other than the light suit he was wearing for luncheon.”
“Are all the coachmen or footmen at home?” George demanded. “Did anyone take a message or call a cab for him?”
“Apparently not.”
“Well, he can’t simply have vanished! He must be somewhere!”
“Of course.” Vespasia frowned still more and at last took herself a piece of toast and spread it with butter and apricot preserve. “But no one knows where. Or, if they do, they are not prepared to say.”
“Oh God!” George gasped at her. “You’re not suggesting he’s been murdered!”
Emily choked on her tea.
“I’m not suggesting anything.” Vespasia waved her arm at Emily, for George to do something about her. “Slap her, for goodness’ sake!” She waited while George obliged and Emily pushed him away, finding her breath again. “I simply don’t know,” Vespasia finished. “But doubtless there will be suggestions, all of them unpleasant, and that will be one of them.”
And it was, although Emily did not hear it until the following day. She had called upon Jessamyn and found Selena already there. So soon after Fanny’s death, social visits were being kept very much within their own immediate circle, possibly as a matter of good taste, but more likely so that they might be freer to discuss it if they wished.
“I suppose you have heard nothing whatever?” Selena asked anxiously.
“Nothing,” Jessamyn agreed. “It is as if the ground had opened up and swallowed him into it. Phoebe came this morning, and naturally Afton has inquired as much as is possible, discreetly, but he is not at any of his clubs in town, and no one else can be found who has spoken to him.”
“Is there no one in the country he might have visited?” Emily asked.
Jessamyn’s eyebrows shot up.
“At this time of the year?”
“It’s the height of the Season!” Selena added, a little disparagingly. “Whoever would leave London now?”
“Perhaps Fulbert,” Emily was stung to reply. “He seems to have left Paragon Walk without a word of explanation to anyone. If he were in London, why should he be anywhere but here?”
“That makes sense,” Jessamyn admitted, “since he is not at any of the clubs, and he does not seem to be visiting any other friends up for the Season.”
“The alternatives are too dreadful to contemplate.” Selena shivered, then instantly contradicted herself. “But we must.”
Jessamyn looked at her.
Selena was not going to draw back now.
“We must face it, my dear. It is possible he has been done away with!”
Jessamyn’s face was very pale, very fine.
“You mean murdered?” she said quietly.
“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
There was a moment’s silence. Emily’s mind raced. Who would murder Fulbert, and why? The other possibility was, at once, worse and also an infinite relief-except that she dared not say it-suicide. If he had after all been the one who killed Fanny, maybe he had taken this desperate way to escape.
Jessamyn was still staring. In her lap her long slender hands were stiff, as if she could neither feel with them nor move them.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would anyone murder Fulbert, Selena?”
“Perhaps whoever killed poor Fanny killed him also?” Selena replied.
Emily could not say what was in her mind. She must lead them to it, gently, until one of them had to say it for herself.
“But Fanny was-molested,” she reasoned aloud. “She was only killed after that-perhaps because she recognized him, and he could not then let her go. Why should anyone kill Fulbert-if indeed he is dead? He is only missing, after all.”
Jessamyn smiled very faintly, something like gratitude warming her pallor.
“You are quite right. There is hardly anything to suggest it was the same person. In fact, there is not really anything to prove they are connected at all.”
“They must be!” Selena exploded. “We could not have two entirely unconnected crimes in the Walk in the space of a month. That is straining credulity too far! We must face it-either Fulbert is dead, or he has run away!”
Jessamyn’s eyes were very bright, her voice came slowly, as if from far away.
“Are you saying that it was Fulbert who killed Fanny, and he has now run away in case the police find him?”
“Someone did.” Selena would not be put off. “Perhaps he is mad?”
Another thought occurred to Emily.
“Or perhaps it was not him, but he knows who it was, and he is afraid?” she said it before she considered what effect it might have.
Jessamyn sat absolutely still. Her voice was soft, almost sibilant. “I don’t think that’s very likely,” she said slowly. “Fulbert was never very good at keeping a secret. Nor was he especially brave. I don’t think that can be the answer.”
“It’s ridiculous!” Selena turned on Emily sharply. “If he knew who it was, he would have said so! And enjoyed it! And why on earth should he protect them? After all, Fanny was his sister!”
“Perhaps he didn’t have the chance to tell anyone?” Emily was growing annoyed at being spoken to as if she were foolish. “Perhaps they killed him before he could get away?”
Jessamyn took a deep breath and let it out in a long, silent sigh.
“I think you must be right, Emily. I hate to say so-” Her voice faded for a minute, and she was obliged to clear her throat. “-but I think it is inescapable that either Fulbert killed Fanny and has run away, or else-” She shivered and seemed to shrink into herself. “-or else whoever so dreadfully murdered Fanny knew that poor Fulbert knew too much and killed him before he could speak!”
“If that is true, then we have a very dangerous murderer living in the Walk,” Emily said quietly. “And I am very glad I have no idea who he is. I think we should all be extremely careful whom we speak to, what we say, and whom we find ourself alone with!”
Selena gave a little whimper, but her face was flushed and there were very fine beads of sweat on her face. Her eyes were bright.
The day seemed darker, the heat more suffocating. Emily rose to go home; the visit was no longer any pleasure.
The day after, it was not possible to keep the matter from the police. Pitt was informed of it and returned to the Walk, feeling tired and unhappy. It was a mark of his failure that something so unforeseen should have happened, and he had no explanation to offer for it. Of course, there were volumes of theories. He had no niceties to keep his mind from coming first to the most obvious and the most ugly. He had seen far too much crime for anything to surprize him, even incestuous rape. In the rookeries and teeming slums incest was all too common. Women bore too many children and died young, often leaving fathers with elder daughters to bring up a brood of little ones. Loneliness and reliance slipped easily into something else more intimate, more urgent.
But he had not expected to find it in Paragon Walk.
Then there was the possibility that it was not escape, or suicide, but another murder. Perhaps Fulbert had known too much and been foolish enough to say so? Perhaps he had even tried blackmail and paid the ultimate price for it.
Charlotte had told him something about Fulbert’s remarks, the sly, cutting cruelty of them, the “whited sepulchers.” Perhaps he had chanced on a secret more dangerous than he knew and been killed for that-nothing to do with Fanny at all? It would not be the first time one crime had planted the seed of an idea for another, where motives were completely unconnected. Nothing invites imitation like apparent success.
The only place he could start was with Afton Nash, the person who had reported Fulbert as missing and who had lived in the same house. Pitt had already sent men to check on the clubs and houses of other sorts, where a
