Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [59]
“I have no idea,” Emily replied in the darkness. “Perhaps.”
7
EMILY HAD THOUGHT ABOUT ALL the murders and the many different tragedies that might lie behind them. She was perfectly aware that a great many marriages were made quite as much for practical reasons as for romantic ones, attempts either to improve positions in Society or to maintain ones that were endangered. Sometimes such alliances worked out quite as well as those embarked upon in the heat of infatuation, but where the difference of age or temperament was too great, they became prisonlike.
She also knew the morally numbing effect of boredom. That she did not suffer from it herself was due to her periodic adventures into the stimulating, frightening, and turbulent world of criminal tragedy. But the long, arid intervals of social trivia in the meantime were the more pronounced because of the contrast. It was a world enclosed upon itself, where the most superficial flirtations assumed the proportions of great love, mere insults in etiquette or precedence became wounds, and matters of dress—the cut, the color, the trimming—were noticed and discussed as if they were of immense importance.
As Christina Ross had said, idle men might occupy themselves with all manner of sport, healthy or otherwise, even finding excitement in risking money or broken limbs. Industrious or morally minded men might seek power in Parliament or trade, or might travel abroad upon missions to benighted nations somewhere, or join the army, or follow the White Nile to discover its source in the heart of the Dark Continent!
But a woman had only the outlet of charitable works. Her home was cared for by servants, her children by a nursery maid, a nanny, and then a governess. For those who were neither artistic nor gifted with any particular intelligence, there was little else but to entertain and be entertained. Small wonder that spirited young women, like some of Christina’s set, trapped in marriages without passion, laughter, or even companionship, could be lured away by someone as raw and dangerous as Max Burton.
And of course Emily had never hidden from herself the other side of the argument, the fact that a number of men do not find all their appetites satisfied at home. Many abstained for one reason or another, but of course there were those who did not. One did not discuss “houses of pleasure”—or the “fallen doves” who occupied them. God!—that was a euphemism she hated! And only with the most intimate friends did one speak of the various affairs that were conducted at country houses over long shooting weekends, in croquet games on summer lawns, at great balls in the hunting season, or any other of a dozen times and places. None of which was to excuse it, but to understand it.
Therefore, in considering murder, Emily took into account the names and situations, such as she knew them, of Christina’s social circle and those who might conceivably have been involved with Max. There were about seven or eight she found likely, and another half dozen possible, though she believed they lacked the courage, or the indifference to values of modesty or loyalty, to have taken such a step. But if nothing better presented itself, she would bear in mind to suggest their names to Pitt, so that he might discover where their husbands had been at the relevant times.
And there was always the possibility of an unfortunate recognition to consider—a little betrayal—or blackmail. What of a man who took his pleasures in a whorehouse and found he had bought his own wife! The permutations were legion, all of them painful and desperately foolish.
It could be that one such woman had been used by Max, that one of her customers had been Bertie Astley and, for some reason, a fear or hatred had arisen that resulted in the murder not only of Max but of Astley also. How Hubert Pinchin was involved, however, she did not yet have any suggestion.
The other most obvious possibility was even less pleasant to her: that Beau Astley had read of the startling murders of Max and Dr. Pinchin, and had