Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [78]
“Well Thomas,” she said quietly. “Is this case something you are not free to discuss?”
“It is … confidential,” he answered carefully. There was no smile on his face, but his eyes were very bright in the light from the coach lamps. He and Vespasia understood each other perfectly, neither the humor nor the knowledge of pity needed to be expressed.
“It may be simply a matter of debt and despair,” he went on. “Or it may be blackmail. I don’t know yet—but it is certainly murder.”
“Of course,” she agreed with a sigh. “They would hardly use you for anything less.”
His answer was lost in the sound of carriage wheels, but apparently Vespasia did not require to hear it.
“Who has been murdered?” Her voice brooked no evasion.
“A particularly disagreeable usurer,” he replied.
Charlotte settled further down into the seat, putting her cloak around her, and listened, hoping to learn some new scraps.
“Who do usurers blackmail, for heaven’s sake?” Vespasia said with disgust. “I cannot imagine their even having the acquaintance of anyone to interest you. It is hardly a political matter—or is it?”
He smiled, his teeth white in a sudden flash of light from the lamps of a passing brougham.
“It may well be.”
“Indeed? Well if I may be of assistance to you, I trust you will let me know.” It was said as a polite offer, but there was something of the imperiousness of an order in it also.
“Of course I will,” he agreed sincerely. “I would be both ungrateful and unwise not to.”
Vespasia snorted delicately, and said nothing.
The following day Pitt left early and Charlotte was busy trying to catch up with some of the domestic chores she should have done the day before, had she not been trying to dress at Emily’s and preparing for the opera. She had done a large laundry of different items which all required special care, instructing Gracie in the finer arts of preserving colors, textures and shape, all the while retelling the events of the evening before, the opera, the clothes, the people, and something of Pitt’s present case.
She washed a lilac dress which needed a pinch of soda in the rinse, exactly the right amount was necessary or it faded the color, and a green cloth gown for which she used two tablespoons of vinegar in a quart of rinse. She had been keeping her best floral dress and two of Jemima’s to wash until she had time to make the recommended mixture she had recently heard of: new ivy leaves added to a quart of bran and a quarter of a pound of yellow household soap.
Gracie observed her as carefully as the continuing story of the evening would allow.
And then there was the starching to do, or more correctly the stiffening, Fine muslin was treated with isinglass, of which she had three half sheets. She broke them up carefully and dissolved the pieces in water, and dipped the lawns and muslins and hung them up to dry, before ironing them. The chintzes would have to wait for another day. She was certainly not boiling rice water as well.
When all the laundry was finished, in the middle of the afternoon, she set about cleaning the smoothing irons by melting fresh mutton suet and spreading it over the still-warm irons, then dusting them with unslaked lime tied in muslin. For some time now they had had a woman come in to take the household linen, and return it two days later clean and ironed.
By evening she was exhausted, and thoroughly complacent with virtue.
The following day she was sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide whether to have a little fish roe on toast for luncheon, or a boiled egg, when Gracie came tripping down the hall to say that Mrs. Radley was here. Emily herself followed hard on her heels in a swirl of floral muslin and lace, with an exquisite parasol decorated with blush-pink roses.
“I’m going to the Royal Academy exhibition,” she announced, sitting down on one of the other chairs and leaning her elbows on the scrubbed wooden table. “I really don’t want to go alone, and Jack is off to see someone about factories