Or had she given the name of someone else who had?
“I’m so sorry she’s gone,” she said to Adriana. “But Aunt Vespasia told me it was peaceful. As if she had taken much laudanum, and simply gone to sleep.” Was that enough? It was a lie, of course. It was Pitt who had told her, but it was unimportant.
Adriana stared at her. “Would a double dose of laudanum kill you?”
Charlotte hesitated. What should she say? Should she evade the truth, or tell it, and see how Adriana reacted? She had to know. Pitt’s case might rest on it.
“No,” she answered levelly. “I believe it takes far more than that, several times a single dose.”
Everyone else in the restaurant seemed as if they were moving in slow motion as Adriana stared at Charlotte. She started to speak but her mouth was so dry her voice faltered. She tried again. “Several times?”
Charlotte nodded. “Apparently.”
“Then …” Adriana did not finish the sentence, but it was not necessary. They both knew what the end was.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said softly. “Perhaps I should not have told you. Would a lie, or at least an evasion, have been better?”
“No.” Adriana sat motionless for a few more moments. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat any more. I think I need to go home. Do you know who gave it to her? Was it Nerissa Freemarsh, do you think? Serafina was so distressed by her failing memory … her mind …” She did not complete the train of thought.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said honestly. “It might be considered an act of mercy by some, but the law would regard it as murder, all the same.”
“Perhaps she took it herself?” Adriana said desperately.
Charlotte knew that was not possible. Care had been taken to prevent that, but perhaps this was not the time to say so.
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “She was terribly afraid of being indiscreet and letting slip old secrets that might cause harm to someone who is still alive and vulnerable. I have no idea who that could be, or indeed if there even is such a person. Do you know?”
“No … she said nothing about anyone to me. I can’t think of a person …” Adriana spoke hesitantly, as if she was raking her memory for anything Serafina might have said.
“No one at all?” Charlotte pressed. Was she being deliberately and pointlessly cruel?
“Well, Serafina knew Lord Tregarron,” Adriana said tentatively. “Quite well, it seemed, from the way she spoke of it.”
Charlotte was puzzled. There had been the faintest flicker of amusement in Adriana’s eyes, gone again the next instant. Tregarron was at least twenty-five years younger than Serafina, if not more. Thirty-five years ago that might have mattered less, but then he would have been very young, no more than a boy, and she in her late thirties. That was ridiculous. Adriana must be mistaken.
“Could it have been someone else, whose name sounded like his?” she suggested. “Someone Austrian, or Hungarian, for example?”
“No, it was Tregarron,” Adriana insisted. “He visited her at Dorchester Terrace.”
“Then she could not have known him far in the past.”
“No. I must have misunderstood that.” Adriana looked at Charlotte’s plate and the unfinished dessert.
“Oh, I’ve had sufficient,” Charlotte said quickly. “Let us go. It was a delicious meal. I shall have to eat Croatian food again. I had no idea it was so very good. Thank you for all you’ve shown me, and for the pleasure of your company.”
Adriana smiled, her composure almost returned. “Didn’t your Lord Byron say that happiness was born a twin? Pleasures tasted alone lose half their savor. Let us go and find the carriage.”
Charlotte arrived home in the middle of the afternoon, a trifle earlier than she had expected. She had much more information to give Pitt but no conclusions, other than the growing certainty in her own mind that Serafina had known who had betrayed Lazar Dragovic, but for some reason had never spoken of it to anyone. Was that the secret she had been so afraid of letting slip? It made sense. At least to Adriana Dragovic, it still mattered passionately, and Serafina had always tried to protect Adriana, whether out of love for Lazar, or simply human decency. She would have known what that knowledge would do to Adriana.
Charlotte walked down the hall to the kitchen. It was too early for Daniel and Jemima to be home from school, but she was surprised to find the kitchen empty. Minnie Maude was not in the scullery either, nor was she in the dining room or the parlor. Could she be out shopping? Most of the household goods they required were delivered, and those that needed to be bought in person were bought in the morning.
Charlotte went up the stairs and looked for Minnie Maude without finding her. Now she was worried. She even looked in the back garden to see if she could have tripped and been hurt. She knew even as she did it that the thought was absurd. Unless Minnie was unconscious, she would have made her way back into the house, even if she had been injured.
She must be in the cellar; it was the only place left. But Charlotte had been home a quarter of an hour! Why on earth would Minnie Maude be in the cellar for that length of time? There was nothing down there that could take so long to collect, and it would be perishing cold.
She opened the door. The light was on-she could see its dim glow from the top step. Had Minnie Maude slipped and fallen here? She went down quickly now, holding on to the handrail. Minnie Maude was sitting on a cushion in the corner, a blanket wrapped around her, and in her arms was a small, dirty, and extremely scruffy little dog, with a red ribbon around its neck.
Minnie Maude and the puppy both looked up at her with wide, frightened eyes.
Charlotte took a deep breath.
“For goodness’ sake, bring it upstairs into the kitchen,” she said, trying to keep the overwhelming emotion inside her under some kind of control. Relief, pity, a drowning comprehension of Minnie Maude’s loneliness, and all the conflicting feelings for Adriana, and for Serafina, everything to do with need and loss churned in her mind. “And wash it!” she went on. “It’s filthy! I suppose one can’t expect it not to be, living in the coal cellar.”
Minnie Maude climbed to her feet slowly, still holding the dog.
“You’d better give it some dinner,” Charlotte added. “Something warm. It’s very young, by the look of it.”
“Are you going to put it out?” Minnie Maude’s face was white with fear, and she held the animal so tightly it started squirming around.
“I daresay the cats won’t like it,” Charlotte replied obliquely. “But they’ll just have to get used to it. We’ll find it a basket. Wash it in the scullery sink, or you’ll have coal dust all over the place.”
Minnie Maude took a long, shuddering breath, and her face filled with hope.
Charlotte turned away to go up the stairs. She did not want Minnie Maude to think she could get away with absolutely anything. “Does it have a name?” she asked huskily.
“Uffie,” Minnie Maude said. “But you can change it if you want to.”
“Uffie seems perfectly good to me,” Charlotte replied. “Bring her, or is it him, upstairs, and don’t put her down until you get to the scullery, or you’ll spend the rest of the day getting coal dust out of the carpets, and we’ll all have no dinner.”
“I’ll carry ’er ter the kitchen,” Minnie Maude promised fervently. “An’ I’ll see she don’t make a mess anywhere, I promise. She’s ever so good.”
She won’t be, Charlotte thought, not when she’s warm enough and properly fed, and realizes she can stay. But maybe that is better. “She’s your responsibility,” she warned as she held the cellar door open. Minnie Maude walked through into the hall, still holding the dog close to her, her face shining with happiness.
When Pitt returned home, late and tired, Charlotte told him very briefly about the dog, not as a question, but simply so he would not be surprised when he found the little animal in the scullery. Daniel and Jemima had both fallen instantly in love with it, so no further decision could really be made.
In the evening, alone with the parlor fire dying down and the embers settling in the hearth, Charlotte told Pitt what she had learned from Adriana.
“Are you sure she said Tregarron?” he asked, sitting a little forward in his chair.
