bright military splendor.
"Unless he was unfortunate enough to witness a particularly unpleasant episode," she said at length, her voice low and sad. "And unwise enough to ask for extra remuneration as a result. Then he might be viewed as more cost than he was worth, and dismissed without a character."
"Wouldn't that be very foolish?" Charlotte questioned. "If I had a servant privy to family secrets, I would want him close by me, not looking for work elsewhere, and with a grudge... a justifiable one at that."
Vespasia shook her head very slightly. "My dear, a man of Ferdinand Garrick's stature does not stoop to explain himself, and prospective employers do not ask a servant they are considering what his reasons were for his actions. They would simply accept that he had threatened Garrick with loose talk of family matters. Indiscretion is the ultimate sin in a personal servant. It would have been less severe if he had taken the family silver rather than the family reputation. One can always buy more silver, or even if the worse comes to the worst, survive without it. No one survives without a reputation."
Charlotte knew Vespasia was right. "I still need to know what happened to Martin," she persisted. "If he was simply dismissed, why didn't he tell Tilda? Especially if it was unfair."
"I don't know," Vespasia admitted, nodding to an acquaintance who had seen her and doffed his hat. She looked quickly at Charlotte, so the man did not take her acknowledgment as an invitation to join them. "I think you are right to be concerned."
"What is Ferdinand Garrick like, apart from being religiously unsufferable?" Charlotte wriggled her foot, hoping the blister had eased a little. It had not.
"For goodness' sake, child, take your boot off!" Vespasia told her.
"Here?" Charlotte said in amazement.
Vespasia smiled. "You will make less of a spectacle of yourself removing a boot than you will by hobbling the length of the row back to my carriage. People will think you are intoxicated. I do not know Ferdinand Garrick well, nor do I wish to. He is a type of man I do not care for. He is devoid of humor, and I have come to believe that a sense of humor is almost the same thing as a sense of proportion." She watched with pleasure as a loose-limbed puppy capered about, throwing up gravel with its feet. "It is the absurdity of disproportion which makes us laugh," she continued. "There is something innately funny in punctured self-importance, in the positioning side by side of that which is incongruous. If everything in the world were suitable, appropriate, it would be unbearably tedious. Without laughter, something in life is lost." She smiled, but there was sudden, deep sorrow in her eyes. "Sanity, perhaps," she said quietly.
Then she lifted her chin. "But I shall find Ferdinand Garrick and see what I can discern. I have nothing more interesting to do, and certainly nothing more important. Perhaps that is the ultimate absurdity?" The puppy had disappeared across the grass, and she was regarding a man and woman who looked to be in their fifties, exquisitely dressed in the height of fashion, walking down the middle of the pathway, nodding graciously to either side of them as they saw people they knew. They acknowledged some and looked through others, now and again hesitating until they had glanced at each other and made up their minds.
"Filling your time with games," Vespasia remarked. "And imagining they matter, because you can think of nothing that does. Or you can, but do not do it."
"Aunt Vespasia," Charlotte said tentatively.
Vespasia turned to look at her, enquiry in her eyes.
"I know you would not like to think that Mr. Ryerson killed Lovat," Charlotte said. "Or even that he deliberately helped Miss Zakhari with the intention that she should get away with murdering him, but facing the worst, what do you really believe?" She saw Vespasia smile. "We cannot defend against the worst if we do not acknowledge what it is," she pointed out, but gently, aware of Vespasia's affections. "What kind of man is he, not just what the police will find, but what you know?"
Vespasia was silent for so long that Charlotte thought she was not going to answer. She stopped waiting for her to speak and bent over to finish unbuttoning her boot. She eased it off painfully. There was a hole in the heel of her stocking, which was what had caused the problem. The skin was raw,