Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [154]
“Can you blame her?” Charlotte whispered back. “The vicar doesn’t exactly make one’s pulse race, does he.”
“Don’t be vulgar. No he doesn’t. I would rather have the good doctor any day—unless, of course, he murdered his wife.”
Charlotte had no effective answer for that, knowing it could be true, however much it hurt, so she turned around sharply and poked Emily in the ribs, as if by accident.
“Humph,” Emily said in total comprehension.
Flora Lutterworth was on her father’s arm, her veil drawn back so she might eat, and there was color in her cheeks and a faintly smug smile on her pretty mouth. Charlotte was curious to know what had caused it.
Across the room at the far side, Pitt saw it too, and had a very good idea it had something to do with Murdo. He considered it highly likely that Murdo would not find it so difficult to pursue Miss Lutterworth. In fact he might very well discover that it happened in spite of any ideas of his own, and it would all be much easier than he had feared.
Pitt was dressed unusually smartly for him. His collar was neat, his tie perfectly straight—at least so far—and he had nothing in his jacket pockets except a clean handkerchief (Emily’s silk one was only for show), a short pencil and a piece of folded paper so he might make notes if he wished. That was quite redundant, because he never did; it was something he thought an efficient policeman ought to have.
He realized Shaw had invited him precisely to annoy Angeline and Celeste. It was a way of establishing that although the function was held in the Worlingham house, this was Amos Lindsay’s funerary dinner, and he, Shaw, was the host and would invite whom he chose. To that end he stood at the head of the table, very square on his feet, and behaved as if the servants offering the baked meats and claret were his own. He welcomed the guests, especially Pitt. He did not glance once at the grim faces of Angeline and Celeste, who were in black bombazine and jet beads, standing behind him and a trifle to one side. They smiled guardedly at those they approved of, such as Josiah and Prudence Hatch, Quinton Pascoe, and Aunt Vespasia; nodded civilly to those they tolerated, like the Lutterworths, or Emily and Jack; and totally ignored those whose presence they knew to be a calculated affront, such as Pitt and Charlotte—although since they came separately and did not speak to each other, the sisters did not immediately connect them.
Pitt took his delicious cold game pie, jugged hare, and brown bread and butter and homemade pickle, liberally apportioned, and his glass of claret, finding them extraordinarily difficult to manage, and wandered around half overhearing conversations, and closely observing faces—those who were speaking, and more particularly those who were alone and unaware they were being observed.
What had been the precise course of events on the day or two before Clemency Shaw’s death? Some time earlier she had discovered the source of the Worlingham money, and spread and given away her own inheritance, almost entirely to relieve the distress of those who were the victims of appalling misery, either directly to assist them, or indirectly to fight the laws which presently enabled owners to take their excess profits so discreetly that their names were never known nor their public reputations smeared with their true behavior.
When had she shared this with Shaw? Or had he discovered it some way of his own, perhaps only when her money was gone, and they had had a furious quarrel? Or had he been wiser than that, and pretended to agree—No. If he had hidden his response, it must have been because he thought there was still a substantial majority