The Hyde Park Headsman (12 page)

She saw several naval officers in uniform, looking very splendid, their gold braid making them stand out from the plain black of civilians. One large, curiously nondescript elderly man seemed to be presiding over the matter of welcoming and acknowledging people. He must be Lord Marlborough Winthrop, the father. The woman beside him, heavily veiled, was slender and very upright, but that was all that could be distinguished of her. Charlotte fancied she detected an aura of anger, a watching with pent-up rage, uncertain yet in which direction to level itself. But it could as easily have been the self-control of grief and the knowledge of more anguish to come, and inevitably a very public resolution to a most personal loss.

She was still pondering this when Vespasia arrived on Thelonius’s arm. It was not an occasion for smiling, but Charlotte found herself doing so at the sight of Vespasia so graciously accompanied. She had been a widow since long before Charlotte had first met her, years ago, during the grotesque affair in Resurrection Row. And later George’s death had wounded her
deeply. He was no more than a great-nephew, but one of the few family she had, and she had been extremely fond of him. And regardless of consanguinity, murder is a dreadful way to die, even without the fear and suspicion that had followed.

Now, on the arm of Thelonius, Vespasia looked serene and confident again, her back as ruler straight as it had been years ago, and there was an imperious lift to her chin as though once again she would defy the world in general, and society in particular, and be perfectly prepared to blaze a trail in whatever direction she chose to go. Those who cared to could follow, and those who did not could go whichever way they pleased.

Thelonius, slender, ascetic, dryly humorous, was at her elbow, his face rendered almost beautiful by the richness of memory which illuminated it as he guided her through the press of people. More and more were arriving, wishing not to be absent from such an occasion, reverent, sympathetic, self-important or hoping for scandal.

Vespasia looked at Charlotte approvingly, but without words. Thelonius smiled at her and inclined his head, and together the three of them made their way into the church, where the painfully slow organ music was already creating the atmosphere of death and something close to decay.

Charlotte shivered. As so often before, her thoughts turned to the anomaly of people who professed a belief in a joyous resurrection meeting together to mark the passing of one, whom most had known only slightly, from where they deemed a vale of tears and into a realm of light. It said little of their estimation of his deserts that they did it with such intense and irrational gloom. One day she would ask a vicar why it was so. An usher with heavy side-whiskers nodded busily and indicated his desire to move them towards their pews. He shifted unhappily from one foot to another.

“Sir! Madam—if I may?”

Thelonius handed him his card.

“Of course. Of course.” The usher nodded. “This way, if you please?” And without waiting to see if they followed, he led the way towards the point where a pew had been kept for them. On the way Charlotte glanced to the right and saw Emily’s fair face filled with surprise, and then swift and complete comprehension, not untouched by amusement.

Vespasia and Thelonius took their seats, and with rather more haste than grace, Charlotte took hers beside them.

The music changed key and a hush fell over the congregation. The service began.

It was not possible during its course for Charlotte to twist around in her seat and observe the faces of anyone behind, and those in front presented only their backs. Rather than draw unwelcome attention to herself, she bent her head in decent prayers and lifted her eyes only to watch the vicar and listen to his sepulchral tones as he eulogized Oakley Winthrop as if he were a departed saint, and exhorted all those present to live worthily of his excellent example. Charlotte dared not look at Vespasia in case she met her glance and read her thoughts, not only of the departed but of the mourners.

Afterwards was a different matter. Everyone rose and trooped out into the sunshine murmuring whatever they felt appropriate, and then she began to search in earnest. Lord and Lady Winthrop were easy to see from the movement of people, the slowing down as they reached them, and the sudden complete hush, momentary embarrassment, and then release as they moved away.

Another group, smaller and somehow less distinguished, was moving in no particular order around a slender, very upright figure. She was only lightly veiled, and looked oddly young and vulnerable. Charlotte took her to be the widow. She would dearly like to have seen her expression, but beneath the veil it was impossible.

“Is that Mrs. Winthrop?” she asked Vespasia.

“I believe so,” Vespasia answered, looking to Thelonius.

“And the man behind her?” Charlotte asked with interest.

“Oh yes.” Vespasia nodded fractionally. “A face to remember. A clarity of gaze, a considerable intelligence, I think. Who is he, Thelonius? A relation, or an admirer?”

Thelonius’s mouth twitched with amusement.

“I’m sorry, my dear, the answer is very ordinary. He is her brother, Bartholomew Mitchell. A man of unblemished character, without pomposity or pretension, so I hear. Very recently returned from Matabeleland. A most unlikely suspect for the murder of his brother-in-law.”

“Mmm.” Vespasia remained thoughtful.

“Now there’s a man about whom you could not possibly say that.” Charlotte looked across at the large figure smiling and nodding as he acknowledged acquaintances on all sides. “There is a man with pretensions, if ever I saw one. Who is he?” Too late she realized he might have been a friend of
Thelonius. “I mean …” She stopped. There was nothing to say that would mend it.

Vespasia bit her lip to conceal her amusement.

“You deserve to be told he is a dear friend,” she replied. “However, I believe he is a prospective member of Parliament, in fact standing against Jack in the by-election. His name is Nigel Uttley.”

“Oh.” Charlotte thought for a moment before continuing. She watched Uttley as he progressed through the crowd, still smiling, until he came to Emily and Jack, then his expression of affability became a mask. The core of it vanished, leaving only the outer semblance. It was impossible to say in what precise way it was different, except that it seemed without life. They were not close enough for Charlotte to hear what was said, but it appeared to be trivialities.

Emily was dressed as beautifully as ever. Black suited her fair coloring and she had an inner glow as though she were only waiting for the memorial service to be over in order to go on somewhere exciting. One felt as if she would shed the black any moment and burst into color.

“I think we should pay our respects to the widow,” Vespasia said with determination. She turned and smiled at Thelonius. “Do you think, my dear, that you would be generous enough to introduce us?”

He hesitated, knowing perfectly well what she intended, even though he was not sure what she expected to achieve.

She preempted his decision with a charming smile of gratitude and set out across the flagged yard towards Mina Winthrop.

Thelonius offered Charlotte his arm, and they followed after.

Mina acknowledged their introduction and accepted their sympathies graciously. All the while Bart Mitchell stood at her elbow, silent but for the civilities of courtesy.

Closer to her, Charlotte’s first impressions were reinforced. She was very fragile, and even through the veil of her widow’s weeds it was possible to see a pallor to her skin.

“How kind of you to come,” she said formally. “We all appreciate it. Oakley had so many friends.” She smiled tentatively. “A great many I confess I never knew. It is most touching.”

“I am sure you will learn of much feeling for him that you were not aware of before,” Vespasia said with an ambiguity that perhaps she had not intended.

“Oh indeed,” Charlotte added quickly. “Sometimes people only express their true regard at such times. It raises a great many emotions we may not fully have realized.”

“Were you acquainted with Captain Winthrop?” Bart Mitchell asked, looking at her narrowly.

“No,” Vespasia answered for her. “My niece came in order to be of support to me.”

Bart drew in his breath, presumably to ask her the depth of her own acquaintance, then met her eyes and changed his mind. What was a reasonable inquiry of Charlotte, of Vespasia would have been an impertinence.

Charlotte was grateful for the rescue, and even more so for the implication of relationship. She found herself smiling, although it was quite inappropriate.

“We are having a small breakfast,” Mina said warmly. “Perhaps you would care to join us, Lady Cumming-Gould?”

“I should be delighted,” Vespasia accepted instantly. “Perhaps we shall have the opportunity to become a little better acquainted.”

It was an invitation for which many debutantes and society hopefuls would have sold their pearls. Mina might not have understood its rarity, but she perceived something of its value instinctively.

“Thank you. I shall look forward to that.”

Vespasia had achieved what she sought, and etiquette required she withdraw and allow time for others to pay their respects. They excused themselves and were barely a couple of yards away when they came face to face with Lady Winthrop. She murmured something about their graciousness in coming, and Thelonius replied that they would see her at the breakfast.

“Indeed?” she said with some surprise. Then she forced a chilly smile. “How nice of Wilhelmina to invite you. I am delighted you are able to come.” But the look she shot her daughter-in-law held no approval at all.

Bart Mitchell moved a step closer to his sister, and his eyes, looking back to Evelyn Winthrop, were guarded and full of warning.

“How interesting,” Vespasia said when they were alone in Thelonius’s carriage on their way, not to Oakley Winthrop’s house, but to his parents’ house in Chelsea. “How often grief divides a family instead of uniting it. I wonder why, in this instance?”

“Very often a great deal of grief is anger, my dear,” Thelonius observed, sitting opposite them, his back to the driver, his fingers locked over the top of his cane. “One feels loneliness, resentment for the pain of it, guilt for all the things one did not do or say, and fear of the enormity of death. There is nothing to be done, no appeal against it. That anger can turn against those to whom one should be the closest. People occasionally feel isolated in their loss, as if no one else grieves as they do, indeed as if they do not grieve enough.”

Vespasia smiled at him, her eyes gentle and bright. “Of course you are right. But I cannot help it crossing my mind that perhaps Lady Winthrop knows or suspects something that we do not.”

Thelonius’s smile was full of amusement. He braced himself very slightly against the movement as the carriage turned a corner and straightened again.

“She may indeed know something, but I doubt even she could suspect anything that you have not imagined,” he agreed.

Vespasia had the grace to blush, very faintly indeed, but her eyes did not waver.

“Indeed,” she said dryly. “What do you know of the Winthrops’ marriage? I confess, I had not ever heard of them. Who are the Mitchells?”

Charlotte looked from one to the other of them.

“Very ordinary, I believe,” he replied. “Evelyn Winthrop regarded the marriage as less than satisfactory. Wilhelmina had nothing to offer but herself and a small dowry. As for Bartholomew Mitchell, he went out to Africa in the Zulu war of ’79, I believe, and has spent most of the eleven years since then either in Southern Africa or north in Mashonaland or thereabouts. Soldier, of course, to begin with. Something of an adventurer, I suppose.” A shadow of amusement crossed his face. “But none the worse for that. Certainly he did not add to his sister’s value in marriage.”

“Then Captain Winthrop was in love?” Vespasia said with warmth and a flicker of surprise.

He looked at her very steadily. “I wish I could say so, but I think it was more a matter of realism. He was not without pretensions, but they were to naval office and personal power rather than social distinction. The Winthrops are not really …” He stopped, uncertain what word to use without a certain crassness.

“Out of the top drawer?” Charlotte suggested.

“Not even out of the second,” he conceded with humor. “But aren’t they supposed to be related to all sorts of people?”

“My dear, if a distinguished person has a dozen children, one will find, in a generation or two, that half the Home Counties are related to him,” Vespasia pointed out. She turned again to Thelonius. “But you used the term ‘realism.’ Was it a fortunate marriage? Are there children?”

“I believe there are two or three, all daughters. One died young, the other two are recently married.”

“Married!” Charlotte was amazed. “But she looks—so …”

“She was seventeen when she married Oakley, and her daughters also married at about that age.”

“I see.” She pictured a man disappointed without sons, although perhaps the judgment was unjust. Why had the daughters both married so young? Love? Or a desire to grasp the first opportunity that was remotely acceptable? What had that family been like when the doors were closed and the polite faces set aside?

There was no more time for speculation because they had arrived at the house of Lord and Lady Winthrop. They alighted and were welcomed in by servants in full mourning and shown into a large reception room with a table laden with rich food set out on exquisite linen. Silver gleamed discreetly under the chandeliers, fully lit even though the day was bright, because the curtains were half closed and the blinds lowered as a sign of death in the house. The most conspicuous ornamentation in the room were bowls and sheafs of white lilies, and the cloying perfume of them was redolent of the hothouse.

“Good heavens, it looks like an undertaker’s,” Vespasia said under her breath, at the same time smiling as she saw Emily and Jack Radley only a few yards away. “Heaven knows what the funeral must have been like! Hello, Emily, my dear. You look quite charming, and obviously in excellent health. How is Evangeline?”