Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [93]
“How nice to see you again, Miss Horbury,” she gazed at Miss Lucinda with something like awe. “I do admire your courage after such an appalling experience. I am only beginning now fully to appreciate what you must have been through! So many of us lead sheltered lives, we have no imagination of the dreadful things there are so close to us— if only we knew!” She mentally kicked herself for being a hypocrite, the more so because she was rather enjoying it.
Miss Lucinda was too steeped in her own convictions to recognize a complete turn of character. She puffed herself out with satisfaction, reminding Charlotte of a pastel-colored pouter pigeon.
“How perceptive of you, Mrs. Pitt,” she said solemnly. “So many people don’t understand what dark forces there are at work, and how near to us they are!”
“Quite.” For a moment Charlotte’s nerve failed her. She caught sight of Miss Laetitia, her pale eyes wide, and was not sure whether there was laughter in them, or if it was only a reflection of the light. She took a deep breath. “Of course,” she continued, “you must know better than the rest of us. I have been fortunate. I have never been brought face to face with pure evil.”
“Few of us have, my dear,” Miss Lucinda was warming to this new show of interest. “And I most sincerely hope you never have the misfortune to be one of us!”
“Oh, so do I!” Charlotte put a great deal of feeling into it. She deliberately creased her brow in anxiety. “But then there is the question of duty,” she said slowly. “Evil will not go away because we choose not to look at it.” She took a deep breath and faced Miss Lucinda squarely, meeting her rather round eyes. “You will never know how much I admire you for your conduct, your determination to get to the bottom of the circumstances here, whatever they may be.”
Miss Lucinda flushed with satisfaction.
“How kind of you, and how very wise. I know few women of such sense, especially among the young.”
“Indeed,” Charlotte continued, ignoring a nudge from Emily. “I admire you for coming here today at all,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “knowing what we have heard about parties here!”
Miss Lucinda blushed, remembering her previous remarks about Freddie Dilbridge and his dissolute gatherings. She struggled for an excuse for her presence.
With increasing delight, Charlotte gave it to her.
“It must require a lot of self-sacrifice,” she said soberly. “But I do appreciate that you are determined, at any cost to yourself in embarrassment or even positive danger, that you must discover whatever dreadful thing it was you saw that night.”
“Yes, yes, quite.” Miss Lucinda fastened onto it eagerly. “It is a matter of Christian duty.”
“Has anyone else seen it?” Emily managed to say something at last.
“If they have,” Miss Lucinda said darkly, “they have not said so.”
“Maybe they were too frightened?” Charlotte tried to get to her actual purpose at last. “What did it look like?”
Miss Lucinda was surprised. She had forgotten the actuality. Now she tried to picture it again.
“Evil,” she began, wrinkling her face. “Most evil. It had a green face, like a creature half man and half beast. And there were horns on its head.”
“How appalling,” Charlotte breathed out, suitably impressed. “What manner of horns? Like a cow, or a goat, or—”
“Oh, like a goat,” Miss Lucinda said immediately. “Curling back.”
“And what manner of body?” Charlotte went on. “Did it have two legs like a man, or four like a beast?”
“Two, like a man, and it ran away and leapt over the hedge.”
“Leapt over the hedge?” Charlotte tried not to sound disbelieving.
“Oh, it’s quite a low hedge, just ornamental.” Miss Lucinda was not as impractical as she appeared. “I could have jumped it myself, when I was a girl. Not that I would have, of course!” she added hastily.
“Of course not,” Charlotte agreed, struggling desperately to keep a straight face. The picture of Miss Lucinda taking a flying leap at the garden hedge was too delicious to be denied. “Which way did it go?”
Miss