Dorchester Terrace (33 page)

Had Serafina somehow discovered that, and raised a fierce objection? Considering her own past, it would surely not be on moral grounds; possibly a concern for Nerissa’s reputation and the damage such an affair would do to it, if discovered?

Nerissa might misinterpret whatever Serafina said as a moral judgment, even a condemnation. If she loved Tregarron she would see it as her aunt ruining her last chance for love.

“Apparently Lord Tregarron called to see Mrs. Montserrat.”

Blantyre stiffened. “Tregarron? Are you sure?”

“Yes.” There was no avoiding it any longer. “And Mrs. Blantyre visited her often. But you know that.”

“They have been in touch, on and off, since that time,” Blantyre said quietly, “and the death of Adriana’s father is never spoken of. I don’t know how much Adriana remembers. I hope very little: just confusion and pain, and then of course the loss. Her mother was also dead. Serafina had no time for a child, especially one with extremely delicate health. Adriana lived with her grandparents until I met her. She was nineteen then, and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

“The shadow of tragedy gave her a haunting quality, a depth other women did not have,” Blantyre continued. “I would be grateful to you if you did not mention that time to her, unless it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the country. I can promise you that if she knew anything about Duke Alois, or about Tregarron, for that matter, she would have already told me, and I would have told you.”

“Of course I won’t mention it,” Pitt promised, “unless my hand is forced—and I can see no reason that should be. But I may have to ask her about her visit to Dorchester Terrace on the night Mrs. Montserrat died, in case she saw or heard anything that can shed light on her death.”

“Then you will do so when I am present.” It was said gently, but it was not a request. The power in Blantyre’s voice, the force of his emotion, filled the room.

“As long as you will not cause delays I cannot afford,” Pitt agreed. “Of course.”

Blantyre smiled very slightly, but there was a warmth in it. “Thank you. I am obliged.”

C
HARLOTTE HAD HAD A
delightful day with Adriana. Their friendship had become much easier and more fluid, and they laughed together often, over the amusing and the absurd.

Today they had been to an afternoon soirée. The singing had been very pleasant, but agonizingly serious. They had looked at each other in the middle of the performance, and had been forced to stifle giggles and pretend a sudden fit of sneezing had attacked them. An elderly lady of a very sentimental nature had been concerned for Adriana, and she had then been obliged to pretend she had suffered an unfortunate reaction to some lilies.

Charlotte had come to her rescue with a long and totally fictitious story about lilies at a funeral affecting her the same way. She had added to the verisimilitude of it by weeping, and everyone had praised her good nature and gentleness of heart—qualities she was perfectly sure she did not possess, as she admitted to Adriana later.

She had accepted the elderly lady’s admiration with a straight face, and she and Adriana had excused themselves hastily before they burst into giggles.

Charlotte had arrived home still smiling. She found Minnie Maude in the kitchen clearing away tea after Daniel and Jemima. There was a pile of crusts on the plate. She whisked them away very quickly when she heard Charlotte’s footsteps, swinging around to hide them with her body. Her eyes widened.

“You do look lovely, ma’am,” she said sincerely. “You should get another dress that same color of goldy-brown. There’s not many as can wear that.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said, but in her head she was wondering why Minnie Maude was not making the children eat their crusts. She would let it go today. It would seem churlish to make an issue of a
small thing after such a nice compliment. But next time she would have to say something.

“I shall be down for dinner, but I must change out of this gown. It is rather too much for the parlor, I think!” She laughed, and turned to leave.

“Can I ’elp yer, ma’am?” Minnie Maude offered. “Them back buttons, any rate.”

“Thank you. That would be a good idea.” Charlotte turned and allowed Minnie Maude to undo the top half dozen or so at the back of her neck. Then she started for the door again. She had reached the bottom of the stairs when she recalled that she had not asked Minnie Maude to set the table in the dining room. As she turned back, she saw Minnie whisk into the cellar with what looked like the dish of crusts in her hand.

She went up the stairs slowly. Was she not giving Minnie Maude enough to eat? The girl should not have to pick at crusts. There was plenty of food in the house, and she was more than welcome to have as much as she wished. She had settled in so well, Charlotte thought, in the way she performed her duties and with her extremely agreeable nature. She should make time to look into the matter more carefully.

But when Pitt came home he was clearly worried, and for the first time since the present case began, he wished to talk to her about it. After supper, when they retired to the parlor, she had barely begun to tell him about the soirée when he interrupted her.

“You know Adriana quite well now. You must talk to each other about many things. Does she ever mention Serafina Montserrat?” he asked.

She saw the earnestness in his face. This was not a question of polite interest.

“Only briefly,” she replied, trying to read his expression. “She was very saddened by her decline.”

“And her death?”

“Of course. Why are you asking, Thomas?”

“I need to know.”

“That means it has something to do with Special Branch.” The deduction was obvious. “So Serafina knew something of great importance, after all.”

She was so used to asking questions that the old habit asserted itself before she could think. She realized it too late. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to pry.”

He smiled. “Not at all, Charlotte. I asked you in the first place. I need to understand Adriana a great deal more than I do. Who better to ask than you? And I cannot expect you to give me the answers I need if I don’t tell you what the questions are.”

His eyes were gentle, and there was an oblique humor in his face. But she heard the emotion in his voice; Adriana was somehow tied into the case, and he could not tell her about the issue that kept him at work late into the evenings and stopped him from sleeping through the night.

“What do you need to know about her?” she asked. “She talks quite freely now. I hate breaking confidences, but you wouldn’t ask if it was not necessary.”

“Do you know when she first met Serafina Montserrat?”

Charlotte thought back to their conversations. “No. She speaks as if she has known her as long as she can remember.”

“As a child?”

“Yes. I think their encounter was brief, and at a time very painful to Adriana. They met again after Adriana was married, but I don’t think she ever knew her as well as she did in the last few months. Why?”

He ignored the question. “What does she say of her father?”

Charlotte felt increasingly uneasy. “Quite a lot. Not so much directly, but she mentions him in passing; she adored him, and she had already lost her mother when he died. He seems to have been brave, funny, kind, and very clever, and to have been devoted to her. He died when she was eight. She still misses him terribly. I suppose when you lose someone when you’re that young, you tend to idealize them a little, but if even half of what she recalls is true, he was a fine man. Certainly they were very close.”

Pitt’s face was bleak, his lips pressed close together for a moment. The sorrow his face showed worried her.

“He was,” he answered. “His name was Lazar Dragovic. He was a fighter for Croatian freedom from Austrian rule. He was the leader of a spectacular plot, which failed because he was betrayed by one of the conspirators. All of the others escaped but he didn’t. He was beaten and then shot because he would not give away the names of the others involved.”

Charlotte was stunned, even though she had known from the way Adriana had spoken of it that her father’s death had been tragic.

“I’m sorry. That’s terrible. But it was thirty years ago, and in Austria. Why does it matter to Special Branch now?”

“Serafina was there. She rescued Adriana from the scene,” he said simply.

“Adriana saw it?” Charlotte’s stomach lurched and knotted inside her. She thought of Jemima at eight, her face soft and innocent, her eyes unafraid. She ached to reach back in time and protect the child Adriana had been.

Pitt nodded. “It was Serafina who took her away. She left Adriana with grandparents.”

Charlotte had known Pitt long enough to make the leap of deduction. “Did Serafina know who betrayed Adriana’s father? Is that what you are afraid of? She knew, and she told Adriana, whether she meant to or not?”

“What I’m afraid of is that Adriana thought that Serafina herself did,” he admitted.

Charlotte sat frozen in her seat. She could see now why Pitt had looked so wretched. “You think Adriana killed her out of revenge?” she asked softly. “The poor old woman was dying anyway! She wouldn’t do such a thing! That’s horrible!”

“Her father’s death was horrible, Charlotte,” he pointed out. “He was betrayed by his own and—worse than that—from what my informant told me, Serafina and Dragovic were lovers. That’s the worst kind of betrayal. He was beaten and killed, in front of his child. I think that warrants final revenge.”

She thought of her own father, Edward Ellison; she knew him only as a rather stern man, affectionate but without the passion she believed was required in a revolutionary: a man prepared to suffer appallingly in order to change an injustice.

But then, how well had she known her father as a human being? She had taken him for granted. He was always there, calm, at the head of the table in the evenings, walking to church on Sundays, sitting by the fire with his legs crossed and a newspaper spread open. He represented safety: the comfortable, unchanging part of life; the things you miss only when, suddenly, they are not there anymore.

Adriana had lost that part of her life when she was only a child, and in a horrible way; soaked in blood and pain, right in front of her.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose I can imagine it easily enough.”

“But did Adriana think it was Serafina who betrayed her father?” Pitt persisted. “She can’t have known until very recently. Revenge like that is not content to wait thirty years. Think back; was there a time when you could see a change in her? Did she speak of Serafina at all? Even a chance remark in passing, a change in attitude, a shock of any sort. She can hardly have learned something like that without it affecting her profoundly.”

They sat still for several moments. Pitt glanced at the fire and put more coal on it. There was no sound from the rest of the house.

Charlotte went over every meeting in her mind, and recalled nothing. “I’m sorry …” She meant it. She was torn in her affection for Adriana, but she wanted to help Pitt find the truth. “She didn’t speak of Serafina often, and she didn’t show any intense reaction to her at all, except pity. Honestly, Thomas, I don’t think she remembers Serafina as part of her father’s death.”

Pitt did not immediately reply.

“Are you certain she would remember any details about it, after this length of time, even if she knew them then?” she asked softly. “And if so, wouldn’t she have seen the fear in Serafina, the fact that she was helpless and slowly losing her mind, as a far better revenge than a quick way out, falling asleep painlessly in her own bed and never waking up?”

“Possibly,” Pitt admitted. “But I’m not Adriana.”

Charlotte thought for several moments, recalling every time she had seen Adriana: from the first meeting at the musical performance through the afternoons they had spent together, talking, laughing, each sharing with the other memories of things that had mattered to them. She did not believe Adriana could have murdered an old woman, whatever she might have been guilty of in the past.

She looked up at Pitt. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t believe it, but that’s because I like her, and I don’t want to believe it. But I know people who plan murder don’t wear it in their faces, before or after. If they did, we wouldn’t need detectives; we would all be able to solve crimes very easily.”

“I seem to remember that you were rather good at solving crimes,” he observed.

“Out of practice,” she replied ruefully. “I don’t want to spy on Adriana, but I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” He reached forward and held out his hand, palm open.

She placed her hand in his, and he closed it gently.

C
HARLOTTE WAS IN THE
kitchen a couple of hours later when the telephone rang in the hall. She went to answer it. Emily was put through.

“Charlotte?” Her voice was a little tentative. “How are you?”

It was unquestionably time to accept peace, even if she had no idea what had prompted it. Had Jack said something to her? She would not ask; it did not matter at all.

“I’m very well, if a little tired of the cold,” Charlotte replied. “How are you?”

“Oh … well. I went to the theater yesterday evening and saw a new play. It was very entertaining. I though perhaps we could go see it together … I think you might enjoy it … that is, if you and Thomas have time?” There was a note of uncertainty in her voice that was out of character for her.

“I’m sure we can make time,” Charlotte answered. “It is very good
to take one’s mind from anxieties for a while. I imagine it will run for another few weeks, at the very least.”

“Oh …” The disappointment was sharp in Emily’s voice now. Clearly she had hoped they would meet sooner, and now she feared this was a rebuff. “Yes, I’m sure it will.”

The silence was heavy. How much could Charlotte say without breaking Thomas’s trust in her discretion?

“But even if Thomas cannot come at the moment, I would like to,” she said quickly. “It seems to be one of those plays worth seeing more than once. I can always take him to see it later.”