‘Would you not find it too fatiguing?’
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Neville brightly. ‘Not at all. I could just look at things you know – I am always happy to look at pretty things: it would be a great treat for me – and you could find out more about this news while you wait for me.’
As she spoke she hurried on to the next shop, and, there amid its trinkets and toys, all Dido’s worst fears were confirmed.
Two solemn, clerical-looking gentlemen were standing in the shop, waiting for their daughters and wives – and looking very long and black and incongruous among the bright merchandise. They were passing the time very pleasantly by exclaiming upon the ills of the modern world. ‘There is such an independence of spirit abroad among the young,’ declared one. ‘Such wilfulness of temper and selfishness.’
‘There is indeed,’ agreed his companion happily. ‘And here is an example of it with young Mr Lansdale. Have you heard? He formed a secret engagement with a young woman he met at a common watering place. Without any reference to the consent of the aunt who raised him!’
‘Shocking!’
‘Shocking indeed. It is just as I have always said, sir, young people nowadays do not like to be crossed or checked in anything. I am not at all surprised that it should end in the most dreadful of crimes…’
Dido’s heart sank as she listened. And it was the same in every shop they entered. Mr Lansdale’s engagement to Miss Bevan was, all of a sudden, upon everybody’s lips. It seemed the news was but just got out – and was spreading very fast indeed.
And there did not seem to be one person in Richmond who could not think him guilty of murder.
‘For,’ as one egregious widow was declaring to the whole company in the linen-drapers, ‘there is no denying that it has a very strange look. Here is Mr Lansdale engaged to a penniless girl and likely to lose all his great fortune. And the next thing anyone knows, there is poor Mrs Lansdale dead and he has got everything and is free to do exactly as he likes! It is all so very convenient for him, is it not?’
By the time they entered the haberdasher’s establishment, Dido had almost ceased to wonder at how the news was got out, in her very great anxiety to discover that not everyone in Richmond was condemning Mr Lansdale. In this, the last shop in the row, Mrs Neville soon became engrossed in lace – asking to see a great many samples of it – much to the disgust of the shopkeeper who clearly judged her an unlikely customer for such an article.
Leaving her by the counter, Dido made her way to the front of the shop, where the sun was shining in. Several ladies had gathered here to admire a perfect rainbow of new sewing cotton – and to chat. At first she could catch nothing of interest; but after a few moments, she discerned the name of, ‘Mr Lansdale’.
She turned towards the sound.
Three smartly-dressed young women had taken seats close by the open door, from which they could watch any passing gentlemen. They seemed to have just come from the circulating library for they all held books in their hands.
‘Oh yes! Poor Mr Lansdale!’ was repeated several times.
Dido listened as hard as she might. And the talk had a more promising sound than her other over-hearings. Of course it was all so very shocking. But he was such a very handsome man, was he not? And charming. And he drove a very fine barouche. And to be engaged secretly! So very romantic!
Dido smiled gratefully. It was refreshing to discover that Henry Lansdale had, at least, the good opinion of some of Richmond’s inhabitants. But then…
‘But Julia,’ murmured one of the young ladies in a lowered voice, ‘do you suppose… Is it possible that he did murder his aunt?’
The three heads pressed closer together. Dido listened hard. ‘Well, my dears, I hardly know. But… But you know how it is when a young man’s passions are inflamed.’ Julia cast a meaning look at the neat leather and gilt volume in her hand. ‘I do believe, you know, there is nothing a truly passionate man would not do to gain his ends.’
‘Oh!’ The girls all shivered happily in the sunshine that poured through the haberdasher’s window.
‘It is their mothers that are at fault,’ said Dido severely as she and Mrs Neville left the shop. ‘They should not allow them to read Mrs Radcliffe’s works.’
‘Oh?’ said Mrs Neville, looking a little bewildered by this outburst. ‘Do you not like Mrs Radcliffe’s books, my dear?’
‘Well,’ said Dido, fairly caught, ‘I would not say I did not enjoy them myself…but for young women…at least, for thoughtless young women…’ She gave up and turned the subject. ‘Have you had enough of shops for today, ma’am?’
‘Yes, yes I think that I have. I did not like that woman at all.’ She looked back over her shoulder at the beady-eyed haberdasher. ‘I did not like the way she watched me.’
They crossed the road and strolled over the green, Dido lost in thoughts and fears of what would happen now that the engagement was known.
And how had it got out?
However, there was one question answered by her overhearing. At least she knew now why Miss Prentice had looked so very unhappy as she left the shop.
They walked on rather briskly, for Mrs Neville seemed, all at once, anxious to be at home. As they walked, Dido worried at the old problem – should she continue to look for another explanation of Mrs Lansdale’s death? Perhaps the nephew was guilty after all. Unlike Flora, she was able to see beyond the handsome face and charming manner to the possibility of evil… But always she came back to those mysteries which his guilt left unexplained…
And there was this to consider too: murder would have been an extremely foolish act for a man in his situation. The suspicions of his neighbours could surely have been predicted. And, no matter what else he might be, Mr Lansdale was certainly no fool…
‘I beg your pardon, madam. May I speak with you a moment?’
Dido stopped. The haberdasher was hurrying across the green towards them – and her words had a particularly grating, ungracious sound. Her narrow cheeks were tinged with red; her even narrower lips were folded into a hard line.
‘If you please, madam, I would be obliged if you would both just step back into the shop with me.’
Dido looked at her in amazement. ‘Thank you, Mrs Pickthorne,’ she said, ‘but we have completed our errands for today.’
The woman’s cheeks became redder. She looked from Dido to Mrs Neville. ‘No madam,’ she said boldly. ‘I don’t think you have.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Mrs Neville said nothing, but her hold on Dido’s arm tightened. By now several passers-by had stopped to eye the three women curiously.
‘I think it would be better if you came back inside with me, madam,’ insisted Mrs Pickthorne. ‘Then we could talk things over more in private.’
‘We have nothing to talk about.’
‘But I think we have madam. There is the matter of what this lady,’ with a nod at Mrs Neville, ‘has in her bag.’
Dido opened her mouth to protest at the woman’s incivility, but Mrs Neville shook her head. ‘We had better go, my dear,’ she said in a very small voice.
So they turned back to the shop. Mrs Pickthorne took them to the dark counter at the back and asked that Mrs Neville open her reticule. ‘Or else,’ she said, her face becoming redder by the minute. ‘Or else I shall have to send for the constable.’
A memory stirred in Dido’s mind – something about Mrs Neville’s last airing – about it finishing with her talking to the constable. She looked rather fearfully at her friend who seemed all of a sudden to have become quite alarmingly small and frail. Then, turning to the shopkeeper, she demanded to know what she expected to find in the reticule.
‘Something that belongs to me, madam. Something this lady had no business taking away with her.’