Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [5]
He smiled. There were so many echoes of Charlotte in her that he could not help warming to her.
“But Fanny was too young,” he finished the sentence for her. “Too naive.”
“Quite. She was almost insipid.” Then her face changed, filling with pity and embarrassment, because she had momentarily forgotten death, and the manner of it. “Thomas, she was the last kind of creature in the world to invite such an abominable thing! Whoever did it must be quite insane. You must catch him, for Fanny’s sake—and for everyone else’s!”
All sorts of answers ran through his mind, reassurance about strangers and vagrants, long gone now, and they all died on his tongue. It was quite possible that the murderer was someone who lived or worked here in Paragon Walk. Neither the constable on duty at one end nor the servants waiting at the other had seen anyone pass. It was not the sort of area where people wandered unremarked. The probability was that it had been some coachman or footman from the party, inflamed with drink and with time on his hands, allowing a foolish impulse, perhaps when she threatened to cry out, to become suddenly an ugly and appalling crime.
But it was not the crime itself; it was the attendant investigation that frightened, and the haunting fear that it might not be a footman but some man on the Walk, one of themselves with a violent and obscene nature lying under the mannered surface they knew. And police investigations uncovered not only the major crimes, but so often the smaller sins, the meannesses and deceits that hurt so much.
But there was no need to tell her that. For all her title and her assurance, she was still the same girl who had been so vulnerable in Cater Street, when she had seen her father frightened and stripped of his pretenses.
“You will, won’t you?” Her voice cut across his silence, demanding an answer. She was standing in the middle of the floor, staring at him.
“We usually do.” It was the best thing he could say and be honest. And even if he had wished to, it was not much use lying to Emily. Like many practical and ambitious people, she was disastrously perceptive. She was well accomplished in the art of polite lies, and she read them like a book in others.
He recalled himself to the purpose of his visit.
“She came to see you that evening, didn’t she?”
“Fanny?” Her eyes widened a little. “Yes. She returned a book, or something, to Aunt Vespasia. Do you want to speak to her?”
He took the chance immediately.
“Yes, please. Perhaps you had better stay. In case she is distressed, you would be of comfort to her.” He imagined an elderly female relative of excessively gentle birth with a correspondingly tender susceptibility to the vapors.
For the first time Emily laughed.
“Oh, my dear,” she put her hand over her mouth. “You can’t imagine Aunt Vespasia!” She picked up her skirts and swept to the door. “But I shall most certainly stay. It is precisely what I need!”
George Ashworth was handsome enough, with bold dark eyes and a fine head of hair, but he could never have been an equal for his aunt. She was over seventy now, but there were still the remnants of a startling beauty in her face—the strength of the bones, the high cheeks and long, straight nose. Blue-white hair was piled on her head, and she wore a dress of deep lilac silk. She stood in the doorway and looked at Pitt for several minutes, then moved into the room, picking up her lorgnette, and studied him more closely.
“Can’t really see without the damn thing,” she said irritably. She snorted very gently, like an extremely well-bred horse. “Extraordinary,” she breathed out. “So you are a policeman?”
“Yes, ma’am.” For an instant even Pitt was at a loss for words. Over his shoulder he saw Emily’s face alight with amusement.
“What are you looking at?” Vespasia said sharply. “I never wear black.