“What has that got to do with it?” Charlotte asked, trying to look as if she were genuinely enquiring.
“What? What did you say?” The old lady was selectively deaf, and she was now choosing to make Charlotte repeat the remark in the hope it would cow her, or at worst leave time for her to think of a crushing answer.
“I asked you what that had to do with it,” Charlotte repeated with a smile.
“What has to do with what?” Grandmama demanded angrily. “What are you talking about, girl? Sometimes you are full of the most arrant nonsense. Comes from mixing with the lower classes who have no education, don’t know how to express themselves. I told you that would happen. I told your mother also—but does she ever listen to me? You are going to have to do something about her.”
“There is nothing I can do, Grandmama,” Charlotte said patiently. “I cannot make her listen to you if she does not wish to.”
“Now listen to me, you stupid girl. Really, sometimes you would try the patience of a saint.”
“I had not thought of you as a saint, Grandmama.”
“Don’t be impertinent!” The old lady flicked her stick sharply at Charlotte’s legs, but she was just too far away for it to do anything more than catch her skirts with a thwack.
“Is she expected home soon?” Charlotte asked.
The old lady’s faint eyebrows shot up almost to her gray hair.
“Do you imagine she tells me that?” Her voice was shrill with indignation. “She comes and goes all hours of the day—and night, for all I know! Dressed up like something out of a melodrama herself, stupid creature. In my day widows wore black—and knew their place. This is all totally indecent. Your father, poor man, hasn’t been dead five years yet, and here is Caroline careering around London like a giddy twenty-year-old trying to make a marriage in her coming-out year, before it is too late.”
“Did she say anything?”
“About what? She never tells me anything important. Wouldn’t dare, I should think.”
“About when she will be home.” Charlotte kept her voice civil with difficulty.
“And if she had, what do you suppose that is worth, girl? Nothing! Nothing at all.”
“What was it anyway?”
“Oh—that she had gone to the milliner, and would be back in half an hour. Stuff and nonsense. She could be anywhere.”
“Thank you, Grandmama. You look very well.” And indeed she did. She was bristling with energy, her skin was pink and her black, boot button eyes sharply alive. Nothing revived her like a quarrel.
“You need spectacles,” the old lady said viciously. “I am in pain—all over. I am an old woman and need care, and a life without worry or distress.”
“You would die of boredom without something to be offended by,” Charlotte said with a candor she would not have dared a few years ago, certainly not when her father was alive.
The old lady snorted and glared at her. She only remembered to be deaf when it was too late.
“What? What did you say? Your enunciation is getting very slipshod, girl!”
Charlotte smiled, and a moment later heard her mother’s steps in the hall outside. She rose to her feet, excused herself briefly, and leaving the old lady complaining about being excluded from everything, she arrived in the hallway just as her mother was halfway up the stairs.
“Mama!”
Caroline turned, her face alight with pleasure.
“Mama.” Charlotte started up the stairs towards her. Caroline wore a very beautiful hat, its broad brim decorated with feathers and silk flowers. It was lush, extravagant, and totally feminine. Charlotte would have adored such a hat herself, but then she had nowhere to which she could wear it anyway.
“Yes?” Caroline said eagerly. “Have you heard something?”
“Not a great deal, I am afraid.” She felt guilty for raising hopes ever so little, and an intense desire to protect such an openness to pain. “But at least it is a place to begin.”
“There is something we can do?” Caroline turned on the step as if to come down already. “What have you heard? From whom—Thomas?”
“Aunt Vespasia, but it is not a great deal, really.”
“Never mind! What can we do to help?”
“Learn more about them, the people involved, in case there is some other crime, or personal secret, as you suspected, which someone feared Judge Stafford might uncover.”
“Oh, excellent,” Caroline said quickly. “Where shall we begin?”
“Perhaps with Devlin O’Neil,” Charlotte suggested.
“But what about Mrs. Stafford, and Mr. Pryce?” Caroline’s face was pinched with concern, and a certain guilt because she was wishing them into such tragedy.
“We don’t know them,” Charlotte pointed out reasonably. “Let us begin where we can. At least Miss Macaulay or Mr. Fielding may help us there.”
“Yes—yes, of course.” Caroline looked Charlotte up and down. “You are dressed very becomingly. Are you ready to leave now?”
“If you think we may go without first obtaining an invitation?”
“Oh yes, I am sure Miss Macaulay would receive us if we go this morning. They rehearse in the afternoons, and that would be inconvenient.”
“Do they?” Charlotte said with surprise and a touch of sarcasm. She had not realized Caroline was so well acquainted with the daily habits of actors and actresses. With difficulty she refrained from remarking on it.
Caroline looked away and began to make arrangements, calling to the footman to send for the carriage again, and informing the staff that she would be out for luncheon.
Several of the cast of the theater company rented a large house in Pimlico, sharing it among them. The manager, Mr. Inigo Passmore, was an elderly gentleman who had been a “star” in his day, but now preferred to take only character parts. His wife also had been an actress, but she seldom appeared on the stage these days, enjoying a place of honor and considerable power, directing the wardrobe, properties and, when it was required, music. They had the ground floor of the house, and thus the garden.
Joshua Fielding had the rooms at the front of the next floor, and a young actress of great promise, Clio Farber, the rooms at the back. The third floor was occupied by Tamar Macaulay and her daughter.
“I didn’t know she had a child,” Charlotte said in surprise as Caroline was remarking on the arrangements to her during their carriage ride from Cater Street to Pimlico. “I didn’t know she was married. Is her husband in the theater?”
“Don’t be naive,” Caroline said crisply, staring straight ahead of her.
“I beg your pardon? Oh.” Charlotte was embarrassed. “You mean she is not married? I’m sorry. I did not realize.”
“It would be tactful not to mention it,” Caroline said dryly.
“Of course. Who else lives there?”
“I don’t know. A couple of ingenues in the attic.”
“A couple of what?”
“Very young actresses who take the part of innocent girls.”
“Oh.”
They said no more until they arrived at Claverton Street in Pimlico, and alighted.
The door was opened to them by a girl of about sixteen, who was pretty in a fashion far more colorful than that of any parlormaid Charlotte had encountered before. Added to which she did not wear the usual dark stuff dress and white cap and apron, but a rather flattering dress of pink, and an apron that looked as if it had been put on hastily. There was no cap on her thick, dark hair.