Phoebe looked alarmed.
“It’s awful!” Mrs. Lowndes moaned. “You can’t know, m’lady, ’ow awful it is down there, knowing as there’s a maniac loose in the Walk. An’ decent, God-fearin’ people bein’ a murdered one by one. Only the good Lord knows as who’ll be next! The scullery maid’s fainted twice today already, and me kitchen maid’s threatening to leave if ’e ain’t found soon. Always been in decent employment, all of us! Never ’ad anything like this in all our lives! We won’t never be the same again, none of us! Aoow-eee!” she wailed, even more shrilly, and tore a handkerchief out of her apron pocket. Her voice rose higher and louder, and the tears streamed down her face.
Everyone looked stupefied. Emily was aghast. She had no idea at all what to do with this enormous woman rapidly nearing the verge of complete hysteria. For once even Aunt Vespasia seemed at a loss.
“Aowoo!” Mrs. Lowndes howled. “Ooooh!” She began to shake violently and threatened to collapse on the carpet.
Charlotte stood up and seized the vase of flowers from the sideboard. She took the blooms out with her left hand and felt a satisfactory weight remaining. With all her strength she hurled the water into the cook’s face.
“Be quiet!” she said firmly.
The howl ceased in mid-breath. There was total silence.
“Now control yourself!” Charlotte went on. “Of course, it is unpleasant. Do you not think we all feel distressed? But it is up to us to behave with dignity. You must set an example to the younger women. If you lose control of yourself, what on earth can we expect of the maids? A cook is not merely someone who knows how to mix a sauce, Mrs. Lowndes. She is head of the kitchen; she is there to keep order and to see that everyone conducts themselves as they ought. I’m surprised at you!”
The cook stared at her. The color brightened in her face, and slowly she drew herself up to her full height, throwing her shoulders back.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” Charlotte said stiffly. “Now Lady Ashworth will look to you to stop any silly chatter among the girls. If you keep your head and behave with the dignity appropriate to the senior member of the female staff, then they will all take courage and follow your example.”
Mrs. Lowndes lifted her chin a little and her bosom swelled, remembering her own importance.
“Yes, m’lady. I’ll take it kindly, m’lady,” she looked at Emily, “if you’d overlook my momentary weakness, and not mention it in front of the other servants, ma’am?”
“Of course not, Mrs. Lowndes,” Emily said quickly, taking Charlotte’s cue. “Quite understandable. It’s a heavy burden of responsibility you carry for so many girls. The less said, the better, I think. Perhaps you would have the parlormaid bring us some fresh cakes and sandwiches?”
“Yes, m’lady, most certainly.” With great relief she picked up the two plates and sailed out, dripping with water, and ignoring Charlotte, still standing with the flowers in one hand and the empty vase in the other.
After Phoebe and Grace had gone, Emily immediately took herself to the kitchen, against Vespasia’s advice, to make sure that Charlotte’s counsel had been taken, and dinner would not be another disaster. Charlotte turned to Vespasia. There was no time for subtlety, even were she capable of it.
“It seems even the servants are in a turmoil over Mr. Nash’s disappearance,” she said directly. “Do you think he has run away?”
Vespasia’s eyebrows rose in slight surprise.
“No, my dear, I do not for a moment think so. I imagine that his tongue has at last earned him the fate he has so long sought by it.”
“You mean someone has murdered him?” Of course it was what she had expected, but to hear it spoken so plainly by someone other than Pitt was still startling.
“I should think so.” Vespasia hesitated. “Except that I have no idea what they have done with his body.” Her nostrils flared. “A peculiarly unpleasant thing to think of, but ignoring it will not change it. I suppose they took him out in a hansom and left him somewhere, perhaps the river.”
“In that case, we’ll never find him.” It was an admission of defeat. With no body, there was no proof of murder. “But that is not the most important thing, what matters is who!”
“Ah,” Vespasia said softly, looking at Charlotte. “Indeed, who? Naturally I have given the subject a great deal of consideration. In fact I have been able to think of little else, although I have avoided speaking of it in front of Emily.”
Charlotte leaned forward. She was not sure how to express herself without seeming forward, even callous, and yet she must. Delicacy was of no service now. “You have known these people most of their lives. You. must know things about them the police could never discover, or understand if they did.” It was not intended as flattery, simply fact. They needed Vespasia’s help-Pitt needed it. “You must have opinions! Fulbert used to say fearful things about people. He said to me once that they were all whited sepulchers. I don’t doubt most of it was for effect, but judging from their reactions, there was a germ of truth!”
Vespasia smiled, and there was dry, faraway humor and regret in her face, an infinity of memories.
“My dear girl, everyone has secrets, unless they have lived no life at all. And even they, poor souls, imagine they have. It is almost an admission of defeat not to have a secret of some kind.”
“Phoebe?”
“Hardly one to kill over,” Vespasia shook her head slowly. “The poor soul is losing her hair. She wears a wig.”
Charlotte recalled Phoebe at the funeral, her hair sliding one way and her hat the other. How could she feel so sharply sorry for her and at the same time want to laugh? It was so unimportant, and yet it would be painful to Phoebe. Unconsciously she touched her own hair, thick and shining. It was her best feature. Perhaps if she were losing it, it would matter enormously. She too would feel insecure, belittled, somehow naked. The laughter vanished.
“Oh,” there was pity in the word, and Vespasia was looking at her with appreciation. “But as you say,” Charlotte collected herself and went on, “hardly a matter to murder over, even if she were capable of it.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Vespasia agreed. “She is far too silly to do anything so big so successfully.”
“I was thinking of the purely physical side,” Charlotte replied. “She couldn’t manage that, even if she’d a mind to.”
“Oh, Phoebe is stronger than she looks,” Vespasia sat back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling in recollection. “She could murder him all right, with perhaps a knife, if she had lured him somewhere she could simply leave him. But she has not the nerve to carry it off afterward. I remember when she was a girl, about fourteen or fifteen, she took her elder sister’s lace petticoat and pantaloons and cut them down to fit herself. She was as cool as you like doing it, but then, when she came to wear them, she was so stricken with fear, she wore her own on top in case anything should catch her skirt and the better ones be seen. As a result she looked ten pounds heavier and not in the least attractive. No, Phoebe might do it, but she has not the endurance to carry it off.”
Charlotte was fascinated. How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.
“What other secrets are there?” she asked. “What else did Fulbert know?”
Vespasia sat up and opened her eyes wide.
“My dear child, I wouldn’t begin to guess. He was unbearably nosy. His main preoccupation in life was to acquire uncharitable information about others. If at last he found something too big for him, I cannot but say he richly deserved it.”
“But what else?” Charlotte was not going to give up so easily. “Who else? Do you think he knew who killed Fanny, and that was it?”
“Ah!” Vespasia breathed out slowly. “That, of course, is the real question. And I’m afraid I have no idea. Naturally I have been over and over everything I know. To tell the truth, I expected you to ask me.” She looked at Charlotte hard. Her old eyes were very clear, very clever. “And I would warn you, my girl, to keep your tongue a little stiller than you have done so far. If indeed Fulbert did know who killed Fanny, it served him ill. At least one of the secrets in Paragon Walk is a very dangerous matter indeed. I don’t know which of them brought Fulbert Nash to his death, so leave them all alone!”
Charlotte felt the cold ripple through her, as if someone had opened an outside door on a winter day. She had not thought of personal danger before. All her anxieties had been for Emily, that she might learn of weakness,
