Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [4]
“Where does Lady Cumming-Gould live?” he asked.
“With Lord and Lady Ashworth,” she replied. “She is an aunt, I believe, and is visiting for the Season.”
With Lord and Lady Ashworth—so Fanny Nash had been to Emily’s house the night she was murdered. Memories came rushing back of Charlotte and Emily as he had first known them in Cater Street when he was investigating the hangman murders. Everyone had been afraid, looking with new eyes at friends, even at family; suspicions had been born that could otherwise have lain silent all life long. Old relationships had faltered and broken under the weight. Now violence and obscene and ugly secrets were close again, perhaps inside the very house. All the nightmares would return, the cold questions one was afraid even to think, and yet could not shut out.
“Is there access between all the gardens?” he asked carefully, forcing the fog and terror of Cater Street from his mind. “Might she have returned that way? It was a pleasant summer evening.”
She looked at him with light surprize.
“I hardly think it likely, Mr. Pitt. She was wearing a dinner dress, not pantaloons! She went and returned by the road. She must have been accosted by some lunatic there.”
A ridiculous thought flashed through his mind to ask her how many lunatics lived in Paragon Walk, but perhaps she would not know there had been coachmen lounging around at one end waiting for their masters and mistresses to leave a party, and a constable on the beat at the other.
He eased his weight from one foot to the other and stood a little straighten
“Then I had best go and see Lady Cumming-Gould. Thank you, Mrs. Nash. I hope we will be able to clear up the matter quickly and not need to distress you for long.”
“I hope so,” she agreed with formal coolness. “Good day.”
At the Ashworth house he was shown into the withdrawing room by a butler whose face mirrored his social dilemma. Here was a person who admitted to being of the police, and therefore undesirable, and should not be allowed to forget he was here on sufferance only, a most unpleasant necessity due to the recent tragedy. Yet, on the other hand, he was quite extraordinarily also Lady Ash-worth’s brother-in-law! Which is what comes of marrying beneath one! In the end the butler settled for a pained civility and withdrew to fetch Lord Ashworth. Pitt was too entertained by the man’s predicament to be annoyed.
But when the door opened, it was not George but Emily herself who came in. He had forgotten how charming she could be, and at the same time how utterly different from Charlotte. She was fair and slight, dressed at the height of fashion and expense. Where Charlotte was disastrously forthright, Emily was far too practical to speak without thinking, and could be exquisitely devious when she chose, in a good cause, of course. And she usually considered Society to be an excellent cause. She could lie without a tremor.
She came in now and closed the door behind her, looking straight at him.
“Hello, Thomas,” she said wanly. “You must be here about poor Fanny. I didn’t dream we should have the good fortune that it should be you to investigate it. I’ve been trying to think if I knew anything that would be of help, as we did in Callander Square.” Her voice lifted for a moment, “Charlotte and I were rather clever there.” Then her tone dropped again, and her face took on a pinched, unhappy look. “But that was different. We didn’t know the people to start with. And the ones who were dead were dead before we ever knew of them. When you didn’t know people alive, it doesn’t hurt the same way.” She sighed. “Please sit down, Thomas. You tower there, sort of flapping. Can’t you do up your coat, or something? I must speak to Charlotte. She lets you come out without—” She looked him up and down and gave up the whole idea.
Pitt ran his hands through his hair and made it worse.
“Did you know Fanny Nash well?” he asked, sitting on the sofa and seeming to spread over it, all coattails and arms.
“No. And I’m ashamed