Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘It’s all very … shapeless,’ Charlotte relented and answered the question. ‘Thomas was called in because they found the body of a woman in a gravel pit up on Shooters Hill. For a little while they were afraid it might be Dudley Kynaston’s missing maid …’

Emily stopped abruptly. ‘Dudley Kynaston? Really?’

Charlotte had a sharp stab of misgiving. Perhaps she was breaking a confidence to have told Emily so much?

‘It’s confidential!’ she said urgently. ‘It could cause an awful scandal, quite unjustifiably, if people started to speculate. You mustn’t repeat it! Emily … I’m serious …’

‘Of course!’ Emily agreed smoothly, beginning to walk again. ‘But I know something already. Jack said Somerset Carlisle was asking questions in the House about Kynaston’s safety.’

‘Somerset Carlisle?’ Now Charlotte was intrigued, and touched with a cold finger of fear. She had not forgotten about Carlisle and the resurrectionists either. ‘What else did Jack say?’ she asked, attempting to keep the urgency out of her voice.

Emily’s mouth tightened and she gave an elegant shrug of her slender shoulders, but it was a tiny movement, as if her muscles were tight. ‘Not very much. I asked him because I know Rosalind Kynaston a little, and I suppose it would really be her maid, not his. But Jack didn’t answer me.’

‘Oh.’ It was a meaningless response, except to acknowledge that she had heard. Had she also understood? Was this one answer that closed Emily out, perhaps because Jack did not know anything more, or what he did know was in confidence? Or had he just not been listening closely enough to realise that Emily wanted an answer?

They walked for a few moments without speaking again. They passed exotic trees, palms whose structure was utterly unlike the oaks and elms they were used to, or the soaring, smooth-limbed beeches. On the ground there were ferns, almost like green feathers a Cavalier might wear on his hat, but far larger. Emily buried her hands in her muff, and Charlotte wished that she had one.

‘What is Rosalind Kynaston like?’ Charlotte said to break the silence before it grew too deep to disregard.

Emily gave a tiny smile. ‘Ordinary enough, I suppose. We spoke little about anything in particular. She’s older than I am. Her children are all married. She doesn’t see them very often. Army, or something, I think.’

‘There are hundreds of other things to talk about!’ Charlotte protested.

‘Gossip,’ Emily said tartly. ‘Have you any idea how boring that is? Half of it is complete rubbish. People make it up in order to have something to say. Who on earth cares anyway?’

It was mid-afternoon and the days were lengthening again. The sky was clear and the lowering light shone brightly and a little harshly on their faces. For the first time Charlotte noticed the very fine lines in Emily’s once-perfect skin. Actually they were the marks of laughter, emotion, thought. They were not unkind. They even gave her face more character, but they were lines none the less. She did not for a second doubt that Emily had also seen them. Of course they were there in Charlotte’s face too — more of them, a little deeper — but she did not mind. Did she?

Pitt was a little older than she, and time had touched him with a brush of grey at the temples. She liked it. She was beginning to find youth less interesting, even callow at times. Experience lent depth, compassion, a sharper value to the good things. Time tested one’s courage, softened the heart.

But did Emily see it that way? Jack Radley was remarkably handsome, and her own age. Men matured nicely. To some people, women simply got older.

As if reading her thoughts and taking them further, Emily spoke again.

‘Do you suppose that Kynaston was having an affair with the maid, and got her with child, or something? Then he had to get rid of her?’ she asked.

‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ Charlotte said with surprise. ‘She far more likely ran off with her young man.’

‘To a gravel pit, in the middle of winter?’ Emily said with an edge of sarcasm. ‘Have you lost your imagination? Or do you think I have? Or is this your way of telling me you can’t discuss it with me?’

Charlotte heard the hurt in her voice beneath the surface irritation. She wanted to turn and study Emily’s face more closely, but she knew that in doing that she would make an issue of something that was too delicate to force.

‘We don’t know that it was her body in the gravel pit,’ she said instead. ‘If it wasn’t, and we accuse a government scientist of what amounts to murder, we are hardly guarding the safety of the state. In fact,’ she added, ‘we are doing the enemy’s work for them.’

Emily stopped, her eyes wide. ‘Now that is a really interesting thought.’

Charlotte’s heart sank. Unquestionably she had said too much now. How could she get out of it? She had never been able to fool Emily; they knew each other far too well. Emily, the youngest of the three sisters, had always been the prettiest, possibly a little spoiled, and forever trying to catch up. Socially and financially, it was many years since she had overtaken Charlotte. The memory of their elder sister, Sarah, murdered in the terrible affair of the Hangman of Cater Street, was one Charlotte seldom touched. There was a pain of grief still left, and also regret over the stupid quarrels, and a nameless guilt that she was dead while Emily and Charlotte were alive, and happy. There was too much darkness in it, the kind of thick, heavy shadow that eats the light.

‘That’s all it is!’ she said, more sharply than she had intended. ‘A thought.’

Emily smiled, a sparkle in her eyes.

‘Anyway, the person who’s drawing attention to it is Somerset Carlisle, and he’s hardly an enemy of the country. Nor is he stupid enough not to understand what he’s doing.’

‘Maybe we could find out?’ Emily suggested.

Charlotte had no quick answer. She was trying to extricate herself from the difficulty she had created by raising the subject at all. She shivered very visibly. ‘Could we do it walking again? I’m freezing standing here.’

‘You don’t want to,’ Emily started to move, actually quite quickly, making conversation difficult. ‘Stop tiptoeing around me, Charlotte. You’re as bad as Jack.’

Charlotte stopped again, colder than she had been even the moment before. What was this about? No more involvement in detection? Being bored and losing interest in gossip and pointless parties just to fill the day, serving no larger purpose? Or was it really about Jack? Certainly it had little if anything to do with Dudley Kynaston or the body in the gravel pit.

Emily was still walking away, though she had slowed down. Charlotte hurried to catch up with her. There was no point in being subtle now; in fact it might only make things worse.

‘Do you really know Rosalind Kynaston?’ she asked a little breathlessly. She wanted desperately to help, and yet the slightest clumsiness would close off the opportunity, perhaps for a long time. She knew even as she was doing it that it might be dangerous, and Pitt would not approve, but she knew also that what she had thought was temper on Emily’s part was really pain.

They had known each other all the life they could clearly remember. Sharing was woven through all childhood. It was nothing to do with toys, lessons, dresses, books; it was memory. As little children they had run hand in hand. As girls they had shared secrets and laughter, quick squabbles. As young women there had been adventures, hope, falling in love, and heartbreak. Now, probably more than half-way through life, there would also be disillusion, coming to terms with other kinds of pain, inequalities that would always be there.