Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [109]
When Buffery had identified himself, Jack told Gracie to leave, which she did rapidly and with deep gratitude, after picking up the sixpence. Jack then proceeded to threaten him with lawsuits as accessory to fraud, and Buffery was ready to swear blind that he did not own the buildings in Lisbon Street, and prove it if necessary before the lawyer who took the rent money from him every month, less his own miserable pittance for the service he performed.
After a brief luncheon, early afternoon found them in the offices on Bethnal Green Road of Fulsom and Son, Penrose and Fulsom, a small room up narrow stairs where Jack insisted on going alone. He returned after a chilly half hour. Emily and Charlotte and Gracie were wrapped in carriage rugs, Gracie still glowing from her triumph in the public house, and the subsequent praise she had received.
They spent until dark trying to track down the property management company whose name Jack had elicited, by a mixture of lies and trickery from the seedy little Mr. Penrose, but eventually were obliged to return home unsuccessful.
Charlotte intended to recount the day’s events to Pitt, but when he arrived home late, lines of weariness deep in his face, and in his eyes a mixture of eagerness and total bafflement, she set aside her own news and asked after his.
He sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the mug of tea she had automatically put before him, but instead of drinking it he simply warmed his hands holding it, and began to talk.
“We went to Shaw’s solicitors today and read Clemency’s will. The estate was left to Shaw, as we had been told, all except a few personal items to friends. The most remarkable was her Bible, which she left to Matthew Oliphant, the curate.”
Charlotte could see nothing very odd in this. One might well leave a Bible to one’s minister, especially if he were as sincere and thoughtful as Oliphant. She could almost certainly have had no idea of his feelings for her; they had been so desperately private. She recalled his bony, vulnerable face as clearly as if she had seen it a few moments ago.
Why was Pitt so concerned? It seemed ordinary enough. She looked at him, waiting.
“Of course the Bible was destroyed in the fire.” He leaned forward a little, elbows on the table, his face puckered in concentration. “But the solicitor had seen it—it was an extraordinary thing, leather bound, tooled in gold and with a hasp and lock on it which he thought must be brass, but he wasn’t sure.” His eyes were bright with the recollection. “And inside every initial letter of a chapter was illuminated in color and gold leaf with the most exquisite tiny paintings.” He smiled slowly. “As if one glimpsed a vision of heaven or hell through lighted keyholes. She showed it to him just once, so he would know what item he was dealing with and there could be no mistake. It had been her grandfather’s.” His face shadowed for a moment with distaste. “Not Worlingham, on the other side.” Then the awareness of the present returned and with it the waste and the destruction. His face was suddenly blank and the light died out of it. “It must have been marvelous, and worth a great deal. But of course it’s gone with everything else.”
He looked at her, puzzled and anxious. “But why on earth should she leave it to Oliphant? He’s not even the vicar, he’s only a curate. He almost certainly won’t stay there in Highgate. If he gets a living it will be elsewhere—possibly even in a different county.”
Charlotte knew the answer immediately and without any effort of reasoning. It was as obvious to her as to any woman who had loved and not dared to show it, as she had once, ages ago, before Pitt. She had been infatuated with Dominic Corde, her eldest sister