Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [57]
Charlotte smiled broadly. “Thank you, that was remarkably tactful of you.”
“Not at all.” Vespasia dismissed it. “I am holding a small soirée this afternoon, very small indeed.” She fluttered her hand slightly to indicate how very minor it was. “And I would like you to be here. I’m afraid this wretched business of Augustus is not going well.”
Charlotte was not immediately sure what she meant. Her mind flew to Dominic. Surely there could be no one who genuinely suspected him—
Vespasia saw her look and read it with an ease that made Charlotte blush, thinking if she were so transparent now, how truly painful she must have been in the past.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I had hoped people would put it from mind, now that he is reinterred. It does seem as if he was only the unfortunate victim of some insane creature who is tearing up graves all over the place. There have been two more, you know—apart from Lord Augustus and the man in the cab!”
She had the satisfaction of seeing Vespasia’s eyes widen in surprise. She had told her something she not only did not know but had not foreseen.
“Two more! I heard nothing of it. When, and who?”
“No one you would know,” Charlotte replied. “One was an ordinary man who lived near Resurrection Row—”
Vespasia shook her head. “Never heard of it. It sounds most insalubrious. Where is it?”
“About two miles away. Yes, it isn’t very pleasant, but nothing like a slum, just a back street, and of course there is a cemetery—there would be, with such a name. That is where the other corpse was found—in the graveyard.”
“Appropriate,” Vespasia said drily.
“Yes, but not sitting up on a tombstone, and with his hat on!”
“No,” Vespasia agreed, pulling a painful face. “And who was he?”
“A man called Horatio Snipe. Thomas would not tell me what he did, so I presume it must be something disreputable—I mean worse than merely a thief or a forger. I suppose he kept a house of women, or something like that.”
Vespasia looked down her nose. “Really, Charlotte,” she snorted. “But I dare say you are right. However, I don’t think it will help. Suspicion is a strange thing; even when it is proved to be entirely unjustified, the flavor of it stays on: rather like something disagreeable one has disposed of—the aroma remains. People will forget even what it was they suspected Alicia or Mr. Corde of having done—but they will remember that they did suspect them.”
“That is quite unjust!” Charlotte said angrily. “And it is unreasonable!”
“Of course,” Vespasia agreed. “But people are both unjust and unreasonable without the slightest awareness or intention of being either. I hope you will stay to the soirée; that is principally why I invited you today. You have something of a perception of people. I have not forgotten you understood what had really happened in Paragon Walk before any of the rest of us. Perhaps you can see something in this that we do not—”
“But in Paragon Walk there had been a murder!” Charlotte protested. “Here there has been no crime—unless you think Lord Augustus was murdered?” It was a horrible thought and she had not accepted it, nor did she now. She meant it as a criticism, a shock rather than a question.
Vespasia was not shaken. “Most probably he died quite naturally,” she replied, as if she had been discussing something that happened every day. “But one must face the possibility that he did not. We know a great deal less about people than we like to imagine. Maybe Alicia is as simple as she seems, a pleasant girl of good family and more than usual good looks, whose father married her advantageously; and she was, if not pleased by it, at least not imaginative or rebellious enough to object, even in her own mind.
“But, my dear, it is also possible that, as her marriage became more and more tedious, and she began to realize it would never be otherwise and could well last another twenty years, the thought became