Highgate Rise (42 page)

“Modesty is one of the most attractive of all the virtues,” she said aloud, gritting her teeth. “It seems that she said nothing to you of her work to have the laws changed with regard to the ownership of the very worst of slum properties.”

There was nothing at all in either of their faces that looked like even comprehension, let alone fear.

“Slum properties?” Angeline was utterly confused.

“The ownership of them,” Charlotte continued, her voice sounding dry and very forced. “At present it is almost impossible to discern who is the true owner.”

“Why should anyone wish to know?” Angeline asked. “It seems an extraordinary and purposeless piece of knowledge.”

“Because the conditions are appalling.” Charlotte murmured her answer and tried to make it as gentle as was appropriate to two elderly women who knew nothing of the world beyond their house, the church and a few of the people in the parish. It would be grossly unfair now to blame them for an ignorance which it was far too late for them to remedy. The whole pattern of their lives, which had been set for them by others, had never been questioned or disturbed.

“Of course we know that the poor suffer,” Angeline said with a frown. “But that has always been so, and is surely inevitable. That is the purpose of charity—to relieve suffering as much as we can.”

“A good deal of it could be prevented, if other people did not exercise their greed at the expense of the poor.” Charlotte sought for words they would understand to explain the devastating poverty she had seen. She looked at the total lack of comprehension on their faces. “When people are poor already, they are much more prone to illness, which makes them unable to work, and they become poorer still. They are evicted from decent housing and have to seek whatever they can get.” She was simplifying drastically, but a long explanation of circumstances they had never imagined would only lose their emotion. “Landlords know their plight and offer them room without light or air, without running water or any sanitary facilities—”

“Then why do they take them?” Angeline opened her eyes wide in inquiry. “Perhaps they do not want such things, as we would?”

“They want the best they can get,” Charlotte said simply. “And very often that is merely a place where they can shelter
and lie down—and perhaps, if they are lucky, share a stove with others so they can cook.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Celeste replied. “If that is all they can afford.”

Charlotte put forward the one fact she knew would reach the bishop’s daughters.

“Men, women and children all in the same room?” She stared straight into Celeste’s strong, clever face. “With no lavatory but a bucket in the corner—for all of them—and nowhere to change clothes in privacy, or to wash—and no way of sleeping alone?”

Charlotte saw all the horror she could have wished.

“Oh, my dear! You don’t mean that?” Angeline was shocked. “That is—quite uncivilized … and certainly unchristian!”

“Of course it is,” Charlotte agreed. “But they have no alternative, except the street, which would be even worse.”

Celeste looked distressed. It was not beyond her imagination to think of such conditions and feel at least a shadow of their wretchedness, but she was still at a loss to see what purpose could be served by making the owners known.

“The owners cannot make more space,” she said slowly. “Nor solve the problems of poverty. Why should you wish to discover who they are?”

“Because the owners are making a very large profit indeed,” Charlotte replied. “And if their names were public, they might be shamed into maintaining the buildings so they are at least clean and dry, instead of having mold on the walls and timbers rotting.”

It was beyond the experience of either Celeste or Angeline. They had spent all their lives in this gracious house with every comfort that money and status could supply. They had never seen rot, never smelled it, had no conception of a running gutter or open sewerage.

Charlotte drew breath to try to depict it in words, and was prevented from beginning by the parlormaid returning to announce the arrival of Prudence Hatch and Mrs. Clitheridge.

They came in together, Prudence looking a little strained
and unable to stand or to sit with any repose. Lally Clitheridge was charming to Celeste, full of smiles to Angeline; and then when she turned to where Charlotte had risen to her feet, recognizing her before introductions were made, her face froze and she became icily polite, her eyes hard and a brittle timbre to her voice.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt. How surprising to see you here again so soon. I had not thought you such a personal friend.”

Celeste invited them to be seated, and they all obeyed, rearranging skirts.

“She came to express her admiration for Clemency,” Angeline said with a slight nervous cough. “It seems Clemency really did look into the question of people making extreme profits out of the wretchedness of some of the poor. We really had no idea. She was so very modest about it.”

“Indeed?” Lally raised her eyebrows and looked at Charlotte with frank disbelief. “I had not realized you were acquainted with Clemency at all—let alone to the degree where you know more of her than her family.”

Charlotte was stung by the manner more than the words. Lally Clitheridge was regarding her with the air one might show a rival who had tricked one out of a deserved advantage.

“I did not know her, Mrs. Clitheridge. But I know those who did. And why she chose to share her concern with them and not with her family and neighbors I am unaware—but possibly it was because they were almost as concerned as she and they understood and respected her feelings.”

“Good gracious.” Lally’s voice rose in amazement and offense. “Your intrusion knows no bounds. Now you suggest she did not trust her own family—but chose instead these friends of yours, whom you have been careful not to name.”

“Really, Lally,” Prudence said gently, knotting her hands together in her lap. “You are distressing yourself unnecessarily. You have allowed Flora Lutterworth to upset you too much.” She glanced at Charlotte. “We have had a rather distasteful encounter, and I am afraid hasty words were said.
That young woman’s behavior is quite shameless where poor Stephen is concerned. She is obsessed with him, and does not seem able to comport herself with any restraint at all-even now.”

“Oh dear—that again.” Angeline sighed and shook her head. “Well of course she has no breeding, poor soul, what can you expect? And raised virtually without a mother. I dare say there is no one to instruct her how to behave. Her father is in trade, after all and he’s from the north; you could hardly expect him to have the least idea.”

“No amount of money in the world makes up for lack of breeding,” Celeste agreed. “But people will insist upon trying.”

“Exactly,” Charlotte said with a voice that cut like acid. “People with breeding can lie, cheat, steal or sell their daughters to obtain money, but people who only have money can never acquire breeding, no matter what they do.”

There was a silence that was like thunder, prickling the air and touching the skin in a cold sweat.

Charlotte looked at their faces one by one. She was quite sure, although there was no proof whatever, that neither Celeste nor Angeline had even the shadow of an idea where their family money came from. Nor did she believe that money was at the root of Prudence’s fear. She looked aghast now, but not for herself; her hands were quite still, even loose in her lap. She was staring at Charlotte in total incomprehension, for her devastating rudeness, not because she was afraid of her.

Lally Clitheridge was dumbfounded.

“I thought Stephen Shaw was the rudest person I had ever met,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “But you leave him standing. You are totally extraordinary.”

There was only one possible thing to say.

“Thank you.” Charlotte did not flinch in the slightest. “Next time I see him I shall tell him of your words. I am sure he will be most comforted.”

Lally’s face tightened, almost as if she had been struck—and quite suddenly and ridiculously Charlotte realized the
root of her enmity. She was intensely jealous. She might regard Shaw as verbally reckless, full of dangerous and unwelcome ideas, but she was also fascinated by him, drawn from her pedestrian and dutiful life with the vicar towards something that promised excitement, danger, and a vitality and confidence that must be like elixir in the desert of her days.

Now the whole charade not only made Charlotte angry but stirred her to pity for its futility and the pointless courage of Lally’s crusade to make Clitheridge into something he was not, to do his duty when he was swamped by it, constantly to push him, support him, tell him what to say. And for her daydreams of a man so much more alive, the vigor that horrified and enchanted her, and the hatred she felt for Charlotte because Shaw was drawn to her, as easily and hopelessly as Lally was to Shaw.

It was all so futile.

And yet she could hardly take the words back, that would only make it worse by allowing everyone to see that she understood. The only possible thing now was to leave. Accordingly she rose to her feet.

“Thank you, Miss Worlingham, for permitting me to express my admiration for Clemency’s work, and to assure you that despite any dangers, or any threats that may be made, I will continue with every effort at my command. It did not die with her, nor will it ever. Miss Angeline.” She withdrew her hand, clutched her reticule a trifle more closely, and turned to leave.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Pitt?” Prudence stood up and came forward. “Are you saying that you believe Clemency was murdered by someone who—who objected to this work you say she was doing?”

“It seems very likely, Mrs. Hatch.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Celeste said sharply. “Or are you suggesting that Amos Lindsay was involved in it as well?”

“Not so far as I know—” Charlotte began, and was cut off instantly.

“Of course not,” Celeste agreed, rising to her feet also.
Her skirt was puckered but she was unaware of it in her annoyance. “Mr. Lindsay was no doubt murdered for his radical political views, this Fabian Society and all these dreadful pamphlets he writes and supports.” She glared at Charlotte. “He associated with people who have all sorts of wild ideas: socialism, anarchy, even revolution. There are some very sinister plots being laid in our times. There is murder far more abominable than the fires here in Highgate, fearful as they were. One does not read the newspapers, of course. But one cannot help but be aware of what is going on—people talk about it, even here. Some madman is loose in Whitechapel ripping women apart and disfiguring them in the most fearful way—and the police seem powerless either to catch him or prevent him.” Her face was white as she spoke and no one could fail to feel her horror rippling out in the room like coldness from a door opened on ice.

“I am sure you are right, Celeste.” Angeline seemed to withdraw into herself as if she would retreat from these new and terrible forces that threatened them all. “The world is changing. People are thinking quite new and very dangerous ideas. It sometimes seems to me as if everything we have is threatened.” She shook her head and pulled at her black shawl to put it more closely around her shoulders, as if it could protect her. “And I really believe from the way Stephen speaks that he quite admires this talk of overthrowing the old order and setting up those Fabian ideas.”

“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t,” Lally contradicted strongly, her face pink and her eyes very bright. “I know he liked Mr. Lindsay, but he certainly never agreed with his ideas. They are quite revolutionary. Mr. Lindsay was reading some of the essays and pamphlets and things by that fearful Mrs. Bezant who helped to put the match girls up to refusing to work. You remember that in April—or was it May? I mean, if people refuse to work, where will we all be?”

Charlotte was powerfully tempted to put forward her own political views, in favor of Mrs. Bezant and explaining the plight of the match girls, their physical suffering, the necrosis of the facial bones from breathing the phosphorus; but this
was neither the time nor were these the people. Instead she turned to Lally with interest.

“Do you believe they were political murders, Mrs. Clitheridge? That poor Mrs. Shaw was killed because of her agitation for slum reform? You know I think you may well be correct. In fact it is what I believe myself, and have been saying so for some time.”

Lally was very much put out of composure by having to agree with Charlotte, but she could not backtrack now.

“I would not have put it quite in those terms,” she said, bridling. “But I suppose that is what I think. After all, it makes by far the most sense out of things. What other reason could there be?”

“Well there are others who have suggested more personal forms of passion,” Prudence pointed out, frowning at Charlotte. “Perhaps Mr. Lutterworth, because of Dr. Shaw’s involvement with Flora—if, of course, it was Stephen he meant to kill, not poor Clemency.”

“Then why would he kill Mr. Lindsay?” Angeline shook her head. “Mr. Lindsay certainly never did her any harm.”

“Because he knew something, of course.” Prudence’s face tightened in impatience. “That does not take a great deal of guessing.”

They were all standing close together near the door, the sunlight slanting between the curtains and the blinds making a bright patch behind them and causing the black crepes to look faintly dusty.

“I am surprised the police have not worked it out yet,” Lally added, glancing at Charlotte. “But then I suppose they are not a very superior class of person—or they would not be employed in such work. I mean, if they were clever enough to do something better—they would, wouldn’t they?”

Charlotte could accommodate a certain amount of insult to herself and keep her temper, but insult to Pitt was different. Again her anger slipped out of control.

“There are only a certain number of people who are willing to spend their time, and sometimes to risk their lives, digging into the sin and tragedy of other people’s affairs and
uncovering the violence in them,” she said acidly, staring at Lally, her eyes wide. “So many people who look the picture of rectitude on the outside and pretend to civic virtue have inner lives that are thoroughly sordid, greedy and full of lies.” She looked from one to another of them, and was satisfied to see alarm, even fear in some of their faces, most especially Prudence’s. And seeing it she instantly relented and was ashamed. It was not Prudence she had intended to hurt.