Silence in Hanover Close (27 page)

Quickly she stepped back into the arms of a vine—and almost fainted with horror at the first instinctive thought that the clinging touch was human. She swallowed a shriek, realizing the truth, and with an effort pulled herself together and stepped out smartly, only to come face to face with Aunt Adeline. She swore under her breath, feeling idiotic and knowing her hair was disheveled, her cheeks scarlet.

“Are you all right, Miss Barnaby?” Adeline raised her eyebrows. “You look a little distressed.”

Charlotte took a deep breath. Only a really good lie would serve.

“I feel such a fool,” she began with what she hoped was a disarming smile. “I was trying to see a flower overhead, and I overbalanced. I do beg your pardon.” She put her hand to the trailing strands of her hair. “And then I got caught in a vine and I couldn’t get loose. But I haven’t hurt the plant.”

“My dear, of course you haven’t.” Adeline smiled bleakly, her eyes like brown velvet boot buttons. Charlotte had no idea whether the woman believed a word of what she had said. “I think perhaps it is time we had some tea. Shall I call Julian and Veronica, or will you?”

“I, er . . .” Without thinking Charlotte moved to block the path. “I’m sure they’ll come in a few moments.”

Adeline’s gaze was steady and skeptical.

“I wondered if it was bougainvillea,” Charlotte said abruptly. “Such a wonderful shade of cerise. Is that not the color you said you saw Veronica wearing one night?”

Adeline looked startled. “That was not Veronica.” For once she dropped her usually clear, fine voice, perhaps her most attractive feature. “I’m perfectly sure of that.”

“Oh, I must have misunderstood you. I assumed ...” Her words trailed away; she did not know how to finish. She had been trying to surprise something out of Adeline, while preventing her from going into the conservatory and seeing that wildly immodest embrace. And it was not only for Veronica she wished it, but for Adeline herself. Perhaps no one had ever held her so, or would do now.

“Oh no,” Adeline said with a tiny shake of her head. “Her walk was quite unlike Veronica’s. You can tell a great deal about a woman by the way she walks, and her walk was unique. There was a grace in it, a daring. She was a woman who had power and knew it—and yet, I think, she had much to be afraid of. If she were to allow herself to be afraid.”

“Oh,” Charlotte faltered. “Then—who?”

Adeline’s face reflected wisdom, pain, and the merest shadow of humor. “I do not know, Miss Barnaby, and I do not ask. There are many old loves, and old hates, that are better left unspoken.”

“You surprise me!” Charlotte’s words were suddenly sharp, almost accusatory. “I had thought you were more candid than that.”

Adeline’s plain, sensitive mouth tightened. “The time for candor is past. You have no idea what pain may lie behind these things. A little blindness can allow them to ease, where to speak may make answer inevitable.” She inclined her head towards the interior of the conservatory. “Now you have done your good turn for the day, Miss Barnaby. Either you will call Veronica, or I shall.”

“I will,” Charlotte said obediently, her mind in a whirl. Had Cerise been a lover of Julian’s? Did Veronica know, or guess; was that the ghost she was fighting—an old mistress? Was that why she allowed herself such abandon before an engagement was even announced, let alone a marriage?

If so, then who had killed Robert York, and why?

They were back to treason. Could it possibly be that Veronica herself was hunting her husband’s murderer? Could it be Julian who had killed Robert, and did she know it? Was that the terror consuming her—and what lay between her and Loretta?

“Veronica!” Charlotte said aloud. “Miss Danver says that tea will be served in a few minutes. Veronica!”

P
ITT CHOSE TO WALK
to Mayfair. It was not a pleasant day; a flat, gray sky closed over the city like a heavy lid and the wind scythed across the park, stinging his skin above his muffler. It crept into the space round his ears and its coldness hurt, making his body tighten against it. Carriages rattled along Park Lane but he saw no one on foot. It was too cold for pleasure; the street vendors knew there would be no business for them here where residents could afford to ride.

He walked because he was going to the Danvers’, and he was putting off arriving there as long as he could. Dulcie was dead, so there was no one left to ask about Cerise except Adeline Danver. Part of the chill inside him was guilt—Dulcie’s bright, frank face came back to his mind far too easily. If only he had taken the precaution of closing the library door before allowing her to speak! He still did not know which of her two remarks had caused her death—the mention of Cerise, or of the missing necklace. But Pitt’s investigation of Piers York’s affairs had proved him to be more than financially secure, and in spite of his remark to Dulcie, he did not seem to have claimed for the gems.

All inquiries into other friends of Robert York who might have acquired debt and turned to amateur burglary had also proved fruitless so far. Nor had Pitt succeeded in tracing many of the servants who had been employed in Hanover Close at the time, and dismissed soon after. The butler had taken a position in the country, the valet had gone abroad, the maids had disappeared into the vast mass of female labor in London and its environs.

He stopped; he was outside the Danvers’ house already. The air was damp, raw in the throat, with the sour smell of too many fires jetting smoke out into the leaden sky. He could not stand around like a vagrant. Someone held a thread that eventually wound back to murder. If he picked at it, teased it, he thought he might find an end lying with Adeline Danver.

She received him civilly, but with undisguised surprise. He had formed a very clear picture of her in his mind from Charlotte’s description; nevertheless he was taken aback by the sharp intelligence in her rather round eyes under their wispy brows. She was a plainer woman than Charlotte had implied: her nose was tip-tilted and narrow, her chin very receding. It was only when she spoke in a voice of remarkable timbre and diction that he saw her beauty.

“Good afternoon, Inspector. I have no idea how I might be of assistance, but of course I shall try. Please do be seated. I don’t believe I have ever met a policeman before.” She regarded him with open curiosity, as if he were some exotic species of creature imported for her entertainment.

For the first time in years Pitt felt self-conscious; he seemed all hands and feet and coattails. He sat down gingerly, trying to arrange himself with some neatness, and failing.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Not at all.” Her eyes never wavered from his face. “I assume it is about poor Robert York’s death? That is the only crime with which I have even the remotest connection—and believe the, it is remote. But I knew him, of course, although there are many others who knew him far better.” She smiled very slightly. “I suppose I have the advantage of being an observer of life, rather than a player, so perhaps I have seen something that others may have missed.”

He felt transparent, guilty of great insensitivity. “Not at all, Miss Danver.” He smiled very faintly. He was not at all sure he should try to be charming—he might end up making a complete fool of himself. “I approach you because I have a very specific question in mind, and you are the person in the house least likely to have any involvement with this event, and therefore to be embarrassed by it, or distressed.”

“You take trouble to be tactful,” she said with a slight nod of approval. “Thank you for not insulting my intelligence with an idle courtesy. What event do you imagine I may know of? I confess I cannot think what it might be.”

“Have you ever seen in this house, alone and not as an ordinary guest, a woman of striking appearance, tall, slender and very dark, wearing a gown of a vivid and unusual shade of magenta or cerise?”

Adeline sat motionless. She might not have been breathing but for the faintest stir of the fichu over her thin, almost bosomless chest.

Pitt waited, staring back at her bright brown eyes. Now there was no possibility of evasion between them. Either she would lie outright, brazenly, or she would tell him the truth.

Outside in the hall a clock struck eleven. The chimes seemed endless, until eventually the last one died away.

“Yes, Mr. Pitt,” she said. “I have seen such a woman. But there is no point whatsoever in your asking me who she is, because I do not know. I have seen her twice in this house, and to the best of my knowledge, I have never seen her anywhere else, either before or since.”

“Thank you,” he said gravely. “Was she wearing the same clothes on both occasions?”

“No, but it was a very similar shade, one darker than the other, as I recollect. But it was at night, and gaslight can be misleading.”

“Can you describe her for me, all that you do remember?”

“Who is she, Inspector?”

The use of his title set a distance between them again, warning him not to take her for granted.

“I don’t know, Miss Danver. But she is the only clue I have as to who murdered Robert York.”

“A woman?” Her eyes widened. “I assume you are suggesting something sordid.” It was a statement.

He smiled broadly. “Not necessarily, Miss Danver. I think there may gave been a theft, unreported because only Mr. York himself knew of it, and that this woman may have been the thief, or may have witnessed the murder.”

“You are full of surprises,” Adeline Danver conceded with an answering softness touching the corners of her mouth. “And you cannot find this woman?”

“Not so far. I have been singularly unsuccessful. Can you describe her for me?”

“I am fascinated.” She bent her head very slightly to one side. “How do you know she exists?”

“Someone else saw her, in the York house, also by gaslight.”

“And their description is not adequate? Or do you fear they are misleading you deliberately?”

Should he frighten her? Dulcie’s trusting face came back as sharply as if she had gone out of the library door only yesterday.

“Her description was very brief,” he said without moderating the blow at all. “But I can’t go back and ask her again because the day after she spoke to me she fell out of an upstairs window to her death.”

Adeline’s thin cheeks were white. She was well acquainted with tragedy. She was over fifty and had known many deaths, but none of them had left her untouched. Much of her life lay in the triumphs and the sorrows of others; it had had to.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “You are referring to Veronica York’s maid, I assume?”

“Yes.” He did not want to seem melodramatic, foolish. “Miss Danver—” He stopped.

“Yes, Inspector?”

“Please do not speak of our conversation to anyone else, even in your own family. They may inadvertently repeat it, without intending harm.”

Her eyebrows rose and her thin hands gripped the arms of her chair. “Do I understand you correctly?” Her voice was little more than a breath, but still perfectly controlled, beautifully modulated.

“I believe she is still here, somewhere—at times very close,” he replied. “Someone among your family, or your acquaintances knows where she is, who she is—and possibly what really happened on that night three years ago in Hanover Close.”

“It is not I, Mr. Pitt.”

He smiled bleakly. “If I thought it were, Miss Danver, I should not waste my time asking you.”

“But you think one of us, someone I daresay I am fond of, does know this terrible thing?”

“People keep secrets for many reasons,” he replied. “Most often out of fear for themselves, or to protect someone they love. Scandal can blow up out of sins that are very slight—if they catch the imagination. And scandal can be a worse punishment for some than imprisonment or financial loss. The admiration of our peers is a far greater prize than some realize—more blood has been shed for it than is seen, and more pain. Women marry men they do not love rather than be imagined to be unloved. People pretend all the time so that others will imagine they are happy. We need our masks, our small illusions; few of us can bear to go naked into the world’s gaze. And people will kill to keep their clothes.”

She stared at him. “What an odd person you are. Why on earth do you choose to be a policeman?”

He looked down at the carpet. It did not occur to him to evade, still less to lie. “Originally because my father was convicted for something he did not do. The truth has its uses, Miss Danver, and although it can be painful, lies are worse in the end. Though there are times when I hate it, when I learn things I would rather not have to know. But that’s cowardice, because we are afraid of the pain of pitying.”

“And do you expect it to hurt this time, Mr. Pitt?” she asked, her eyes on his face, her thin fingers picking very slightly at the lace in her skirt.

“No,” he said honestly. “No more man the murder already has done. What did she look like, Miss Danver? Could you describe this woman for me?”

She hesitated for a moment, searching her memory. “She was tall,” she said slowly. “I think quite definitely taller than average; she had a kind of grace short women cannot possess. And she was slender, not...” She blinked, grasping for the word which eluded her. “Not voluptuous, and yet she—no. Her voluptuousness was not in her shape but it was there! Quite definitely it was there; it was in the way she moved. She had passion, style, a kind of daring, as if she were dancing a great ballet along a razor’s edge. I’m sorry— do I sound ridiculous?”

“No.” He shook his head without taking his eyes from hers. “No, if what I guess about her is right, then that is a fitting analogy. Go on.”

“She had dark hair, black it seemed in the gaslight. I only caught the briefest glimpse of her face, and I remember she was very beautiful.”

“What sort of face?” Pitt pressed. “There are many kinds of beauty.”

“Unusual,” she said slowly, and he knew she was trying to picture the moment again, the gaslight on the landing, the vivid dress, the turn of the head till she saw the features. “There was a perfect balance between the brow and the nose, the cheek and the curve of the throat; it was all a matter of bones and a sweeping hairline. It was nothing ordinary, like arched eyebrows or a pouting mouth, or dimples. She reminded me vaguely of someone, and yet I am perfectly sure I had never seen her before.”