Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [90]
“You are going to stay with Grandmama for a few days,” Charlotte informed them with a bright smile. “You will enjoy it very much. You can take your lessons with you if you wish, but you don’t have to do them more than an hour or two in the mornings. I shall explain why you are not at school. If you are good, Grandmama might take you for a carriage ride, to the zoo perhaps?”
She had their immediate cooperation, as she had intended. “You will be going with Great-Aunt Vespasia, who is ready to take you as soon as you are packed. She is a very important lady indeed, and you must do everything exactly as she tells you.”
“Who is Great Vepsia?” Daniel asked curiously, his face puckered up trying to remember. “I only ’member Aunt Emily.”
“She is Aunt Emily’s aunt,” Charlotte simplified for the sake of clarity, and to avoid mentioning George, whom Jemima at least could recall quite clearly. She did not understand death, except in relation to small animals, but she knew loss.
Daniel seemed satisfied, and rapidly Charlotte set about putting into a Gladstone bag everything they would require. When it was fastened she made sure they were clean and wrapped up in coats and that their gloves were attached to their cuffs, their shoes buttoned, their hair brushed and their scarves tied. Then she took them downstairs to where Vespasia was waiting, still seated in the kitchen chair.
They greeted her very formally, Daniel half a step behind Jemima, but as she took out her lorgnette to regard them, they were so fascinated by it they forgot to be shy. Charlotte had no qualms as she watched them mount into the carriage, with considerable assistance from the footman, and depart along the street.
Gracie was so excited she could hardly hold her comb in her hand to tidy her hair, and her fingers slipped and made a knot in the strings of her bonnet which she would probably have to cut with scissors ever to get it off again. But what did it matter? She was going with the mistress to help her detect! She had very little clear idea of what it would involve, but it would absolutely without question be marvelously interesting and very important. She might learn secrets and make discoveries concerning issues of such magnitude that people were prepared to commit murder in their cause. And possibly it would even be dangerous.
Of course she would walk a couple of steps behind, and only speak when she was invited to; but she would watch and listen all the time, and notice everything that anyone said or did, even the way their faces looked. Maybe she would notice something vital that no one else did.
It was some two hours later when Charlotte and Gracie descended from the second carriage. They were handed down by Percival, to Gracie’s intense delight; she had never ridden in a proper carriage before, still less been assisted by another servant. They walked up the path to St. Anne’s Church side by side at Charlotte’s insistence, in hope of finding someone there who might guide them in matters of parish relief, and thus to a more precise knowledge of Clemency Shaw’s interest in housing.
Charlotte had given the matter a good deal of thought. She did not wish to be open about her intentions and it had been necessary to construct a believable story. She had tussled with the problem without success until Gracie, biting her lip and not wishing to be impertinent, had suggested they inquire about a relative who had been thrown on the parish as a result of widowhood, which they had just heard about and were anxious to help.
Charlotte had thought this so unlikely to be true that even Hector Clitheridge would doubt it, but then Gracie had pointed out that her Aunt Bertha had been in just such a predicament, and Gracie had indeed heard about it only two weeks ago. Then Charlotte realized what she meant, and seized upon the idea instantly.
“O’ course me Aunt Bertha din’t live in ’Ighgate,” Gracie said honestly. “She lived in Clerkenwell—but then they dunno that.”
And so after learning that there was