Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [97]
“It’s only star-shaped,” Emily replied. “I don’t think it’s very attractive. It’s uneven.”
“A star!”
“Yes, the other points are over there, and behind the room. Why?”
“How many points altogether?” Something was beginning to form in Charlotte’s mind, a memory of a case Pitt had been working on more than a year ago, and a scar he had spoken of.
Emily counted.
“Five. Why?”
“Five! That means it is a pentacle!”
“If that’s what you call it.” Emily was not impressed. “What does it matter?”
“Emily,” Charlotte turned to her, the idea hard, frightening inside her. “Pentacles are the shapes people use when they practice black magic! Maybe that’s what they do here, at their parties?” Now she remembered when Pitt had mentioned the scar—on the body of Fanny—on the buttock. The place of most mockery.
“That’s why Phoebe is so terrified,” she went on. “She thinks they have begun by playing but have conjured up real devils!”
Emily screwed up her face.
“Black magic?” she said incredulously. “Isn’t that a little far-fetched? I don’t even believe in it!”
But it made sense, and the more Charlotte thought of it, the more sense it made.
“You haven’t got any proof,” Emily went on. “Just because the garden is set out in a star shape! Lots of people might like stars.”
“Do you know any?” Charlotte demanded.
“No—but—”
“We’ve got to get inside that room.” Charlotte stared at it. “That’s what Miss Lucinda saw, someone dressed up in black magic robes, with green horns.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Bored people sometimes do ridiculous things. Look at some of your Society friends sometime!”
Emily squinted at her.
“You don’t believe in black magic, do you, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know—and I don’t want to. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t.”
Emily gave in.
“Then I suppose we had better see if we can get inside that room, if you think Miss Lucinda’s monster could be in there.” She led the way across the bitter herbs and took out her hairpin again, but this time there was no need. The door was not locked. It swung open easily, and they stood staring into a large rectangular room with a black carpet and black curtained walls with green designs on them. The sun streamed in through a totally glassed roof.
“There’s nothing here,” Emily sounded annoyed, now that she had come this far and was half convinced.
Charlotte squeezed past her and went in. She put her hand to the velvet curtains and brushed them slowly. She was more than halfway around before she came to the space behind and saw the black robes and hoods. There were crosses embroidered on them in scarlet, upside down, symbols of mockery, like the one on Fanny. She understood immediately what they were, and it was as if they were still alive. The evil in them remained after the wearers had gone out of this place, stripped to their ordinary faces and their daily lives among other people. How many of them carried that scar on their buttock?
“What is it?” Emily asked from just behind her. “What have you found?”
“Robes,” Charlotte said quietly. “Disguises.”
“What about Miss Lucinda’s monster?”
“No, it isn’t here. Maybe they didn’t keep it.”
Emily’s face was pale, her eyes shadowed.
“Do you think it really is black magic, devil worship, and that sort of thing?” She was struggling to disbelieve it herself, now that she actually saw it in its ugliness and absurdity.
“Yes,” Charlotte said quietly. She reached out and touched one of the hoods. “Can you think of any other reason for all this? And the pentacle, and the bitter herbs? That must be why Phoebe wears a cross and keeps going to church all the time, and why she thinks we can’t ever get rid of the evil now that it’s here.”
Emily started to say something, and it died on her tongue. They stood staring at each other.
“What can we do?” Emily said at last.
Before Charlotte could think of any answer, there was a sound at the door, and they both froze in horror. They had forgotten the possibility of someone else coming. There was no conceivable explanation