Thomas & Charlotte Pitt 29 - Death On Blackheath (13 page)

Later she had fallen in love, wildly and quite irresponsibly (so she told herself) with the handsome and charming Jack Radley. He had no profession and no inheritance at all. Everyone else had agreed with her that it would be a disaster, and in their first few years together Jack had done little but enjoy himself, and be excellent company. Then the ambition had seized him to do something of value, and he had fought very hard to win a seat in Parliament. Emily had been enormously proud of him, as indeed had Charlotte. He had more than justified their belief in him.

Young Edward’s inheritance allowed Emily to live extremely well, without using up what would rightfully be his when he reached majority. This was a little while in the future because he was roughly the same age as Jemima, who was now fifteen.

Emily kept a carriage for her personal use, and it was in that that she came to pick up Charlotte for their luncheon.

She came into the house in Keppel Street, barely glancing at its hallway, so much smaller than her own. Nor did she look at the stairs, which went straight up to the first-floor landing, not in the sweeping arc of those at Ashworth House, never mind those at their country seat, which could accommodate twenty guests without inconvenience.

Charlotte was still in the kitchen, giving Minnie Maude last-minute instructions for dinner, and warning her not to let Uffie steal the sausages, which he was presently creeping towards, imagining no one would notice him.

‘See that Daniel and Jemima have no more than hot soup when they come in from school,’ Charlotte added, picking up the little dog and putting him back in his basket. ‘And that they go straight upstairs to do whatever homework is assigned them.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Minnie Maude agreed, giving Uffie a stern look. He thumped his tail happily in reply.

Emily was looking extraordinarily dashing, wearing the very latest fashion in capes. It was double-breasted, with two rows of large fancy buttons down the front. It was very becoming and from the way she walked it was apparent that she knew it. The whole outfit was a mixture of blues and greens, an up-to-the-minute daring combination, frowned upon only a year ago. Her hat was positively rakish. She was younger than Charlotte, only just approaching forty, and had always been slender. Her fair hair had a deep wave to it, the finer tendrils curling delicately. With her porcelain skin and wide blue eyes she had a refinement approaching beauty, and she never failed to make the best of it.

Charlotte felt a little drab beside her, even though her skirt had the latest cut, with five pieces making the fullness fall very gracefully to the back. But it was an ordinary terracotta in colour. She would have added a cape, but she had little spare income to spend on memorable clothes she could not afford to be seen in next year, and the year after, and probably after that too.

She hugged Emily quickly and stood back to admire her. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said sincerely. ‘You manage to make winter look as if it is fun.’

Emily smiled suddenly, lighting her face, and only then did Charlotte realise that the moment before Emily had looked tired. She made no remark on it. The last thing any woman wanted to hear was that she did not look fresh. It was almost as bad as ill, and approaching the worst of all – old.

Charlotte reached for her hat, a rich brown ordinary felt one. It was nothing like as beautiful as Emily’s, but it did suit her richer colouring, and she knew it.

They had an excellent luncheon. As always, it was Emily’s gift. They had become so used to that over the years that they ceased to argue about it, even though since Pitt’s promotion Charlotte’s means were considerably improved. Still they were not in the same sphere as Emily’s.

They spoke of family matters, how their children were faring. Besides Emily’s son, Edward, she had a younger daughter, Evangeline. Children changed so rapidly there was always something to report.

They also spoke of their mother, Caroline Fielding, who had scandalised everyone by remarrying after their father’s death – and to an actor, of all things! Not only that, but he was very considerably younger than she was. Life had changed radically for her. She had a whole new set of occupations and issues to engage her mind and her emotions, and to worry about. She was happier than she had imagined possible.

‘And Grandmama?’ Charlotte said finally, over dessert. It was a subject she would have preferred to ignore, but it hovered between them unsaid, but with such weight that eventually she surrendered.

Emily smiled in spite of herself. ‘Nearly as appalling, as always,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Complaining about everything, although I think it is merely habit, and her heart is no longer in it. I caught her actually being nice to the scullery maid last week. I swear she’ll live to be a hundred.’

‘Isn’t she there already?’ Charlotte asked waspishly.

Emily’s eyebrows shot up. ‘For goodness’ sake, do you think I asked her? But if you did, then please tell me the answer. I have to have some hope to cling on to!’

‘What if she’s only ninety?’

‘Then say nothing,’ Emily responded instantly. ‘I couldn’t bear it – not another ten years.’

Charlotte looked down at the folded napkin and the empty plate. ‘It could be twenty …’

Emily said a word she would later deny ever having used, and they both laughed.

They rose from the table and had the carriage sent for, and agreed that a walk in Kew Gardens would be just what they would most enjoy.

The air was cold and bright, but with no wind at all it was very pleasant. Scores of other people seemed to have had the same idea.

‘I suppose you don’t get the opportunity to help Thomas with cases any more,’ Emily remarked, as they passed several very handsome trees. Neither of them bothered to read the plaques in front saying what they were, and which were their countries of origin. ‘All too secret,’ she added, referring back to Pitt’s cases.

‘Not much,’ Charlotte agreed. She heard the wistfulness in Emily’s voice. She even felt a little of it herself. Looking back, some of their adventures, which had been dangerous or even tragic at the time, now were softened by memory and only the better parts remained.

‘But you have to know something about them,’ Emily insisted. ‘Don’t you?’

Charlotte glanced sideways at her, just for a moment, and saw a hunger in her, almost a need. Then it vanished, and as they passed a couple of well-dressed women she smiled at them charmingly, full of confidence. The old Emily was there again, beautiful, funny, intensely alive, brave enough for anything.

‘It’s all very … shapeless,’ Charlotte relented and answered the question. ‘Thomas was called in because they found the body of a woman in a gravel pit up on Shooters Hill. For a little while they were afraid it might be Dudley Kynaston’s missing maid …’

Emily stopped abruptly. ‘Dudley Kynaston? Really?’

Charlotte had a sharp stab of misgiving. Perhaps she was breaking a confidence to have told Emily so much?

‘It’s confidential!’ she said urgently. ‘It could cause an awful scandal, quite unjustifiably, if people started to speculate. You mustn’t repeat it! Emily … I’m serious …’

‘Of course!’ Emily agreed smoothly, beginning to walk again. ‘But I know something already. Jack said Somerset Carlisle was asking questions in the House about Kynaston’s safety.’

‘Somerset Carlisle?’ Now Charlotte was intrigued, and touched with a cold finger of fear. She had not forgotten about Carlisle and the resurrectionists either. ‘What else did Jack say?’ she asked, attempting to keep the urgency out of her voice.

Emily’s mouth tightened and she gave an elegant shrug of her slender shoulders, but it was a tiny movement, as if her muscles were tight. ‘Not very much. I asked him because I know Rosalind Kynaston a little, and I suppose it would really be her maid, not his. But Jack didn’t answer me.’

‘Oh.’ It was a meaningless response, except to acknowledge that she had heard. Had she also understood? Was this one answer that closed Emily out, perhaps because Jack did not know anything more, or what he did know was in confidence? Or had he just not been listening closely enough to realise that Emily wanted an answer?

They walked for a few moments without speaking again. They passed exotic trees, palms whose structure was utterly unlike the oaks and elms they were used to, or the soaring, smooth-limbed beeches. On the ground there were ferns, almost like green feathers a Cavalier might wear on his hat, but far larger. Emily buried her hands in her muff, and Charlotte wished that she had one.

‘What is Rosalind Kynaston like?’ Charlotte said to break the silence before it grew too deep to disregard.

Emily gave a tiny smile. ‘Ordinary enough, I suppose. We spoke little about anything in particular. She’s older than I am. Her children are all married. She doesn’t see them very often. Army, or something, I think.’

‘There are hundreds of other things to talk about!’ Charlotte protested.

‘Gossip,’ Emily said tartly. ‘Have you any idea how boring that is? Half of it is complete rubbish. People make it up in order to have something to say. Who on earth cares anyway?’

It was mid-afternoon and the days were lengthening again. The sky was clear and the lowering light shone brightly and a little harshly on their faces. For the first time Charlotte noticed the very fine lines in Emily’s once-perfect skin. Actually they were the marks of laughter, emotion, thought. They were not unkind. They even gave her face more character, but they were lines none the less. She did not for a second doubt that Emily had also seen them. Of course they were there in Charlotte’s face too – more of them, a little deeper – but she did not mind. Did she?

Pitt was a little older than she, and time had touched him with a brush of grey at the temples. She liked it. She was beginning to find youth less interesting, even callow at times. Experience lent depth, compassion, a sharper value to the good things. Time tested one’s courage, softened the heart.

But did Emily see it that way? Jack Radley was remarkably handsome, and her own age. Men matured nicely. To some people, women simply got older.

As if reading her thoughts and taking them further, Emily spoke again.

‘Do you suppose that Kynaston was having an affair with the maid, and got her with child, or something? Then he had to get rid of her?’ she asked.

‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ Charlotte said with surprise. ‘She far more likely ran off with her young man.’

‘To a gravel pit, in the middle of winter?’ Emily said with an edge of sarcasm. ‘Have you lost your imagination? Or do you think I have? Or is this your way of telling me you can’t discuss it with me?’

Charlotte heard the hurt in her voice beneath the surface irritation. She wanted to turn and study Emily’s face more closely, but she knew that in doing that she would make an issue of something that was too delicate to force.

‘We don’t know that it was her body in the gravel pit,’ she said instead. ‘If it wasn’t, and we accuse a government scientist of what amounts to murder, we are hardly guarding the safety of the state. In fact,’ she added, ‘we are doing the enemy’s work for them.’

Emily stopped, her eyes wide. ‘Now that is a really interesting thought.’

Charlotte’s heart sank. Unquestionably she had said too much now. How could she get out of it? She had never been able to fool Emily; they knew each other far too well. Emily, the youngest of the three sisters, had always been the prettiest, possibly a little spoiled, and forever trying to catch up. Socially and financially, it was many years since she had overtaken Charlotte. The memory of their elder sister, Sarah, murdered in the terrible affair of the Hangman of Cater Street, was one Charlotte seldom touched. There was a pain of grief still left, and also regret over the stupid quarrels, and a nameless guilt that she was dead while Emily and Charlotte were alive, and happy. There was too much darkness in it, the kind of thick, heavy shadow that eats the light.

‘That’s all it is!’ she said, more sharply than she had intended. ‘A thought.’

Emily smiled, a sparkle in her eyes.

‘Anyway, the person who’s drawing attention to it is Somerset Carlisle, and he’s hardly an enemy of the country. Nor is he stupid enough not to understand what he’s doing.’

‘Maybe we could find out?’ Emily suggested.

Charlotte had no quick answer. She was trying to extricate herself from the difficulty she had created by raising the subject at all. She shivered very visibly. ‘Could we do it walking again? I’m freezing standing here.’

‘You don’t want to,’ Emily started to move, actually quite quickly, making conversation difficult. ‘Stop tiptoeing around me, Charlotte. You’re as bad as Jack.’

Charlotte stopped again, colder than she had been even the moment before. What was this about? No more involvement in detection? Being bored and losing interest in gossip and pointless parties just to fill the day, serving no larger purpose? Or was it really about Jack? Certainly it had little if anything to do with Dudley Kynaston or the body in the gravel pit.

Emily was still walking away, though she had slowed down. Charlotte hurried to catch up with her. There was no point in being subtle now; in fact it might only make things worse.

‘Do you really know Rosalind Kynaston?’ she asked a little breathlessly. She wanted desperately to help, and yet the slightest clumsiness would close off the opportunity, perhaps for a long time. She knew even as she was doing it that it might be dangerous, and Pitt would not approve, but she knew also that what she had thought was temper on Emily’s part was really pain.

They had known each other all the life they could clearly remember. Sharing was woven through all childhood. It was nothing to do with toys, lessons, dresses, books; it was memory. As little children they had run hand in hand. As girls they had shared secrets and laughter, quick squabbles. As young women there had been adventures, hope, falling in love, and heartbreak. Now, probably more than half-way through life, there would also be disillusion, coming to terms with other kinds of pain, inequalities that would always be there.

Emily shook her head. ‘Not very well, but that could be mended. In fact, it will have to be, if Jack takes a position with Dudley Kynaston. He’s likely to be offered it. It must be a promotion.’ And yet there was no lift in her voice, no excitement.