Bedford Square Page 5

  He smiled very slightly. “A beautifully phrased, most tactful one, which would not have meant much and not sounded like you at all,” he answered. “And I should think you had changed, which I should regret.” Then he colored faintly, as if he were aware of having been too outspoken.

  “I hope I’ve learned a little,” she said. “Even if I sometimes fail to put it into practice.” She wanted to remain at least a few minutes longer. Perhaps there was something she could do to help, if only she could think of it. But it would be horribly intrusive to ask questions, and Pitt would already have done so anyway. Why did she imagine she could do anything more?

  He broke the silence. “How are you? How is your family?”

  “Very well. My children are growing up. Jemima is quite tall ….”

  “Ah, yes … Jemima.” A smile touched his mouth again. No doubt, like her, he was thinking of Jemima Waggoner, who had married his only son, and after whom Charlotte had named her daughter. “They returned the compliment, you know?”

  “The compliment?” she asked.

  “Yes. They called their second son Thomas.”

  “Oh!” She smiled back. “No. I didn’t know. I shall tell him. He’ll be very pleased. Are they well?”

  “Very. Brandy is posted in Madrid now. We don’t see them very often.”

  “You must miss them.”

  “Yes.” There was a moment of deep loneliness in his eyes. He looked away, staring out of the window into the quiet summer garden, roses lush and heavy in the morning sun, the dew already evaporated from them.

  The clock ticked on the mantelshelf.

  “My mother remarried,” Charlotte said awkwardly.

  He dragged himself to the present and turned back to face her.

  “Oh? I … hope she is happy.” It was not a question; one did not ask about such things, it was far too personal and intrusive. One did not even speak about happiness or unhappiness; it would be indelicate.

  She smiled at him, meeting his eyes. “Oh, yes. She married an actor.”

  He looked mystified. “I beg your pardon?”

  Had she gone too far? She had meant to lighten the tension, and perhaps he had taken it for levity. She could not go back, so she plunged on. “She married an actor, rather younger than she is.” Would he be scandalized? She felt the heat burn up her cheeks. “He has a great deal of courage … and charm. Moral courage, I mean … to remain loyal to friends in difficulty and to fight for what he believes to be right.”

  His expression eased, the lines around his mouth softening. “I am glad.” For an instant, almost too short to be certain she saw it, there was passionate regret in his eyes. Then he took a breath. “I gather that you like him?”

  “Yes, I do, and Mama is very happy, although she has changed a good deal. She has the acquaintance now of people she would never have imagined knowing a few years ago. And I am afraid some of her earlier friends no longer call, and even turn the other way if they encounter her in the street.”

  A flicker of amusement touched his mouth. “I can imagine it.”

  The door opened and Lady Augusta Balantyne stood in the entrance. She looked magnificent, her dark hair piled in a great swirl on her head, the silver streaks making it look even more dramatic. She was dressed in lilac and gray in the height of fashion and wore a very fine amethyst necklace and earrings. She regarded Charlotte with cold distaste.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Pitt. I assume I am addressing you correctly?” This was a sarcastic reminder that when Charlotte had first entered their house it had been ostensibly to assist the General with some clerical work on his memoirs, and she had used her maiden name to disguise her connection with Pitt and the police.

  Again Charlotte felt the blush warm her cheeks. “Good morning, Lady Augusta. How are you?”

  “I am perfectly well, thank you,” Augusta replied, coming farther into the room. “I presume it is not mere civility which brings you here to enquire after our well-being?”

  This was an icy impasse. There was nothing to do but brazen it out. There was little room to make it any worse.

  Charlotte smiled brightly. “Yes, it is.” Everyone would know that was a lie, but no one could call it so. “It was only yesterday I realized that we were near neighbors.”

  “Ah … the newspapers,” Augusta said with immeasurable contempt. Ladies of breeding or gentility did not read the newspapers except for the society pages and the advertisements. And Charlotte might once have had an element of breeding, but she had married a policeman, and that had disposed of any pretensions to gentility now.

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows very high. “Was your address in the newspapers?” she said innocently.

  “Of course it was!” Augusta said. “As you know perfectly well, some unfortunate wretch was murdered on our doorstep. Don’t be disingenuous, Mrs. Pitt. It ill becomes you.”

  Balantyne flushed hotly. Like most men, he loathed emotional confrontations, and those between women most of all. But he had never flinched from his duty.

  “Augusta! Mrs. Pitt came to express her sympathy for our misfortune in that issue,” he said critically. “I assume she knew of it from Superintendent Pitt, not from the newspapers.”

  “Do you!” Augusta retorted with equal chill towards him. “Then you are very naive, Brandon. But that is your own affair. I am going to call upon Lady Evesham.” She turned to Charlotte. “I am sure you will be gone when I return, so I shall wish you good day, Mrs. Pitt.” And she turned with a swirl of skirts and went out of the door, leaving it open behind her.

  Balantyne went over and closed it with a sharp snap, to the obvious surprise of the footman standing in the foyer and holding Augusta’s cape.

  “I’m sorry,” Balantyne said with profound embarrassment. He did not offer any explanation or attempt to make better of it. Any candor between them would be shattered by such a denial of the truth. “It was …”

  “Probably well deserved,” she finished for him ruefully. “It was rather clumsy of me to have come at all, and I had no idea what I was going to say, except that I feel for you, and I hope you will consider me as your friend, regardless of what should transpire.”

  He looked thoroughly taken aback by such frankness, and acutely pleased. “Thank you … of course I shall.” He seemed about to add something more, then changed his mind. He was still deeply troubled, and there was another emotion more powerful beneath the surface anger or shame for Augusta’s behavior or for his own discomfort in the face of candor.

  “Actually, I did read the newspaper,” she admitted.

  “I assumed you did,” he said with the ghost of a smile.

  “It was a shameful piece! Completely irresponsible. That was what prompted me to come—outrage … and to let you know I am on your side.”

  He looked away from her. “You speak blindly, Mrs. Pitt. You cannot have any idea what may transpire.”

  He was not uttering some platitude. She was quite sure—from the stiffness in his body, the unhappiness in his face and the way he glanced away from her—that he feared something specific, and the anxiety of it underlay everything else he was able to think of.

  It frightened her for him, and her response was to defend him, instantly and without thought.

  “Of course not!” she agreed. “What kind of friend makes their support conditional upon knowing everything that will happen, and that there will be no unpleasant surprises and absolutely no inconvenience, embarrassment or cost?”

  “A great many friends,” he said quietly. “But none of the best. But this loyalty must run both ways. One does not allow friends to walk unknowingly into danger or unpleasantness, nor require of them a pledge, even unspoken, whose costs you know and they do not.” He realized he had overstated what she had offered, and looked deeply uncomfortable. “I mean …”

  She walked to the door, then turned and met his eyes. “There is no need to explain. Time has passed since we last met, but not so much as all that. We do not misunde
rstand one another. My friendship is yours, for what that may be worth. Good day.”

  “Good day … Mrs. Pitt.”

  Charlotte went straight home, walking so briskly she passed by two people she knew without even noticing them. She went in her own front door and straight through to the kitchen without bothering to take off her hat.

  The ironing was finished, and Archie was asleep in the empty basket.

  Gracie looked up from the potatoes she was peeling, the knife still in her hand, her face full of anxiety.

  “Put on the kettle,” Charlotte requested, sitting down in the nearest chair. She would have done it herself, but one did not go near even the cleanest stove when wearing a yellow gown.

  Gracie obeyed instantly, then got out the teapot and the cups and saucers. She fetched milk from the larder. She set the blue-and-white jug on the table and removed the muslin cover, weighted down all around with glass beads to keep it from blowing off.

  “’Ow was the General?” she asked, getting the tin of biscuits off the dresser. She still had to stretch to do it, standing on tiptoe, but she refused to put them on a lower shelf. That would be acknowledging defeat.

  “Very distressed,” Charlotte answered.

  “Did ’e know the man wot was killed?” Gracie asked, putting the biscuits on the kitchen table.

  “I didn’t ask him.” Charlotte sighed. “But I am afraid that he might. He was extremely worried about something.”

  “But ’e din’t say, I suppose.”

  “No.”

  The kettle began to hiss as steam blew out of the spout, and Gracie took the holder for it to pick it up, poured a little hot water into the teapot, swilled it out and threw it away down the sink. She put three spoonfuls of tea leaves into the pot and carried it back to the stove, then poured the rest of the water on. She filled up the kettle again as a matter of habit. One should always have a kettle of hot water, even in June.

  “Are we goin’ ter do summink about it?” she asked, carrying the teapot over and sitting down opposite Charlotte. The potatoes could wait. This was important.

  “I don’t know what we can do.” Charlotte looked across at her. Absentmindedly, she took off her hat.

  “Are you scared as mebbe ’e did do summink?” Gracie screwed up her face.

  “No!”

  Gracie bit her lip. “Aren’t yer?”

  Charlotte hesitated. What was Balantyne afraid of? He was certainly afraid of something. Was it simply more pain, more public exposure of his personal and family affairs? Every family has grief, embarrassments, quarrels or mistakes they prefer to keep unknown from the public in general and from their own circle of acquaintances in particular … just as one does not undress in the street.

  “I’m not really sure,” she said aloud, setting the hat on the table. “I believe he is a totally honorable man, but all of us can make errors of judgment, and many of us do foolish or rash things to protect those we love or feel responsible for.”

  Gracie poured the tea. “’Oo’s ’e responsible fer, the General?”

  “I don’t know. His wife, maybe any of the servants, perhaps a friend.”

  Gracie thought for several minutes. “Wot’s ’is wife like?” she said at length.

  Charlotte sipped her tea and tried to be fair. “Very handsome, very cold.”

  “Wouldn’t a’ bin ’er lover, would ’e, this corpse?”

  “No.” Charlotte could not imagine Augusta dissembling sufficiently to have a lover, let alone one who would be found dead on a doorstep.

  Gracie was watching her anxiously. “You don’ like ’er a lot, do yer?”

  Charlotte sighed. “No, not a lot. But I don’t think she would attack anyone without extraordinarily good reason, and I can’t think of anything that would make her kill someone and then not be perfectly prepared to call the police and explain herself—if, for example, she had caught him in the house attempting to steal, and he had turned on her.”

  “Wot if the General caught ’im?” Gracie asked, taking a biscuit.

  “The same. Why not call the police?”

  “I dunno.” Gracie sipped her tea also. “Yer sure ’e were upset about the body, not summink else?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then I s’pose as we’d better keep up wif everythink as the Master finds out,” Gracie said seriously.

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed, wishing they could know at least some of it before Pitt found out.

  Gracie was watching her, waiting for her to take the lead with some practical and clever plan.

  There were only two things in her mind: the sense of fear she had drawn from General Balantyne as he stood by the window in his morning room; and her sharp awareness that Sergeant Tellman, very much against his will and judgment, was attracted to Gracie. It was against his judgment because they disagreed about almost everything. Gracie considered herself to be very fortunate to work in Pitt’s house, to have a roof over her head, a warm bed every night and good food every day. She had not always had these things, or expected to. She also considered that she was doing a very important and useful job, and was appropriately proud of it.

  Tellman had profound feelings regarding the innate social evil of any person’s being servant to another. From that basic difference sprang a host of others on every subject of social justice and personal judgment. And Gracie was cheerful and outgoing by nature, while he was dour and pessimistic. They had neither of them yet realized that they shared a passionate sense of justice, a hatred of hypocrisy and a willingness to work and to risk their own safety to fight for what they believed in.

  “Sergeant Tellman is on the case,” Charlotte said aloud.

  “I don’t see as ’avin’ ’im ’elps,” Gracie replied, wrinkling her nose a little. “I s’pose ’e’s quite clever, in ’is own fashion.” This last was added half grudgingly. “But ’e won’t ’old no favors for generals an’ the like.”

  “I know he won’t,” Charlotte admitted, thinking of Tellman’s opinion of all inherited privilege. No doubt he was fully aware that in Balantyne’s time of office commissions were purchased. “But at least we have him.”

  “Yer mean like ter speak to?” Gracie was puzzled.

  “Yes.” A plan was rapidly forming in Charlotte’s mind, not a very good one so far. “He might be persuaded to tell us what information he has learned.”

  Gracie brightened. “Yer reckon? If yer asked ’im, like?”

  “I was thinking more if you asked him.”

  “Me? ’e wouldn’t tell me nuffink! ’E’d say sharpish as it were none o’ my business. I can see ’is face now if I started meddlin’ wif questions about ’is work. Tell me right w’ere to put meself, ’e would.”

  Charlotte took a deep breath and plunged in.

  “I had in mind more if he were to make his reports to Mr. Pitt at home, instead of at Bow Street, and perhaps when Mr. Pitt happened to be out.”

  “’ow are we goin’ ter manage that?” Gracie was nonplussed.

  Charlotte thought of Tellman’s face as he had looked at Gracie the last time she had observed them together.

  “I think that could be arranged, if you were to be very nice to him.”

  Gracie opened her mouth to argue, then colored very pink.

  “I s’pose I could be, if it was important ….”

  Charlotte beamed at her. “Thank you. I should be very grateful. Mind, I do appreciate it will take a great deal of careful planning, and it may not work every time. A little subterfuge may be necessary.”

  “A little what?” Gracie frowned.

  “A little more or less than the truth, now and again.”

  “Oh, yeah … I see. O’ course.” Gracie smiled back and took another sip of her tea, reaching for a second biscuit. In the laundry basket, Archie woke up, stretched and started to purr.

  When Sergeant Tellman had begun to work on identifying the body found on General Balantyne’s step he had naturally started at the mortuary. Looking at
corpses was part of his duty, but something he disliked intensely. For a start, they were naked, and it was an intrusion into a man’s decent privacy he was helpless to prevent. Tellman found it offensive, even though he completely understood the necessity. Secondly, the smell of dead flesh, formaldehyde and carbolic turned his stomach, and no matter what time of the year it was, the place always seemed cold. He found himself both sweating and shivering. But he was conscientious. The more he disliked a job, the less would he stint in doing it.

  However, even the most diligent examination taught him nothing he had not observed in the first few moments by lantern light in Bedford Square. The dead man was lean to thin, wiry, pale skinned where his clothes covered him, weathered where they did not, as if he spent much time in the open. His hands were not those of a laborer. He had several scrapes, as if he had fought hard to save himself, especially across his knuckles. He had been hit extremely hard on the head, killed with one blow.

  He looked, as nearly as Tellman could judge, to be in his fifties. There were half a dozen old scars of varying sizes. None of them looked to be from major injuries, just the sort of thing any man might collect if he had been involved in dangerous work or lived largely on the streets. There was one exception: a long, thin scar across the left side of his ribs, as though from a knife slash.

  Tellman replaced the sheet gratefully and moved to the clothes. They were well worn, rather grubby and uncared for. The soles of the boots were in need of repair. They were exactly what he would have expected of a poor man who had spent the day outside, and possibly the night before as well. They told him nothing.

  But the contents of the pockets were a different matter. Of course, the most interesting thing was the snuffbox, now in Pitt’s keeping. He was puzzled as to its meaning; it could be any of a dozen things, all more or less implicating General Balantyne. But Pitt had said he would look into that himself. A year before, Tellman would not have believed him, expecting him to protect the gentry from the just desserts for their own deeds. Now he knew better, but it still rankled.

  The only other thing that seemed relevant to the search for either his identity or that of the person who had killed him seemed to be the receipt for the three pairs of socks. Actually, he was surprised that a man in such circumstances should purchase socks from a shop which had its name on the paper. He would have expected him to buy them from a peddler or market stall. Still, the receipt was there, so he should follow it.