Anne Perry - Silence in Hanover Close

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pitt,” she said very slowly. “I’m afraid I am not very well. I–I haven’t seen the person you spoke of. I cannot help.”

“Then I’ll not disturb you any further. I’ll leave you with your-maid.” Pitt forced himself to be civil, even gentle. “I apologize for having disturbed you.”

Emily rang the bell for the footman, and when he came she gave him his instructions. “John, please show Mr. Pitt to the front door, and then ask Mary to bring Mrs. York a tisane.”

Pitt glared at her and she looked back with her chin high.

“Thank you,” he said, and followed the footman out.

He took a hansom home and strode up his own hallway to the kitchen.

“Charlotte! Charlotte!”

She turned round with innocent surprise at the rage in his voice, then saw his face.

“You knew!” he said furiously. “You knew Emily was in that house as a maid! God Almighty, have you no wits at all, woman?”

It was the wrong approach and he knew it even as he shouted at her, but he was too angry to control himself.

For a moment she glared back at him, then she changed her mind and lowered her eyes meekly. “I’m sorry, Thomas. I didn’t know until it was too late, I swear, and then there was no point in telling you. You couldn’t have done anything about it.” She looked up with a very small smile. “And she will learn things there that we can’t.”

He gave up, swearing long and savagely under his breath before he ran out of vocabulary he could use in front of Charlotte and accepted the cup of tea she was pouring.

“I don’t give a damn what she learns!” he said fiercely. “Have you thought for one moment in all your idiotic plans about the danger she’s in? For God’s sake, Charlotte, two people have been murdered in that house already! If she were found out, what could you do to help her? Nothing! Nothing at all!” He flung his arm out. “She’s there completely on her own; I can’t get in there. How could you be so bloody stupid?”

“I am not stupid!” she said hotly, indignation bright in her cheeks and eyes. “I didn’t know anything about it-I told you that! I only heard about it afterwards.”

“Don’t equivocate!” he snapped back. “You drew Emily into this; she would never have heard about it if you hadn’t started meddling. Get her out! Sit down now and write to her telling her to go home where she belongs-now!”

Charlotte’s face was set. “There’s no point; she won’t come.”

“Do it!” he roared. “Don’t argue with me, just do it!”

There were tears in her eyes, but no obedience or submissiveness. “She won’t listen to me!” she said furiously. “I know the danger! Do you think I can’t see it? And I know you’re in danger too! I sit at home and wait for you when you’re late, wondering where you are, if you are safe-or lying bleeding in the street somewhere.”

“That’s unfair! And it has nothing to do with Emily,” he answered more levelly. “Get her out, Charlotte.”

“I can’t. She won’t come.”

He said nothing. He was too angry-and too frightened.

Emily was appalled when she came into the library in answer to Albert’s summons and saw Pitt standing there. Thank heaven the circumstances had given him little time to express his outrage or to press his demand that she leave. When Veronica returned to consciousness, Pitt had been obliged to remain silent, except for the few remarks to excuse himself, leaving Emily alone with her mistress propped up against the cushions, looking like death warmed over.

Emily felt so intense a pity for her it was like a new wound, but she also knew that she would probably never have a better chance than now, when Veronica was shocked and off balance, to draw some unguarded word from her as to what had frightened her so profoundly.

She bent down beside her and touched her hand. “Ma’am, you do look ill,” she said gently. “Whatever did he say to you? He ought not have been allowed!” She stared so intently at Veronica’s ashen face that some sort of answer was unavoidable.

“I–I think I fainted,” Veronica whispered at last.

Mentally Emily apologized to Pitt for the injustice she was about to do him; then with all the skill she could muster, she let genuine compassion fill her eyes. “Did he threaten you, ma’am? What did he say? He has no right! You should report him: What was it?”

“No,” Veronica said quickly, then bit her lip, struggling with the lie. “No-he-he was really quite civil. I. .” For a moment her eyes met Emily’s and she hesitated on the brink of speech, the temptation to trust so vivid that Emily could trace every thread of it, the wavering, the rival fears.

Emily held her breath.

But the moment passed. Veronica turned away and the tears spilled and ran down her cheeks. She lay back and closed her eyes.

Emily longed to put her arms round her and tell her she understood, she knew what it was like to lose your husband suddenly, violently, in the horror of murder, with the knowledge that someone must hate so much that only death could satisfy them. And she also knew the fear that grew day by day, fear of confusion, of a whole world become incomprehensible and full of secrets, some of them hideous; and the fear that the truth might be worse than you could bear. And there was the fear that with knowledge you, too, might become a victim-and at the back of every other fear, the one that you might be guilty of some stupidity, or some neglect that had contributed to it all, a permanent rising, whispering guilt!

And for Emily, too, there had been the fear that the police would suspect her. Her motive had looked to be so obvious!

Was that what Veronica was afraid of now? Did she feel Pitt treading closer? Was it terror for herself that had made her faint?

Or was she afraid for someone she was protecting- someone like Julian Danver? It was more like Pitt to be oblique, to go for the weakest link in the chain of events: not the murderer himself but the person most likely to yield to pressure.

Or was Veronica afraid, as Emily had been, of the people in her husband’s family who believed she was guilty, or who wanted her to be-not only of errors of judgment, of the occasional selfishness, but literally physically guilty of murder? Was that the passion between Loretta and Veronica-that Loretta believed her daughter-in-law had killed her son? Was taking her revenge in her own way, slowly, day by day, turning the knife, collecting one word after another until she had proof? It was a far more delicate torture than the simple hangman’s noose, and Loretta could administer it herself-and watch.

Or was it Cerise she was afraid of?

Or in spite of the fear now, was she Cerise herself? And was it her paymasters of whom she was terrified, now that the net was closing in?

Whatever the truth, there was no point in pursuing it at present. The moment when she might have spoken was gone, and Emily knew it would be foolish to betray her curiosity. She felt a little sick. She did not want it to be Veronica. She could not help liking her, even feeling a kind of identity. But Emily was angry also, because of her own inability to judge. Her emotions were strong, she wanted to protect the victims and attack the offenders, of all sorts, whether guilty of murder, or only of hatred and meanness of soul; but she could not discern who they were.

“Would you like to go upstairs, ma’am?” she said, perhaps less tactfully man she might have. “Before anyone comes and-” She realized how far she was committing herself and stopped.

But Veronica understood. She swung her legs down from the sofa and sat up very slowly, still dizzy.

“Yes-yes, I would rather.” There was no need to add Loretta’s name; all the implications hung in the air between them, perfectly understood, but it would not do to speak them aloud.