanted to ask? And even if it was, would Dora or Mrs. Dunphy accidentally betray the anguish in the house at the moment? It was a fallacy of self-preservation, of dignity, to suppose that the servants did not know the private quarrels and tears above the stairs. They had eyes and ears, and curiosity. Someone would have overheard. Gossip would be discreet, even sympathetic, but it would be there. Of course it would never go outside the house. Loyalty and pride of establishment were fierce, but they would know.
“Do you wish me to call her in here?” she asked, thinking she would be able to control the situation if she were there to prevent any slips of the tongue. “She won’t lie to me either.”
Pitt looked at her, eyes narrowed very slightly.
“Please don’t trouble yourself. Besides, I think she might well be reticent in front of you. I don’t wish to question her in Mrs. Dunphy’s presence either, only to confirm with Mrs. Dunphy first, and then use the information to press Dora. If she did something you would not approve of, she won’t say so in front of you, but she might tell me, alone.”
She wanted to argue, to find some reason to be present, but she could think of nothing that sounded honest. Yet she must prevent his learning of Papa and the woman. She believed he would feel, as she did, that it was a betrayal, a moral dishonesty that one might try to pardon with one’s mind, but could never forget. Respect was gone; one could not trust again.
That was foolish. Pitt was a man, and would no doubt feel as other men did that such things were quite ordinary and to be accepted-as long as women did not do the same, of course. Perhaps she was afraid unnecessarily. Murder was quite a different thing from adultery, to men.
“How is your sergeant?” she asked, in an attempt to delay him until she could think of a reason to prevent him from seeing Dora alone.
“Getting better, thank you.” If he was surprised he did not show it.
“Do you have to have another sergeant now?” she went on.
“Yes.” He smiled. “You would like him; he’s quite an entertaining character. A little like Willie.”
“Oh?” The interest she expressed was quite genuine. And it was a few minutes’ respite. “I see Willie as a very uneasy policeman.”
“Oh, Dickon was uneasy to begin with, but he was obliged to find work very early, and naturally found dishonest employment easier to come by. He gained an excellent knowledge of the underworld, and then, after an extremely narrow squeak, decided it might be safer to profit from his expertise on the side of the law rather than against it.” He grinned broadly. “Actually he fell rather seriously in love with a girl socially above him. He promised her he would become respectable if she would marry him. So far he’s kept at it.”
“Why did he have to go out to work so young?” she was interested to know, as well as still wishing to keep him from the kitchen. The memory of Willie’s wry face was clear, and in her mind she saw this Dickon with the same features.
“His father died at a hanging, in ’forty-seven or ’forty-eight, and his mother was left with five children of which he was the youngest; and the other four were girls.”
“Oh no! However did she manage? How irresponsible of him to commit a crime that got him hanged!” She could think only of the poor woman with five children to feed.
“He wasn’t hanged,” Pitt corrected her. “He was killed at a hanging. They used to have public hangings then, and they were considered quite a sporting event.”
She did not believe him. “Hanging? Don’t be ridiculous. What kind of a person would wish to see some wretched creature taken out to a gibbet and hanged?” She swallowed hard, flaring her nose in disgust.
“Many kinds,” he answered seriously. “It used to be quite a spectacle; hundreds of people came to watch, and others came to pick their pockets, to gamble, to sell their muffins and winkles and hot chestnuts in winter. And, of course, the odd dogfight to warm them up.
“The poor crowded into the square, while the quality, the gentlemen, booked rooms in nearby houses with front windows-”
“That’s obscene!” she said fiercely. “It’s disgusting!”
“They let them for very high rents,” he continued as if she had not spoken. “Unfortunately the excitement of the actual hanging often spilled over into the crowd, and fights broke out. Dickon’s father was beaten to death in one of these.”
He smiled bleakly at her horror. “They don’t have public hangings anymore. Now let me speak to Dora. I don’t know whether I shall discover whatever it is you are so afraid of, but I must try.”
She swallowed hard again.
“I don’t know what you mean! Ask Dora anything you wish. There’s nothing I am afraid of, except the hangman himself, and we are all afraid of him.”
“But you are afraid that he is someone you know, aren’t you, Charlotte?”
“Isn’t he? Isn’t he someone we all know?” she demanded. There was no point in lying anymore. “At least I’m not afraid it’s me, in some black, terrible other side of myself I don’t know about. But any man who has any imagination at all must have feared just that at least once in the dark hours of the night.”
“And you’ve thought of it for them,” he finished softly. “Your father, Dominic, George Ashworth, Maddock, probably the vicar and the sexton too. Which one are you afraid for now, Charlotte?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, then realized it was futile. Instead she simply refused to commit herself.
Pitt touched her hand lightly, and went out of the door into the hallway and the kitchen to find Dora.
