Silence in Hanover Close (40 page)

She did not go home but to Jack Radley’s rooms in St. James’s. She had never been there before, but knew the address from writing to him. Normally he spent as little time there as possible, preferring to be someone’s guest in one of the fine town houses. It was both more pleasant and easier on his frugal finances. But he had promised he would be available as long as this crisis lasted, and she did not hesitate to call upon him.

The building was a good second best, and not an address one would be embarrassed to mention. She asked the porter in the hall and was told courteously, with only the slightest frown, that Mr. Radley’s rooms were on the third floor, and the stairs were to her left.

Her legs were tired when she got there, and there was no view to reward her effort, since his rooms were at the back. She knocked sharply on the door. If he was not there she would have to leave a note. She shifted from one foot to the other impatiently in the few minutes till the door opened—in fact she had been on the point of rattling the handle.

“Charlotte!” Jack looked startled, caught out; then self-concern vanished and he welcomed her in. “What is it? Has something happened?”

She had little time to look round. A few weeks ago she would have been consumed with curiosity—a person’s home said much about them—but now she had neither the time nor the need. Doubts of Jack had died without her noticing. She observed only that the rooms were elegantly furnished but small, and she had economized enough herself to recognize it in others.

“Well?” he demanded.

“I have just met the constable who is investigating Cerise’s death.”

His face darkened. “What do you mean, ‘just met’?”

“I found him.” She brushed the means and the circumstances aside. “Coming out of Half Moon Street. But the important thing is, he described the body. Jack, I’m sure it isn’t her. It was made to look like her, but it was just some poor woman in a pink dress—”

“Just a minute! Why?”

“Because of her hands, but even more her knees.”

His face was incredulous; he looked almost as if he might burst out laughing.

“Calluses,” she exclaimed peremptorily. “From scrubbing floors. But Jack, what it means is that the real Cerise is still alive! And I have an idea. I know it is extreme, even idiotic—but I’ve racked my brains and I can’t think of anything else at all. I need your help. We must go again to the Yorks’, and the Danvers must be there, too, and as soon as possible. Time is getting terribly short.”

Every vestige of humor left Jack’s face. No trial date had been set yet, but it would not be long and he had never pretended to her that it might. Now he listened with total gravity. “What else?” he asked.

“I must know at least two days in advance, so I can make arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

She hesitated, uncertain whether to tell him. He was likely to disapprove.

“Don’t be stupid!” he said abruptly. “How can I help you if I don’t know what you’re doing? You aren’t the only one with brains, nor the only one who cares.”

She felt for an instant as if he had slapped her. She was about to retort, when the truth of it overwhelmed her. It was surprisingly painless, in fact. All at once she felt less alone than she had since Pitt’s arrest.

“The Danvers come to dinner regularly—next time I’m going to dress up as Cerise and make an assignation with each of the men it might have been,” she said frankly. “Only Piers York, the Danvers, and Felix Asherson were there the night Dulcie was killed. I’ll start with the Danvers, because Aunt Adeline saw Cerise at their house.”

Jack was startled. He hesitated for a long, tense moment, struggling for a better idea himself. When nothing came, he conceded doubtfully. “You don’t look much like her—that is, like the descriptions of her,” he said at last.

“I’ll meet them in the conservatory,” she reasoned. “The light’s very poor in there, and I’ll have the right color dress, and a black wig. If I can pass for long enough to get a reaction it might be enough.” The plan sounded desperate as she described it, a very slim chance, and she felt her hopes, thin as wraiths, drain from her grasp. “If he even knows me, it will prove something!”

He felt her panic and put his hand on her arm gently. “It might be dangerous,” he warned.

Danger would be marvelous; it had the kick and the fire of hot wine, and seemed very close to outright victory. No one would turn up unless he knew Cerise, and if anyone threatened her with violence it could only be because she was too close to the truth.

“I know,” she said with a surge of excitement. “But you’ll be there, and Emily. I need Emily’s help. I’ve worked it all out: I’ll take the dress and wig in a bag and give them to Emily, beforehand; then when we are there after dinner I shall pretend to be faint and excuse myself. Emily will ‘look after’ me, so I can slip up to her room and change. Then she’ll watch and tell me when to go down to the conservatory, she said the Yorks have a large one, to keep my trysts.”

“You’re leaving a lot to chance,” he said anxiously.

“Can you think of anything better?”

He hesitated for a moment. “No,” he admitted. “I’ll do everything I can to keep all the others occupied in the withdrawing room. I’ll make some riveting conversation.” He smiled bleakly. “For heaven’s sake, promise me if there is the slightest danger you’ll scream. I mean it, Charlotte.”

“I promise.” She giggled a little wildly. “Although it would be awfully difficult to explain, wouldn’t it? What on earth should I say I was doing in their conservatory dressed in a hideous gown and a black wig, screaming my head off, when I was supposed to be upstairs with the vapors?”

“I should have to say you’d taken leave of your wits,” he agreed with a very twisted grin. “But better that than dead—and whoever it is has already killed three times.”

Her laughter suddenly stopped, becoming tight in her throat. Bitter tears sprang to her eyes.

“It will be four, with Thomas,” she said.

She made her assignations by letter, using as few words as possible, and leaving them unsigned. She had no idea what Cerise’s handwriting looked like, nor what her real name was. She used expensive notepaper, wrote only the time and place, and instead of sealing the letters in an envelope, she tied each one with a broad piece of ribbon in a vivid, almost painful magenta. It was the best she could do.

Emily had written to her banker and provided money so Charlotte could purchase the dress and the wig, and Jack had taken them to Hanover Close, posing as a coalman this time and carrying coke inside to the kitchen for them. How he arranged it Charlotte never knew, and she was too preoccupied with her own preparations to ask.

That evening she dressed in a very simple smoke gray and white gown of Emily’s, judiciously let out by Emily’s maid. It was not nearly as flattering on Charlotte with her darker complexion and mahogany hair as it had been on Emily’s apple-blossom fairness, but it had the one merit Charlotte was looking for now: it was very easy to get in and out of. She dressed her hair with the minimum of fuss, so it could be squashed flat under a wig without removing a hundred pins first. The result did not make her look her most attractive, but it could not be helped. Jack was tactful enough to refrain from commenting, although his face registered slight surprise, quickly replaced by a smile and a wink.

They arrived at Hanover Close a few minutes late, as was the acceptable thing to do, and were handed down from the carriage onto the icy pavement. Charlotte took Jack’s arm up the steps and into the lighted hall. As the door was closed behind them she felt a moment’s panic, then forced herself to think of Pitt, and said rather too effusively, “Good evening, Mrs. York, how kind of you to invite us.”

“Good evening, Miss Barnaby,” Loretta replied with far less enthusiasm. “I hope you are well? Our city winter is not disagreeing with you?”

Only just in time Charlotte remembered that she was going to be taken ill after dinner. She chose her words carefully. “I do find it—a trifle different. There is a very little pleasure walking in the streets here, and the snow seems to get dirty so quickly.”

Loretta’s eyebrows rose in faint surprise. “Indeed? I have never considered walking.”

“It is very good for the health.” Charlotte managed to sound agreeable without actually smiling.

In the withdrawing room Veronica was standing by the hearth in a very fine gown of black and white, looking considerably more composed than the last time they had met. She welcomed Charlotte with what seemed like genuine pleasure, especially when she saw her very indifferent gray gown.

The usual greetings followed and Charlotte was relieved to see that everyone the plan required was present: Harriet looking pale; Aunt Adeline in an unfortunate dress of vivid brown, which made her eyes the more startling; Loretta in salmon pink, her bodice stitched with pearls at once individual and utterly feminine. But far more important, the men were there: Julian Danver, smiling with candid directness; Garrard Danver, elegant, more elusive than his son, quick of wit, and she thought perhaps more original. Piers York was there as well, welcoming her with the sincerity that is a mixture of long practice and genuine awareness of privilege and its responsibilities. Good manners were as natural to him as rising early, or eating all the food on his plate. He had been taught them in the nursery and now they were ineradicable.

With Jack’s help, Charlotte devoted her mind to the usual trivial conversation that preceded dinner. Dinner itself was quite ordinary; the talk meandered from one unimportant topic to another. It was an uneven party in that there were four unmarried women present and only three unmarried men, one of them being Garrard Danver, who could have no possible romantic interest in his daughter or his sister, and presumably not in Veronica, who was shortly to become his daughter-in-law. Since he was twenty-five years Charlotte’s senior, she would have been most unlikely to have been paired with him in anyone’s mind, even supposing he had any desire to remarry. And of course Jack was assumed to be her first cousin and therefore unsuitable.

Nevertheless Loretta was a skilled hostess. Tonight she seemed to be using all her very considerable charm and poise to strike a perfect balance between dominating the company and making everyone else feel at their best. If she tried a little harder than usual, or if her hand gripped the stem of her wineglass so her knuckles were momentarily bloodless, perhaps it was her daughter-in-law who had given her very real cause for anxiety. She could not be blamed if she was nervous in case, even at this point, Veronica should show some trace of the hysteria, the willfulness, or the latent jealousy so ugly to any man, and which had come through her fragile exterior so very lately in the imagined privacy of her bedroom.

Since it was such a small company and the hour was a little later than usual for the end of dinner, Jack rather boldly suggested that they not separate but all retire to the withdrawing room together. He did not even glance at Charlotte: he was playing his part to perfection.

It was time Charlotte took her cue. Everyone was rising to leave, the table was littered with half empty dishes and crumpled napkins. The gas in the chandeliers was hissing gently and the flowers underneath them looked waxy white, artificial; they must have come from the conservatory.

Charlotte felt ridiculous now that the time had come. There had to be a better way. It would never work—they would see right through her, and there would be nothing for Jack to do except say she was mad. Nursing the sick aunt had turned her wits!

“Miss Barnaby, are you all right?” It was Julian Danver’s voice coming to her out of a mist.

“I—I beg your pardon?” she stammered.

“Elisabeth, are you ill?” Veronica came back to her, her face full of concern.

Charlotte wanted to laugh—she had created the desired effect without even trying. She heard her own voice answering automatically. “I do feel a little faint. If I might go upstairs for half an hour, I’m sure I shall recover. I just need to rest for a short while. It’s really nothing.”

“Are you sure? Shall I come with you?” Veronica offered.

“No, please—I should feel most guilty dragging you from your party. Perhaps your maid ...” Was she being too obvious? They were all staring at her—perhaps the whole charade was perfectly transparent. Did anybody really behave like this?

“Of course,” Veronica agreed and the words were such a relief Charlotte could feel the blood rush back into her face and she felt like laughing. They would put her down as a hysteric! For goodness sake, she must get out of the room and upstairs.

“I’ll call Amelia,” Veronica said quickly, going to the bell. “If you are quite sure?”

“Oh yes!” Charlotte said too loudly. “Quite!”

Five minutes later Charlotte was upstairs in Emily’s small, cold attic bedroom. She looked at Emily, and pulling a face, she slipped out of the gray and white dress. Emily presented her with the glowing dress of almost violent cerise.

“Oh Lord!” Charlotte closed her eyes.

“Come on,” Emily urged. “Get into it. You’ve already made up your mind; don’t waver now.”

Charlotte stepped into it and pulled it up. “Cerise must be a remarkable woman to look ravishing in this! Fasten me up. Come on, I’ve only ten minutes to get to the conservatory. Where’s the wig?”

Emily finished the fastening and passed her the black wig. It took them several minutes to get it right and to apply the rouge Charlotte had brought. Emily stood back and looked at her critically.

“You know that’s not bad,” she said with considerable surprise. “In fact, you look quite dashing, in a garish sort of way.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said sarcastically, but her hands were shaking and her voice was not quite level.

Emily was watching her closely. She did not ask if Charlotte still wanted to go on with it.

“Right,” Charlotte said more firmly. “See if the passage is clear. I’d hate to meet the parlormaid on the stairs.”

Emily opened the door and looked out, took half a dozen steps—Charlotte could hear her feet on the boards—then came back again. “Come on! Quick. You can get down these stairs, and if there’s anyone coming we’ll duck into Veronica’s room.”