Southampton Row - Anne Perry [61]
Emily knew she was intruding, but there was no time for delicacy. “Why did you need her, Rose? What could she possibly give you that matters so much right now?”
“She was my contact with the other side, of course!” Rose said impatiently. “Now I have to find someone else and start all over again! There isn’t time . . .” She bit back the words, knowing she had already said too much.
“Time before what?” Emily pressed. “The election? Is it something to do with the election?” Questions as to why Thomas was still here in London crowded into her mind.
Rose’s expression was closed. “Before Aubrey wins his seat and takes up a place in Parliament,” she answered. “And I have much less privacy.”
She was still lying, or at least telling a half-truth, but Emily could not prove it. Why? Was it a political secret or a personal one? How could she find out? “The man who was here from the police, what did you tell him?” she urged.
“About the other two clients who were there that evening, of course.” Rose stood up and walked over to the bowl of peonies and delphiniums on the wrought-iron table. She poked absentmindedly at the stems, rearranging them to no advantage. “The man from Bow Street seemed to think one of them had done it.” She gave a shiver and tried to disguise it with a shrug. “He was not as I would expect a policeman to be,” she continued. “He was very quiet and polite, but he made me uncomfortable. I would like to think he wouldn’t come again, but I expect he will. Unless, of course, they find very quickly who it was. It must be the man who didn’t believe, I should think. It wouldn’t be the soldier who wished to speak to his son. He cares just as much as I do.”
Emily was confused. She had no idea what Rose was talking about, but this was not the time to admit it. “And if he found something he didn’t like?” she said softly. “What then?”
Rose stopped with a delphinium in her hand, still lifted in the air, her face pinched, eyes miserable. “Then he would be crushed,” she answered, her voice husky. “He would go away in despair . . . and . . . and try to heal himself, I suppose. I don’t know how. What does one do when . . . when you hear the unbearable?”
“Some people would retaliate,” Emily answered, watching Rose’s stiff back, the silk twisted as she stood half turned. “If nothing else, at least to make sure no one else heard the unendurable thing.” Her imagination raced, in spite of the pity she felt for Rose’s very obvious distress. Who were the men? What reason could they have had for killing the medium? What secret had Rose stumbled into?
“That’s what the policeman suggested,” Rose said after a second.
Emily knew that Tellman had been promoted now that Pitt was gone from Bow Street.
“Tellman?” she asked.
“No . . . Pitt, his name was.”
Emily breathed out slowly. Now a great deal of it made ugly and frightening sense. There was no doubt anymore that the murder of the spiritualist was a political matter, or Pitt would not have been called. Special Branch could surely not have foreseen it? Could they? Charlotte had told her little of what his new duties were, but Emily knew enough of current affairs to be well aware that Special Branch dealt only with violence, anarchy, threats to the government and the throne, and the ensuing danger to the peace of the nation.
Rose still had her back to Emily. She had seen nothing. Now Emily was torn between one loyalty and another. She had asked Jack to support Aubrey Serracold, and he had been reluctant, even though he would not admit it. Now she understood that he was right. She had taken it for granted that Jack would win his seat again, with all the opportunities and the benefits that it afforded. Maybe she had been hasty in that. There were forces she had not appreciated, or Pitt would not be bothering with one unfortunate crime of passion or fraud in Southampton Row.
One obvious thought crossed her mind. If Rose had unwittingly told this woman of some incident in her past, some indiscretion, a stupid act that would now look ugly, then the possibilities