Farrier's Lane (20 page)

“I know what I found out. Nothing at all. Godman was seen coming out of Farriers’ Lane with blood on his coat, and identified by a flower seller in Soho Square, two streets away. He didn’t even deny that, just the actual time, and that was proved to be a lie. Sorry, my love, but it looks incontestable that he did it. I know you would like him to be innocent, because of Tamar Macaulay, but it seems he can’t be.”

“Then why are the Inner Circle telling you to leave it alone?” she demanded. “If there’s nothing to find out, why
should they mind if you look?” She wriggled a little lower and knew Pitt was smiling in the darkness beside her. “In fact,” she added, “they should be very glad if you prove they were right!”

He said nothing, but reached over with his arm and touched her hair gently.

“Except perhaps they aren’t,” she went on. “Are you going to leave it?”

“I am going to sleep,” he said comfortably.

“But is the Farriers’ Lane case really closed, Thomas?” she persisted.

“For tonight—yes!”

“But tomorrow?”

He pulled her closer, laughing, and she was obliged to leave the matter.

    In the morning Pitt ate a hurried breakfast, having woken late, and then kissed Charlotte long and gently, and left at a run to take an omnibus to see the medical examiner again.

Charlotte set about the small chores of the day, beginning with a pile of ironing, while Gracie washed the breakfast dishes and then cleaned and blacked the grate in the parlor, laid the fire for the evening, swept the floor and dusted, and made the beds.

At eleven o’clock they both stopped for a cup of tea and a chance to gossip.

“Is the master still on the case o’ the man wot was crucified in the stable yard?” Gracie asked with an elaborately casual air, stirring her tea in apparent concentration.

“I’m not really sure,” Charlotte replied without any pretense at all. “You haven’t any sugar!”

Gracie grinned and stopped stirring. “Won’t ’e tell you nuffing?”

“Oh yes—but the more he looks into it, the less it seems as if Judge Stafford could have found out anything new about it. And if he didn’t, then there isn’t any reason why anybody from that case should have killed him.”

“Then ’oo did? ’Is wife?” Gracie was transparently disappointed.
Domestic murder was so much less interesting, especially if it were simply a matter of an affair, and the other party involved was known to them, and not really scandalous.

“I suppose so, or Mr. Pryce.”

Gracie stared at her, ignoring her tea.

“What’s wrong, ma’am? Don’t you think that’s ’oo did it?”

Charlotte smiled. “I don’t know. I suppose they might. I just keep remembering how I felt when I watched her the evening her husband died. Maybe it’s vanity to think I could not be so wrong in my judgment.”

“Maybe it was ’er lover, an’ she didn’t know nuffing about it?” Gracie suggested, trying to be helpful.

“Maybe—but I rather liked him too.” Charlotte sipped her tea and caught Gracie’s eye over the top of the cup.

“ ’Oo is it as you don’t like?” Gracie was ever practical.

“No one yet. But I’ve liked people who were guilty before.”

“ ’Ave yer? Really?” Gracie’s eyes were wide with interest and amazement.

“It depends why.” Charlotte thought she ought to explain. She was about to elaborate, recalling some of Pitt’s cases in which she had been involved, when the doorbell rang, and Gracie, in a flurry of surprise, put down her cup, stood up, straightened her skirts and scampered down the corridor to answer it.

She returned a moment later with Caroline, who was smartly dressed, but obviously she had dressed somewhat hurriedly, and without her usual attention to detail. After the greetings had been exchanged, and the answers that all were in good health, Caroline sat down at the kitchen table, accepted the tea Gracie gave her, and explained her reason for having come. She took a breath and plunged in.

“How is Thomas progressing with the murder of poor Mr. Stafford? Has he learned anything yet?”

“How devious and indirect you are, Mama,” Charlotte said with amusement.

“What?”

“You used to criticize me for being too blunt,” Charlotte replied cheerfully. “You said people did not like it, and that one should always approach things a little sideways, to give people a chance to avoid the subject if they wish.”

“Nonsense!” Caroline expostulated, but there was a distinct pinkness in her cheeks. “Anyway, that was with strangers, and with gentlemen—and I am neither. And what I said was that it is indelicate to be too forthright—it is …”

“I know—I know.” Charlotte waved her hand. “I am afraid he has discovered nothing new about the Farriers’ Lane murder. He has no idea why Judge Stafford should have been looking into it again. It seems quite beyond question that Aaron Godman was guilty.”

“Oh—oh dear. Poor Miss Macaulay.” Caroline shook her head minutely, her face full of sorrow. “I think she really believed her brother was innocent. This will be very hard for her.”

Charlotte put her hand on her mother’s. “I only said he had found nothing new, so far. I don’t think he will give up, unless it was Mrs. Stafford or Mr. Pryce, or both of them.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

“Then he will have to go back to the Farriers’ Lane case—unless there is something else.”

“What?” Caroline’s face was creased with anxiety now and she leaned farther forward across the table, her tea forgotten. “What else?”

“I don’t know—some other personal enmity. Something to do with money, perhaps, or another crime he knew about.”

“Is there evidence of anything like that?”

“No—I don’t think so. Not so far.”

“It doesn’t sound …” Caroline smiled bleakly. “It doesn’t sound very likely, does it? He’s bound to go back to the Farriers’ Lane case. I would.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “It is what Mr. Stafford was doing the day he died. He must have had a reason. Even if all he intended was to prove forever that it was Aaron Godman, maybe someone else thought differently.”

“That’s illogical, my dear,” Caroline pointed out ruefully.
“If Aaron Godman was guilty, then no one now would kill Mr. Stafford to prevent him from proving that. Miss Macaulay might grieve that she could no longer hope to clear her brother’s name, but she would not kill Stafford because he believed him guilty. Apart from the fact that it would be ridiculous, everyone else believes him guilty. She cannot kill everyone. And why should she? It wasn’t Stafford’s fault.” She bit her lip. “No, Charlotte, if Godman was guilty, there was no reason to kill Judge Stafford. But if someone else was, then there was every reason, if he knew that—or they thought he did.”

“Someone like whom, Mama? Joshua Fielding? Is that what you are afraid of?”

“No! No.” She shook her head fiercely, her face pink. “It could be anyone.”

“Now who is being illogical?” Charlotte said gently. “The only people the judge saw that day were his wife, Mr. Pryce, Judge Livesey, Devlin O’Neil, Miss Macaulay, and Joshua Fielding. Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Stafford and Judge Livesey had nothing to do with Kingsley Blaine. They only came into the case when it came to trial, and Judge Livesey only when it went to appeal. They couldn’t possibly be guilty of that crime.”

Caroline looked very pale.

“Then we’ve got to do something! I don’t believe it was Joshua, and we must prove it. Perhaps we can find out something before Thomas starts, while he is still investigating Mrs. Stafford and Mr. Pryce.”

Charlotte felt a sudden, quick sympathy with her, but she could think of little that would be helpful. She knew the sense of fear that someone one liked could be implicated, hurt—even be guilty.

“I don’t know what we could find out,” she said hesitantly, watching Caroline’s face and the anxiety in it, the awareness of her vulnerable situation. It was so easy to be foolish. “If Thomas has tried …” She shrugged. “I don’t know where to begin. We don’t know Mrs. Stafford—although of course I suppose I could call on her …” She knew her reluctance to do it was plain in her voice and in
her expression. “It’s …” She struggled to find words that were not too abrupt. “She will know it is curiosity; she knows I am a policeman’s wife. And if she is innocent, and grieving, whatever she feels for Mr. Pryce—and we don’t know what her feelings are—it is only rumor—then it would be so offensive.”

“But if innocent people were in jeopardy?” Caroline pressed, leaning forward across the table. “Surely that must be the most urgent thing, the most important.”

“That is not yet the case, Mama, and it may never be.”

“When it is, it will be too late,” Caroline said with rising anxiety. “It isn’t only charges and arrests, Charlotte—it is suspicion, and the ruin of reputations. That can be enough to destroy someone.”

“I know.”

“What did Lady Cumming-Gould say? You haven’t told me.”

“Actually I don’t know. I haven’t been to see her since then, and she did not send a note, so I assume she did not learn anything she thought of value.” She smiled. “Perhaps the case really was decisive.”

“Would you find out, please?”

“Of course,” Charlotte said with relief. That would be easy to do.

“You can take my carriage again, if you like,” Caroline offered, then blushed at her own forcefulness and the urgency with which she was pursuing the issue. “If that would help, of course,” she added.

“Oh yes.” Charlotte accepted with only the faintest smile. “That would help a great deal.” She rose to her feet, the laughter in her eyes unmistakable now. “It is so much more elegant to roll up in a carriage than to walk from the omnibus stop.”

Caroline opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind.

    Vespasia was out when Charlotte arrived at her house, but the parlormaid informed her she would be back in no more than half an hour, and if Charlotte cared to wait she
could take tea in the withdrawing room. Lady Vespasia would be most disappointed to have missed her.

Charlotte accepted, and sat in Vespasia’s elegant room sipping her tea and watching the flames leap in the fireplace. She had time to look around, which she had never had before, when it would have been obvious and seemed an intrusive curiosity. The room was stamped with Vespasia’s character. There were tall, slender candlesticks on the mantel shelf, not at either end, as one might have expected, but both of them a little to the left of the center, asymmetrically. They were Georgian silver, very cool and simple. On the Sheraton table by the window there was an arrangement of flowers in a Royal Worcester gravy boat, three pink chrysanthemums low down in the center, and a lot of coppery beech leaves, and some dark purple red buds of which she did not know the name.

She lost interest in the tea and rose to her feet to look more closely at the few photographs which stood in plain frames on the top of the bureau. The one which drew her first was a sepia tint, oval faded away to nothing at the edges, a woman of about forty, slender necked, with high cheekbones and delicate, aquiline nose. Her wide eyes were heavy lidded under a perfect brow. It was a beautiful face, and yet for all its pride, and classic bones, there was individuality in it, and the romantic pose did not entirely mask either the passion or the strength.

It was several moments before Charlotte realized it was Vespasia herself. She had grown so accustomed to her as an old lady, she had forgotten that as a young woman she could be so different—and yet after a second look, so much the same.

The other pictures were of a girl of perhaps twenty, very pretty, but heavier boned, thicker of jaw and shorter nosed. The resemblance was there, and something of the charm, but not the mettle, not the fire of imagination. It must be Olivia, Vespasia’s daughter, who had married Eustace March, and died after bearing him so many children. Charlotte had never known her, but she remembered Eustace vividly, with both anger and pity.

The third picture was of an elderly aristocratic man with a high-boned, gentle face and eyes that looked into a far distance, beyond the camera into some world of his own vision. There was sufficient resemblance to Vespasia for Charlotte to guess from the faintness, the fashion of the dress and the style of the photograph that it was Vespasia’s father.

It was interesting that she should choose to keep in her favorite room a memory of her father, not her husband.

Charlotte was looking at the books in the carved bookcase when she heard a murmuring in the hall and footsteps across the parquet flooring. Quickly she turned around and moved towards the window, so that when the door opened and Vespasia came in, she was facing her, smiling.

Vespasia looked full of energy, as if she were about to go somewhere she anticipated with excitement, not as if she had just returned. Her skin glowed from the brisk wind, her back was straight and her shoulders squared, and she was dressed in the softest grape blue, a gentle color neither navy nor purple, nor yet silver. It was subtle, expensive and extremely flattering. There was almost no bustle, in the most up-to-the-moment fashion, and the cut was exquisite. No doubt she had left a sweeping brimmed hat in the hall.

“Good morning, Aunt Vespasia,” Charlotte said with surprise and a very definite pleasure. She had never seen Vespasia in such health since before the death of Emily’s first husband, Vespasia’s nephew and the only reason they could count her as a relative. Today she seemed to have shed the years that grief had added to her and to be the vigorous woman she had been before. “You look most excellently well.”

“There is considerable justice in that,” Vespasia replied, but her satisfaction was obvious. “I
am
excellently well.” She looked at Charlotte closely. “You look a trifle anxious, my dear. Are you still concerned about that miserable business in Farriers’ Lane? For heaven’s sake sit down! You look as if you were about to rush out of the door. You are not, are you?”

“No—no, of course not. I came to see you, and I have
nothing else to do immediately. Mama is at home, and will care for everything that may arise.”

“Oh dear.” Vespasia sat down gracefully, arranging her skirt with a flick of her hand. “Is she still enamored of the actor?”