Charlotte reached for her hat, a rich brown ordinary felt one. It was nothing like as beautiful as Emily’s, but it did suit her richer colouring, and she knew it.
They had an excellent luncheon. As always, it was Emily’s gift. They had become so used to that over the years that they ceased to argue about it, even though since Pitt’s promotion Charlotte’s means were considerably improved. Still they were not in the same sphere as Emily’s.
They spoke of family matters, how their children were faring. Besides Emily’s son, Edward, she had a younger daughter, Evangeline. Children changed so rapidly there was always something to report.
They also spoke of their mother, Caroline Fielding, who had scandalised everyone by remarrying after their father’s death — and to an actor, of all things! Not only that, but he was very considerably younger than she was. Life had changed radically for her. She had a whole new set of occupations and issues to engage her mind and her emotions, and to worry about. She was happier than she had imagined possible.
‘And Grandmama?’ Charlotte said finally, over dessert. It was a subject she would have preferred to ignore, but it hovered between them unsaid, but with such weight that eventually she surrendered.
Emily smiled in spite of herself. ‘Nearly as appalling, as always,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Complaining about everything, although I think it is merely habit, and her heart is no longer in it. I caught her actually being nice to the scullery maid last week. I swear she’ll live to be a hundred.’
‘Isn’t she there already?’ Charlotte asked waspishly.
Emily’s eyebrows shot up. ‘For goodness’ sake, do you think I asked her? But if you did, then please tell me the answer. I have to have some hope to cling on to!’
‘What if she’s only ninety?’
‘Then say nothing,’ Emily responded instantly. ‘I couldn’t bear it — not another ten years.’
Charlotte looked down at the folded napkin and the empty plate. ‘It could be twenty …’
Emily said a word she would later deny ever having used, and they both laughed.
They rose from the table and had the carriage sent for, and agreed that a walk in Kew Gardens would be just what they would most enjoy.
The air was cold and bright, but with no wind at all it was very pleasant. Scores of other people seemed to have had the same idea.
‘I suppose you don’t get the opportunity to help Thomas with cases any more,’ Emily remarked, as they passed several very handsome trees. Neither of them bothered to read the plaques in front saying what they were, and which were their countries of origin. ‘All too secret,’ she added, referring back to Pitt’s cases.
‘Not much,’ Charlotte agreed. She heard the wistfulness in Emily’s voice. She even felt a little of it herself. Looking back, some of their adventures, which had been dangerous or even tragic at the time, now were softened by memory and only the better parts remained.
‘But you have to know something about them,’ Emily insisted. ‘Don’t you?’
Charlotte glanced sideways at her, just for a moment, and saw a hunger in her, almost a need. Then it vanished, and as they passed a couple of well-dressed women she smiled at them charmingly, full of confidence. The old Emily was there again, beautiful, funny, intensely alive, brave enough for anything.
‘It’s all very … shapeless,’ Charlotte relented and answered the question. ‘Thomas was called in because they found the body of a woman in a gravel pit up on Shooters Hill. For a little while they were afraid it might be Dudley Kynaston’s missing maid …’
Emily stopped abruptly. ‘Dudley Kynaston? Really?’
Charlotte had a sharp stab of misgiving. Perhaps she was breaking a confidence to have told Emily so much?
‘It’s confidential!’ she said urgently. ‘It could cause an awful scandal, quite unjustifiably, if people started to speculate. You mustn’t repeat it! Emily … I’m serious …’
‘Of course!’ Emily agreed smoothly, beginning to walk again. ‘But I know something already. Jack said Somerset Carlisle was asking questions in the House about Kynaston’s safety.’
‘Somerset Carlisle?’ Now Charlotte was intrigued, and touched with a cold finger of fear. She had not forgotten about Carlisle and the resurrectionists either. ‘What else did Jack say?’ she asked, attempting to keep the urgency out of her voice.
Emily’s mouth tightened and she gave an elegant shrug of her slender shoulders, but it was a tiny movement, as if her muscles were tight. ‘Not very much. I asked him because I know Rosalind Kynaston a little, and I suppose it would really be her maid, not his. But Jack didn’t answer me.’
‘Oh.’ It was a meaningless response, except to acknowledge that she had heard. Had she also understood? Was this one answer that closed Emily out, perhaps because Jack did not know anything more, or what he did know was in confidence? Or had he just not been listening closely enough to realise that Emily wanted an answer?
They walked for a few moments without speaking again. They passed exotic trees, palms whose structure was utterly unlike the oaks and elms they were used to, or the soaring, smooth-limbed beeches. On the ground there were ferns, almost like green feathers a Cavalier might wear on his hat, but far larger. Emily buried her hands in her muff, and Charlotte wished that she had one.
‘What is Rosalind Kynaston like?’ Charlotte said to break the silence before it grew too deep to disregard.
Emily gave a tiny smile. ‘Ordinary enough, I suppose. We spoke little about anything in particular. She’s older than I am. Her children are all married. She doesn’t see them very often. Army, or something, I think.’
‘There are hundreds of other things to talk about!’ Charlotte protested.
‘Gossip,’ Emily said tartly. ‘Have you any idea how boring that is? Half of it is complete rubbish. People make it up in order to have something to say. Who on earth cares anyway?’
It was mid-afternoon and the days were lengthening again. The sky was clear and the lowering light shone brightly and a little harshly on their faces. For the first time Charlotte noticed the very fine lines in Emily’s once-perfect skin. Actually they were the marks of laughter, emotion, thought. They were not unkind. They even gave her face more character, but they were lines none the less. She did not for a second doubt that Emily had also seen them. Of course they were there in Charlotte’s face too — more of them, a little deeper — but she did not mind. Did she?
Pitt was a little older than she, and time had touched him with a brush of grey at the temples. She liked it. She was beginning to find youth less interesting, even callow at times. Experience lent depth, compassion, a sharper value to the good things. Time tested one’s courage, softened the heart.
But did Emily see it that way? Jack Radley was remarkably handsome, and her own age. Men matured nicely. To some people, women simply got older.
As if reading her thoughts and taking them further, Emily spoke again.
‘Do you suppose that Kynaston was having an affair with the maid, and got her with child, or something? Then he had to get rid of her?’ she asked.
‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ Charlotte said with surprise. ‘She far more likely ran off with her young man.’
‘To a gravel pit, in the middle of winter?’ Emily said with an edge of sarcasm. ‘Have you lost your imagination? Or do you think I have? Or is this your way of telling me you can’t discuss it with me?’
Charlotte heard the hurt in her voice beneath the surface irritation. She wanted to turn and study Emily’s face more closely, but she knew that in doing that she would make an issue of something that was too delicate to force.
‘We don’t know that it was her body in the gravel pit,’ she said instead. ‘If it wasn’t, and we accuse a government scientist of what amounts to murder, we are hardly guarding the safety of the state. In fact,’ she added, ‘we are doing the enemy’s work for them.’