Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [85]
He was stung. It was not only cruel, but totally unjust. And it was not what he had meant. “There are many words I have heard applied to the murder of Bertie Astley,” he said cuttingly. “But you are the first to choose ‘sophisticated.’ It is an allusion whose appropriateness escapes me!”
A dull color marked her cheeks. He had misunderstood her willfully, and as painfully as she had mistaken him. “I do not appreciate sarcasm, Brandon,” she answered. “And you have not the wit to do it successfully. Bertie Astley was an unfortunate victim of whatever lunatic is perpetrating these outrages. What purpose took him to that area we will probably never know, and it is none of our business. Suffer him to be buried in peace, and his family to mourn him decently. It is indelicate in the extreme to remind anyone of the circumstances of his death. I imagine a gentleman would not do so.”
“Then it is time we had fewer gentlemen—and a greater number of police, or whatever it is that it takes to get something done!” he retorted. “I, for one, do not desire to see any more mutilated corpses turning up in London.”
She looked at him wearily. “We have few enough gentlemen already. I would wish there were more, not less!” She turned and walked away, leaving him with the feeling that he had lost the argument in spite of the fact that he was in the right.
The following day, Christina had luncheon with her mother but declined to go calling. Balantyne found himself in the withdrawing room alone with his daughter. The fire was blazing halfway up the chimney, and the room was full of warm, flickering light. It seemed familiar, comfortably timeless, almost as if they could have slipped back into his youth and her childhood, when affection was taken for granted.
He sat back in his chair and stared at Christina as she stood by the round piecrust table. Her face was remarkably pretty: the small features, rounded lips, wide eyes, shining hair. Her figure, in its fashionable dress, still had the freshness of a girl’s. She was a strange mixture of child and woman—perhaps that was her charm. Certainly she had had many admirers before she married Alan Ross. And, to judge from the social occasions at which he had seen her, she still had, even if they were now more discreet.
“Christina?”
She turned and looked at him. “Yes, Papa?”
“You knew Sir Bertram Astley, didn’t you.” He did not allow it to be a question, because he would not accept denial.
She faced him when she spoke, but bent her eyes to a china ornament on the table. The subject was trivial, not worth a conversation.
“Slightly,” she replied. “One is bound to meet most of the people in Society at some time or another.” She did not ask why he had mentioned it.
“What sort of a man was he?”
“Pleasant, as far as I could judge,” she answered with a slight smile. “But quite ordinary.”
She was so confident that he could not disbelieve her. And yet he knew she moved in circles that were neither bland nor artless. She was far less innocent than he had been at her age—perhaps than he was even now?
“What about Beau Astley?”
She hesitated a moment. Was there a touch of color on her skin, or was it only a reflection of the firelight?
“Charming.” she said without expression in her voice. “Very agreeable, although I admit I do not know him well. It is something of a hasty judgment. If you are expecting me to come up with any profundity, Papa, I am afraid I shall disappoint you. I had no idea Sir Bertram had perverted tastes. I fully thought he was after that silly Woolmer creature, and meant to marry her. And since she has no money at all, and no family to speak