Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [49]
“You had better start doing your job a little more effectively, Mr. Pitt. Everyone here is suffering appallingly. As if the heat and the Season were not enough! I loathe the Season, with its endless simpering young women dressed by their mothers and taught to parade like cattle at a fat stock show, young men gambling away their money, whoring around, and drinking till they cannot even remember which idiocy they were at the night before. Do you know I went to see Hallam Cayley at half past ten on the morning Fulbert disappeared, to inquire if he had seen him, and he was still insensible from the previous night? The man is only thirty-five, and he’s a dissipated wreck! It’s obscene!”
He looked at Pitt without pleasure. “One thing to be said for your type, I suppose, at least you are too busy to become drunk, and you cannot afford it.”
Pitt straightened up and put his hands into his pockets to hide the clenching of his fists. He had seen every kind of moral and spiritual wreck thrown up with the flotsam of London’s underworld, but nothing that offended him, as did Afton Nash, without stirring up a modicum of pity. There must be some deep and dreadful scar on this man he did not even guess.
“Does Mr. Cayley drink a great deal, sir?” he asked with soft voice.
“How the devil should I know?” Afton snapped. “I do not frequent that sort of place. I know he was drunk the other morning when I called, and he behaves like a man who has indulged himself beyond the point his stomach can bear.” He jerked his head up to look at Pitt again. “But look at the Frenchman. There is something sly and over intimate about him. God only knows what foreign aberrations he has! There is no one in his house but his own servants. He could be doing anything in there. Women are incredibly foolish. For God’s sake, protect us from this—this obscenity!”
Six
EMILY DID NOT mention Fulbert’s disappearance to Charlotte, and she heard of it from Pitt. There was nothing she could do about it so late in the evening, or indeed the following day. Since Jemima was grizzly with cutting teeth, Charlotte did not feel it fair to ask Mrs. Smith to look after her. However, by midafternoon she was so distracted by Jemima’s crying that she slipped over the street to ask Mrs. Smith if she had any remedy for it, or at least something to ease the pain sufficiently for the child to rest.
Mrs. Smith clucked with disapproval at Charlotte and took herself off into the kitchen. A moment later she came back with a bottle of clear liquid.
“You put that on ’er gums with a piece of cotton, an’ it’ll soothe ’er in no time, you just see.”
Charlotte thanked her for it profusely. She did not ask what was in the mixture, feeling she would probably prefer not to know, as long as it was not gin, which she had heard some women gave their babies when they could bear the crying no longer. Still, she imagined she would recognize the smell of that.
“And ’ow’s your poor sister?” Mrs. Smith asked, glad of a few moments’ company and wanting to keep it.
Charlotte seized the chance to prepare the ground to visit Emily again.
“Not very well,” she said quickly. “I’m afraid the brother of a friend has disappeared quite without trace, and it is all very distressing.”
“Oooh!” Mrs. Smith was entranced. “’Ow dreadful! Ain’t that extraordinary, wherever can ’e ’ave gorn?”
“Nobody knows.” Charlotte sensed that she had won already. “But tomorrow, if you will be kind enough to look after Jemima, and I hardly like to ask you when—”
“Never you mind!” Mrs. Smith said instantly. “I’ll look after ’er, don’t you worry. She’ll ’ave them teeth cut in a week or two, and poor little thing’ll feel the world better. You just go and see to your sister, love. Find out what ’appened!”
“Are you sure?