She was on the landing with her hand raised to Christina’s door when the worst thought of all came to her. She nearly fainted from the sheer horror of it. Max had been in their employ for six years. She sincerely believed that if such an appalling thing had happened before she would have known it-but what if she had not? And would the police believe it? Could they even afford to? Unless she was very much mistaken, that young man Pitt was of uncommon intelligence. He would pursue the matter, question Christina, perhaps even discover that it was Max, and draw from him all the sordid truth. What would he believe of the bodies in the square then? What did she herself believe?
She let her hand fall to the wood, and before Christina replied, she pushed the door open.
Christina was lying on the bed, looking pale and peaked, her features unusually sharp, her dark hair spread on the pillow around her.
Augusta felt a moment’s pity for her, then it passed and she forced her attention to preventing the far worse pain that threatened.
“Sick?” she asked simply.
Christina nodded her head.
Augusta came in and shut the door. There was no point in mincing words. She sat on the end of the bed and looked at her daughter.
“Is it an illness you have caught from Max?” she said, looking at Christina’s eyes.
Christina tried to look away, and failed. She was used to getting her own way, to charming or dominating everyone, but never since childhood had she succeeded with her mother.
“What-what do you mean, Mama?” she said stiltedly.
“There is no point in prevaricating, Christina. If you are with child, there is a great deal we have to do. I have no wish to frighten you unnecessarily, but I don’t think you have realized the seriousness of our predicament, if it is so.”
Christina opened her mouth, and closed it again.
Augusta waited.
“I don’t know,” Christina said very quietly. There was a shiver in her voice and she was having to struggle hard not to cry. It was only pride that prevented her, and the knowledge that her mother would not have cried.
Augusta asked the question she dreaded, but she would shirk nothing. She needed to know.
“Is this the first time?”
Christina stared, eyes enormous with indignant disbelief, and then horror as she realized what Augusta meant, what she was thinking. Her face was as bleached as the sheet.
“Oh, Mother! You can’t think I would-oh no!”
“Good. I did not think you would. But it is not what I think that matters, it is what the police think, or have enough cause to consider that they raise the possibility-”
“Mother-!”
“I shall deal with it. You will not see Max again. Until I have secured his silence, you will remain in bed. You have a chill. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mama,” she was too shocked and too frightened to argue. “Do you think-the police-I mean-?”
“I intend that they shall not know anything to think one way or the other. And you will do exactly as I tell you, to that end.”
Christina nodded silently, and Augusta looked at her pale face, remembering how she had felt for the first few weeks when she had been with child, with Christina herself. What a lifetime ago that seemed. Brandy had been a small boy, still in skirts: and his father had been younger, his face less lean, his body a few pounds slimmer, but just as straight, shoulders as broad and stiff. How could a man change so little? His voice, his manners, even his thoughts seemed all the same.
“It will pass,” she said gently. “It will not be more than a few weeks, then you will feel better. I shall have cook make you a beef tea.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Christina whispered, and closed her eyes.
Augusta racked her brains and her imagination for a way to make sure of Max’s silence, without at the same time giving him a weapon for future use. But by the following morning she had achieved no more than the elimination of all the impossibilities, and was left with little else. She was in an ill temper to receive him when Pitt arrived at a quarter past ten.
When she first learned that it was Max who had shown him in, a moment of panic seized her, then she realized that Max’s ambition would never allow him to waste his valuable knowledge by giving it to Pitt, who would pay him nothing for it, instead of first offering it to Augusta, who might pay him in all sorts of ways, only beginning with money, and progressing through advancement to heaven knew what avaricious heights.
She found Pitt in the morning room, warming his hands in front of the fire. It was another bitter day, a hard east wind driving needles of sleet in from the North Sea, and she could hardly blame any living creature for availing itself of any warmth at all, yet she resented this policeman in front of her fire. He did not move because he had not heard her enter.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” she said coldly. “What is it this time?”
He was startled, and he took a moment to compose himself before he turned to face her.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m afraid we have not yet discovered the truth regarding the bodies in the square-”
“Do you seriously imagine, Mr. Pitt, that you ever will?” She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“Perhaps not, ma’am; but I must try a great deal harder before I give up.”
“Indeed. It seems like a waste of public money to me.”
“It was perhaps a waste of human life, which is infinitely more precious.”
“We also seem to have infinitely more of it,” she said dryly. “But of I presume you have to do your duty, as you see it. What is it you imagine I can do that will help you?”
“Give me your permission to speak to your staff again, ma’am; and perhaps to Miss Christina Balantyne. She may have observed some behavior, some small sign that you have been too busy to note.”
Augusta felt her stomach tighten. Was it conceivable he had already heard something? Could Max have been so-no, surely not! Max was, above all, ambitious. He wanted his advantage to use, not to squander.
“I’m sorry, you may speak to the servants, of course; although I must insist that you do not distress them unnecessarily, and I shall have some responsible person with you, to that end; but I regret my daughter is unwell and confined to her bed. Naturally she cannot see anyone.”
“Oh dear,” his expressive face composed itself into lines of sympathy. She had no idea whether he meant it or not. “I do hope it is only a passing indisposition.”
“We believe so,” she replied. “The season of the year, no doubt. It is inclined to affect one. Now which of the servants do you wish to see? The female ones, I presume?”
“If you please.”
She reached for the bell.
“I shall have the butler assist you.”
“I should prefer to speak to them alone. His presence might inhibit them, make them feel less free to-”
“No doubt. But for their protection, the butler will remain with you. I will not have young girls who are my responsibility intimidated, even unwittingly, into saying things which they may afterward regret. Perhaps you do not realize how young and how ignorant some of them are; most suggestible, and easily led.”
“Lady Augusta-”
“Those are the conditions on which you may speak with them, Mr. Pitt. Quite reasonable, I believe.”
There was no further argument he could offer without betraying foreknowledge of some particular guilt, and she defied him at this point to do so.
“Ma’am,” he acquiesced with a slight smile in recognition of her superior tactics. Had he been a gentleman, she might even have liked him, for a moment.
She felt no such sentiment toward Charlotte Ellison when she arrived shortly before midday to assist the general with his papers. Miss Ellison was a young woman she could not warm to-there was an element of emotion about her, of unpredictability, which was dangerous. One could not plan for it because it fell within none of the rules. And yet she seemed harmless enough. She came and went silently and was certainly both civil and, at least to all appearances, well-bred enough. But why should any young woman desire to help a middle-aged general sort out papers pertaining to battles and regiments, instead of seeking herself a husband? It was a question to which, at a less preoccupied time, she would have sought an answer.