Seven Dials

“So do I.” Charlotte looked unblinkingly at Tellman.

Tellman gazed back at her without shifting his eyes even momentarily. “I don’t know how to take it any further, Mrs. Pitt. The police have got no reason to ask anyone. I got shown out pretty sharply more than once, as it was, and told to attend to my own affairs. I had to pretend it was to do with a robbery. Said that Mr. Garrick could have been a witness.” His face pinched up, showing his loathing for having allowed himself into the position of needing to lie. Charlotte wondered if Gracie knew just what cost he had paid to please her. She looked across at Gracie’s back, stiff and straight as she paid attention to the hot bubble and squeak in the frying pan, and very carefully lifted it on the slice to avoid breaking the crisp surface as she set it on the plate beside the cold mutton. Perhaps she did.

Tellman took the plate from her appreciatively. “Thank you.” He began to eat after only the slightest hesitation when Charlotte nodded to indicate he was welcome to begin.

“So wot are we go

Charlotte was about to say “Of course not” when she realized that she was actually considering the possibility.

Tellman drew in his breath, but his mouth was full.

“I think we need to know a great deal more about the Garrick family,” Charlotte said, choosing her words carefully.

Gracie’s face tightened. “Yer go

Charlotte looked at Gracie’s eager face and then at Tellman, who hated aristocrats, and amateurs interfering with police business, especially women, and saw his eyes flicker, a shadow of self-mockery with the denial. She hesitated as if deferring to his opinion, then when he said nothing, she nodded.

“I can’t think of anything better. As we have already acknowledged, there is no police case to pursue, but there is almost certainly something wrong,” he conceded. “There’s no help for it.”

IT WAS FAR TOO LATE that evening to contact Aunt Vespasia, but in the morning Charlotte dressed in her best calling gown, albeit very definitely last year’s cut, which she had had no reason or incentive to alter yet. Since Pitt’s demotion from head of Bow Street into Special Branch, she had had absolutely no excuse, or opportunity, to attend social engagements of any importance. It was only now, looking at her overfamiliar wardrobe, that she realized it quite so forcefully.

However, there was no money to spare for u

The thing that stung was that she had not had the opportunity to help Thomas, which would have been an important thing in itself, and as an added benefit would have given her the chance and the excuse to borrow something glamorous from Emily, or even from Aunt Vespasia herself, who, although two generations older, was of a more similar height.

Now she pulled out her plum-colored morning dress and changed into it, pleased that at least it still fit her very nicely. Finding the right hat was less easy, and she settled for black with a touch of soft reddish pink. She did not really like it, but she owned nothing better, and one could not call without wearing a hat of some sort. More important than her own feelings, if anyone else were calling upon Vespasia, she would not like to embarrass her. No one wishes for impecunious relatives, however distant, still less for ones with distressing taste in clothes.

Gracie saw her off with enthusiasm and last-minute advice and instruction. She would not have been so impertinent as to offer it had she thought first, but her eagerness overcame propriety.

“We gotta know wot that ’ouse’old is like,” she said with a frown. “They done summink to ’im. We gotta find out wot, an’ why.”

“I shall tell Aunt Vespasia the truth,” Charlotte answered her, standing on the front step and looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful day, bright but decidedly crisp.

“It in’t go

“No, I can see that. I was just thinking it is the sort of day when everyone and their mothers will think to go out calling. I may be fortunate to find her alone, and it is really not the sort of conversation where I would care to be interrupted.”

“Well, we gotta try,” Gracie urged. “An’ I can’t think o’ no one better than Lady Vespasia. We don’t know nob’dy else, unless Mrs. Radley knows ’em?”

“Emily isn’t of much help,” Charlotte replied, stepping off onto the pavement. “She has not really been around long enough. I will be back when I can do no more. Good-bye.” And she set off with determination, now intent upon getting a hansom rather than saving money and losing time by taking a series of omnibuses. If she did the latter she would have to get off some considerable distance from Vespasia’s house. One could hardly arrive to call on Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould having alighted from a public omnibus.

However, when she arrived, Vespasia’s maid, who knew her well, told her with much regret that Lady Vespasia had decided in such clement weather to take the carriage to the park and go for a walk.

Charlotte was surprised how sharply disappointed she was. London was full of parks, but when society referred to “the Park” it only ever meant Hyde Park, so there was nothing to do but find another hansom and direct the driver to take her there.

Earlier in the year, during the season, she might have found a hundred carriages in or near the park, and looking for an individual would have been a waste of time, but now in the sharper autumn sunshine of late September, with a very decided chill in the breeze, there were not more than a dozen carriages at the nearer end of Rotten Row, and perhaps the same at the farther. Footmen and coachmen stood around gossiping with each other in the dappled shade, and keeping a weather eye open not to be caught by a returning master or mistress. Horses stood idly, moving only now and then with a clink of harness, brasses gleaming in the sun.

Charlotte was perfectly prepared to find Vespasia and join her, even if it meant interrupting almost anyone, short of the Princess of Wales. But since the Princess was seriously deaf, it was most unlikely Vespasia would be engaged in conversation with her, although they were friends, and had been so for years. If Vespasia was speaking with a duchess or countess, Charlotte would be unlikely to recognize the fact. She realized with a sharp intake of breath that she had better behave with the utmost circumspection, even if the lady in question should turn out to be of no social consequence whatever. Vespasia was perfectly capable of talking to an actress or a courtesan, if the person interested her.