Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [59]
Charlotte smiled bleakly. “I don’t think even Mrs. March will give her tongue full rein with Aunt Vespasia there. I feel there is not much love lost between them.”
“I wish I could think it was Mrs. March who killed George,” Emily said thoughtfully. “I’ve been trying to scrape up any kind of reason why she should.”
“Did you succeed?”
“No.”
“Nor I. But there must be an enormous amount that we don’t know.” Charlotte’s face was dark and tense, as if she was afraid. “Emily, I woke up in the night and I thought I heard you walking around.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, it wasn’t you! It was coming from the stairs, so I got up to follow, but when I got the landing I saw it was Tassie. She was coming up and she walked past me to her bedroom. I saw her quite clearly. Emily, her sleeves were smeared with blood, and there were splashes down the front of her skirt and at the hem. She was smiling! There was a sort of peace about her. Her eyes were shining and wide open, but she didn’t even see me. I kept back in the small passage to the dressing room, and she walked so close I could have touched her.” She felt a little sick again as the smell came back, nauseating and sweet.
Emily was dazed—this was unbelievable. She offered the only explanation she could conceive of. “You had a nightmare.”
“No, I didn’t,” Charlotte insisted. “It was real.” Her face was tight and miserable but she did not waver. “I thought I might have been dreaming, with everything that’s happened, so I went down to the laundry room this morning and found the dress soaking in one of the coppers.”
“And was it covered in blood?”
Charlotte shook her head no more than an inch. “No, it was washed out. But then it would be; she’d hardly leave it like that for the maids to find, would she.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” Emily still protested. “Whose blood? Why? Nobody’s been murdered that way”—she swallowed—“that we know of.”
Another hideous memory stirred in Charlotte’s mind, of parcels in a graveyard, but she refused to allow it to take shape. “Do you think she could be mad?” she said wretchedly. It seemed the only explanation left—and one must be found, for Emily’s sake.
“I suppose so,” Emily said reluctantly. “But I’m sure George didn’t know—unless he’d just found out. Which could be a reason for old Mrs. March to have killed him.”
“Do you think so?” Charlotte pursed her lips. “Would George ever have told anyone?”
“Yes! If she were dangerous—which she must be, if it was human blood.”
Charlotte said nothing, but she looked increasingly unhappy.
Emily knew why: she liked Tassie also. There was something in her that was immediately appealing, frankness, humor and generosity. But she had seen her coming up the stairs with blood bright on her sleeves and staining her dress. She shivered. Please God, it mustn’t be Tassie.
“It doesn’t have to be her,” Charlotte said quietly. “I suppose there could be some other explanation. An animal? An accident in the street? We don’t know anything. I just find it too hard to believe Tassie is ... Anyway, if the family knew they’d lock her up in an asylum, for her own sake.”
“Perhaps they didn’t know how bad she was,” Emily said quietly. “Maybe she has suddenly got worse.”
“But there is still Jack Radley,” Charlotte argued. “You can’t forget him. Or Sybilla. And William has to be an obvious choice. It could even be Eustace. I don’t know why, but maybe George found out something about him. After all, this is his house. Perhaps he’s doing something very wrong, or has a secret in his past that he couldn’t afford to have known.”
Emily looked up. “Such as what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an illegitimate child—or a love affair with someone wildly inappropriate.”
Emily’s fair eyebrows shot up. “Eustace? A love affair? That taxes the imagination! Can you visualize