Emily was occupied, which was excellent. Charlotte left a message with Gwen. Then, after having spoken briefly to Gracie, she requested Emily’s second-best carriage to take her to the railway station for the next train. At the station she made enquiries as to the hour of the return trains in the evening and arranged to have the carriage meet her from the one which arrived in Ashworth at three minutes before ten.
* * *
“Well, my dear,” Vespasia said with interest, regarding her carefully. Charlotte was very smart in her deep hunting green traveling suit and cape with fur trim, borrowed from Emily. Although the chill wind had stung some color into her cheeks, Vespasia was quite capable of seeing the anxiety beneath the surface well-being.
“How are you, Aunt Vespasia?” Charlotte enquired, going forward into the withdrawing room with its warm, delicate colors and old-fashioned, almost Georgian lines. There was far more light in it, more simplicity, than the modern design fashionable ever since the Queen came to the throne fifty-three years before.
“I am as well as I was when you spoke to me on the telephone this morning,” Vespasia replied. “Sit down and warm yourself. Daisy can bring us tea, and you can tell me what concerns you so much you are prepared to leave Ashworth Hall and return to London for a day.” Her eyes narrowed a little and she regarded Charlotte with some gravity. “You do not look at all yourself. I can see that something exceedingly unpleasant has happened. You had better tell me about it.”
Charlotte realized she was still trembling very slightly at the memory of it, even though she had exercised her mind on other things for the entire duration of the journey on the train, but the effort had been immense. Now it was all as vivid as the moment after it happened. She even found her voice a little high.
“Someone exploded a bomb at Ashworth Hall this morning, in Jack’s study ….”
Vespasia went very pale.
“Oh, my dear, how dreadful!”
Charlotte should have been more thoughtful. She should never have told Vespasia like this. She clasped her quickly.
“It’s all right! Jack isn’t hurt! He wasn’t there at the time.”
“Thank you,” Vespasia said with some dignity. “You may let go of me, my dear. I am not going to faint. I presume if Jack were hurt, you would have told me so immediately and not in this roundabout fashion. Was anyone else injured? Who was it who did such a fearful thing, and why?”
“Someone was killed, an Irishman named Lorcan McGinley.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself with an effort of will. “And we don’t know who did it. It is all part of a long story.”
Vespasia indicated the large chair to one side of the fire, burning high up in the grate and sending warmth throughout the room.
Charlotte sat down gratefully. Now that she was there it was less easy to put her fears into words. As always, Vespasia sat upright, straight-backed, her silver hair curled and braided in a coronet, her silver-gray eyes under their hooded lids bright with intelligence and concern. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould was an aristocrat from an ancient family with many lands, obligations, and knowledge of honor and privilege. She could freeze an impertinence at twenty feet and make the unfortunate trespasser wish he or she had never spoken. She could trade wit with philosophers, courtiers, and playwrights. She had smiled at dukes and princes and made them feel honored by it. In her eighties the bones of her face were still exquisite, her coloring delicate, her movements a good deal stiffer but not without the pride and assurance of the past. One could easily believe that half a century ago she had been the greatest beauty of the age. Now she was old enough and rich enough not to care in the slightest what society thought of her, and she was enjoying the exquisite freedom it gave her to be utterly herself.
It was Charlotte’s immense good fortune that Emily’s first husband had been Vespasia’s great-nephew. Vespasia had become fond of both Emily and Charlotte, and more remarkably, considering the chasm between their situations, of Pitt as well.
Vespasia was looking more closely at Charlotte. “Since it is apparently so serious,” she said gravely, “perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, wherever you believe that to be.”
That was easy. “It started with going to Ashworth Hall to protect Ainsley Greville,” Charlotte replied.
“I see.” Vespasia nodded. “For political reasons, I assume? Yes, of course. One of our more notable Catholic diplomats; discreetly Catholic, naturally. He is not a man to allow his religion to get in the way of his career. He married Eudora Doyle, a very beautiful woman from one of the outstanding Irish Catholic Nationalist families, but they have always lived here in England.” A ghost of irony crossed her features. “Is it to do with this absurd Parnell-O’Shea business?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. “I don’t think so. Although perhaps indirectly it is. I’m not sure ….”
Vespasia put her long, thin hand with its moonstone rings very gently on Charlotte’s lap.
“What is it, my dear? You seem very deeply troubled. It can only be some person for whom you care very much. From the tone in which you told me of his death, I assume it is not the unfortunate Mr. McGinley, and I cannot imagine that it is Mr. Greville. He is not a very pleasant man. He has great charm, considerable intelligence, and certainly diplomatic skill, but a basically self-serving nature.”
“He did have,” Charlotte agreed with the shadow of a smile.
“Don’t tell me he has had a sudden conversion to the light,” Vespasia said incredulously. “That I must see ….”
Charlotte laughed in spite of herself, but it ended abruptly.
“No. Thomas was there in order to protect him from threats of assassination, and I am afraid he did not succeed.” She took a deep breath. “He was murdered ….”
“Oh.” Vespasia sat very still. “I see. I am sorry. And I assume you do not yet know who is responsible?”
“No … not yet, though it will be one of the Irishmen who are staying there this weekend ….”
“But that is not what you have come to see me about.” Vespasia put her head a little to one side. “I am tolerably well-acquainted with Irish politics, but not with the identity of individual assassins.”
“No … of course not.” Charlotte wanted to smile at the idea, but the reality was too painful. She remembered that morning vividly, the physical shock of the explosion, and then the realization a moment later of what it was. She had not been close to such powerful violence before. There was something quite new and terrible about an actual room being blown apart.
“I think you had better leave the beginning and come to the middle.” Vespasia slid her hand over Charlotte’s. “It is obviously very serious. Ainsley Greville has been murdered, and now this Mr. McGinley, and so far you do not know who has killed them, except that it is someone still at Ashworth Hall. You have experienced crimes before, and Thomas has solved some exceedingly difficult murders. Why does this trouble you so much you have left Ashworth and come here?”
Charlotte looked down at her hands, and Vespasia’s older, thinner, blue-veined hand over them.
“Because Eudora Greville is so vulnerable,” she said quietly. “In the space of a few days she has lost everything, not only her husband—and therefore her safety, her position, and whatever he earned, if that matters—but what really hurts is that she has lost what she believed he was.” She looked at Vespasia. “She has been forced to learn that he was a philanderer, and uglier than that, a man who used people without any regard for their feelings, or even for what happened to them as a result.”