Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [76]
Zenobia laughed outright. She loathed Mary Carfax and everything to do with her, but for the first time since they had parted thirty-eight years go, she felt a glimmer of understanding toward her, and with it a kind of warmth.
“I fail to see what is funny!” Lady Mary said tartly.
“I’m sure.” Zenobia nodded through her mirth. “You always did.”
Lady Mary reached for the bell. “You must have other calls to make—please do not let me take all of your time.”
There was nothing Zenobia could possibly do but take her leave. She rose. The visit had been a total disaster, not a thing could be salvaged, but she would go with dignity.
“Thank you for passing on the news about Beatrice Allenby. I knew you would be the person who would know what had happened—and who would repeat it. It has been a charming afternoon. Good day to you.” And as the maid opened the door in answer to the bell, she swept past her, across the hall, and out of the front door as soon as it was opened. Outside in the street she swore fluently in a dialect she had learned from a canoeist in the Congo. She had achieved nothing to help Florence Ivory, or Africa Dowell.
Vespasia had by far the easiest task, but she was also the only person suited to perform it with excellence. She knew the political world as neither Charlotte nor Zenobia could possibly do; she had the rank and the reputation to approach almost anyone, and from her many battles for social reform she had gained the experience to know very well when she was being lied to or fobbed off with an edited version of the truth suitable for ladies and amateurs.
She was fortunate to find Somerset Carlisle at home, but had he been out she would have waited. The matter was far too urgent to put off. She had naturally not said so to Zenobia, but the more she heard of the details, the more she feared that at the very least the police could make an excellent case against Florence Ivory, and at most she was actually guilty. Had Zenobia not been the character she was—eccentric, courageous, lonely, and of deep and enduring affections—Vespasia would have avoided any involvement with the affair at all. But since she had agreed to help, the least cruel thing she could think of was that they should try to discover the truth as soon as they could. There was the remote possibility that they would find some other solution; if not, they would at least end Zenobia’s fearful suspense, the swings between the upsurge of hope and the plunges of cold despair as one piece of information surfaced after another. And as hard as any revelation was the gray silence of waiting, not knowing what could happen next, imagining, trying to argue in the mind what the police would be thinking.
Vespasia had experienced it all after George’s death and she knew what Zenobia would feel with an immediacy no outsider could.
Therefore she did not have the slightest qualm in sending for Charlotte and dispatching her on any errand that might prove useful. She would have sent Emily as well had she not been gallivanting round Italy. And she was perfectly happy to take up Somerset Carlisle’s time and employ his talents, should they prove to be of help.
He received her in his study. It was a smaller room than the withdrawing room, but immensely comfortable, full of old leather and old finely polished wood reflecting the firelight. The big desk was strewn with papers and open books, and there were three pens in the stand and half a stick of sealing wax and a scatter of unused postage stamps.
Somerset Carlisle was a man in his late forties, lean, with the look of one who has burnt up all his excesses of energy in relentless activity, a face where emotion and irony lay so close to the surface that only years of schooling kept them within the bounds of taste, not because he feared or believed the doctrine of others, but because he knew the impracticality