Southampton Row - Anne Perry [105]
“It is fear that’s making you behave wildly, Rose, not inherited madness. What you have done is no more stupid than the things any of us do at one time or another. If you need to know what your father died from, there must be ways of finding out from the doctor who attended him.”
“Then everyone else would know!” Rose said with panic rising in her voice, her hands gripping Emily’s. “I can’t bear that!”
“No, they don’t have to—”
“But Aubrey . . .”
“I’ll come with you,” Emily promised. “We’ll say it is a day out together, and we’ll go and ask the doctor who attended him. He’ll not only tell you whether your father was mad or not, but if he was, whether it is something that happened to him alone, because of an accident or a disease, or if it is something you might inherit. There are lots of different kinds of madness, not just one.”
“And if the newspapers find out? Believe me, Emily, learning that I went to a séance will be nothing compared with that!”
“Then wait until after the election.”
“I need to know before! If Aubrey becomes a member, if he’s called into some office in the government, the Foreign Office . . . I am . . .” She tailed away, unable to say the words.
“Then it will be terrible,” Emily said for her. “And if you are not, but are driven mad by fear, then you will have sacrificed all your chances for good for nothing at all. And not knowing won’t change it anyway.”
“Will you?” Rose asked. “Come with me, I mean?” Then her face changed and the hope died out of it and it became bleak and full of pain again. “Then I suppose you will go and tell your policeman brother-in-law!” It was an accusation born out of despair, not a question.
“No,” Emily replied. “I will not come in with you, and I will have no idea what answer you receive from the doctor. And it is certainly no business of the police what manner of illness your father died from—unless it caused you to kill Maude Lamont, because she knew?”
“I didn’t! I . . . I never got to asking the spirit of my mother.” She sank her head into her hands again, lost in misery, fear and embarrassment.
The exquisite voice of the singer floated through from the other room again, and Emily realized they were alone, except for a dozen or so men all talking earnestly together in the farther corner near the doors to the hallway. “Come,” she said firmly. “A little cold water on your face, a hot cup of tea, which they are serving in the dining room, and we shall rejoin the others. Let them assume we are planning a garden party, or some such. But we had better tell the same story. A fête . . . to raise money for a charity. Come!”
Slowly, Rose climbed to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and obeyed.
CHAPTER
TEN
Pitt and Tellman returned to the house in Southampton Row. Pitt was increasingly certain that he was being observed each time he came and went in Keppel Street, although he had never actually seen anyone but the postman and the man who sold milk from the cart which usually stood at the corner of the mews leading through to Montague Place.
He had received two brief letters from Charlotte saying that all was well; they were missing him profoundly, but other than that having an excellent time. There was no return address on either of them. He had written to her, but made sure that he dropped the letters in boxes far from Keppel Street where the inquisitive postman would never see them.
The house in Southampton Row looked peaceful, even idyllic in the hot, still summer morning. There were errand boys in the street as usual, whistling as they carried messages, fish and poultry, or other small grocery items. One of them called out a cheeky compliment to a housemaid shooing a cat up the area steps and she giggled and told him off soundly.
“Get on wi’ yer, yer daft ’aporth! Flowers, indeed!”
“Violets!” he shouted after her, waving his arm.
Once inside the house it was a different matter. The curtains were half drawn as was appropriate for a death, but then many people did that anyway, simply to protect the rooms from