Anne Perry: Brunswick Gardens

But she had aborted Dominic’s child. That Charlotte could never understand, when Dominic was there and prepared to marry her. It was not done from fear, desperation, or the feeling of having been betrayed.

What of the child she had been carrying when she died? Had she intended to abort this one also? She was at least three months into the pregnancy. She must have been well aware of her condition. Charlotte remembered her own pregnancies-first with Jemima, then with Daniel. She had been sick only a little, but the giddiness and the nausea had been too pronounced ever to doubt or to ignore. At first she had not put on any weight, but by the third month there was a pronounced thickening around her waist, and other alterations of a more intimate nature.

Pitt came back out of the study door, looking for her.

She went up the last step and across the landing.

“Sorry,” she apologized hastily, following him in and closing the door.

He looked at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, I was just thinking… about Unity, how she felt.”

He touched her very gently, holding her arm for a moment, meeting her eyes, then went back to the bookcases, where he had already started searching for the originals of the letters.

She began with the lower shelves and flipped through one book after another, setting each aside as it proved irrelevant.

“I’m going to look in the library,” she said after about fifteen minutes. “If she was working down there, it could be there rather than here.”

“Good idea,” he agreed. “I’ll finish all these and the ones behind the desk.”

But when she was outside, another thought seized her, and glancing around to make sure no one was in sight, she slipped along the corridor towards the bedrooms. She tried the first one, and guessed it was Tryphena’s from the book by Mary Wollstonecraft on the bedside table. The furniture was mainly in pinks, which somehow suited Tryphena’s soft coloring.

The next room was far larger and extremely feminine, even though the colors were bolder and it had an exotic and very modern air, rather like the main reception room of the house. This was Vita’s taste-touches of the Arabic, the Turkish, and even a Chinese lacquered box by the window.

She stepped in and closed the door, her heart beating high in her chest. There was no earthly excuse if she were caught here. Please heaven the maids were all at the service!

She tiptoed across to the dressing table, glanced at the jars of lavender water, attar of roses, the hairbrushes and combs. Then she opened the top drawer. There were several little pillboxes, some gilded and enameled, one of carved soapstone, one of ivory. She unscrewed the first. Half a dozen pills. They could have been anything. She undid the second. A pair of gold cuff links with initials engraved on them-D.C. Dominic Corde!

She replaced the top with hands trembling a little. She searched further. She found a handkerchief with a D embroidered on it. There was a pearl-faced collar stud, a small penknife, a single glove, a note for a sermon written on the back of a menu but in Dominic’s writing. She knew it from years ago. It had not changed.

She closed the drawer with both hands shaking so visibly she had to sit still and breathe deeply for several moments before she could compose herself sufficiently to stand up and cross back to the door. She could feel her face burning with memory. Ten years ago she had been obsessed with Dominic, so in love with him she could repeat everything he said to her days afterwards. When he came into the room she was almost tongue-tied with emotion. She knew every gesture of his hands, every glance or expression of his face. She followed where he had walked, touched the things he had touched, as if they held some imprint of him even after he had gone. She collected small things that he had lost or no longer wanted-a handkerchief, a sixpence, a pen he had thrown away.

She did not need any deductions to know exactly what Vita had done, and why.

She opened the door slowly and looked around. There was no one. She slipped out and closed the door, going back to the head of the stairs again. Apart from Tryphena, Vita was the only one who could not possibly have pushed Unity. Had Dominic any idea how Vita felt about him?

Anyone else might think it beyond belief that he could not. But Charlotte knew absolutely that he had had no idea how she herself had felt. She recalled vividly his horror and incredulity when he had learned.

Once was possible… but was that ignorance possible twice? Had he known and been… What? Flattered, frightened, embarrassed? Or was it Unity who had seen it and threatened to make it public, to tell Ramsay?

She stood at the top of the stairs again and looked down. The house was silent. Emsley would be waiting somewhere not very far away, in case Pitt called, probably wherever the bells rang, which would be in the servants’ hall and the butler’s pantry. There might be a kitchen maid somewhere, preparing a cold midday meal. There seemed to be no one else, except Pitt in the study.

Unity had quarreled with Ramsay, as had happened so often before. She had stormed out, come along the corridor and across the landing to go downstairs. She had stood there, where Charlotte was now. Perhaps she had shouted one more thing back towards Ramsay, then turned again to go downstairs. She would have held on to the banister rail probably. What if she had slipped?

But there was nothing to slip on or to trip over.

What if she had broken a heel?

But she hadn’t. Her shoes had been perfect, except for the stain from the conservatory floor.

Could she have been dizzy? She was three months with child. Dizzy enough to fall downstairs?

Not very likely.

Charlotte leaned a little over the banister rail and looked down. The potted palm was directly below her. She found it rather an ugly thing. She did not like palms inside the house. They always looked a trifle dusty, and this particular one was full of spikes where old fronds had been cut off. There were probably spiders in it, and dead flies. Disgusting! But how could anyone clean such a thing?

There was something caught in it now! Something about an inch and a half square, and pale. Heaven only knew what that could be!

She went down the stairs slowly, tiptoeing again without knowing why. She peered at the palm from a closer vantage point. The object was wedged between the main trunk and one of the shorn-off spikes. It was cube shaped, or almost.

She moved a little to try to see it from a different angle. The top of it looked like raw wood. But when she bent down to peer through the banisters, the side caught the light, as if it were satin. What on earth could it be?

She went all the way down and squeezed behind the huge brass pot and put her hand in among the fronds, gritting her teeth against the risk of spiders. She had to fumble for several moments before her fingers found the object and pulled it out. It was the heel of a woman’s shoe.

How long had it been there?

Since Unity broke it in falling? Perhaps she had been a little dizzy, turned too quickly, broke the heel and then, losing her balance, called out instinctively, even as she pitched down, a cry of terror as she realized what was happening?

But when she was found her shoe had not been broken!

And then an answer came to her which satisfied it all. She clutched the heel in her hand and ran back up the stairs and across the landing and into the study.

“I’ve got it!” Pitt said before she could speak. He held up a slim book, his face triumphant. “They’re here.”

She opened her hand and showed him the heel.

“I found it in the potted palm at the bottom of the stairs,” she said, watching his face. “And that is not all. I… I went into Vita’s bedroom. I know I shouldn’t have, you don’t have to tell me! Thomas… Thomas, she’s hoarded all sorts of little things of Dominic’s, personal things.” She could feel the heat of shame creeping up her face. She would infinitely rather not have had to admit this to him, but there was no alternative now. “Thomas-she is in love with him. Obsessively in love.”