and a contempt.
“If it’s anybody in the Walk,” she said with feeling. “I sincerely hope it’s him-and that he is caught!”
“So do I,” Emily agreed. “But somehow I don’t think it is. Fulbert is perfectly sure it isn’t. He keeps saying so, and with great pleasure, as if he knew something horrid that amused him.”
“Perhaps he does.” Charlotte frowned, trying to hide the thought, and failing. It would come out in words. “Perhaps he knows who it is-and it is not Afton.”
“It’s too disgusting to think of,” Emily shook her head. “It will be some servant or other, almost certainly someone hired for the Dilbridges’ party. All those strange coachmen milling about, with nothing to do but wait. No doubt one of them refreshed himself too much, and, when he was in liquor, he lost control. Perhaps in the dark he thought Fanny was a maid, or something. And then, when he discovered she wasn’t, he had to stab her to keep her from giving him away. Coachmen do carry knives quite often, you know, to cut harness if it gets caught, or get stones out of horses’ hooves if they pick them up, and all sorts of things.” She warmed to her own excellent reasoning. “And after all, none of the men who live in the Walk, I mean none of us, would be carrying a knife anyway, would we?”
Charlotte stared at her, one of her carefully cut sandwiches in her hand.
“Not unless they meant to kill Fanny anyway.”
Emily felt a sickness that had nothing to do with her condition.
“Why on earth would anyone want to do that? If it had been Jessamyn, I could understand. Everyone is jealous of her because she is always so beautiful. You never see her put out, or flustered. Or even Selena, but no one could have hated Fanny-I mean-there wasn’t enough of her to hate!”
Charlotte stared at her plate.
“I don’t know.”
Emily leaned forward.
“What about Thomas? What does he know? He must have told you, since it concerns us.”
“I don’t think he knows anything,” Charlotte said unhappily. “Except that it doesn’t seem to have been any of the regular servants. They can all pretty well account for themselves. And none of them have a past trouble he can find. They wouldn’t, would they? Or they wouldn’t be employed in Paragon Walk!”
When Emily returned home, she wanted to talk to George, but she did not know how to begin. Aunt Vespasia was out, and George was sitting in the library with his feet up, the doors open to the garden, and a book upside down on his stomach.
He looked up as soon as she came in and put the book aside.
“How was Charlotte?” he asked immediately.
“Well.” She was a little surprised. He had always liked Charlotte, but in a rather distant, absent way. After all, he very seldom saw her. Why the keenness today?
“Did she say anything about Pitt?” he went on, moving to sit upright, his eyes on her face.
So it was not Charlotte. It was the murder and the Walk he was thinking about. She felt that intense moment of reality when you know a blow is coming but it has not yet landed. The pain is not quite there, but you understand it as surely as if it were. The brain has already accepted it. He was afraid.
It was not that she thought he had killed Fanny; even in her worst moments she had never believed that. She did not know or sense in him the capability for such violence or, to be honest, for the fierceness of emotion to ignite such a train of events. If she were honest, he was not stirred by great tides. His worst sins would be indolence, the unintentional selfishness of a child. His temper was easy; he liked to please. Pain distressed him; he would go to much trouble to avoid his own and, as much as he had energy for, that of others. He had always possessed worldly goods without the need to strive for them, and his generosity frequently bordered on the profligate. He had given Emily everything she wanted and taken pleasure in doing so.
No, she would not believe he could have killed Fanny- unless it were in the heat of panic, and he would have given himself away immediately, terrified as a child.
The blow she felt was that he had done something else that Pitt would uncover in searching for the killer, some thoughtless gratification, not intended to hurt Emily, just a pleasure taken because it was there, and he liked it. Selena-or someone else? It hardly mattered who.
Funny, when she had married him, she had seen all that so clearly and accepted it. Why did it matter now? Was it her condition? She had been warned it might make her oversensitive, weepy. Or was it that she had come to love George more than she had expected to?
He was staring at her, waiting for her to answer the question.
“No.” She avoided his eyes. “It seems as if most of the servants are accounted for, but that’s all.”
“Then what in hell is he doing?” George exploded, his voice sharp and high. “It’s damn near a fortnight! Why hasn’t he caught him? Even if he can’t arrest the man and prove it, he ought at least to know who it is by now!”
She was sorry for him because he was frightened, and sorry for herself. She was also angry because it was his stupid thoughtlessness that had given him cause to fear Pitt, self-indulgence he had had no need to take.
“I only saw Charlotte,” she said a little stiffly, “not Thomas. And, even if I had seen him, I could hardly have asked him what he was doing. I don’t imagine it is easy to find a murderer when you have no idea where to begin, and no one can prove where they were.”
“Dammit!” he said helplessly. “I was miles away from here! I didn’t come home until it was all over, finished. I couldn’t have done anything or seen anything.”
“Then what are you upset about?” She still did not face him.
There was a moment’s silence. When he spoke again his voice was calmer, tired.
“I don’t like being investigated. I don’t like half London being asked about me, and everyone knowing there is a rapist and murderer in my street. I don’t like the thought that he’s still loose, whoever he is. And, above all, I don’t like the thought that it could be one of my neighbors, someone I’ve known for years, probably even liked.”
That was fair. Of course, he was hurt. He would have been callous, even stupid, not to have been. She turned and smiled at him at last.
“We all hate it,” she said softly. “And we’re all frightened. But it might take a long time yet. If he’s one of the coachmen or footmen, he won’t be easy to find, and if it’s one of us-he will have all sorts of ways of hiding himself. After all, if we’ve lived with him all these years and have no idea, how can Thomas find him in a few days?”
He did not reply. Indeed, there was no argument to make.
Still, regardless of tragedy, there were certain social obligations to be honored. One did not abandon all discipline simply because there had been loss, still less if the loss had been accompanied by scandalous circumstances. It would be unseemly to be observed at parties quite so soon, but afternoon calls, discreetly made, were an entirely different matter. Vespasia, prompted by interest and justified by duty, called upon Phoebe Nash.
She had intended to convey sympathy. She was genuinely sorry for Fanny’s death, although the idea of dying did not appall her as it had in her youth. Now she was resigned to it, as one is to going home at the end of a long and splendid party. Eventually it must happen, and, perhaps by the time it did, one would be ready for it. Though doubtless that could hardly have been the case for Fanny, poor child.
Her real sympathy for Phoebe, however, was for her misfortune in having made an excessively trying marriage. Any woman obliged to live under one roof with Afton Nash was deserving at the least of commiseration.
She found the visit more trying to her patience. Phoebe was more than ordinarily incoherent. She seemed forever on the edge of some confidence which never actually formed itself into words. Vespasia tried concerned interest and appreciative silence in turn, but on every occasion Phoebe dived off into some altogether unrelated subject at the final moment, twisting her handkerchief in her lap until the thing was not fit to stuff a pincushion.
Vespasia left as soon as duty was fulfilled, but outside in the blistering sun she walked very slowly and began to reflect on what might be causing Phoebe such distraction of mind. The poor woman seemed unable to keep her wits on anything for more than a moment.
Was she so overcome with grief for Fanny? They had never appeared especially close. Vespasia could not recall more than a dozen occasions when they had gone calling together, and Phoebe had never accompanied her to
