Anne Perry - Highgate Rise

The formal proceedings were very carefully laid out. It would have been impossible to seat everyone, and anyway since Shaw had invited extra people as the whim took him (including Pitt, to the deep indignation of the Worlingham sisters and the vicar), the servants did not know in advance how many there would be.

Therefore the food was set out so that people might be served by the butler and maids who were standing waiting discreetly just beyond the door, and then stand and speak with each other, commiserate, gossip and generally praise the dead until it should be time for a few prepared words, first by the vicar, then by Shaw as the departed’s closest friend. And of course they could partake of a few of the very best bottles of Port wine, or something a little lighter for the women. Claret was served with the meal.

“I don’t know how we are going to learn anything now,” Emily said with a frown of disappointment. “Everyone is doing precisely what one would expect. Clitheridge looks incompetent and harassed, his wife is trying to compensate for him all the time, while being aware of you and Dr. Shaw, and if looks had any effect your hair would have frizzled on your head and dropped out, and your dress would hang on your back in scorched rags.”

“Can you blame her?” Charlotte whispered back. “The vicar doesn’t exactly make one’s pulse race, does he.”

“Don’t be vulgar. No he doesn’t. I would rather have the good doctor any day-unless, of course, he murdered his wife.”

Charlotte had no effective answer for that, knowing it could be true, however much it hurt, so she turned around sharply and poked Emily in the ribs, as if by accident.

“Humph,” Emily said in total comprehension.

Flora Lutterworth was on her father’s arm, her veil drawn back so she might eat, and there was color in her cheeks and a faintly smug smile on her pretty mouth. Charlotte was curious to know what had caused it.

Across the room at the far side, Pitt saw it too, and had a very good idea it had something to do with Murdo. He considered it highly likely that Murdo would not find it so difficult to pursue Miss Lutterworth. In fact he might very well discover that it happened in spite of any ideas of his own, and it would all be much easier than he had feared.

Pitt was dressed unusually smartly for him. His collar was neat, his tie perfectly straight-at least so far-and he had nothing in his jacket pockets except a clean handkerchief (Emily’s silk one was only for show), a short pencil and a piece of folded paper so he might make notes if he wished. That was quite redundant, because he never did; it was something he thought an efficient policeman ought to have.

He realized Shaw had invited him precisely to annoy Angeline and Celeste. It was a way of establishing that although the function was held in the Worlingham house, this was Amos Lindsay’s funerary dinner, and he, Shaw, was the host and would invite whom he chose. To that end he stood at the head of the table, very square on his feet, and behaved as if the servants offering the baked meats and claret were his own. He welcomed the guests, especially Pitt. He did not glance once at the grim faces of Angeline and Celeste, who were in black bombazine and jet beads, standing behind him and a trifle to one side. They smiled guardedly at those they approved of, such as Josiah and Prudence Hatch, Quinton Pascoe, and Aunt Vespasia; nodded civilly to those they tolerated, like the Lutterworths, or Emily and Jack; and totally ignored those whose presence they knew to be a calculated affront, such as Pitt and Charlotte-although since they came separately and did not speak to each other, the sisters did not immediately connect them.

Pitt took his delicious cold game pie, jugged hare, and brown bread and butter and homemade pickle, liberally apportioned, and his glass of claret, finding them extraordinarily difficult to manage, and wandered around half overhearing conversations, and closely observing faces-those who were speaking, and more particularly those who were alone and unaware they were being observed.

What had been the precise course of events on the day or two before Clemency Shaw’s death? Some time earlier she had discovered the source of the Worlingham money, and spread and given away her own inheritance, almost entirely to relieve the distress of those who were the victims of appalling misery, either directly to assist them, or indirectly to fight the laws which presently enabled owners to take their excess profits so discreetly that their names were never known nor their public reputations smeared with their true behavior.

When had she shared this with Shaw? Or had he discovered it some way of his own, perhaps only when her money was gone, and they had had a furious quarrel? Or had he been wiser than that, and pretended to agree-No. If he had hidden his response, it must have been because he thought there was still a substantial majority of the money left-enough to be worth killing her to save.

He looked across the heads of two women talking, to where Shaw still stood at the head of the table, smiling and nodding, talking to Maude Dalgetty. He looked very tense; his shoulders were tight under the fabric of his black jacket, as if he longed to break into action, punch the air, stride backward and forward, do anything to use that wild anger inside him. Pitt found it hard to believe he would have contained his temper so well that Clemency, who must have known his every expression, inflection of voice, gesture, would not have understood the power of his rage, and thus at least some shadow of her own danger.

What must she have thought when Josiah Hatch announced that there was going to be a stained-glass window put in the church dedicated to the old bishop, and depicting him as one of the early Christian saints? What an intolerable irony. What self-control had enabled her to keep silent? And she had done so. It had been a public announcement, and if she had given even the slightest hint that she knew some hideous secret, as a member of the family she would have been listened to, even if not entirely believed.

Was it conceivable that everyone had kept silent about it-a conspiracy?

He looked around the room at the somber faces. All were suitably grim for the occasion: Clitheridge harassed and nervous; Lally smoothing things over, fussing around Shaw; Pascoe and Dalgetty studiously avoiding each other, but still padded out by bandages under their mourning clothes-Dalgetty’s cheek stitched and plastered. Matthew Oliphant was speaking quietly, a word of comfort, a gesture of warmth or reassurance; Josiah Hatch’s face was white except where the wind had whipped his cheeks; Prudence was more relaxed than earlier, her fear gone. Angeline and Celeste were quietly angry; the Lutterworths were still being socially patronized. No, he could not believe in a conspiracy among such disparate people. Too many of them had no interest in protecting the reputation of the Worlinghams. Dalgetty would have delighted in spreading such a richly ironic tale, the ultimate freedom to speak against the established order of things-even if only to infuriate Pascoe.

And Amos Lindsay, with his Fabian socialist sympathies, would surely have laughed loud and long, and made no secret of it at all.

No-assuredly nothing had been said when the window was announced. And all plans had gone ahead for it, money had been raised, the glass purchased and the artists and glaziers engaged. The Archbishop of York had been invited to dedicate it and all Highgate and half ecclesiastical north London would be there at the ceremony.

Pitt sipped his claret. It was extremely good. The old bishop must have laid down a remarkable cellar, as well as everything else. Ten years after his death, Theophilus’s share gone, and there was still this quality to draw on for an affair which was not really more than a duty for Celeste and Angeline.