Rutland Place - Anne Perry [59]
“How kind of you to call,” he said in a small voice. He looked stunned, shorter and narrower than Charlotte had imagined him.
“The least we could do,” Caroline murmured unhappily as they accepted the seats he offered. “We were very fond of Mina.”
Alston looked a little questioningly at Emily, obviously not sure who she was or why she was there.
Emily lied without blinking an eye; she was very good at it.
“Indeed we were,” she said with a sad smile. “Very fond. I met her at several soirées and she was quite charming. We were just getting to know one another and found we had so much in common. She was such a discerning person.”
“Indeed she was,” Alston said with a lift of surprise that Emily should have noticed. “A most perceptive woman.”
“Exactly.” Emily put a wealth of understanding into the word. “She saw so much that passed by other, less sensitive people.”
“Do you think so?” Charlotte looked from one to the other of them.
“Oh yes.” Alston nodded. “I’m afraid poor Mina was frequently too astute for her own happiness. She was able to see in others traits and qualities that were not always attractive.” He shook his head. “Not always to their credit.” He sighed heavily and stared from Emily to Caroline, and back again. “I daresay you observed that yourselves?”
“Of course.” Emily sat straight-backed, rather prim. “But one cannot help a certain”—she hesitated delicately—“wisdom in the ways of the world if one has the intelligence to possess it. I’m sure I never heard Mina speak ill of people, for all that. She was not a gossip!”
“No,” he said flatly. “No, she knew how to keep her own counsel, poor creature. Perhaps that was her undoing.”
Charlotte took up the thread before the conversation became maudlin. Mina had had a sly tongue, even if Emily had not had the wit to guess as much.
“But it is almost impossible not to hear things.” Charlotte was surprised to hear her voice continue in precisely the same tone. “And to see them also, if one lives in a small area where everyone sees everyone else. I remember quite clearly poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown speaking with great sympathy”—she gulped on the words. Hypocrite!—“of the death of Mrs. Charrington’s daughter. That must have been a dreadful shock, and one cannot help but wonder what awful event occurred, even if only to know what comfort to offer.”
Caroline sat up at a sharp poke from Emily.
“Yes, indeed,” Caroline said. “No one knows what it was that struck her down so suddenly. Quite appalling. I recall Mina’s mentioning it.”
“She was very perceptive,” Alston repeated. “She knew there was something terribly wrong there—far more than met the eye. Most people were fooled, you know, but not Mina.” There was a perverse ring of pride in him. “She noticed everything.” His face put on a sober look. “Of course she never spoke, except to me. But she knew that the Charringtons had some tragedy that they dared not speak of. She said to me more than once that she would not be surprised if Ottilie met her death by violence! Of course the family would conceal it if it happened somewhere else, where we did not see—I mean, if it were— shameful!”
Charlotte’s mind raced. Did he mean another murder? Murder by a lover, perhaps? Or had Ottilie died bearing an illegitimate child—or, worse than that, as the result of a badly executed abortion? Or could she have been found in some appalling place, a man’s bedroom—or even a brothel?
Could one die of a socially vile disease at such a young age?
She thought not.
Surely death by such things was long and very slow, a matter of years?
But one could discover one had contracted it—and perhaps even be quietly suffocated by one’s own family before the ravages became obvious!
They were obscene thoughts, but not impossible. And any one of them worth killing for—if Mina had been foolish enough to let her knowledge be seen.
Emily was talking again, trying to draw out more details without betraying a vulgar curiosity. They had passed from Ottilie Charrington before it became too indiscreet, and were now discussing Theodora von Schenck.