Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [14]
And now this extraordinary creature, the police inspector, was coming into the withdrawing room, all arms and legs and coattails, with hair like the scullery maid’s mop, falling in every direction.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Pitt said courteously.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” she replied, extending him her hand without rising. He bent over and brushed it with his lips. It was a ridiculous gesture from a policeman, who after all was more or less a tradesman, but he did it without an iota of self-consciousness, even a kind of odd grace. He was not as uncoordinated as he appeared. Really, he was the oddest creature!
“Please sit down, Thomas,” Emily offered. “I shall send for more tea.” She rang the bell as she spoke.
“What is it you wish to know this time?” Vespasia enquired. Surely the fellow could not be paying a social call?
He turned a little to face her. He was uncommonly plain, and yet she found him not displeasing. There was great intelligence in his face and a better humor than she had observed in anyone else in Paragon Walk, except perhaps that marvelously elegant Frenchman all the women were making such fools of themselves about. Surely that could not be why Emily was tying herself in? Could it?
Pitt’s reply cut across her thoughts.
“I was not able to see Lord Ashworth when I called before, ma’am,” he answered.
Of course. Suppose the wretched man had to see George. It would appear odd if he did not.
“Quite,” she agreed. “I suppose you want to know where he was?”
“Yes, please?”
She turned to George, sitting a little sideways on the arm of one of the easy chairs. Wish he would sit properly, but he never had since he was a child. Always fidgeted, even on a horse; only saving grace was that he had good hands, didn’t haul an animal about. Got it from his mother. His father was a fool.
“Well!” she said sharply, turning to him. “Where were you, George? You weren’t here!”
“I was out, Aunt Vespasia.”
“Obviously!” she snapped. “Where?”
“At my club.”
There was something in the way he was sitting that made her feel uncomfortable and distrust his answer. It was not a lie, and yet it was somehow incomplete. She knew it from the way he shifted his bottom a little. His father had done exactly the same as a child when he had been in the butler’s pantry trying the port. The fact that the butler had imbibed the majority of it himself was immaterial.
“You have several clubs,” she pointed out tartly. “Which were you at on that occasion? Do you wish to send Mr. Pitt scouring all the gentlemen’s clubs in London asking after you?”
George colored.
“No, of course not,” he said with irritation. “I was at Whyte’s, I think, most of the evening. Anyway, Teddy Aspinall was with me. Although I don’t suppose he kept time, any more than I did. But I suppose you could ask him, if you have to?” He twisted to look at Pitt. “Although I’d rather you didn’t press him. He was pretty well soaked, and I don’t suppose he can remember much. Rather embarrassing for him. His wife is a daughter of the Duke of Carlisle, and a bit straitlaced. Make things rather unpleasant.”
The old Duke of Carlisle was dead, and anyway Daisy Aspinall was as used to her husband’s drinking as she had been to her father’s. However, Vespasia forbore from saying so. But why did George not want Pitt to ask? Was he nervous that Pitt would let fall that he was George’s brother-in-law? No doubt George would get ragged about it, but one was not accountable for the peculiar tastes of one’s relatives, as long as they were discreet about it. And so far Emily had been excellently discreet, as much as loyalty to her sister would allow. Vespasia admitted to a rapidly mounting curiosity about this sister she had never seen. Why had Emily not invited her? Since they were sisters, surely the girl had been tolerably well brought up? Emily certainly knew how to behave like a lady. Only someone of Vespasia’s immense and subtle experience would have known she was not—not quite.
She had missed