Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [92]
Gracie flushed with pleasure. “What does it say, ma’am? I carsn’t read that kind o’ writin’.”
Charlotte looked at the sprawling cursive script. “It is exactly what we want,” she answered approvingly. “The names and addresses of several of the women who might know where Clemency Shaw began her work. We shall start immediately with Maude Dalgetty. I rather liked her manner at the funeral. I think she may be a sensible woman and generous spirited. She was a friend of Clemency’s and so, I expect, inclined to help us.”
And so it proved. Maude Dalgetty was both sensible and desirous to help. She welcomed them into a withdrawing room full of sunlight and bowls of late roses. The room had a graciousness of proportion and was elegantly furnished, although many of the pieces were beginning to show wear. There were little knots and gaps in some of the fringes around lamps and the sashes on the curtains, and some of the crystals were missing from the chandelier. But the warmth was unmistakable. The books were used—here was one open on the side table. There was a large sewing basket with mending and embroidery clearly visible. The painting above the mantelpiece was a portrait of Maude herself, probably done a dozen years earlier, sitting in a garden on a summer day, the light on her skin and hair. She certainly had been a remarkable beauty, and much of it was left, even if a little more amply proportioned.
Two cats lay curled up together in a single ball of fur by the fire, sound asleep.
“How may I help you?” Maude said as soon as they were in. She paid no less attention to Gracie than to Charlotte. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
It was, strictly speaking, too early for such a thing, but Charlotte judged it was sincerely offered and since she was thirsty and had eaten no lunch, and she imagined Gracie was the same, she accepted.
Maude ordered it from the maid, then inquired again how she might help.
Charlotte hesitated. Sitting in this warm room looking at Maude’s intelligent face she was uncertain whether to risk telling her the truth rather than a concocted lie, however plausible. Then she recalled Clemency’s death, and Lindsay’s so soon after, and changed her mind. Wherever the heart of the murders lay, there were tentacles of it here. An unwitting word by even an innocent person might provoke more violence. It was one of the ugliest changes in the aftermath of murder that instinctive trusts disappeared. One looked for betrayal and suspected every answer of being a lie, every careless or angry word of hiding greed or hatred, every guarded comment of concealing envy.
“Gracie has recently heard that an aunt of hers in this locality has been widowed,” she explained. “She fears she may be in straitened circumstances, perhaps even to the degree of being put out on the street.”
Maude’s face showed immediate concern but she did not interrupt.
“If she has fallen on the care of the parish then perhaps you know what has become of her?” Charlotte tried to put the urgency into her voice that she would have felt had it been true, and saw the compassion in Maude’s eyes, and hated herself for the duplicity. She hurried on to cover it in speech. “And if you do not, then someone else may? I believe that the late Mrs. Shaw concerned herself greatly with such cases?” She felt her cheeks burn. This was the kind of deception she most despised.
Maude tightened her lips and blinked several times to control the very obvious grief that flooded her face.
“Indeed she did,” she said gently. “But if she had any record of whom she helped it will have been destroyed when the house was burned.” She turned to Gracie, since it was Gracie whose aunt they were speaking of. “The only other person likely to know would be the curate, Matthew Oliphant. I think she confided in him and he gave her counsel, and possibly even help. She spoke very little of her work, but I know she felt more deeply about it as time passed. Most of it was not within the parish, you know?