“What is it, Gracie?” she said impatiently.
“Oh, ma’am-I’m terrible sorry.” Gracie was on the edge of tears again, her voice thick with crying.
“What?”
“Mrs. Biggs ’as gorn, ma’am. Never so much as did the floors. Said she wouldn’t work for nobody what murdered women. I’m terrible sorry, ma’am-I wouldn’t ’a’ told yer, but I ’ad to say as why she went, an’-” She gulped deeply, tears running down her cheeks. “An’ the butcher wouldn’t give no credit. As good as said as ’ow ’e’d sooner we got our meat somewheres else!”
Charlotte was stunned. She had not even thought of that, and here it was, so soon. She felt breathless and a little sick.
“Ma’am?” Gracie sniffed fiercely but it did not stop her crying.
Suddenly Charlotte put her arms round her and they clung to each other, letting the tears come in a storm of misery.
It was several moments before Charlotte was able to pull herself together, blow her nose, and go into the kitchen. She splashed her face with cold water and rubbed it dry so fiercely her red eyes hardly showed. Ordering Gracie about was a kind of relief, chopping vegetables savagely helped to calm her while she tried to think.
She told Daniel and Jemima nothing, doing what she could to behave normally. Daniel was too hungry to be observant, but Jemima noticed and asked what was wrong.
“I have a cold,” Charlotte said, forcing herself to smile. “Don’t worry about it.” She might as well get the initial news over now. She was dreading the lies, but the sooner she started the less horrible it would be. “Papa won’t be home for a few days. He’s away on a very special job.”
“Is that why you’re unhappy?” Jemima said slowly, watching her.
The closer she could stay to some kind of truth the better.
“Yes. But don’t worry-we’ll keep each other company.” She tried to smile and knew it was a disaster.
Jemima smiled back, and immediately her lip began to tremble. She had always been quick to grasp Charlotte’s mood, whether she understood it or not: she was like a little mirror reflecting gestures, expressions, tones of voice. Now she knew there was something wrong.
“Yes, I will miss him,” Charlotte repeated. “And I miss Aunt Emily, too, since she went on holiday. Never mind; I shall have to be busy and then the time will pass. Now eat your supper or it will get cold.”
She bent to her own plate, forcing herself to spoon down the stew and mashed potatoes although she was barely aware of their taste. Her throat ached and her stomach felt like stone.
She was barely finished when the doorbell rang. Both she and Gracie stopped, fear returning. Who could it be? For one wild moment Charlotte thought perhaps Pitt had been released and somehow lost his key; then she realized it was far more likely to be some neighbor seeking to confirm the worst, full of curiosity and spurious pity, or worse, another tradesman.
It rang again, more insistently this time.
She looked at Gracie.
“Don’t ’ave me answer it, ma’am!” Gracie said urgently. “Y’never know ’oo it is!” She stood up reluctantly. “Less’n I can ’ave yer word ter shut it in their faces if it in’t nobody good. I don’t say as I can be civil wiv ’em!”
“You have my permission,” Charlotte agreed. “Open it on the chain.”
“Yes ma’am.” And tightening her apron a little and gritting her teeth, Gracie disappeared up the passage. Jemima and Daniel stopped eating, and they all sat, ears straining to hear, as Grade’s heels clicked on the linoleum. There was a moment’s silence, the rattle of the chain on the door latch, a murmur of voices too indistinct to identify, then another rattle and returning footsteps.
Charlotte stood up. “Stay here,” she ordered.
“Who is it, Mama?” Jemima whispered. Daniel stared at her truculently, frightened and ready to fight.
“I don’t know. Stay here.” And Charlotte went out into the passage just in time to meet Jack Radley as he came, white-faced, ahead of Gracie. He put out his arms and she walked straight into them. He held her tight, saying nothing at all, and Gracie squeezed past with a little sniff of relief. She thought very highly of Charlotte, but it always needed a man to sort things out properly. Thank heaven one had come.
Charlotte disengaged herself reluctantly. She could not stand here pretending someone else could mend everything.
“Come into the kitchen,” she said. There was no fire in the parlor-Gracie had not even thought of it-and the weather was too bitter to take anyone into an unheated room. “Gracie, you’d better take the children up and get them ready for bed.”
“I haven’t had any pudding!” Daniel said with burning injustice.
It was on the tip of Charlotte’s tongue to tell him he would have to do without, until she looked at his face and saw the fear in it, blind, knowing only that she was frightened, too, and his world was threatened. She made an intense effort and controlled her own feelings.
“You’re quite right, and I forgot to make any. I’m very sorry. Will you accept a piece of cake instead, if I bring it upstairs for you?”
He regarded her with great dignity. “Yes, I will,” he conceded, and climbed down from his chair.
“Thank you.”
When they had gone she looked at Jack.
“I read it in the newspaper,” he said quietly. “For God’s sake, what happened?”
“I don’t know. A constable came this morning and told me Thomas had been arrested for killing a prostitute in Seven Dials. It must be Cerise. I bought a newspaper myself, but I haven’t had time to look at it yet. I daren’t take it out- Jemima can read. I’ll look at it this evening, and then put it straight into the stove.”
“I’d put it in the stove now,” he said, biting his lip. “There’s nothing in it you want to read. He went into Seven Dials to find the woman in cerise. He said he was told where she was by a running patterer-a man who sells news stories-and when he went into the house he was shown upstairs to her room. He says he found her dead, neck broken, and the people in the house say she was all right when they last saw her, and no one else went up except regulars, and they are all accounted for.”
“That can’t be true!”
“Of course it can’t! They’re lying, and I daresay well paid for it. But for the time being, they won’t be shaken. It’s going to take some work-but we’ll do it. Only this time we don’t have Pitt to help us.”
She sat down again on one of the kitchen chairs, and he took Gracie’s.
“Jack, I don’t know where to begin! I went to see Mr. Ballarat. I was sure he would be moving heaven and earth to find the truth, and all he did was talk to me as if I were a child, and tell me to go home and leave everything to him. Only I’d swear he isn’t going to do anything at all. Jack-” She hesitated, wondering if what she was thinking would sound hysterical to him, but what alternative did she have? “Jack, I think he wants Thomas to stay in prison. He’s afraid of him!” She expected disbelief and hurried on to explain herself. “He’s afraid of what Thomas will uncover that’s embarrassing to people who matter, the Yorks and the Danvers, or the people in the Home Office. Ballarat wants to sweep the whole lot under the carpet. He hopes if he says nothing it will all go away, and he’d rather that, and that someone should get away with treason and murder, than be the one who has to expose what everyone will hate! People can be very unjust, they can hate the person who makes them see what they would prefer not to, who topples idols and shows their clay feet. They blame them for the truth, and the responsibility it leaves us. We don’t often forgive those who destroy our illusions. Ballarat doesn’t want to be that person, and he will be, by implication, if Thomas discovers what Cerise knew. That’s why they killed her-it has to be!”
“Of course it has,” he agreed. He reached out across the table and took her hands, quite gently. It was in no way a familiarity, just friendship, and she found herself gripping him back, hard, hanging on. “Do you want me to fetch Emily?” he asked.
“Yes-please do. I don’t trust myself to go to the Yorks’.” She searched for an excuse. “You’ll have to tell her it’s family illness or something. I don’t know how you’ll explain knowing her, but you can scrape up a good lie before you get there.” The thought of seeing Emily was such a relief, almost like someone lighting a fire in a cold room. Perhaps she would even come and stay with Charlotte. They could work together, as they had done in the past on other cases, ones that mattered infinitely less than this.
“Then what would you like me to do?” he asked. “I’ve never tried detecting before, and this is a damn sight too important for amateurs, but I’ll do whatever I can.”
