Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [53]
Charlotte felt the cold ripple through her, as if someone had opened an outside door on a winter day. She had not thought of personal danger before. All her anxieties had been for Emily, that she might learn of weakness, selfishness in George. She had not feared violence, not even to Emily, let alone to herself. But, if there were a secret so dreadful in Paragon Walk that Fulbert had lost his life merely because he knew it, then to betray curiosity at all would be dangerous, and knowledge itself would be fatal. Surely the only secret like that must be the identity of the rapist. He had killed Fanny to protect that. There couldn’t be two murderers in the Walk—could there?
Or had Fulbert stumbled on some other secret, and his victim, already prompted by the one so-far-successful murder, simply copied the same resolution to his problem? Thomas had said that crime begot crime; people imitated, especially the weak and sick in mind, the opportunists.
“Do you hear me, Charlotte?” Vespasia said somewhat abruptly.
“Yes! Oh, yes, I do.” Charlotte recalled herself to the present, the sunlit withdrawing room and the old lady in ecru-colored lace sitting opposite her. “I don’t speak to anyone except Thomas about it. But what else? I mean, what other secrets do you know?”
Vespasia snorted. “You won’t be told, will you!”
“Don’t you want to know?” Charlotte met her eyes squarely.
“Of course, I do!” Vespasia snapped. “And if I die for it, at my time of life it doesn’t matter! I shall almost certainly die soon anyway. If I had anything useful to say, don’t you think I would have said it? Not to you, but to your extraordinary policeman.” She coughed. “George has been dallying with Selena. I have no proof of it, but I know George. As a child he played with other children’s toys if he felt like it, and ate other children’s sweets. He always gave the toys back, and he was always generous with his own. Used to everything being his anyway. Trouble with an only child. You have a child, don’t you? Well, have another!”
Charlotte could think of no adequate reply to this. She had every intention of having another, when the good Lord should so choose. Anyway, her concern was for Emily now.
Vespasia guessed it.
“He knows that I know,” she said gently. “He is far too frightened at the moment to do anything foolish. In fact he turns decidedly green every time Selena comes anywhere near him. Which isn’t very often, except to try and show the Frenchman that she is sought after. Silly creature! As if he cared!”
“What other secrets?” Charlotte pressed.
“None of any value. I cannot think Miss Laetitia would harm anyone because they knew she had a scandalous love affair thirty years ago.”
Charlotte was stunned.
“Miss Laetitia? Laetitia Horbury?”
“Yes. Quite secret, of course, but very burning at the time. Haven’t you noticed Miss Lucinda always making cutting little remarks to her about morals, and so forth? The poor creature is so jealous it is eating her alive. Now, if Laetitia had been killed, I could understand it. I have frequently thought that Lucinda would poison her in a shot, if she dared. Except she would be lost without her. Devising new ways of observing her own moral superiority is her chief enjoyment in life.”
“But how can it hurt? Laetitia knows it is only envy?” Charlotte was fascinated.
“Good heavens, no! They never discuss it! They each imagine the other does not know! What would be the pleasure or the savor of it if it were all in the open?”
Again Charlotte was torn between pity and laughter. But then, as Vespasia had said, it was hardly a matter over which Fulbert could have lost his life. Even