Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [132]
Drummond smiled bitterly. “You won’t. Neither shall I. Poor woman ... poor woman!”
Charlotte looked up, eyes wide with horror. The tears ran down her cheeks unheeded and her hands holding the letters were shaking.
“Oh Thomas! It’s too dreadful to have a name! How they must have suffered—first Naomi, and then poor Elsie. How that poor creature must have felt! To watch her mistress the slowly, growing weaker every day, and yet refusing to betray her truth, and Elsie helpless to do anything. Then when it had gone too far and she could not eat, even if she would, to watch her sink into unconsciousness and death. And when Elsie would not let them hush it all up and report it as scarlet fever, they told her she was mad, and bundled her away to spend the rest of her life behind the walls of a lunatic asylum.” She seized his handkerchief from his pocket and blew her nose fiercely. “Thomas, what are we going to do?”
“Nothing. There is nothing we can do,” he replied somberly.
“But that’s preposterous!”
“There’s been no crime committed.” And he related what Drummond had said to him.
She stood stunned, too appalled to speak, knowing what he said was true, and that argument was pointless. And staring up at him, she was as aware of his pity and anger as she was of her own.
“Very well,” she said at last. “I can see that. I am sure you would prosecute him if there were any grounds—of course you would. But there is no purpose in taking to law something which could never be acted upon. I think, if you don’t mind, I shall show the letters to Great-aunt Vespasia tomorrow. I am sure she would like to know what the truth of the matter was. May I take them to her?” She half held them out to him, but it was only a gesture; she had not considered that he might refuse.
“If you wish.” He was reluctant, and yet why should she not tell Vespasia? Perhaps they could comfort each other. She might want to talk about it further, and he was too exhausted by his own emotions to want to relive it. “Yes, of course.”
“You must be tired.” She put the letters in her apron pocket, regarding him gravely. “Why don’t you sit down by the fire, and I shall make supper. Would you like a fresh kipper? I have two from the fishmonger today. And hot bread.”
By late the following afternoon Charlotte knew precisely what she was going to do, and how she would accomplish it. No one would help her, at least not knowingly, but Great-aunt Vespasia would do all that was necessary, if she was asked the right way. Pitt had spent most of the day in the garden, but at five o’clock the weather had changed suddenly, a chill wind had sprung up from the east covering the sky with leaden clouds, and by nightfall there would be a freezing fog. He had come inside, then gone to sleep in front of the fire.
Charlotte did not disturb him. She left a leek and potato pie in the oven and a note on the kitchen table telling him she had gone to visit Aunt Vespasia. Since it was extremely cold and a fog was drifting in off the river, she took the rather expensive step of hiring a cab to take her all the way to Vespasia’s house where she was received with pleasure and some surprise.
“Is anything wrong, my dear?” Vespasia asked, and looked at Charlotte more closely. “What is it? What has happened?”
Charlotte took the letters from her reticule and passed them over, explaining how Pitt had discovered them.
Vespasia opened them, adjusted her pince-nez on her nose, and read them slowly and without comment. Finally she put the last one down and sighed very quietly.
“How very terrible. Two lives wasted, and in such confusion and pain, over such terrible domination of one person by another. How unreasonably far we still have to go before we learn to treat each other with dignity. Thank you for showing them to me, Charlotte—although when I lie awake at night I shall wish you had not. I must speak to Somerset next time about the laws of lunacy; I am getting old to take up new causes about which I know nothing, but it will haunt me. What could be worse than madness, except to spend