Highgate Rise (14 page)

“Bishop Worlingham,” Charlotte replied immediately.

“Bishop Worlingham! Augustus Worlingham?” The old lady’s eyes snapped sharp with interest; she leaned forward in her chair and thumped her black walking stick on the ground. “Answer me, girl! Augustus Worlingham?”

“I imagine so.” Charlotte could not remember Pitt having mentioned the bishop’s Christian name. “There surely cannot be two.”

“Don’t be impertinent!” But the old lady was too excited to be more than cursorily critical. “I used to know his daughters, Celeste and Angeline. So they still live in Highgate. Well why not? Very fortunate area. I should go and call upon them, convey my condolences upon their loss.”

“You can’t!” Caroline was appalled. “You’ve never mentioned them before—you cannot have called upon them in years!”

“And is that any cause not to comfort them now in their distress?” the old lady demanded, eyebrows high, searching for reason in an unreasonable house. “I shall go this very afternoon. It is quite early. You may accompany me if you wish.” She hauled herself to her feet. “As long as you do not in any circumstances display a vulgar curiosity.” And she stumped past the tea trolley and out of the withdrawing room without so much as glancing behind her to see what reaction her remarks had provoked.

Charlotte looked at her mother, undecided whether to declare herself or not. The idea of meeting people so close to Clemency Shaw was strongly appealing, even though she believed the person who had connived her death, whoever had lit the taper, was someone threatened by her work to expose slum profiteers to the public knowledge.

Caroline drew in her breath, then her expression of incredulity turned rapidly through contemplation to shamefaced interest.

“Ah—” She breathed in and out again slowly. “I really don’t think we should permit her to go alone, do you? I have no idea what she might say.” She bit her lip to suppress a smile. “And curiosity is so vulgar.”

“Perfectly terrible,” Charlotte agreed, rising to her feet and clasping her reticule, ready for departure.

They made the considerable ride to Highgate in close to silence. Once Charlotte asked the old lady if she could inform them of her acquaintance with the Worlingham sisters, and anything about their present situation, but the reply was scant, and in a tone that discouraged further inquiry.

“They were neither prettier nor plainer than most,” the old lady said, as if the question had been fatuous. “I never heard any scandal about them—which may mean they were virtuous, or merely that no opportunity for misbehavior offered itself. They were the daughters of a bishop, after all.”

“I was not seeking scandal.” Charlotte was irritated by the implication. “I simply wondered what nature of people they were.”

“Bereaved,” came the reply. “That is why I am calling upon them. I suspect you of mere curiosity, which is a character failing of a most distasteful sort. I hope you will not embarrass me when we are there?”

Charlotte gasped at the sheer effrontery of it. She knew perfectly well the old lady had not called on the Worlinghams in thirty years, and assuredly would not now had Clemency died in a more ordinary fashion. For once a suitably stinging reply eluded her, and she rode the remainder of the journey in silence.

The Worlingham house in Fitzroy Park, Highgate, was imposing from the outside, solid with ornate door and windows, and large enough to accommodate a very considerable family and full staff of indoor servants.

Inside, when they were admitted by a statuesque parlormaid, it was even more opulent, if now a little shabby in various places. Charlotte, well behind her mother and grandmother, had opportunity to glance around with a more lingering eye. The hall was unusually large, paneled in oak, and hung with portraits of varying age, but no plates underneath to tell their names. An instant suspicion crossed Charlotte’s mind that they were not ancestral Worlinghams at all, merely dressing to awe a visitor. In the place of honor where
the main light shone on it was by far the largest portrait, that of an elderly gentleman in very current dress. His broad face was pink fleshed, his silver hair grew far back on his sloping forehead and curled up over his ears, forming an almost luminous aureole around his head. His eyes were blue under heavy lids, and his chin was wide; but his most remarkable feature was the benign, complacent and supremely confident smile on his lips. Under this the plate was legible even as Charlotte walked past it to the morning room door.
BISHOP AUGUSTUS T. WORLINGHAM.

The maid departed to inquire whether they would be received, and Grandmama bent herself stiffly to sit in one of the chairs, staring around at the room critically. The pictures here were gloomy landscapes, framed samplers with such mottoes as “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” in cross-stitch; “The price of a good woman is above rubies,” framed in wood; and “God sees all,” with an eye in satin and stem stitches.

Caroline pulled a face.

Charlotte imagined the two sisters as girls sitting on a sabbath afternoon in silence, carefully sewing such things, all fingers and thumbs, hating every moment of it, wondering how long until tea when Papa would read the Scriptures to them; they would answer dutifully, and then after prayers be released to go to bed.

Grandmama cleared her throat and looked with disfavor at an enormous glass case filled with stuffed and mounted birds.

The antimacassars were stitched in brown upon linen, and all a trifle crooked.

The parlormaid returned to say that the Misses Worlingham would be charmed to receive them, and accordingly they followed her back across the hall and into the cavernous withdrawing room hung with five chandeliers. Only two of these were lit, and the parquet wooden floors were strewn with an assortment of Oriental rugs of several different shades and designs, all a fraction paler where the pile had been worn with constant tread, from the door to the sofa and chairs, and
to a distinct patch in front of the fire, as if someone had habitually stood there. Charlotte remembered with an odd mixture of anger and loss how her father had stood in front of the fire in winter, warming himself, oblivious of the fact that he was keeping it from everyone else. The late Bishop Worlingham, no doubt, had done the same. And his daughters would not have raised their voices to object, nor would his wife when she was alive. It brought a sharp flavor of youth, being at home with her parents and sisters, the callowness and the safety of those times, taken for granted then. She glanced at Caroline, but Caroline was watching Grandmama as she sailed up to the elder of the Misses Worlingham.

“My dear Miss Worlingham, I was so sorry to hear of your bereavement. I had to come and offer my condolences in person, rather than simply write a letter. You must feel quite dreadful.”

Celeste Worlingham, a woman in her late fifties with strong features, dark brown eyes and a face which in her youth must have been handsome rather than pretty, now looked both confused and curious. The marks of shock were visible in the strained lines around her mouth and the stiff carriage of her neck, but she had admirable composure, and would not give in to unseemly grief, at least not in public, and she considered this public. Obviously she did not recall even the barest acquaintance with any of her visitors, but a lifetime of good manners overrode all.

“Most kind of you, Mrs. Ellison. Of course Angeline and I are very grieved, but as Christians we learn to bear such loss with fortitude—and faith.”

“Naturally,” Grandmama agreed, a trifle perfunctorily. “May I introduce to you my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Caroline Ellison, and my granddaughter, Mrs. Pitt.”

Everyone exchanged courtesies and Grandmama fixed her eyes on Celeste, then changed her mind and looked at Angeline, a younger, fairer woman with mild features and a comfortable, domestic look. Grandmama swayed back and forth on her feet and planted her stick heavily on the carpet and leaned on it.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Ellison,” Angeline said immediately. “May we offer you some refreshment? A tizanne, perhaps.”

“How kind,” Grandmama accepted with near alacrity, pulling Caroline sharply by the skirt so she also was obliged to sit on the fat red sofa a step behind her. “You are as thoughtful as ever,” Grandmama added for good measure.

Angeline reached for the hand bell and rang it with a sharp, tinkling sound, and almost as soon as she had replaced it on the table the maid appeared. She requested a tizanne, then changed her mind and asked for tea for all of them.

Grandmama sank back in her seat, set her stick between her own voluminous skirts and Caroline’s, and rather belatedly masked a look of satisfaction with concern again.

“I imagine your dear brother will be a great strength to you, and of course you to him,” she said unctuously. “He must be most distressed. It is at such a time that families must support each other.”

“Exactly what our father the bishop used to say,” Angeline agreed, leaning forward a little, her black dress creasing across her ample bosom. “He was such a remarkable man. The family is the strength of the nation, he used to say. And a virtuous and obedient woman is the heart of the family. And dear Clemency was certainly that.”

“Poor Theophilus passed on,” Celeste said with a touch of asperity. “I am surprised you did not know. It was in
The Times.”
For an instant Grandmama was confounded. It was no use saying she did not read obituaries; no one would have believed her. Births, deaths, marriages and the Court calendar were all that gentlewomen did read. Too much of the rest was sensational, contentious or otherwise unsuitable.

“I am so sorry,” Caroline murmured reluctantly. “When was it?”

“Two years ago,” Celeste answered with a slight shiver. “It was very sudden, such a shock to us.”

Caroline looked at Grandmama. “That will have been when you were ill yourself, and we did not wish to distress
you. I imagine by the time you were recovered we had forgotten we had not told you.”

Grandmama refused to be obliged for the rescue. Charlotte was moved to admiration for her mother. She would have allowed the old lady to flounder.

“That is the obvious explanation,” Grandmama agreed, staring at Celeste and defying her to disbelieve.

A flicker of respect, and of a certain dry humor, crossed Celeste’s intelligent face.

“Doubtless.”

“It was very sudden indeed.” Angeline had not noticed the exchange at all. “I am afraid we were inclined to blame poor Stephen—that is, Dr. Shaw. He is our nephew-in-law, you know? Indeed I almost said as much, that he had given Theophilus insufficient care. Now I feel ashamed of myself, when the poor man is bereaved himself, and in such terrible circumstances.”

“Fire.” Grandmama shook her head. “How can such a thing have happened? A careless servant? I’ve always said servants are nothing like they used to be—they’re slovenly, impertinent and careless of detail. It is quite terrible. I don’t know what the world is coming to. I don’t suppose she had this new electrical lighting, did she? I don’t trust that at all. Dangerous stuff. Meddling with the forces of nature.”

“Oh, certainly not,” Angeline said quickly. “It was gas, like ours.” She barely glanced at the chandelier. Then she looked wistful and a little abashed. “Although I did see an advertisement for an electric corset the other day, and wondered what it might do.” She looked at Charlotte hopefully.

Charlotte had no idea; her mind had been on Theophilus and his unexpected death.

“I am sorry, Miss Worlingham, I did not see it. It sounds most uncomfortable—”

“Not to say dangerous,” Grandmama snapped. She not only disapproved of electricity, she disapproved even more of being interrupted in what she considered to be her conversation. “And absurd,” she added. “A bedpost and a maid with a good strong arm was sufficient for us—and we had
waists a man could put his hands ’round—or at least could think of such a thing.” She swiveled back to Celeste. “What a mercy her husband was not also killed,” she said with a perfectly straight face, not even a flicker or a blush. “How did it happen?”

Caroline closed her eyes and Grandmama surreptitiously poked her with her stick to keep her from intervening.

Charlotte let out a sigh.

Celeste looked taken aback.

“He was out on a call,” Angeline answered with total candor. “A confinement a little earlier than expected. He is a doctor, you know, in many ways a fine man, in spite of—” She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, a tinge of pride creeping up her cheeks. “Oh dear, I do beg your pardon. One should not speak ill, our dear father was always saying that. Such a wonderful man!” She sighed and smiled, staling mistily into some distance within her mind. “It was such a privilege to have lived in the same house with him and been of service, caring for him, seeing that he was looked after as such a man should be.”

Charlotte looked at the plump, fair figure with its benign face, a blurred echo of her sister’s, softer, and more obviously vulnerable. She must have had suitors as a young woman. Surely she would rather have accepted one of them than spend her life ministering to her father’s needs, had she been permitted the chance. There were parents who kept their daughters at home as permanent servants, unpaid but for their keep, unable to give notice because they had no other means of support, ever dutiful, obedient, ever loving—and at the same time hating, as all prisoners do—until it was too late to leave even when the doors were at last opened by death.

Was Angeline Worlingham one of these? Indeed, were they both?

“And your brother also.” Grandmama was unstoppable; her beadlike eyes were bright and she sat upright with attention. “Another fine man. Tragic he should die so young. What was the cause?”

“Mama-in-law!” Caroline was aghast. “I really think we—Oh!” She gave a little squeal as the old lady’s stick poked her leg with a sharp pain.

“Have you the hiccups?” Grandmama inquired blandly. “Take a little more of your tea.” She returned to Celeste. “You were telling us of poor Theophilus’s passing. What a loss!”

“We do not know the cause,” Celeste said with chill. “It appears it may have been an apoplectic seizure of some sort, but we are not perfectly sure.”