Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [141]
Lally Clitheridge was dumbfounded.
“I thought Stephen Shaw was the rudest person I had ever met,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “But you leave him standing. You are totally extraordinary.”
There was only one possible thing to say.
“Thank you.” Charlotte did not flinch in the slightest. “Next time I see him I shall tell him of your words. I am sure he will be most comforted.”
Lally’s face tightened, almost as if she had been struck—and quite suddenly and ridiculously Charlotte realized the root of her enmity. She was intensely jealous. She might regard Shaw as verbally reckless, full of dangerous and unwelcome ideas, but she was also fascinated by him, drawn from her pedestrian and dutiful life with the vicar towards something that promised excitement, danger, and a vitality and confidence that must be like elixir in the desert of her days.
Now the whole charade not only made Charlotte angry but stirred her to pity for its futility and the pointless courage of Lally’s crusade to make Clitheridge into something he was not, to do his duty when he was swamped by it, constantly to push him, support him, tell him what to say. And for her daydreams of a man so much more alive, the vigor that horrified and enchanted her, and the hatred she felt for Charlotte because Shaw was drawn to her, as easily and hopelessly as Lally was to Shaw.
It was all so futile.
And yet she could hardly take the words back, that would only make it worse by allowing everyone to see that she understood. The only possible thing now was to leave. Accordingly she rose to her feet.
“Thank you, Miss Worlingham, for permitting me to express my admiration for Clemency’s work, and to assure you that despite any dangers, or any threats that may be made, I will continue with every effort at my command. It did not die with her, nor will it ever. Miss Angeline.” She withdrew her hand, clutched her reticule a trifle more closely, and turned to leave.
“What do you mean, Mrs. Pitt?” Prudence stood up and came forward. “Are you saying that you believe Clemency was murdered by someone who—who objected to this work you say she was doing?”
“It seems very likely, Mrs. Hatch.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Celeste said sharply. “Or are you suggesting that Amos Lindsay was involved in it as well?”
“Not so far as I know—” Charlotte began, and was cut off instantly.
“Of course not,” Celeste agreed, rising to her feet also. Her skirt was puckered but she was unaware of it in her annoyance. “Mr. Lindsay was no doubt murdered for his radical political views, this Fabian Society and all these dreadful pamphlets he writes and supports.” She glared at Charlotte. “He associated with people who have all sorts of wild ideas: socialism, anarchy, even revolution. There are some very sinister plots being laid in our times. There is murder far more abominable than the fires here in Highgate, fearful as they were. One does not read the newspapers, of course. But one cannot help but be aware of what is going on—people talk about it, even here. Some madman is loose in Whitechapel ripping women apart and disfiguring them in the most fearful way—and the police seem powerless either to catch him or prevent him.” Her face was white as she spoke and no one could fail to feel her horror rippling out in the room like coldness from a door opened on ice.
“I am sure you are right, Celeste.” Angeline seemed to withdraw into herself as if she would retreat from these new and terrible forces that threatened them all. “The world is changing. People are thinking quite new and very dangerous ideas. It sometimes seems to me as if everything we have is threatened.” She shook her head and pulled at her black shawl to put it more closely around her shoulders, as if it could protect her. “And I really believe from the way Stephen speaks that he quite admires this talk of overthrowing the old order and setting up those Fabian ideas.”
“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t,” Lally contradicted strongly,