“Were you acquainted with Miss Castelbranco, Mrs. Pitt?”
“Only slightly. If you are asking if she confided anything to me, she did not. I can tell you only what I saw.”
SHE MET VESPASIA LATER, just before they were permitted to leave. Vespasia was as immaculate as always, but she looked tired and pale, and she was clearly distressed.
“What are you going to say?” Charlotte asked her when they had a few moments alone in a small anteroom off the main hallway.
“I have been turning over all possibilities in my mind,” Vespasia answered slowly. “But we do not know the reason for what happened; we can only guess. I think the bare truth, without interpretation, is all either of us can afford to say.”
Charlotte stared at her. “That is what Pitt said. But we know she was terrified. If we say nothing then aren’t we lying, by omission?”
“Terrified of what, or of whom?” Vespasia said very quietly.
“Of … of Neville Forsbrook,” Charlotte replied.
“Or of something she believed about Neville Forsbrook,” Vespasia went on. “That may or may not have been true.”
Charlotte felt helpless. If they voiced their own fears about what had happened to Angeles, speculation would run wild. Neville Forsbrook was alive to defend himself, and so were his friends. He could say that Angeles was hysterical, that she had misunderstood a remark; perhaps her English was not so fluent as to grasp a joke or a colloquialism. Or even that she had had rather too much champagne. Any of those explanations could even be true, though Charlotte did not believe any of them.
“So there is nothing we can do?” she asked aloud.
Vespasia’s eyes were full of pain. “Nothing that I know of,” she replied. “If it were your child, what would you want strangers to do, apart from grieve with you, and make no speculation or gossip?”
“Nothing,” Charlotte agreed.
She rode home silently with Pitt. When they alighted and went inside, Charlotte went directly up the stairs. As gently as she could, she opened Jemima’s bedroom door and stared at her daughter, sleeping in the faint light that came through the imperfectly drawn curtains. Her face was completely untroubled. Her hair, so like Charlotte’s own, was spread across the pillow, unraveled out of its braids. She could have been a child still, not on the verge of womanhood at all.
Charlotte found herself smiling, even as tears ran down her cheeks.
CHAPTER
6
VESPASIA WAS DEEPLY TROUBLED by the terrible death of Angeles Castelbranco. She went over and over it in her mind, waking in the night and turning up the light in her elegant bedroom. She felt the urge to see her familiar belongings, to become rooted again in her own life with the beauty and the pleasures she was accustomed to. But with that came also the deep, almost suppressed loneliness that underlay it all.
At least she was physically safe from everything except illness and age. As the events at Dorchester Terrace a short while ago had reminded her so painfully, no one was free from those. Death need not be gentle, even in one’s own home. The only thing one could do was have courage, and keep faith in an ultimate goodness beyond the limited sight of the flesh.
Of course faith was of little use now to Isaura Castelbranco; and Angeles, poor child, was beyond the reach of any of them.
But whoever had brought about her death, even indirectly—and Vespasia was certain that someone had—he need not be beyond the reach of justice, and maybe even more important, of being prevented from ever doing such a thing again.
Vespasia had heard of the death of Catherine Quixwood, and the speculation as to the nature of her attack. She knew that Victor Narraway had involved himself in the case and wondered if he really had any perception of the horror behind such a terrible act. In thinking this, she realized she had been avoiding approaching him about the matter because it would hurt her if he could not—or would not—grasp the true breadth of suffering such pain.
That made the decision for her. If she feared talking to Victor, then she must face that fear. She sent him a note in the morning arranging to meet him for luncheon in one of her favorite restaurants.
She found him already waiting for her when she arrived. There were some tables in the open air, placed well apart under the dappled shade of trees. They were set with white linen, and the ever-moving light caught the edges of