Rutland Place - Anne Perry [35]
“Theodora obviously has more money now than she used to,” Caroline went on reluctantly. “Mina once suggested that she did something quite appalling to earn it, but I was sure at the time that she was only being facetious. She had rather poor taste sometimes.” She looked up. “Charlotte, do you think perhaps it could have been true and Mina knew something about it?”
“Perhaps.” Charlotte weighed the idea. “Or perhaps on the other hand Mina was merely being spiteful—or saying something for the sake of making an effect. The stupidest stories get started that way sometimes.”
“But Mina wasn’t like that,” Caroline argued. “She very seldom talked about other people, except as everybody does. She was much more inclined to listen.”
“Then it begins to look as if it was something to do with Tormod,” Charlotte reasoned. “Or some other man we don’t know of yet. Or perhaps something to do with Alston that we do not know. Or else simply that she was the thief.”
“Suicide?” Caroline pushed her plate away. “What a dreadful thing it is that another human being, another woman you thought of as much like yourself, only a few houses away, could be so wretched as to take her own life rather than live another day—and you know nothing about it at all. You go about your own trivial little affairs, thinking of menus and seeing that the linen is repaired, and whom to call upon, exactly as if there were nothing else to do.”
Charlotte put her hand across the table to touch Caroline.
“I don’t suppose you could have done anything even if you had known,” she said quietly. “She gave no clue at all that she was so desperately unhappy—and one cannot intrude into everyone’s business to inquire. Grief is sometimes more easily borne for being private, and a humiliation is the last thing one wishes to share. The kindest thing one can do is to affect not to have noticed.”
“I suppose you’re right. But I still feel guilty. There must have been something I could have done.”
“Well, there isn’t anything now, except speak well of her.”
Caroline sighed. “I sent a letter to Alston, of course, but I feel it is too early to call upon him yet. He is bound to be very shocked. But poor Eloise is unwell also. I thought we might call there this afternoon and express our sympathy. She has taken the whole thing very badly. I think perhaps she is even more delicate than I had realized.”
It was not a prospect Charlotte looked forward to, but she could see it was quite plainly a duty. And if the Lagardes had been the last people, apart from Mina’s own servants, to see her alive, then perhaps something could be learned.
Charlotte was stunned when she walked behind Caroline into the Lagarde withdrawing room. Eloise looked so different from the woman she had seen the week before that for a moment she almost expected a new introduction. Eloise’s face was almost colorless, and she moved so slowly she might have been fumbling in her sleep. She forced herself to smile, but it was a small gesture. Death was in the Place, and the formality of the usual pretended delight was not expected now.
“How kind of you to call,” she said quietly, first to Caroline, then to Charlotte. “Please do sit, and make yourselves comfortable. It still seems to be quite cold.” She had on a heavy shawl over her dress and kept it closed around her.
Charlotte sat down in a chair across the room, as far as she could get with courtesy from the fire that roared up the chimney as if it had been midwinter. It was a pleasant spring day outside, bright though not yet warm.
Caroline appeared to be at a loss for words. Perhaps her own anxieties were too pressing for her to organize her thoughts into polite remarks. Charlotte rushed in with speech before Eloise should become aware of it.
“I’m afraid summer is always longer in coming than one hopes,” she said meaninglessly. “One fancies because the daylight hours are longer that the sun will be warmer, and it so seldom is.”
“Yes,” Eloise