Callander Square (3 page)

“Good afternoon,” she said quickly. “Polly says you are from the police.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He respected her social embarrassment and explained his business as rapidly as possible, then asked her permission to speak to her servants as he had done in the other houses. It was granted hastily and he was almost physically bundled into the housekeeper’s parlor to conduct his inquiries safely out of sight. He began with the parlormaid Polly, to leave her free for her afternoon duties as soon as the first caller should arrive.

He learned nothing but names and faces; he would store them all in his mind, consider them, rule out the impossibilities. Perhaps the sheer tension, the presence of the police in the house, would frighten someone into indiscretions, mistakes. Or perhaps they would never find out what sordid affair, or private tragedy of love and deceit, lay behind the small deaths.

The Campbells and the Dorans were, as General Balantyne had said, not in residence at the moment. He passed the vacant house, ascertained that the reclusive Housmann did indeed employ only menservants, and it was after four o’clock when he knocked at the last door—that of Sir Robert and Lady Carlton.

It was opened by a startled parlormaid.

“Yes, sir?”

“Inspector Pitt, from the police.” He knew he was intruding, as it was the most inconvenient of all times to call, the time when the rigid etiquette of the social hierarchy was observed to the letter, the intricacies of rank, whether one called to visit, or merely left a card, whether calls were acknowledged, returned, who spoke to whom, and on what terms. To have the police at such a time was unforgettable. He endeavored to make his presence as inoffensive as possible. They could not have been taken by surprise. Backdoor gossip would long ago have reached them carrying his purpose, whom he had seen, what had been asked, probably even a minute description of him and an acute assessment of his precise social status.

The parlormaid took a deep breath.

“You had better come in,” she stepped back, surveying him with anxiety and disapproval, as if he might have brought crime in with him like a disease. “Come through to the back, we’ll find a place for you. The mistress can’t see you, of course. She has callers. Lady Townshend,” she added with pride. Pitt was ignorant of Lady Townshend’s importance, but he endeavored to look suitably impressed. The parlormaid saw his expression and was mollified. “I’ll get Mr. Johnson,” she added. “He’s the butler.”

“Thank you.” Pitt sat down where she pointed and she swept out.

At home Charlotte Pitt had attended to the ordering of her house, which took her no more than an hour, then had immediately dispatched her single housemaid to purchase a daily newspaper so that she might discover what it was that Pitt would not tell her. Previous to her marriage she had been forbidden by her father to read such things. Like most other men of breeding he believed them vulgar and totally unsuitable for women. After all, they carried little else but crime and scandal, and such political notions as were undesirable for the consideration of women, as well, of course, as intellectually beyond them. Charlotte had had to indulge her interest by bribery of the butler or with the connivance of her brother-in-law, Dominic Corde. She smiled now to think how she had loved Dominic in those days, when Sarah was still alive. The smile vanished. Sarah’s death still hurt, and the passion for Dominic had long ago cooled to friendship. She had been shocked and dismayed to discover she was in love with this awkward and impertinent policeman who had told her so disturbingly of a world she had never previously acknowledged, a world of petty crime and desperate, grinding poverty. Her own blind comfort had become offensive to her, her judgments had changed.

Of course her parents had been shaken when she had informed them she intended to marry a policeman, but they had accepted it with as good a grace as possible. After all, she was something of a liability on the marriage market, with her unacceptable frankness. She was handsome enough, in fact Pitt thought her beautiful, but she had not sufficient money to overcome her waywardness and her undisciplined tongue, devastating disadvantages in the eyes of any gentleman of her own station. Her grandmother had given up all hope and was dismally convinced poor Charlotte was destined to become an old maid. And there was the compensation of Emily having married a lord! And with the social stigma of a murder in the house, the Ellisons were no longer a family with whom one chose willingly to contract an alliance!

Pitt was a great deal firmer with Charlotte than she had expected; indeed, in spite of his being deeply and unashamedly in love with her, he was quite as insufferably bossy as all the other men she knew. She was amazed, to begin with, and even fought him a little, but in her heart she was quite glad of it. She had barely dared to admit it to herself, but she had been a little afraid that because of his devotion to her, and their previous relative social positions, he might have let her ride over him, bend his will to hers. She was secretly delighted to discover he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. Of course she had cried, and made an exhibition of both temper and hurt in their first quarrel. But she had gone to sleep with singing happiness inside her when he had come to her gently, taking her in his arms, but utterly and finally refusing to allow her her own way.

But he had never objected to her reading the newspapers, and as soon as the maid returned with the copy of today’s she scrambled through it, fingers flying to find some reference to a crime in Callander Square. She did not find it the first time and had to search more diligently before she discovered a small piece, barely two inches long, stating simply that two bodies of babies had been found in the gardens, and a domestic tragedy among the maidservants was suspected.

She knew immediately why Pitt had concealed it from her. She herself was newly expecting their first child. The thought of some servant girl, alone, desperate not to lose her livelihood, deserted by a lover—the whole thing was appalling. She felt cold at the imagining of it. Yet when she put the paper down she was already determined not to drive it from her mind. Perhaps she would be able to help the girl, if she were thrown out. It was a possibility: not herself, of course, she had no position to offer. But Emily! Emily was rich—and she had a deep suspicion she was also just a little bored. It was two years since her marriage also, and she had by now met all George Ashworth’s friends of any importance; she had been seen well dressed in all the fashionable places. Perhaps this would arouse her. Charlotte decided on the spot. This afternoon she would call upon Emily; early, so as not to collide with her more socially elite callers, and before Emily herself might be out.

Duly at two o’clock she presented herself at the front door of Emily’s London house in Tavistock Square.

The parlormaid knew her and admitted her without asking explanation. She was shown into the withdrawing room where there was a fire lit already and barely a moment later Emily herself came in. She was already dressed for her afternoon visiting; she looked magnificent in pale apple green silk with dark brown velvet ribbons. It must have cost more than Charlotte would have spent on clothes in half a year. Her face was alight with pleasure. She kissed her sister delicately, but with genuine warmth.

“Goodness, if you’re going to take up calling, Charlotte, I shall have to teach you what time to begin! It is not done to arrive before three at the very, very earliest. Ladies of rank, of course, later still.”

“I haven’t come calling,” Charlotte said quickly. “I wouldn’t think of it. I came to ask your help, if you can give it; and of course you are interested.”

Emily’s honey-colored eyebrows rose, but her eyes were bright.

“In what? Not a charity, please!”

Charlotte knew her sister too well to have come on such an errand.

“Of course not,” she said sharply. “A crime—”

“Charlotte!”

“Not to commit, goose; to help, when it is solved.”

Even Emily’s new sophistication could not hide her excitement.

“Can’t we solve it? Can’t we help? If we—”

“It’s not a nice crime, Emily, not a robbery or something clean,” Charlotte said hastily.

“Well, what is it?” Emily did not look disconcerted. Charlotte had forgotten how composed she was, how easily she adapted to the unpleasantnesses of life. Indeed, from the day she had decided she would marry Lord George Ashworth, she had accepted frankly that he had faults and that she might never eradicate more than a few of them, but she made her decision and settled for the bargain as it was. She had never complained. Although in truth Charlotte did not know if she had any cause.

“Goodness, Charlotte,” Emily prodded. “Is it so dreadful you cannot put tongue to it? I never before knew you at a loss for words.”

“No. No, it is merely very sad. Two babies’ bodies were dug up in the garden in the center of Callander Square.”

Surprisingly, Emily was shaken.

“Babies?”

“Yes.”

“But who would want to kill a baby? It’s insane.”

“A servant girl who was unmarried, of course.”

Emily frowned.

“And you want to find out who it was? Why?”

“I don’t want to find out who it was,” Charlotte said impatiently. “But if they were born dead, as seems well possible, perhaps you might be able to find her another position, if she were dismissed—”

Emily stared at her, thoughts flashing in her face almost as transparently as they crossed her mind.

Charlotte waited.

“I know someone who lives in Callander Square,” she said at last. “At least George does—Brandy Balantyne. His father is a general, or something. I’m sure they live in Callander Square. He has a sister, Christina. I shall have George introduce us; it can be arranged, with a little thought. Then I shall call on her,” her voice began to rise with excitement. There was a faint color in her cheeks and a set of determination about her head. “We shall discover the real truth. I can learn things the police never could, because I move in the right circles. They will speak to me. And you can speak to the servants; oh, the higher-up ones, of course—cook and governess, and the like. You won’t tell them you are a policeman’s wife, naturally. We shall begin immediately. As soon as George returns home I shall speak to him and he will arrange it!”

“Emily—”

“What? I thought you wanted my help. We cannot possibly know what is best to do if we do not know the truth. It is always best to know the truth, whether you then decide to dismiss it or to conceal it, or even to forget about it entirely. But if we do not know the truth to begin with, we can make the most unfortunate mistakes.”

Charlotte looked at Emily’s dancing eyes and every shred of common sense in her told her to refuse instantly.

“We shall have to be very discreet.” Common sense suffered a quick defeat.

“Of course!” Emily was withering. “My dear Charlotte, I could not possibly have survived in society for two whole years if I had not learned to say everything but what I actually mean. I am the soul of discretion. We shall begin right away. Go home and discover whatever you can. I don’t imagine you can be discreet, you never could; but at least don’t volunteer our plans. Mr. Pitt may not approve.”

That was an understatement of magnificence. Nevertheless, Charlotte stood up with every intention of obeying, a tingle of fear inside her, and a thin quiver of Emily’s excitement.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
Pitt went back to Callander Square, hoping to interview the servants in the last two houses, but it was not until the early afternoon that they returned from their long weekends in the country. Consequently it was nearly three o’clock when he was shown by the Campbells’ butler into the back parlor and, one by one, saw the rest of the servants. Of course they were expecting his questions—the news must have been virtually waiting for them on the doorstep in the shape of scullery maid, tweeny, or bootboy bursting with the events and their own rich interpretations of them.

Pitt learned nothing new, and he was ready to leave when he met the mistress of the house. The Honorable Garson Campbell was a younger son of a family of wealth and position, and he had maintained a lifestyle appropriate to it. Mariah Campbell was a pleasant looking woman in her late thirties, with broad, good-humored face and fine, hazel eyes. She had been busy unpacking and organizing her family, which, she explained hastily, comprised a son, Albert, and two daughters, Victoria and Mary. She showed considerable distress on hearing of the purpose of his questions. Apparently the gossip had not reached her, and she begged that he would be discreet enough that the children might not come to hear of it.

“I assure you, ma’am, I should not dream of introducing such a subject to a child,” he said honestly, although he forbore to say that if some child should mention the matter to him, he would not be averse to listening. He had usually found children much less affected by death than adults. And it was a rare child indeed that was not inveterately inquisitive, and would have extracted from the servants every last detail that was to be had, or even invented and embroidered upon.

“Thank you,” she said courteously. “Children can be—hurt,” she was looking out of the window, “and frightened. There is so much that is ugly. The least we can do is protect them from it as long as we are able.”

Pitt was of a totally different opinion. He believed that the longer you hid from the truth the less able you were to cope with it when it finally broke through all the barriers, like a dammed river, and carried away the careful structure of your life with it. He opened his mouth to argue, to say that a little at a time bred some tolerance to pain, a balance; but remembered his place. Policemen did not give advice in the upbringing of children to ladies who lived in Callander Square. In fact, policemen did not philosophize at all.

“I’m afraid, ma’am, that they may well hear it from the servants,” he said gently.

She frowned at him.

“I shall forewarn the servants,” she answered. “Any servant who mentions such a thing will lose his or her position.”