Callander Square (11 page)

He was received in the main withdrawing room. Campbell was standing by a blaze that burned halfway up the chimney; he was a heavy-chested man with rather a long nose, not ill-looking, but yet certainly not handsome. Such charm as he had lay in a dignity of bearing and a fastidiousness both of manner and of person.

“Evening, Reggie,” he said cordially. “Must be urgent to get you away from your fireside on a night like this. What is it, run out of port?”

“Sack a butler who’d let me do that,” Reggie replied, joining him over by the fire. “Filthy night. Hate winter in London, ’cept it’s a damn sight worse in the country. Civilized men should go to France, or somewhere. ’Cept the French are a lot of barbarians, what? Don’t know how to behave. Paris the weather’s as bad as here, and the south there’s nothing to do!”

“Ever thought of hibernating?” Campbell raised his eyebrows sardonically.

Reggie wondered vaguely if he were being laughed at; but it did not worry him. Campbell had a habit of jeering slightly at most things. It was part of his manner. Who knew why? People cultivated manners for a variety of reasons, and Reggie was hard to offend.

“Frequently,” he said with a smile. “Unfortunately things tend to need prodding and probing every so often, y’know. Like this wretched business of the bodies in the square; filthy mess.”

“Quite,” Campbell agreed. “But hardly our concern. Nothing we can do about it, except be more careful about servants in the future. Always give the girl some sort of help, I suppose, if it turns out the child was born dead. Find her a place in the country, where no one would know about it. That what you want? I’ve loads of relatives who could be prevailed upon.”

“Not quite,” Reggie sidled closer to the fire. Why on earth couldn’t the miserable fellow offer him a drink? He glanced at Campbell’s wry face, and found the blue eyes on him. Damn fellow knew he wanted a drink, and was deliberately not offering one. Nasty sense of humor, the honorable Garson Campbell.

“Oh?” Campbell was waiting.

“Bit anxious about the police,” Reggie avoided his stare and assumed an attitude of concentration, as if he knew something Campbell did not. “Nosing around the servants’ halls, you know. Don’t know quite how responsible these police are. Ordinary sort of chap, working class, naturally. Could start a lot of silly gossip, without realizing the harm it could do. Freddie agrees with me.”

Campbell turned his head to look at him more closely.

“Freddie?”

“Saw him yesterday,” Reggie said casually. “Pointed out what a nuisance it could be, for all of us, if the square got the reputation for loose behavior, immoral servants, general bad taste, and so on. Not good, you know. Don’t want to be the butt of a lot of gossip, even if it’s all supposition.”

Campbell’s mouth turned down at the corners.

“Take your point,” he said with a slight rasp. “Could be difficult. Even if people don’t believe it, they’ll pass it on. Find ourselves snubbed in clubs, laughed at.” His face darkened fiercely. “Bloody damned nuisance! Some idiotic girl who—” his anger died out as suddenly. “Way of the world. Poor little bitch. Still, what did you come to me about, except to commiserate?”

Reggie drew a deep breath.

“Commiseration’s not much use—”

“None at all,” Campbell agreed.

“Better to prevent it before it happens.”

Campbell’s face betrayed interest for the first time.

“What are you suggesting, Reggie?”

“A discreet word, with the butler or housekeeper, to speak to the rest of the servants. See that one or the other of them is present every time this police fellow interviews any of them. Get them to make sure nothing—foolish—is said. Natural enough, what? Not to let a young servant be bullied. Got to protect them, eh?”

Campbell smiled with harsh amusement.

“Why, Reggie, I never suspected you of such subtlety—or such common sense.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“My dear idiot, my household is already aware that loose talk would cost them their livelihoods: but I admit it would be an added protection to make sure a butler or housekeeper is present if this, what’s-his-name—Pitt—comes back again. Personally I think they’ll probably drop it after a reasonable show of trying. After all, to whom does it really matter if some servant girl has two children stillborn? It’s hardly worth raising hell in an area like this. He’ll know that he’ll find out nothing that matters, and offend a lot of people who could make life damned difficult for him, if he gives them cause. Don’t get yourself upset, Reggie. They’ll run around to give the impression of intent, then quietly let it die. Do you want a glass of port?”

Reggie took a moment for the idea to seep through him with its relief: then he realized Campbell had offered him the port at last.

“Yes,” he accepted graciously. “Thank you, very civil of you.”

“Not at all,” Campbell smiled to himself and walked away to the side table to fetch the decanter.

Augusta had noticed Christina’s indisposition; and at first she had thought nothing of it, beyond a natural sympathy. It was easy enough to eat or drink something which did not agree with one. Then on the appalling discovery of Christina in the arms of the wretched footman, Max, the incident came back to her mind with rather more anxiety. When the indisposition occurred again a week later, and she heard from the lady’s maid that Christina was to remain in her bed for the morning, she felt something considerably more like alarm.

She did not wish General Balantyne to know anything about it—he would be entirely useless if indeed there were such a crisis as her worst fears framed, and if there were not, there was no purpose in alarming him. They were at the breakfast table when she was informed, and after a moment’s silent panic, she thanked the woman civilly and bade her return to Christina and care for her, then she requested the general to pass her the orange conserve to spread upon her toast.

“Pity,” the general said quietly, passing across the jar. “Poor girl. Hope it’s nothing serious. Want to send for the doctor? Always ask Freddie to slip over, if she doesn’t want a fuss.”

“Nothing he can do for a chill on the stomach,” she replied smoothly. Heavens above, the last thing she wanted now was a doctor! “Charming as he is, he can’t change the weather. Lots of pestilence of one sort or another in the autumn. I shall have cook make her an herbal tea. That will do as much good as anything. No doubt it will cure itself in a day or two.”

He looked at her with slight surprise, but rather than argue, continued with his deviled kidneys, bacon, eggs, and toast.

When she had finished her meal, so as not to appear in a hurry and give the matter undue importance, she excused herself and went upstairs. If there were no reason for alarm, so much the better, but if her worst fears were valid—and she remembered with a cold shiver through her flesh the familiarity of that touch in the stillroom pantry, the ease with which the hands had caressed the silk bodice under the breasts—and it was indeed true, then she must think now what to do about it. If there were any hope at all of saving the situation, it lay in immediate action. Every additional day would make it harder.

And if she did not succeed—a lesser woman would have flinched even from the thought, but even her enemies, and she had several, would never have denied that Augusta had courage—there lay ahead for Christina little but endless unhappiness. To have an illegitimate child was a sin never completely forgiven by the society in which Christina moved, in which she had been brought up, and in which were all her friends, indeed the society which would enable her to have the only life for which she was fitted. It might be possible, with care and money dispersed in appropriate places, to create some fiction to take her away from London for the necessary period of time, have the child brought up on the country estate, adopted by some good serving woman. It would take skill, but it was not impossible: it had surely been done by others! Christina was not the first, nor would she be the last in this predicament.

If only that were all!

But there was Max: an ambitious and ruthless man. Of course she had realized from the day she had employed him that he was intent, above all things, on bettering himself. And she had thought that that would make him an excellent footman. Ambitious men were good employees; and so he had proved, in respect of his job; he was always immaculate, always punctual, always more than civil; indeed she had received many compliments as to his quality. But she blamed herself now for not realizing that his ambition would lead him to use any means that offered to advance himself, even to lying with his employer’s daughter. She did not delude herself for a moment that there was any affection involved—on either side. And she should also have known her daughter better, she should have seen the weakness in her, and protected her from it. What else were mothers for?

Max had forged himself a weapon. If he chose to use it, to spread gossip, gently, like slow poison, Christina would be ruined. No man of her own class would marry her, no matter what her dowry. There was always a surfeit of personable young women in the marriage market, and Christina possessed no special advantage; at least none that would outweigh the reputation of a trollop. To be high-spirited was one thing, to be a whore and to have borne a child to a footman was quite another. The only world she knew, or could cope with, would be as closed to her as the Bank of England.

Max must be silenced: not by bribery of any sort. Give in to him even once, and they would be hostage to him for the rest of their lives. It must be a counterthreat of equal magnitude. Not only for Christina’s sake, but for the whole family, for the general, and for young Brandy, as well as herself. If Brandy should fall in love, or even find agreeable some well-connected girl, what parents would allow their daughter to marry into a family whose blood bred such as Christina?

She was on the landing with her hand raised to Christina’s door when the worst thought of all came to her. She nearly fainted from the sheer horror of it. Max had been in their employ for six years. She sincerely believed that if such an appalling thing had happened before she would have known it—but what if she had not? And would the police believe it? Could they even afford to? Unless she was very much mistaken, that young man Pitt was of uncommon intelligence. He would pursue the matter, question Christina, perhaps even discover that it was Max, and draw from him all the sordid truth. What would he believe of the bodies in the square then? What did she herself believe?

She let her hand fall to the wood, and before Christina replied, she pushed the door open.

Christina was lying on the bed, looking pale and peaked, her features unusually sharp, her dark hair spread on the pillow around her.

Augusta felt a moment’s pity for her, then it passed and she forced her attention to preventing the far worse pain that threatened.

“Sick?” she asked simply.

Christina nodded her head.

Augusta came in and shut the door. There was no point in mincing words. She sat on the end of the bed and looked at her daughter.

“Is it an illness you have caught from Max?” she said, looking at Christina’s eyes.

Christina tried to look away, and failed. She was used to getting her own way, to charming or dominating everyone, but never since childhood had she succeeded with her mother.

“What—what do you mean, Mama?” she said stiltedly.

“There is no point in prevaricating, Christina. If you are with child, there is a great deal we have to do. I have no wish to frighten you unnecessarily, but I don’t think you have realized the seriousness of our predicament, if it is so.”

Christina opened her mouth, and closed it again.

Augusta waited.

“I don’t know,” Christina said very quietly. There was a shiver in her voice and she was having to struggle hard not to cry. It was only pride that prevented her, and the knowledge that her mother would not have cried.

Augusta asked the question she dreaded, but she would shirk nothing. She needed to know.

“Is this the first time?”

Christina stared, eyes enormous with indignant disbelief, and then horror as she realized what Augusta meant, what she was thinking. Her face was as bleached as the sheet.

“Oh, Mother! You can’t think I would—oh no!”

“Good. I did not think you would. But it is not what I think that matters, it is what the police think, or have enough cause to consider that they raise the possibility—”

“Mother—!”

“I shall deal with it. You will not see Max again. Until I have secured his silence, you will remain in bed. You have a chill. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mama,” she was too shocked and too frightened to argue. “Do you think—the police—I mean—?”

“I intend that they shall not know anything to think one way or the other. And you will do exactly as I tell you, to that end.”

Christina nodded silently, and Augusta looked at her pale face, remembering how she had felt for the first few weeks when she had been with child, with Christina herself. What a lifetime ago that seemed. Brandy had been a small boy, still in skirts: and his father had been younger, his face less lean, his body a few pounds slimmer, but just as straight, shoulders as broad and stiff. How could a man change so little? His voice, his manners, even his thoughts seemed all the same.

“It will pass,” she said gently. “It will not be more than a few weeks, then you will feel better. I shall have cook make you a beef tea.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Christina whispered, and closed her eyes.

Augusta racked her brains and her imagination for a way to make sure of Max’s silence, without at the same time giving him a weapon for future use. But by the following morning she had achieved no more than the elimination of all the impossibilities, and was left with little else. She was in an ill temper to receive him when Pitt arrived at a quarter past ten.

When she first learned that it was Max who had shown him in, a moment of panic seized her, then she realized that Max’s ambition would never allow him to waste his valuable knowledge by giving it to Pitt, who would pay him nothing for it, instead of first offering it to Augusta, who might pay him in all sorts of ways, only beginning with money, and progressing through advancement to heaven knew what avaricious heights.