Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [52]
“In that case, we’ll never find him.” It was an admission of defeat. With no body, there was no proof of murder. “But that is not the most important thing, what matters is who!”
“Ah,” Vespasia said softly, looking at Charlotte. “Indeed, who? Naturally I have given the subject a great deal of consideration. In fact I have been able to think of little else, although I have avoided speaking of it in front of Emily.”
Charlotte leaned forward. She was not sure how to express herself without seeming forward, even callous, and yet she must. Delicacy was of no service now. “You have known these people most of their lives. You. must know things about them the police could never discover, or understand if they did.” It was not intended as flattery, simply fact. They needed Vespasia’s help—Pitt needed it. “You must have opinions! Fulbert used to say fearful things about people. He said to me once that they were all whited sepulchers. I don’t doubt most of it was for effect, but judging from their reactions, there was a germ of truth!”
Vespasia smiled, and there was dry, faraway humor and regret in her face, an infinity of memories.
“My dear girl, everyone has secrets, unless they have lived no life at all. And even they, poor souls, imagine they have. It is almost an admission of defeat not to have a secret of some kind.”
“Phoebe?”
“Hardly one to kill over,” Vespasia shook her head slowly. “The poor soul is losing her hair. She wears a wig.”
Charlotte recalled Phoebe at the funeral, her hair sliding one way and her hat the other. How could she feel so sharply sorry for her and at the same time want to laugh? It was so unimportant, and yet it would be painful to Phoebe. Unconsciously she touched her own hair, thick and shining. It was her best feature. Perhaps if she were losing it, it would matter enormously. She too would feel insecure, belittled, somehow naked. The laughter vanished.
“Oh,” there was pity in the word, and Vespasia was looking at her with appreciation. “But as you say,” Charlotte collected herself and went on, “hardly a matter to murder over, even if she were capable of it.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Vespasia agreed. “She is far too silly to do anything so big so successfully.”
“I was thinking of the purely physical side,” Charlotte replied. “She couldn’t manage that, even if she’d a mind to.”
“Oh, Phoebe is stronger than she looks,” Vespasia sat back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling in recollection. “She could murder him all right, with perhaps a knife, if she had lured him somewhere she could simply leave him. But she has not the nerve to carry it off afterward. I remember when she was a girl, about fourteen or fifteen, she took her elder sister’s lace petticoat and pantaloons and cut them down to fit herself. She was as cool as you like doing it, but then, when she came to wear them, she was so stricken with fear, she wore her own on top in case anything should catch her skirt and the better ones be seen. As a result she looked ten pounds heavier and not in the least attractive. No, Phoebe might do it, but she has not the endurance to carry it off.”
Charlotte was fascinated. How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.
“What other secrets are there?” she asked. “What else did Fulbert know?”
Vespasia sat up and opened her eyes wide.
“My dear child, I wouldn’t begin to guess. He was unbearably nosy. His main preoccupation in life was to acquire uncharitable information about others. If at last he found something too big for him, I cannot but say he richly deserved it.”
“But what else?” Charlotte was not going to give up so easily. “Who else? Do you think he knew who killed Fanny, and that was it?”
“Ah!” Vespasia breathed out slowly. “That, of course, is the real question. And I’m afraid I have no idea. Naturally I have been over and over everything I know. To tell