Anne Perry - Rutland Place

"Don't lie to me, Charlotte. I'm perfectly capable of seeing for myself what is going on!"

"Are you?" Charlotte demanded, angry with her mother not for misjudging her but for being so vulnerable, for allowing herself to be swept away by a dream till the awakening threat-xened everything that really mattered. "Are you, Mama? I think if you could see anything at all, you would know as well as I do that he doesn't love you in the least." She saw the tears in Caroline's eyes, but she had to go on. "It isn't anything to do with me, or any other woman! He is simply unaware that your feeling for him is anything more than pleasant-a little relief from boredom-a courtesy! You have built up a whole romantic vision around him that has nothing to do with the kind of person he is underneath. You don't even know him really! All you see is what you want to!" She held on to Caroline's arm, this time too hard for her to snatch it away.

"I know exactly how you feel!" she went on, keeping up with her. "I did the same with Dominic. I pinned all my romantic ideals onto him, put them over him like a suit of armor, till I had no idea what he was like underneath them. It isn't fair! We haven't the right to dress anyone else in our dreams and expect them to wear them for us! That isn't love! It's infatuation, and it's childish-and dangerous! Just think how unbearably lonely it must be! Would you like to live with someone who didn't even look at or listen to you, but only used you as a figure of fantasy? Someone to pretend about, someone to make responsible for all your emotions so that they are to blame if you are happy or unhappy? You have no right to do that to anyone else."

Caroline stopped and stared at her, tears running down her face.

"Those are terrible things to say, Charlotte," she whispered, her voice difficult and hoarse. "Terrible."

"No, they aren't." Charlotte shook her head hard. "It is just the truth, and when you've looked at it a bit longer you'll find you like it!" Please God that could be true!

"Like it! You tell me I have made a ridiculous fool of myself over a man who doesn't care for me at — all, and that even the feeling I had was an illusion, and selfish, nothing to do with love-and I shall come to like that!"

Charlotte threw her arms around her because she wanted to be close to her, share in her pain and comfort her. Besides, looking at her face right now would be an intrusion into privacy too deep to allow forgetting afterward.

"Maybe 'like it' was a silly phrase, but when you see it is true, you will find the lies something you don't even want to remember. But believe me, everyone who was ever capable of passion has made a fool of themselves at least once. We all fall in love with a vision sometime. The thing is to be able to wake up and still love."

For a long time neither of them said anything more, but stood in the footpath with their arms around each other. Then very slowly Caroline began to relax, her body lost-its stiffness, and the pain changed from anger to simple weeping.

"I'm so ashamed of myself," she said softly. "So terribly ashamed!"

Charlotte's arms tightened. There was not anything else to say. Time would ease it away, but words could not.

In the distance there was the sound of hooves, someone else making an early visit.

Caroline straightened up and sniffed hard. For a moment her hand lingered on Charlotte's; then she withdrew it and fished in her reticule for a handkerchief.

"I don't think I shall make any more calls this afternoon," she said calmly. "Perhaps you would like to come home for tea?"

"Thank you," Charlotte said. They began to walk again, slowly. "You know, Mina was quite wrong about Theodora. Her money doesn't come from a brothel at all, or blackmail-she has a business for selling bathroom furniture!"

Caroline was stunned. Her eyebrows shot up.

"You mean-"

"Yes, water closets!"

"Oh, Charlotte!"

Two days later Pitt was still as confused as ever about who had killed Mina Spencer-Brown. He had a wealth of facts, but no conclusions that were subject to proof-and, worse than that, none that satisfied his own mind.

He stood still on the pavement of Rutland Place in the sun. It was warm there, sheltered from the east wind by the high houses, and he stopped to collect his thoughts before going on to Alston for yet more questioning.

He had been talking to Ambrosine Charrington, and the inter shy;view had left him less sure than he had been before he went. It was always possible that Mina had observed Ambrosine in the act of stealing and Ambrosine had been unable to deny it. If that had been so, Mina might have threatened her with exposure.

But would Ambrosine have minded? From what Charlotte had told him, that was far from the case! She might even have been perversely pleased by the disgrace. Ottilie had said it was her motive for doing it in the first place, a desire to shock and distress her husband, to break out of the mold into which he had cast her. Of course she might well not see it so lucidly herself. But he found it impossible to believe she would commit murder to protect a secret she half wanted known.

Did she hate Lovell enough to have allowed Mina to blackmail him? In theory it was possible. It had an irony that would appeal to Ambrosine.

And yet he felt that he would have had some sense of the anger and the tension in Lovell, and of the bitter taste of satisfac shy;tion in Ambrosine herself. And he had not. To him she seemed just as elegantly imprisoned as before, and Lovell just as undis shy;turbed in his massive, impregnable security.

Mention of Ottilie had shaken Lovell's composure most markedly, and he had become white-lipped, sweat-browed. He had tried intensely to hide the whole affair. Yet Ambrosine left Pitt entirely comfortable!

Perhaps it was Alston Spencer-Brown after all? Maybe Mina's long-standing involvement with Tormod Lagarde had finally proved too much for him, and when Alston had learned that she was still enamored, he had procured more belladonna from some other doctor, in the city, poured it into the cordial, and left it to do its work.

All Pitt's investigations had pointed to the conclusion that Mina's infatuation with Tormod had been discreet but very real. Many a husband had killed for less, and Alston's ordinary exterior could hide a violent possessiveness, a sense of outrage where murder might seem to him no more than justice.

Pitt was driven back to the facts. The cordial wine was homemade, a mixture of elderberry and currants. People in Rutland Place did not make their own wines! Of course, it was impossible to tell who might have been given some, and if they had used it to mask poison, they would hardly own to its possession now.

The belladonna could have been distilled by anyone, or even crushed from the deadly nightshade plant itself, which, while less common than the brightly flowered woody nightshade, was far more lethal. It did not need the fruit that ripened in the autumn; even the leaves were sufficient. And they might be found in hedgerows or woodlands in any wild area in the south shy;east of the country.

It was perhaps a little early for a biennial plant, but in a sheltered place-ror even blown and taken root in a conservatory or hothouse? A few shoots above the ground would be enough.

The facts proved nothing. Anyone could have given her the bottle, at almost any time. Mina's servants had not seen i! before, or any like it, but then one does not always tell servants of cordial wine. It is not drunk at table. Anyone could have picked the nightshade and crushed the leaves. It required no skill, no special knowledge. It was well-known lore that the plant killed; every child was warned. Even its name told as much.

He was driven back again to motive, although you could not damn anyone on motive alone. One man will kill for sixpence, or because he feels he has been insulted. Another will lose reputation, fortune, and love-anything rather than commit murder,