Pentecost Alley Read online

  “How do you do, Mr. FitzJames,” she responded, looking at him with a far greater interest than she could ever have had, had Tallulah not confided in her his disastrous connection with the murder in Whitechapel. She tried to smile brightly, noncommittally, as if she knew nothing, but she could not help trying to read his face. He was handsome; he had a good nose, a wide mouth, and a broad, firm jaw. His hair was beautiful. It sprang back from his brow in thick, fair waves. It was the face of a man who would never be lost for female admiration. What uncontrolled appetite or unseen weakness had taken him to find a prostitute in Whitechapel, of all places? Looking at him across the family breakfast table, she thought how little of a person one sees in the inbred manners and the traditional dress, the neatly barbered hair.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Radley,” he replied without interest. “Morning, Tallulah. Have a good evening?”

  Tallulah sat down next to Emily and picked at a bowl of fruit, then set it aside and chose toast and apricot preserve instead.

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied noncommittally. He was not asking with any interest.

  Emily was offered smoked haddock or eggs and declined both. She too said toast would be sufficient. She must return home as soon as she decently could. It would be difficult enough to give a satisfactory explanation of her night’s absence as it was.

  “Where did you go?” Augustus asked Tallulah. His tone was not peremptory, but there was an underlying assumption in it that he would be answered, and answered truthfully.

  Tallulah did not look up from her plate.

  “To Lady Swaffham’s for dinner. Did I not mention it?”

  “Yes, you did,” he said grimly. “And you did not remain there until after two in the morning. I know Lady Swaffham better than that.”

  They had not mentioned the time they came in. Presumably two was the time he had gone to bed himself, and he knew she was not home.

  “I went on with Reggie Howard and Mrs. Radley to a literary discussion in Chelsea,” Tallulah replied, glancing up at her father.

  “At two in the morning?” His eyebrows rose sarcastically. “I think, madam, that you mean a party at which certain young men who imagine themselves writers sit around striking poses and talking nonsense. Was Oscar Wilde there?”

  “No.”

  He looked at Emily to confirm or deny the statement.

  “I don’t believe any of his set were there,” she said with complete honesty. Actually, she was not sure who his “set” were anyway, and she resented being put in the position of having to answer for Tallulah or make her a liar.

  “I don’t care for young Howard,” Augustus continued, taking another slice of toast and pouring himself more tea. He did not look at his daughter. “You will not go out in his company again.”

  Tallulah drew in her breath and her face hardened.

  Augustus faced his wife.

  “It is time you took her to more appropriate places, my dear. It is your job to find her a suitable match. This year, I think. It is past time you did so. As long as she does not jeopardize her reputation too far by wasting her time in loose company, then she is eminently eligible. Regardless of behavior, she will not remain so indefinitely.” He was still looking at Aloysia, not Tallulah, but Emily saw Tallulah’s cheeks flush with humiliation. “I will make a list of desirable families,” he concluded, and bit into his toast, his other hand reaching for his cup.

  “Desirable to whom?” Tallulah said hotly.

  He turned to her. There was not a shred of humor or light in his eyes.

  “To me, of course. It is my responsibility to see that you are well provided for and that you make a success of your life. You have everything that is necessary, except self-discipline. You will now apply that, beginning today.”

  Had she thought anyone was taking the slightest notice of her, Emily would have been embarrassed, but even Finlay seemed absorbed in what his father was saying. Apparently such total command did not surprise any of them. She did not need to look at Tallulah’s downcast head to know that Augustus FitzJames’s list of acceptable suitors for his daughter’s hand would not include the “Jago” she had referred to. The virtue she was so sure he possessed would not endear him to a socially ambitious father.

  Tallulah needed to do some very serious evaluating of her own desires, and some weighing of costs and rewards, if she were to have any chance of happiness.

  Emily looked across at Finlay, still eating toast and marmalade and finishing his last cup of tea. Any sympathy he might have felt for his sister did not register in his face.

  Without warning Augustus turned on him.

  “And it is past time you found a suitable wife. You cannot take up an embassy post of any importance unless you have a wife capable of maintaining the position. She should have breeding, dignity, the capacity to hold intelligent conversation without forcing her own opinions into it, and sufficient charm to appeal, but not so much as to cause gossip and speculation. Wholesomeness is preferable to beauty. Naturally her reputation must be impeccable. That goes without saying. I can think of a dozen or more who would be suitable.”

  “At the moment—” Finlay began, then stopped abruptly.

  Augustus’s face froze. “I am quite aware that at the moment there are other matters to be cleared up.” His face was tight and hard, and he did not look at his son when he spoke. “I trust that that will not take more than a few days.”

  “I should think not,” Finlay said unhappily, staring at his father as if willing him to look up and meet his eyes. “I had nothing to do with it! And if they have any competence at all, they will soon know that.” He said it as if it were a challenge, and he did not expect to be believed without proving it, and yet Emily heard the sincerity sharp in his voice.

  Tallulah ignored her unfinished toast, and her tea grew cold. She looked from her father to her mother, and back again.

  “Of course they will,” Aloysia said meaninglessly. “It is unpleasant, but there is no need whatever to worry.”

  Augustus regarded her with a world of contempt in his eyes and the tired lines around his mouth deepened.

  “No one is worried, Aloysia. It is simply a matter of dealing with things so that nothing unpleasant does happen as a result of … incompetence, or other misfortune we cannot prevent.” He turned to Tallulah. “You, madam, will deport yourself in a manner which raises no eyebrows whatsoever and gives no malicious tongues the fuel with which to spread gossip. And you, sir”—he looked at Finlay—“will conduct yourself like a gentleman. You will confine your attentions to your duty and to such pleasures as are enjoyed by the sort of young lady you would wish to marry. You might escort your sister. There are soirées, exhibitions and other appropriate gatherings all over London.”

  Finlay looked desperate.

  “Otherwise,” Augustus continued, “this matter may not be as easily contained as you would wish.”

  “I had nothing to do with it!” Finlay protested, a rising note of desperation in his voice.

  “Possibly,” Augustus said dryly, continuing with his breakfast. The discussion was over. He did not need to say so in words; the finality in his voice was total. Argument with it would have been useless.

  Tallulah and Emily finished the remains of their meal in silence, then excused themselves. As soon as they were in the hallway and out of earshot, Tallulah turned to Emily.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with distress. “That must have been dreadful for you, because I’m sure you know what he was talking about. Of course they will clear it all up, but it could take ages. And what if they never find out who it was?” Her voice sharpened as panic mounted inside her. “They never found the other Whitechapel murderer! He killed five women, and that was two years ago, and still no one has the faintest idea who he was. It could be anyone!”

  “No it couldn’t,” Emily said steadily. She was speaking empty words, but she hoped Tallulah would not know it. “That other failure had very little to do with this.�
� She believed Pitt could find the truth, but probably all the truth, which even if Finlay were as innocent as he claimed, might include a few facts about him which were embarrassing or painful, or both. The trouble with an investigation was that all manner of things were discovered, perhaps irrelevant to the crime, private sins and shames which it was afterwards impossible to forget.

  And when people were afraid they too often behaved badly. One might see them far more clearly than one ever wished. There was more to fear than simply a discovery of guilt.

  “It is probably someone in her daily life,” she went on very steadily, thinking even as she was saying it that Augustus FitzJames was not certain of his son’s innocence. Emily knew from the edge in his voice, the way he overrode his wife’s comfortable words, that a needle of doubt had pricked him. Why? Why would a man have so little confidence in his own son as to allow such an awful possibility into his mind?

  “Yes, of course it is,” Tallulah agreed. “I’m just upset because Papa is going to try to force me to marry some bore and become a bland, uninteresting wife sewing useless embroidery and painting watercolors no one wants to look at.”

  “Thank you.” Emily smiled at her.

  Tallulah blushed scarlet. “Oh God! I’m so sorry! What an unpardonable thing to say! I didn’t mean it like that!”

  Emily blinked at the blasphemy, but said frankly, “Yes you did. And I don’t blame you. Plenty of women spend their whole lives doing things they despise. I bore myself to tears sometimes. And I am married to a politician, and usually he is very interesting. I was bored last night because he has been so busy I have seen little of him lately, and I have done nothing to interest myself. I need a good issue to fight for.”

  Gradually the color subsided in Tallulah’s cheeks, but she still looked mortified.

  Emily took her by the arm and led her back up the stairs towards her temporary bedroom.

  “I have a great-aunt by marriage,” she continued, “who is never bored a day in her life, because she is always concerned with something, usually battling some injustice or ignorance. She doesn’t take on anything easy, so everything tends to last.” She could have mentioned that she had a mother who had just married a Jewish actor seventeen years her junior, and a sister who had married beneath her, to a man in the police force, and brought drama into all their lives by becoming involved in the worst of his cases. But just at the moment that would be tactless, not to mention overwhelming.

  “Does she?” Tallulah said with a flicker of interest. “Her husband doesn’t mind?”

  “Actually he’s dead, and he doesn’t count,” Emily conceded. “If he were alive that would make it harder. What about this Jago that you mentioned?”

  “Jago!” Tallulah laughed jerkily. “Can you see Papa allowing me to marry a parish priest in Whitechapel? I should end up with about two dresses to my name, one to wash, one to wear, and live in a drafty room with cold water and a roof that leaked. Socially I should cease to exist!”

  “I thought priests had vicarages,” Emily argued, standing at the top of the stairs on the bright sunlit landing with its yellow carpet and potted palms. A housemaid in crisp lace-trimmed cap and apron walked across the hall below them, her heels clicking on the parquet. There might be vicarages in Whitechapel, but they were still another world from this.

  Tallulah bit her lip. “I know that. But I would have to give up so much. No more parties. No more beautiful gowns, witty conversations that last all night. No more trips to the theater and the opera. No more dinners and balls and coming home in the dawn. I wouldn’t even be warm enough half the time, or have enough to eat. I might have to do my own laundry!”

  It was all perfectly true.

  “Do you want to change Jago into something he isn’t?” Emily asked her.

  “No!” Tallulah drew in her breath slowly. “No, I don’t. Of course not … I …” She stopped. She did not know what she meant. The decision was enormous.

  “No one gets everything,” Emily said softly. “If what you care for in him is that part which clings to his own values, then you have to accept all that goes with it. Perhaps it is time to weigh up exactly what life with him would mean and what life without him would be for you, and then decide what you really want. Don’t let it go by default. It is too important for that. It could be your whole life.”

  Tallulah’s curious face was twisted in self-mockery, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “There’s no decision for me to make. Jago wouldn’t even look at me in that way. He despises everything I am. It’s just a matter of trying to help Finlay through this, and I can’t even think of a way to do that. And then not letting Papa marry me to anyone too stultifyingly tedious.” She sniffed. “Maybe he’d marry me to someone very old, and they’d die. Then I can be a widow, like your great-aunt, and do as I please.”

  Below them the dining room door opened again and Finlay came out, walking quickly and a little angrily towards the front door.

  “Jarvis!” he shouted. “Where’s my hat and my stick? I left them in the stand last night. Who’s moved them?”

  A footman materialized, duly deferential.

  “Your stick is there, sir, and I took the hat to brush it.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” Finlay reached for the stick. “Well, fetch the hat, Jarvis. Why did you take it anyway? I don’t need a hat brushed every time I wear it.”

  “A bird unfortunately …” Jarvis began.

  Tallulah smiled in spite of herself and took Emily by the arm to guide her back to the room to make the necessary arrangements to have her own dress packed so she could take it with her on her return home.

  Emily made her farewells, then rode home in the FitzJameses’ second carriage, Augustus having taken the first. Her thoughts were engaged in Tallulah’s problems. Was it possible that Finlay was guilty?

  Why would he do such a thing? What was there about him that his father knew, or suspected, which made him so cold, so uncertain, and yet unhesitant to defend him?

  Or had she misread the emotions in his face? She had been an onlooker at one meal. Perhaps she was being foolish, absurdly overrating her own judgment.

  She wondered idly what Jago was like that he could have captured Tallulah’s dreams so completely. Apparently he was the opposite of everything she treasured in her present life. Perhaps that was it? Not reality at all, simply an enchantment with the idea of the different. Whatever it was, she liked Tallulah, liked her vividness, her ability to care, and the fact that she was teetering on the edge of dreams for which she would have to pay for the rest of her life. She was worthy of all the help Emily could give her. There was no decision to be made about that.

  When she arrived she thanked the FitzJameses’ coachman, alighted and went up her own front steps. The butler opened the door to her without raising his eyebrows.

  “Good morning, Jenkins,” she said calmly, walking in.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he replied, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Radley is in the study, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.” She passed him the package containing her dinner gown with instructions to give it to her ladies’ maid. Then, feeling a trifle odd in Tallulah’s muslin morning dress, she walked, head high, to the study to explain herself to Jack.

  “Good morning,” he said coolly when she opened the door. He was sitting at the desk with a pile of papers, a pen in his hand, his expression unsmiling. “I received your message. Rather incomplete. Where were you?”

  She took a deep breath. She found herself resenting the need to account, but she had known it would be unavoidable.

  “I accepted a ride to another party, and did not realize how late I had stayed. They were interesting people, and I met someone …” She still had not made up her mind whether to pass it off as help to a friend in trouble or enquiring into Pitt’s current case. Looking at Jack’s displeased face did not assist her. Whatever she said, it had better be something she could substantiate.

  “Yes?” h
e prompted, his eyes chilly.

  She must decide immediately, or it would look like a lie. He was not as easy to mislead as she sometimes wished. She had once assumed that his attention could be diverted by a smile, and she had been wrong.

  “I’m waiting, Emily….”

  “I met a young woman I liked very much, and she was in great distress because her brother has been accused of murder…. Thomas is investigating the case. I couldn’t leave it, Jack! I had to find out all I could about it … for her sake, and Thomas’s … and for the truth itself!”

  “Indeed …” He sat back in his chair, regarding her skeptically. “So you stayed the night in her home. What did you learn in this generous effort? Is he guilty?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she replied tartly. “Even I can’t solve a murder over breakfast.” She looked at him with a hesitant smile. “It will take me at least until dinner … maybe even longer.” And with that she met his eyes for an instant, saw the beginning of humor in them, then turned and went out, closing the door behind her.

  In the hall she gave a sigh of relief and ran swiftly upstairs to change.

  4

  AT THE TIME Emily was talking to Tallulah at the stairhead, and Finlay was taking his hat and stick from the footman and going out of the door, Pitt was sitting in a hansom on the far side of Devonshire Street with Rose Burke beside him. As the door to number thirty-eight opened and Finlay came out, she leaned forward, peering out of the side, her body stiff. She remained watching, her head turning very slowly to follow his path along the pavement until he disappeared around the corner of Upper Wimpole Street, then she sat back again.

  “Well?” Pitt asked. He did not know what he wanted her to say. If she identified him it would be the beginning of a very unpleasant gathering of facts for an arrest and prosecution. The FitzJames family would muster all its resources to fight back. There would certainly be accusations of police incompetence. Rose herself would be attacked and every attempt would be made to undermine her resolve, slander her character—which would not be hard—and generally discredit her testimony.