“Yes … yes he was.” Tallulah’s face creased with confusion and misery. “I saw him there myself….”
A waiter strode by, holding aloft a tray of chilled drinks in long-stemmed glasses which chinked as they touched each other. In the distance someone laughed.
Emily realized there must be far more to the story, something very ugly and very private. She did not ask.
“But you cannot say so,” she concluded the obvious.
Tallulah turned to her quickly. “I would if I thought anyone would believe me. I’m not trying to protect myself. I’d clear Fin in a second, if I could! But it wasn’t that sort of party. They were all taking opium, and that kind of thing. I was only there for about half an hour, then I left. But I did see Fin, although I think he was already too far gone to see me. The place was full of people, all laughing and either drunk or in a daze.”
“But you saw Finlay … definitely!” Emily said with conviction. “You weren’t drunk … or … or on opium?”
“No.” Tallulah took a shaky breath. “But, you see, when Papa asked where I had been, in front of Mama, and the servants, and Mama’s doctor … I said I had been somewhere else. No one would believe me now. They’d think I was just lying to protect Fin! And who wouldn’t think so? If I were them, that’s what I’d think.”
Emily would like to have argued, said something comforting, but she knew that Tallulah was right. No one would take her testimony seriously.
Tallulah looked down at her hands lying on her skirt. “Damnation!” she said fiercely. “Isn’t this a mess!” She clenched her fists. “Sometimes he’s so stupid I could hate him.”
Emily said nothing. She was thinking hard, searching for any thread she could grasp that might help. This was a practical problem. It would not be solved by indulging emotions, however justified.
“I remember I used to think he was marvelous,” Tallulah went on, as much to herself as to Emily. “When I was young he used to have such exciting ideas. He would invent games for us, turn the whole nursery into another world, a desert island, a pirate ship, the Victory at Trafalgar, or a palace, or the Houses of Parliament.” She smiled and her eyes were soft with the memory. “Or a forest with dragons. I’d be the maiden and he’d rescue me. He’d be the dragon as well. He used to make me laugh so much.”
Emily did not interrupt.
“Then of course he had to go away to school,” Tallulah went on. “I missed him terribly. I don’t think I’ve ever been as lonely as I was then. I lived the whole term time until he should come back home again. To begin with he was just the same, but gradually he changed. Of course he did. He grew up. He only wanted to play with boys. He was still kind to me, but he had no patience. All his dreams were forward and not backward to where I was. It was then I began to understand all the things that men can do and women can’t.” She looked across at a group strolling past, a man in a tall hat with a young woman on one arm and an older woman on the other with a magnificent feather-trimmed hat, but she did not seem to see them.
“Men can go to Parliament or become ambassadors,” she went on. “Join the army or the navy, become explorers or bankers or deal in stocks or imports and exports.” She shrugged dramatically. “Write drama, music, be philosophers or poets. Women get married. Men get married too, but only as an incidental. I realized that when I understood what Papa expected of me and what he hoped for Fin. He would like to have had more sons. Mama was always sorry for that. I suppose it was her fault.”
Emily had a suddenly bleak picture of family life at the FitzJameses’, a little girl realizing with a rush of coldness how small a part of her life was in her own control, how restricted her choices compared with those of her brother. Her mother’s success or failure depended on how many sons she bore, and it was not something she could help. Perhaps Tallulah would be the same … a failure. Only one thing of importance would be asked of her, and she might not manage to do it.
Emily’s own life was the same. She had married a man who wanted sons to carry on his title, but she had not felt the same pressure. She could not recall even doubting herself. But then she had had no brothers.
“Sometimes when Fin was home from school there’d be some terrible quarrels.” Tallulah was still staring into the distance, living the past. “Papa would call him into his study, and Fin would come out white-faced. But it was always all right in the end. Nothing terrible ever happened. I was very frightened at first. I remember I sat on the landing behind the stair rail and looked down into the hall, waiting for him to come out of the study, terrified he’d been beaten or something. I don’t know what I really expected. But it never happened. It was always all right.”
Someone laughed in the distance, but she barely seemed to hear it.
“Fin and Papa still made their plans. Fin went back to school, then to University, then into the Foreign Office. If this goes away without any scandal, he’ll be posted to a really good ambassadorship, probably Paris. He’ll have to get married first, but that won’t be difficult. There are dozens of suitable girls who’d be happy to have him.”
She took a deep breath and turned to look at Emily, her eyes bright with tears.
“I wish I could help, but I don’t even have any idea what I could do! He won’t talk about it to me, but I know he’s frightened. Mama won’t talk about it either, except to say it will be all right because he can’t be guilty and Papa will see that he isn’t blamed for something he couldn’t possibly have done.”
Emily had a picture of a frightened woman, loving her son but knowing startlingly little about him, seeing in her heart only the child she had known so many years ago. She did not see the present man who lived in a world outside her experience, with appetites beyond her emotional or physical imagination, a woman clinging to decency because it was what she lived by, perhaps even lived for. What did Aloysia FitzJames know of reality beyond her very handsome, safe front door?
No wonder modern, outrageous Tallulah could not speak to her or share her fears. It would be cruel and completely pointless even to try. Who did Tallulah talk to? Her society friends who were all totally occupied in seeking suitable marriages? The convention-defying aesthete set who sat up all night talking about art and meaning, the idolatry of the senses, the worship of beauty and wit? Jago? But he had time only for the poor. He did not see the loneliness or the panic behind her extravagant dresses and defiant face.
“We’ll do something,” Emily stated with absolute determination. “To begin with we’ll deal with this badge which they say is his. If he didn’t leave it there, then someone else must have, either by accident or deliberately.”
“Deliberately?” Tallulah stared at her. “You mean they stole it and put it there to try to get Finlay hanged?” She shivered in spite of the heat, which was now so intense there was a fine dew of perspiration on her brow and Emily could feel the muslin of her own gown sticking to her uncomfortably.
“Is that impossible?” she asked.
Tallulah hesitated only a moment. “No, no it isn’t,” she answered with a catch in her voice. “Papa has quite a few enemies. I’ve come to realize that more lately. They might want to strike out at him where it would hurt the most, and where he was most vulnerable. Finlay does behave like a fool sometimes. I know that.” She shook her head a little. “I think he’s half afraid of being an ambassador, and then going into Parliament, in case he doesn’t live up to all Papa’s expectations for him. It’s almost as if he wanted to do something to prevent it, even before he really tries. Not really,” she added quickly, with a fleeting smile. “Just at moments when he’s … when he has no confidence in himself. We all get times like that.”
“Who in particular?” Emily pressed, flicking her hand sharply to shoo a fly away.
Tallulah thought for a moment. “Roger Balfour, for one. Papa just about ruined him in a business deal with the army-over munitions, I think. Peter Zoffany. I used to like him. He told wonderful stories about living in India. I think he rather liked me too. I thought Papa might marry me to him, but then he used him to get to somebody else and there was a terrible row and I never saw him again. But Fin would never do anything like that.” She did not add any assurance, which made it the more absolute.
She looked at Emily with a frown.
“Does it matter who? All we could do would be tell the police. I wouldn’t mind telling Mr. Pitt if he comes again, but I wouldn’t tell that other miserable-faced man. I think his name was Tellman, or Bellman, or something like that. He looked at me as if I were a leper. He’d only think I was trying to protect Finlay anyway.”
“No, I don’t suppose it matters,” Emily conceded. “That club badge is the thing. If we could throw doubt on that, it would weaken this case a great deal.”
“But they’ve got it!” Tallulah protested. “What doubt could there be? It has Fin’s name engraved on the back. He told me. Anyway, I’ve seen it.”
“What is it like?” Emily asked quickly. “What is it like exactly? Do you remember?”
“Certainly. About that size.” She held her finger and thumb apart about three quarters of an inch. “Round.
