Cardington Crescent by Anne Perry Page A

Crescent.
    “Mrs. March seemed very nervous of you,” he said curiously. “When you mentioned the word ‘detecting,’ I thought she was going to take a fit and slide under the table.” There was a shadow of laughter in his comment, and she realized just how much he disliked the old lady; a whole region of unhappiness opened a fraction to her guess. Perhaps family and circumstances were pressing him into a marriage for money. Perhaps he wanted such a union no more than the young women who were so mercilessly maneuvered by their mothers into marrying for position, so as not to be left that most pathetic of all social creatures, the unmarried woman past her prime, with neither means to support herself nor vocation to occupy her years.
    “It is not my ability which alarms her,” she said with the first smile she had genuinely felt. “It is the way I came by it.”
    “Came by it?” His eyebrows rose. “Was it something frightful?”
    “Worse.” Her smile increased.
    “Shameful?” he pursued.
    “Terribly!”
    “What?” He was on the edge of outright laughter now.
    She bent closer to him and held up her hand. He leaned over to listen.
    “My sister married appallingly beneath her,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear, “to a detective in the police!”
    He shot upright and turned to face her in amazement and delight. “A detective! A real one, a peeler? Scotland Yard, and all that?”
    “Yes. All that—and more.”
    “I don’t believe it!” He was enjoying the game enormously, and there was a touch of reality in it that made it all the better.
    “She did!” Emily argued. “Didn’t you see Mrs. March’s face? She’s terrified I’ll mention it. It’s a disgrace to the family.”
    “I’ll bet it is!” He chortled with delight. “Poor old Eustace—he’ll never recover. Does Lady Cumming-Gould know?”
    “Aunt Vespasia? Oh, yes. In fact if you doubt me, ask her. She knows Thomas quite well, and what’s more, she likes him, in spite of the fact that he wears clothes that don’t fit him and perfectly dreadful mufflers of most violent and unseemly colors, and his pockets are always bulging with notes and wax and matches and bits of string and heaven knows what else. And he’s never met a decent barber in his life—”
    “And you like him too,” he interrupted happily. “You like him very much.”
    “Oh, yes, I do. But he’s still a policeman, and he gets involved in some very gruesome murders.” The memory of them sobered her for a moment; he saw it in her face, and immediately took her mood.
    “You know about them?” Now he was truly intrigued. She had his total attention, and she found it exhilarating.
    “Certainly I do! Charlotte and I are very close. I’ve even helped sometimes.”
    His bright eyes clouded with skepticism.
    “I have!” she protested. It was something she was obscurely proud of: it had, really, something to do with life outside the suffocation of drawing rooms. “I practically solved some of them—at least, Charlotte and I did together.”
    He was not sure whether to believe her or not, but there was no criticism in his face; his wide gaze was quite genuine. Were she a few years younger she could have lost herself in that look. Even now she was going to make the best of it. She stood up with a little twitch of her skirt.
    “If you don’t believe me ...”
    He was at her side immediately. “You? Investigating murders?” His voice was just short of incredulous, inviting her to convince him.
    She accepted, walking half a step ahead of him towards the conservatory doors and the hanging vines and sweet smell of earth. Inside it was hot and motionless among the lilies, dim as a tropical night.
    “We had one where the corpse turned up on the driving seat of a hansom cab,” she said deliberately. It was quite true. “After a performance of The Mikado.”
    “Now you are joking,” he protested.
    “No, I’m not!” She turned her widest, most innocent look