“And if it wasn’t?”
“Then he will have to go back to the Farriers’ Lane case—unless there is something else.”
“What?” Caroline’s face was creased with anxiety now and she leaned farther forward across the table, her tea forgotten. “What else?”
“I don’t know—some other personal enmity. Something to do with money, perhaps, or another crime he knew about.”
“Is there evidence of anything like that?”
“No—I don’t think so. Not so far.”
“It doesn’t sound …” Caroline smiled bleakly. “It doesn’t sound very likely, does it? He’s bound to go back to the Farriers’ Lane case. I would.”
“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “It is what Mr. Stafford was doing the day he died. He must have had a reason. Even if all he intended was to prove forever that it was Aaron Godman, maybe someone else thought differently.”
“That’s illogical, my dear,” Caroline pointed out ruefully. “If Aaron Godman was guilty, then no one now would kill Mr. Stafford to prevent him from proving that. Miss Macaulay might grieve that she could no longer hope to clear her brother’s name, but she would not kill Stafford because he believed him guilty. Apart from the fact that it would be ridiculous, everyone else believes him guilty. She cannot kill everyone. And why should she? It wasn’t Stafford’s fault.” She bit her lip. “No, Charlotte, if Godman was guilty, there was no reason to kill Judge Stafford. But if someone else was, then there was every reason, if he knew that—or they thought he did.”
“Someone like whom, Mama? Joshua Fielding? Is that what you are afraid of?”
“No! No.” She shook her head fiercely, her face pink. “It could be anyone.”
“Now who is being illogical?” Charlotte said gently. “The only people the judge saw that day were his wife, Mr. Pryce, Judge Livesey, Devlin O’Neil, Miss Macaulay, and Joshua Fielding. Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Stafford and Judge Livesey had nothing to do with Kingsley Blaine. They only came into the case when it came to trial, and Judge Livesey only when it went to appeal. They couldn’t possibly be guilty of that crime.”
Caroline looked very pale.
“Then we’ve got to do something! I don’t believe it was Joshua, and we must prove it. Perhaps we can find out something before Thomas starts, while he is still investigating Mrs. Stafford and Mr. Pryce.”
Charlotte felt a sudden, quick sympathy with her, but she could think of little that would be helpful. She knew the sense of fear that someone one liked could be implicated, hurt—even be guilty.
“I don’t know what we could find out,” she said hesitantly, watching Caroline’s face and the anxiety in it, the awareness of her vulnerable situation. It was so easy to be foolish. “If Thomas has tried …” She shrugged. “I don’t know where to begin. We don’t know Mrs. Stafford—although of course I suppose I could call on her …” She knew her reluctance to do it was plain in her voice and in her expression. “It’s …” She struggled to find words that were not too abrupt. “She will know it is curiosity; she knows I am a policeman’s wife. And if she is innocent, and grieving, whatever she feels for Mr. Pryce—and we don’t know what her feelings are—it is only rumor—then it would be so offensive.”
“But if innocent people were in jeopardy?” Caroline pressed, leaning forward across the table. “Surely that must be the most urgent thing, the most important.”
“That is not yet the case, Mama, and it may never be.”
“When it is, it will be too late,” Caroline said with rising anxiety. “It isn’t only charges and arrests, Charlotte—it is suspicion, and the ruin of reputations. That can be enough to destroy someone.”
“I know.”
“What did Lady Cumming-Gould say? You haven’t told me.”
“Actually I don’t know. I haven’t been to see her since then, and she did not send a note, so I assume she did not learn anything she thought of value.” She smiled. “Perhaps the case really was decisive.”
“Would you find out, please?”
“Of course,” Charlotte said with relief. That would be easy to do.
“You can take my carriage again, if you like,” Caroline offered, then blushed at her own forcefulness and the urgency with which she was pursuing the issue. “If that would help, of course,” she added.
“Oh yes.” Charlotte accepted with only the faintest smile. “That would help a great deal.” She rose to her feet, the laughter in her eyes unmistakable now. “It is so much more elegant to roll up in a carriage than to walk from the omnibus stop.”
Caroline opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind.
Vespasia was out when Charlotte arrived at her house, but the parlormaid informed her she would be back in no more than half an hour, and if Charlotte cared to wait she could take tea in the withdrawing room. Lady Vespasia would be most disappointed to have missed her.
Charlotte accepted, and sat in Vespasia’s elegant room sipping her tea and watching the flames leap in the fireplace. She had time to look around, which she had never had before, when it would have been obvious and seemed an intrusive curiosity. The room was stamped with Vespasia’s character. There were tall, slender candlesticks on the mantel shelf, not at either end, as one might have expected, but both of them a little to the left of the center, asymmetrically. They were Georgian silver, very cool and simple. On the Sheraton table by the window there was an arrangement of flowers in a Royal Worcester gravy boat, three pink chrysanthemums low down in the center, and a lot of coppery beech leaves, and some dark purple red buds of which she did not know the name.
She lost interest in the tea and rose to her feet to look more closely at the few photographs which stood in plain frames on the top of the bureau. The one which drew her first was a sepia tint, oval faded away to nothing at the edges, a woman of about forty, slender necked, with high cheekbones and delicate, aquiline nose. Her wide eyes were heavy lidded under a perfect brow. It was a beautiful face, and yet for all its pride, and classic bones, there was individuality in it, and the romantic pose did not entirely mask either the passion or the strength.
It was several moments before Charlotte realized it was Vespasia herself. She had grown so accustomed to her as an old lady, she had forgotten that as a young woman she could be so different—and yet after a second look, so much the same.
The other pictures were of a girl of perhaps twenty, very pretty, but heavier boned, thicker of jaw and shorter nosed. The resemblance was there, and something of the charm, but not the mettle, not the fire of imagination. It must be Olivia, Vespasia’s daughter, who had married Eustace March, and died after bearing him so many children. Charlotte had never known her, but she remembered Eustace vividly, with both anger and pity.
The third picture was of an elderly aristocratic man with a high-boned, gentle face and eyes that looked into a far distance, beyond the camera into some world of his own vision. There was sufficient resemblance to Vespasia for Charlotte to guess from the faintness, the fashion of the dress and the style of the photograph that it was Vespasia’s father.
It was interesting that she should choose to keep in her favorite room a memory of her father, not her husband.
Charlotte was looking at the books in the carved bookcase when she heard a murmuring in the hall and footsteps across the parquet flooring. Quickly she turned around and moved towards the window, so that when the door opened and Vespasia came in, she was facing her, smiling.
Vespasia looked full of energy, as if she were about to go somewhere she anticipated with excitement, not as if she had just returned. Her skin glowed from the brisk wind, her back was straight and her shoulders squared, and she was dressed in the softest grape blue, a gentle color neither navy nor purple, nor yet silver. It was subtle, expensive and extremely flattering. There was almost no bustle, in the most up-to-the-moment fashion, and the cut was exquisite. No doubt she had left a sweeping brimmed hat in the hall.