“No,” Doll answered.
“They must ’a thought summink. Yer must ’a looked like yer’d broke yer ’eart. Yer still do.”
Doll gave a sigh that ended in a sob, and Gracie held her tighter.
“They just thought I’d fallen in love,” Doll said with a fierce sniff. “I wish I had. It couldn’t hurt this much.”
“I dunno,” Gracie said softly. “But if you din’t kill ’im, ’oo did?”
“I don’t know, I swear. One of the Irishmen.”
“Well, if I were Mrs. Greville, an’ I knew wot yer just told me, I would ’ave killed ’im, no trouble,” Gracie said candidly.
Doll moved back and sat up. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained.
“She didn’t know!” she said vehemently. “She didn’t, Gracie! She’d never ’ave been able to hide it. I know. I was with her every day.”
Gracie said nothing. Doll was right.
“Come on,” Doll urged, her face full of urgency now, her own fear temporarily forgotten. “You’re a lady’s maid. You know everything in your house, don’t you? Everything about your mistress. You know her better than anyone, better than her husband or her mother!”
Gracie did not want to argue that point. Her house was not like Doll’s, and Charlotte was certainly nothing like Eudora Greville.
“I suppose,” she said with a sigh.
“You won’t tell no one.” Doll gripped her arm. “You won’t!”
“ ’Oo’d I tell?” Gracie shook her head a little. “Could ’appen ter anyone, if they was pretty enough.”
But it ate at Gracie all day and she could not get her pity or her anger at it out of her mind. And more than that, Doll’s trust in her tore at her loyalty to Pitt. She had made up her mind that she could say nothing. She really did believe that Doll had not killed him, and Doll would surely know if Eudora knew of Greville’s treatment of her. How could any woman hide the knowledge that her husband had behaved that way and hide it from the victim, of all people? If Charlotte had had such a terrible secret, Gracie would have known.
Pitt came back after dark, his clothes grimy after the long train journey. He was still horribly stiff from his horseback ride across country, and now he was so tired he looked as if he would rather go to bed than change and go downstairs again to the dining room with the effort of civility that would entail. He had to watch what was said all the time, the emotional tension. He looked defeated, and Gracie could only guess at what they had said to him up in London.
Charlotte had already dressed in the blue silk and gone down for dinner, looking wonderful. She felt it was best if she watched and listened as much as possible, just in case she observed something, but it left her no time to do more than welcome him home and ask anxiously what Cornwallis had said.
Only Gracie knew what an effort it had cost her. She was so tensed up it was a hard job to lace up her straps tight enough, her back hurt, and she had the kind of headache no amount of lavender oil or feverfew would lift for long. Half an hour after you thought you got rid of it, it was back again. But Charlotte did not mention it.
Gracie stood in the dressing room doorway and watched Pitt fiddle to put the studs in his shirt. That Tellman was useless. He should have been doing it.
“I’ll do that for yer, sir,” she offered, coming forward.
“Thank you.” Pitt handed the shirt to her, and she picked up the studs and threaded them through, her fingers quick and supple.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Gracie?” He swiveled to face her, his attention complete.
She had not been going to tell him, but she found herself doing so. The words spilled out and it was impossible to equivocate or pretend she had not asked Doll the next question, and the next.
She felt guilty. It was too late to draw any of it back. She had betrayed Doll, who had already suffered so much. But what if Mrs. Greville had killed her husband? She had good reason, if she knew what he had done. And Gracie could not lie to Pitt, and saying nothing would be the same as a lie. She owed him far more than that, and Charlotte too. She could never forgive herself if she knew the truth and Pitt were blamed for failure, when all the time Gracie could have told him what he needed to find the answer.
And Pitt also had no choice. He sat all through dinner turning over in his mind what Gracie had told him. He was only vaguely aware of the conversation around him, of Emily bright-eyed and nervous, trying to watch everyone and the servants at the same time, of Jack being immeasurably more genial than he must have felt, and of Charlotte looking a little pale, not eating much, and trying to fill in the gaps in the conversation.
He took no pleasure in the food on his own plate, exquisite as it was, food he could normally only imagine. Gracie’s words filled his thoughts and drove out everything else. It was one of the most wretched stories he had ever heard, and only over the gooseberry tart and iced meringues did he realize with surprise that he had never doubted it. It was a reflection on his personal estimate of Ainsley Greville that he had not even considered that Gracie had been lied to. It was too much like the man revealed in the letters in the study in Oakfield House. The arrogance was there, the callousness towards women. He would regard Doll as his own, paid for with every week’s wages. That he had used her was bad enough, if not as uncommon as one would wish. Forcing her to have the child aborted or face a life alone on the streets was beyond forgiveness.
He could not ignore it, neither could he forget it, and it was too powerful a motive for murder for him to leave it unexamined.
He excused himself from the table before the port was passed. He went to the servants’ hall to find Wheeler. If he had no knowledge of it, it would be brutal to tell him. But murder was brutal, so were the fear, misery and suspicion that fell on innocent people, their lives taken apart, then other, irrelevant, secrets torn open.
“Yes sir?” Wheeler said with a frown when Pitt took him aside to the butler’s pantry, Dükes being occupied in the withdrawing room.
Pitt closed the door. “I wouldn’t ask you this if it were not necessary,” he began. “I regret it, and if I can keep it from going any further, then I will.”
Wheeler looked anxious. He was really a very agreeable man, perhaps younger than Pitt had supposed earlier, when he had first seen him on the morning of Greville’s death. He was serious, but there was something gentle in his face, and perhaps in other circumstances he could laugh or dance like anyone else.
“Wheeler, you must know Mrs. Greville’s maid, Doll?”
Wheeler’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, perhaps no more than a tightening of muscles.
“Doll Evans? Yes, sir, of course I do. She’s a very good girl, hardworking, good at her job, never gives any trouble.”
Pitt sensed the defensiveness in Wheeler. The answer had been too quick. Was he fond of her, or simply protecting his own household?
“Did she have an illness about three years ago?” Pitt asked.
Wheeler was guarded. A sharpness in his eyes betrayed a need to be careful. Pitt was sure in that moment that he did know.
“She was ill for a while, yes sir.” He did not enquire why Pitt asked.
“Do you know what she suffered from?”
There was a slight flush of pink in Wheeler’s cheeks.
“No sir. It was not my place to ask, and she did not say. That kind of thing is personal.”
“Was she changed in any way when she recovered?” Pitt pressed.
Wheeler’s face smoothed out until it was bland, almost defiant, but the long-trained courtesy did not vanish, only became remote, a thing of habit.
“Was she?” Pitt asked again.
Wheeler looked straight at him. His eyes were gray—and completely guarded.
“She took a long time to recover herself, sir, yes. I think she must have been ill indeed. Sometimes it can take a person that way.” He took a breath and made a decision to go on. “When you have to work to support yourself, it can be very frightening to be seriously ill, sir. There’s no one’ll look after a girl like Doll if she can’t work, and we all know that. You try not to think of it, but sometimes circumstances makes you.”