Cardington Crescent Read online

  “Good afternoon, Mr. March,” she said with forced cheerfulness. She felt like a fool and a philistine.

  He was startled and the brush jerked in his hand, but she had chosen a moment when it was still far from the canvas. He turned to look at her coldly. His eyes were surprisingly dark gray, and deep-set under the red brows.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt. Are you lost?” It was plain to the point of rudeness. He resented being disturbed and still more being placed where he was obliged to conduct a pointless conversation with a woman he did not know.

  She lost any hope of fooling him. “No, I came here on purpose, because I wished to talk with you. I realize I am preventing your work.”

  He was surprised; he had expected some silly excuse. He still held the brush in the air and his face was tight with concentration. “Indeed?”

  She looked past him at the picture. It was far cleverer than she had foreseen; there was a shivering in the leaves—an impression more than an outline—and just beyond the brightness of sunlight there was ice, wind that cut the skin, a sense of isolation and pain. It was as much the tail end of winter, with sudden frost that kills, as it was a herald of spring, and she felt it in the mind as well as the eye.

  “It’s very fine,” she said sincerely. She thought it was far too good for someone who merely wanted a representation of his possessions and would be blind to the artist’s voice illuminating it like flame. “You should exhibit it before you hand it over. It has the cruelties of nature, as well as the loveliness.”

  He flinched as though she had hurt him. “That’s what Emily said.” His voice was quiet; it was more a reflection to himself than a remark to her. “Poor Emily.”

  “Did you know George well?” She plunged straight in, watching his eyes and the curious, chiseled mouth. But she saw no alteration but sadness, no evasion.

  “No,” he said quietly. “He was a cousin, so naturally I have met him from time to time, but I cannot say I knew him.” He smiled very slightly. “We had few interests in common, but that is not to say I disliked him. On the contrary, I found him very agreeable. He was almost always good-natured, and harmless.”

  “Emily thought he was in love with Mrs. March.” She was franker than she might have been with someone else, but he seemed too intelligent to dupe and too perceptive to misunderstand her.

  He stared at the painting. “In love?” He turned the phrase over in his mind. “I suppose that is as good a term as any—it covers almost whatever you like. It was an adventure, something daring and different. Sybilla is never a bore—she has too much unknown in her.” He began to wipe the paint off his brush, not looking at Charlotte. “But he would have forgotten her after he left here. Emily is a clever woman, she knew how to wait. George was childish, that’s all.”

  Charlotte had known George for seven years, and what William March said was precisely true, and he had seen it as clearly as she.

  “But someone killed him,” she persisted.

  His hands stopped moving. “Yes, I know. But I don’t believe it was Emily, and it certainly wasn’t Sybilla.” He hesitated, still watching the spread-out hairs of the brush. “I would consider Jack Radley, if I were you. Emily is now a young and titled widow with a considerable fortune, and a most attractive woman. She has already shown him some favor, and he might be vain enough to fancy it could increase.”

  “That would be vile!”

  He looked up at her, his eyes bright. “Yes. But vileness exists. It seems we can think of nothing so appalling that someone somewhere hasn’t thought of it too—and done it.” His mouth twitched, and with difficulty he controlled it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pitt. I beg your pardon. I did not wish to offend you.”

  “You haven’t, Mr. March. As I am sure you could not have forgotten, my husband is a policeman.”

  He swung round, letting the brush drop, and stared at her as if part of him wanted to laugh at the joke on Society. “You must have great courage. Were your family horrified?”

  She had been too much in love to take a great deal of notice of anyone else’s feelings, but that seemed a peculiarly insensitive thing to say now to this man, whose wife had responded so fully and so publicly to George. Instead, she told him the easiest lie.

  “They were so pleased with Emily marrying Lord Ashworth they tolerated me really quite well.”

  But mention of George and Emily only brought back the sharp contrast with Emily’s present loss. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, and turned back to the cruel, sensitive painting.

  She was dismissed, and this time she accepted it, walking slowly back through the jungle of growth to the rest of the house.

  In the afternoon they were visited by the pink-faced curate. He made an embarrassed and rather abrupt apology for the vicar who, apparently, was unable to come in person due to some emergency, the nature of which was unclear.

  “Indeed!” Vespasia said with unconcealed skepticism. “How unfortunate.”

  The curate was a large young man of obvious West Highland origin. With the bluntness of youth, and perhaps some judgment of his own, he made no effort to embellish the excuse. Charlotte warmed to him immediately and was not surprised to observe that Tassie also seemed to find him agreeable.

  “And when do we expect this crisis to pass?” Mrs. March inquired coldly.

  “When our reputation is restored and we are not the seat of scandal anymore,” Tassie said instantly, and blushed as soon as the words were out.

  The curate took a deep breath, bit his lip, and colored as well.

  “Anastasia!” Mrs. March’s voice cracked like a whip. “You will excuse yourself to your room if you cannot guard your tongue from uncharitableness, let alone impertinence. No doubt Mr. Beamish has his reasons for not calling upon us to give us his comfort in person.”

  “I expect Mr. Hare will do rather better anyway,” Vespasia murmured to no one in particular. “I find the vicar peculiarly tedious.”

  “That is beside the point!” Mrs. March snapped. “It is not the vicar’s function to be amusing. I always felt you did not understand religion, Vespasia. You never knew how to behave in church. You have had a tendency to laugh in the wrong places as long as I have known you.”

  “That is because I have a sense of the absurd, and you have not,” Vespasia replied. She turned to Mungo Hare, balanced on the edge of one of the hard-backed, withdrawing room chairs and trying to compose his face to display the appropriate mixture of piety and solicitude. “Mr. Hare,” she continued, “please convey to Mr. Beamish that we understand his reasons quite perfectly, and that we are very satisfied that you should take his place.”

  Tassie sneezed, or that is what it sounded like. Mrs. March made a clicking noise with her tongue, excessively irritated that Vespasia should have contrived to insult the vicar more effectively than she herself had. How dare the wretched, cowardly little man send a curate in his place to call upon the Marches? And Charlotte remembered with renewed vividness why she had liked Aunt Vespasia from the day they had met.

  Mungo Hare duly unburdened himself of the condolences and the spiritual encouragement he had been charged with; then Tassie accompanied him upstairs to repeat it all to Emily, who had chosen to spend the afternoon alone.

  Charlotte meant to go up later and see if she could tap Emily’s memory for some observation, however minor, which would betray a weakness, a lie, anything which could be pursued. But as she was crossing the hall Eustace emerged from the morning room, straightening his jacket and coughing loudly, thus making it impossible for her to pretend she had not seen him.

  “Ah, Mrs. Pitt,” he said with affected surprise, his round little eyes very wide. “I should like to talk with you. Perhaps the boudoir? Mrs. March has gone to change for dinner, and I know it is presently unoccupied.” He was behind her, hands wide, almost as if he would physically shepherd her in the direction he wished her to go. Short of being unexplainably rude, she could not refuse.

  Charlotte found the room one
of the ugliest she had ever seen. It exemplified the worst taste of the last fifty years, and she felt suffocated by everything it symbolized as much as by the sheer weight of the furniture, the hot color, and the wealth of ornaments and drapings. It seemed to be expressive of a prudery that was vulgar in its very consciousness of the things it sought to cover—an opulence that was lacking in any real richness. It was difficult to keep the distaste from showing in her face.

  For once Eustace did not fling open the windows in his customary manner, and it was the only time when she would willingly have done it for him. He seemed too preoccupied with the burden of framing his thoughts.

  “Mrs. Pitt. I hope you find yourself as comfortable as may be, in these tragic circumstances?”

  “Quite, thank you, Mr. March.” She was confused. Surely he had not brought her to this room to ask her in private such a trivial question?

  “Good, good.” He rubbed his hands together and remained looking at her. “Of course, you do not know us very well. Nor perhaps anyone like us. No, no you wouldn’t. We must seem alien to you. I should explain, so that we do not add confusion as well to your natural grief for your sister. If I can help you at all, in the least way, my dear ... ?”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to say that she was no more confused than anyone else would be, but he hurried on, drowning her protest.

  “You must excuse Lady Cumming-Gould her eccentricities. She was a great beauty once, you know, and so she was allowed to get away with being outrageous, and I’m afraid she has never grown beyond it. Indeed, I think with age she has become more so—I know my dear mother finds her quite trying at times.” He rubbed his hands and smiled experimentally, searching Charlotte’s face to see how she responded to this information. “But we must all exercise forbearance!” he went on quickly, sensing disapproval. “That is part of being a family—so important! Cornerstone of the country. Loyalty, continuity, one generation to the next—that’s what civilization is all about. Marks us from the savages, eh?”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to argue that in her opinion savages had an excellent dynastic sense, and were intensely conservative, which was precisely why they remained savages instead of inventing and exploring things new. But again Eustace carried on regardless before she could begin.

  “And of course from your point of view poor Sybilla must seem most cruel and ill-behaved, because you will naturally take Emily’s part. But you know there was far more to it than that. Oh dear, yes. I am afraid it was George who pursued, you know—quite definitely George. And dear Sybilla is so used to admiration she failed to discourage him appropriately. It was ill-judged of her, of course. I feel obliged to tell her so, directly. And George should have been far more discreet—”

  “He shouldn’t have done it at all!” Charlotte interrupted hotly.

  “Ah, my dear!” Eustace’s face was lit with a smile of patience and condescension. He wagged his head a little. “Let us not be unrealistic. One expects girls of Tassie’s age to have romantic illusions, and heaven forfend I should wound her susceptibilities at so tender a stage in her life, when she is just on the brink of betrothal. But a married woman of Emily’s years must come to terms with the nature of men. A truly feminine woman has forgiveness in her nature for our foibles and weaknesses, as indeed we men have for the frailties of women.” He smiled at her, and for a moment his hand hovered warmly over hers and she was intensely aware of him.

  Charlotte was furious. There was something about him that brought back in a rush every patronizing word she had ever heard. She ached to wipe the complacence off his moon face.

  “You mean that if Emily had lain with Mr. Radley, for example, George would have forgiven her?” she asked sarcastically, pulling her hand away.

  She had succeeded. Eustace was genuinely shocked. She had preempted a subject he would not have put words to himself. The blood drained from his skin, then rushed back in a tide of color. “Really!” he spluttered. “I appreciate that you have had a grave shock, and perhaps you are afraid for Emily, understandably. But my dear Mrs. Pitt, there is no call for vulgarity! I shall do you the favor of putting from my mind that I ever heard you so forget yourself as to make such a vile suggestion. We shall agree never to refer to it again. You strike at the very root of all that is fine and decent in life. If women were to behave in that way, why, good God!—a man wouldn’t know if his son were his own! The home would be desecrated, the very fabric of Society would fall apart. The idea does not bear thinking of!”

  Charlotte found herself blushing, although as much from anger as embarrassment. Perhaps she was being ridiculous, and the movement of his hand really had been no more than sympathy.

  “I did not suggest it, Mr. March!” she protested, raising her chin and staring at him. “I merely meant that perhaps Emily expected as high a standard from George as she was prepared to adhere to herself.”

  “I see you are very inexperienced, Mrs. Pitt, and somewhat romantic.” Eustace shook his head knowingly, but his expression eased out into a smile again. “Women are quite different from men, my dear, quite different! We have our corresponding virtues of intellect, manliness and courage.” Unconsciously he flexed the muscles of his arm. “A man’s brain is a far more powerful thing than a woman’s.” His eyes roamed gently and with pleasure over her neck and bosom. “Think what we have achieved for humanity, in every way. But if a woman does not have modesty, patience and chastity, a sweet disposition, what is she? Indeed, what is the whole world without the influence of our wives and mothers? A sea of barbarism, Mrs. Pitt—that is what it is.” He stared at her, and she met his gaze unflinchingly.

  “Was that what you wished to say to me, Mr. March?” she asked.

  “Ah, no, er ...” He seemed thrown off balance and blinked rapidly; he had lost the thread of his thought entirely, and she gave him no assistance.

  “I merely wished to make sure that you were comfortable,” he said at last. “We must present a united face to the world. You are one of us, my dear, through poor Emily. We must do what is best for the family. It is not a time for selfishness. I am sure you understand that.”

  “Oh, absolutely, Mr. March,” she agreed, staring solemnly at him. “I shall not forget my family loyalties, you may be assured.”

  He smiled with a gust of relief, apparently forgetting that Thomas Pitt was her most immediate relative. “Excellent. Of course you will not. Now I must leave you time to change for dinner, and perhaps to visit poor Emily. I am sure you will be an enormous help to her. Ha!”

  After dinner the ladies withdrew from the dining room, to be followed quite soon by the gentlemen. Conversation was stilted, because Emily had joined them for the first time since George’s death and no one knew what to say. To speak of the murder seemed needlessly cruel, and yet to converse as if it had not happened deformed all other subjects into such artificiality as to be grotesque. Consequently Charlotte rose at a little after nine and excused herself, saying she wished to retire early and was sure they would understand. Emily went with her, much to everyone’s relief. Charlotte imagined she could hear the sigh of exhaled breath as she closed the door behind them, and people sank a little more easily into their chairs.

  She woke in the night, thinking she had heard Emily moving about next door, and she was anxious in case her sister was too distressed to sleep. Perhaps she should go to her.

  She sat up and was about to reach for a shawl when she realized the noise was from a different direction, more towards the stairs. Why should Emily go downstairs at this time of night?

  She slipped out of bed and, without fumbling for slippers, went to the door, opened it, and crept out and along to the main landing. She had put her head round the corner before she saw what it was in the gaslight at the head of the stairs; she froze as if the breath had been snatched from her and her skin doused in cold water.

  Tassie March was coming up the stairs, her face calm and weary, but with a serenity unlike anything Charlotte had seen in her before.
The restlessness was gone, all the tension released. Her hands were held out in front of her, sleeves crumpled, smears of blood on the cuffs, and a dark stain near the hem of her skirt.

  She reached the top of the stairs just as Charlotte realized her own position and shrank back into the shadows. Tassie passed on tiptoe less than a yard away from her, still with that unhurried smile, leaving a heavy, sickly, and quite unmistakable odor behind her. No one who had smelled fresh blood could ever forget it.

  Charlotte went back to her room, shivering uncontrollably, and was sick.

  7

  EMILY WOKE EARLY the next morning. It was the day of George’s funeral. She felt cold immediately, and the white light on the ceiling was bleak, without warmth or color in it. She was filled with the kind of misery that is edged with anger and intolerable loneliness. This would make it all final. Not, of course, that it was not final anyway. George was dead, there was no going back or recapturing anything of the past warmth, except in memory. But a funeral, a burial, made it certain in the mind, took the immediacy out of it, and relegated the man to the past.

  She hunched up under the blankets, but there was no comfort in it. It was too early to get up, and anyway she did not want to see other people. They would be full of their own business, making a show of it, thinking what hat to wear, how to behave, how they looked. And above all they would be watching her, suspiciously. Most of them believed she had killed George, deliberately crept into old Mrs. March’s room, stolen her digitalis, and slipped it into the coffeepot.

  Except one. One of them would know she had not—because that one had. And that person was prepared to see her suspected, perhaps charged—even tried, and ... She let her thoughts continue, even though it was stupid, self-inflicted pain. And yet she went on, visualizing the courtroom, herself in drab prison dress, hair screwed back, face white and hollow-eyed, the jury that could not look at her, the odd women among the spectators whose eyes reflected pity—perhaps who had suffered the same rejection, or felt they had. Then the verdict, and the judge with a face like stone, reaching for the black cap.