The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [104]
She swallowed hard again.
“I don’t know what you mean! Ask Dora anything you wish. There’s nothing I am afraid of, except the hangman himself, and we are all afraid of him.”
“But you are afraid that he is someone you know, aren’t you, Charlotte?”
“Isn’t he? Isn’t he someone we all know?” she demanded. There was no point in lying anymore. “At least I’m not afraid it’s me, in some black, terrible other side of myself I don’t know about. But any man who has any imagination at all must have feared just that at least once in the dark hours of the night.”
“And you’ve thought of it for them,” he finished softly. “Your father, Dominic, George Ashworth, Maddock, probably the vicar and the sexton too. Which one are you afraid for now, Charlotte?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, then realized it was futile. Instead she simply refused to commit herself.
Pitt touched her hand lightly, and went out of the door into the hallway and the kitchen to find Dora.
Chapter Twelve
CHARLOTTE WENT BACK to her letters since Pitt would not question Dora in her presence. She did not know whether he intended to speak to her again before leaving, or whether he would tell her what Dora had told him if it were of any value. For the first fifteen minutes she could only think of what might be said in the kitchen—whether Pitt would ask about anything other than the Hiltons’ maid, or whether, even by accident, he might stumble on the knowledge of Papa and the woman in Cater Street.
When she finally settled to writing, the letters were scrappy, and she feared full of repetition and irrelevancies but, even so, better than letting her mind dwell on the kitchen.
By four o’clock it was darkening outside with fog swirling up from the river and already hanging in haze ’round the gas lamps in the street.
Mama and Emily returned a few minutes later, cold and dissatisfied with the dress. They requested tea immediately and asked if Sarah were home yet.
“No.” Charlotte replied with a slight frown. “Inspector Pitt was here earlier. I’m not even sure if he has gone now.”
Mama looked up agitatedly.
“Why was he here?” she asked with an edge to her voice. Was she harbouring the same fear as Charlotte: that somehow he would find out about Papa and the woman? Charlotte did not wish to ask, in case her mother had not even thought of it.
“Something to do with Dora knowing the Hiltons’ maid, and not having said so before,” she replied.
“Why should Dora lie?” Emily enquired, putting down her cup, still untouched, too hot to drink. “There could be nothing wrong in it if she had.”
“Fear, I suppose,” Charlotte answered her. “Scandal, and all that. Didn’t want to be mixed up with the police. Easier just to deny it.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know her, and Pitt is wrong?” Emily suggested. “It hardly matters anyway. You know it’s quite dark outside. Surely Sarah can’t still be trailing around with Martha Prebble on parish work at this hour?”
Caroline stood up and went to the window. There was nothing to see but opaque fog and darkness.
“If she is I shall speak to her very sharply when she returns. Unless someone has been taken ill, there is no need whatsoever to be out as late as this, and on such a wretched night. We shall have to send Maddock to bring her back. She cannot possibly travel alone in this.”
“I dare say the vicar will accompany her,” Emily observed calmly. “I don’t care for him, any more than Charlotte does,” she looked sideways at her sister, “but he is not so completely without manners or breeding as to let Sarah walk home alone after dark.”
“No, of course not,” Caroline came away from the window and sat down, making a determined effort to control herself. “I am just being foolish. I don’t know why I should be afraid. We know where she is, and no doubt she is doing excellent work. Neither death nor birth, unfortunately, restricts itself to convenient weather or times of the day. And illness certainly doesn’t. I heard old Mrs. Petheridge was