“Now you are being ridiculous.” Caroline’s patience was wearing positively threadbare. “You will make a reasonable accommodation, as we all do.”
“Charlotte didn’t!”
“I think the less said about Charlotte the better!” Caroline said in exasperation. “And if you imagine for one instant that you could marry someone like a policeman, or any other sort of tradesman or artisan, and be happy, then you really have taken leave of your wits! Charlotte is extremely fortunate that it hasn’t turned out to be worse than it has. Oh, certainly Thomas is a pleasant enough man, and he has treated her as well as he is able, but she has no security. If something should happen to him tomorrow she will be left with nothing at all, and two small children to raise by herself.” She sighed. “No, my dear, do not delude yourself into thinking that Charlotte has everything her own way. It would not suit you to be cutting down last year’s dresses to do this year, and cooking in your own kitchen, with Sunday’s meat having to last you through till Thursday. And don’t forget you would have no wealthy sister to help you as she has! Have your daydreams, by all means, but remember that is all they are. And when you have woken up from them, behave yourself like a widow of charm and dignity, with a considerable fortune and a social position that is very much worth your while to maintain undamaged by eccentric behavior. Give tongues no cause to whisper.”
Emily was too crushed to argue.
“Yes, Mama,” she said wearily. The whole realm of answers and explanations was too tangled in her mind, too alien to Caroline, and too little understood even by herself for her to begin to unravel and present them.
“Good.” Caroline smiled at her. “Now perhaps you will offer me a dish of tea—it is extremely cold outside. And in a few months I shall speak to the vicar. There are committees for various things that would do very nicely as suitable places for you to begin to associate again.”
“Yes, Mama,” Emily said again hollowly, and reached for the bell rope.
The rest of the day was thoroughly miserable. Outside, the wind blew showers of sleet against the windows, and it was so dark all the gas lamps were burning even at midday. Emily finished her letter to Great-aunt Vespasia, and then tore it up. It was too full of self-pity, and she did not want Aunt Vespasia to see that side of her. It was understandable, perhaps, but it was not attractive, and she cared very much what Vespasia thought of her.
When Edward finished his lessons they had afternoon tea together, and then the long evening stretched to an early bed.
The following day was utterly different. It began with the morning mail, which contained a letter from Charlotte posted late the previous evening and marked “Most Urgent.” She tore it open and read:
Dear Emily,
Something very sad has happened, and if we are right, then it is also evil and dangerous. I think the woman in cerise is the key to it all. Thomas knew of her too, from the lady’s maid at the Yorks’. Of course he didn’t tell me about her at the time, because then he did not know we had any interest. She saw Cerise—I shall call her that—at the York house in the middle of the night. When I told him what Aunt Addie said you can imagine his reaction!
But the dreadful thing is that when he went into the station at Bow Street before going back to question the maid at Hanover Close again, he heard that she had been killed the day before! Apparently she fell out of an upstairs window. Thomas is very upset. Of course, it could have been an accident and nothing to do with his inquiries or the fact that she told him about Cerise, but on the other hand someone may have overheard her. And this is the interesting thing: all the Danvers were in the house when Thomas was there, so anyone might have been in the hall at the time she and Thomas were in the library talking.
What we need to do is find out who was there when she fell. Thomas can’t do it because there is no reason to suspect it wasn’t an ordinary domestic accident. People do sometimes fall out of windows, and one cannot start casting suspicions on a family like the Yorks. And if the whole investigation of Veronica should come out, then there would be the most dreadful scandal and goodness knows who would be hurt. Julian Danver would probably be ruined, and Veronica most certainly would.
You must tell Jack when next he calls.
If there is anything else, I shall tell you as soon as I hear it.
Your loving sister, Charlotte
Emily held the paper with tingling fingers. Her hands were numb and already her mind was racing. The woman in cerise! And the lady’s maid who had seen her in the York house in the middle of the night was now dead.
But they would never get beneath the smooth, supremely disciplined surface of the Yorks’ facade by going for the odd afternoon tea, or walking round the Winter Exhibition and exchanging a few slight confidences on fashion or gossip. Pitt had disturbed something much deeper than an old burglary, or the question of Veronica’s suitability to become the wife of Julian Danver. This was something of such passion and horror that even three years later it could erupt without warning into violence—and now, it seemed quite possible, murder.
They must get closer, much closer—in fact, they must get inside the Yorks’ home.
But how?
An idea occurred to her, but it was preposterous! It would never work. To start with, she would not be able to carry it off; she was sure to be found out immediately. They would know.
How would they know? It would be difficult—of course, it would—she would have to behave entirely differently, alter her appearance, her face, her hair, even her hands and her voice. An Englishwoman’s background could be identified by her voice the moment she spoke; no servant had those rounded vowels, the precise consonants, even if the grammar had been meticulously copied. But Veronica York would be needing a new lady’s maid, someone who would be there all the time, in the unguarded moments, someone who would see everything, as only those who are invisible can. And domestic servants are invisible.
Knowing it was absurd, Emily went on planning how it might be done. She had had a lady’s maid all her life—first her mother’s, then her own—and she knew the duties by heart. Some she would certainly not be very good at; she had never really tried to iron, but surely she could learn? She was rather good at doing hair; she and Charlotte had played at doing each other’s before they had been allowed to wear their hair up. She was adequate with a needle; there could not be all that much difference between embroidering and mending.
The difficulty—and the danger—would be in altering her manner so that she passed for a servant. What was the worst that could happen if she were discovered?
She would be dismissed, of course, but that hardly mattered. They would think she was a well-bred girl who had fallen into some sort of disgrace that necessitated taking a menial position. They would almost certainly assume she had had an illegitimate child, that was the kind of disgrace women fell into. It would be a humiliation, but a brief one. If they ever met her again as Lady Ashworth they would be unlikely to recognize her, because it would never occur to them that it was she; if it did, she could brazen it out. She would look daggers at them and suggest they had lost their wits to make such an offensive and tasteless suggestion.
As a lady’s maid she would not meet any guests to the house; she would never be asked to wait at table, or answer the door. Perhaps the idea was not so absurd after all. They would never discover who had murdered Robert York if they continued as they were. They were playing at it, touching the fringes, knowing there was a terrible passion under the conventional surface, but only throwing around guesses as to what it was, and whom it had pushed into murder. Inside the York house she could learn infinitely more.