Highgate Rise by Anne Perry Page B

accidental. We know little other than that, except that her name was Clemency Shaw—” She stopped, seeing the look of distress that had touched his face the moment she said the name. “You knew her?”
    “Yes—mostly by repute,” he answered, his voice low, his eyes searching their faces, seeing the surprise and the heightened tension as he spoke. “I only met her twice. She was a quiet woman, still uncertain of how best to achieve her aims and unused to battling the intricacies of civil law, but there was an intense dedication in her and an honesty I admired very much. I believe she cared for the reforms she desired more than her own dignity or the opinions of her friends oracquaintances. I am truly grieved that she is dead. Have you no idea how it happened?” The last question he addressed to Charlotte. He had known Pitt for many years, in fact since he himself had been involved in a bizarre murder.
    “It was arson,” she replied. “She was at home because a trip into town had been unexpectedly canceled, and her husband was out on a medical emergency. Otherwise he would have died, and not she.”
    “So her death was accidental.” He made it almost a question, but not quite.
    “Someone might have been watching and known.” Charlotte would not leave it so quickly. “What was she fighting for—what reforms? Who would want her to fail?”
    Carlisle smiled bitterly. “Almost anyone who has invested in slum property and raked in exorbitant rents for letting it to whole families a room at a time, sometimes even two or three families.” He winced. “Or for sweatshops, gin mills, brothels, even opium dens. Very profitable indeed. You’d be surprised by some of the people who make money that way.”
    “How did Mrs. Shaw threaten them?” Vespasia asked. “Precisely what did she wish to do about it? Or should I say, what did she have the slightest realistic prospect of doing?”
    “She wanted to change the law so that owners could be easily traced, instead of hiding behind companies and lawyers so they are virtually anonymous.”
    “Wouldn’t it be better to make some law as to occupancy and sanitation?” Emily asked reasonably.
    Carlisle laughed. “If you limit occupancy all you would do is put even more people out into the street. And how would you police it?”
    “Oh-”
    “And you’d never get a law passed on sanitation.” His voice hardened. “People in power tend to believe that the poor have the sanitation they deserve, and if you gave them better, within a month they would have it back to its present state. It is easier for them to take their own luxury with a quiet conscience. Even so, to do anything about it would cost millions of pounds—”
    “But each individual owner—” Emily argued. “They would have millions. At least over time—”
    “Such a law would never be passed through Parliament.” He smiled as he said it, but there was anger in his eyes and his hands by his sides were tight. “You forget who votes for them.”
    Again Emily said nothing. There were only two political parties with any chance of forming a government, and neither of them would espouse such a law easily, and no women had the franchise, the poor were ill organized and largely illiterate. The implication was too obvious.
    Carlisle gave a little grunt that was almost a laugh. “That is why Mrs. Shaw was attempting to make it possible to discover without difficulty who owned such places. If it were public, social pressure would do a great deal that the law cannot.”
    “But don’t social pressures come from the same people who vote?” Charlotte asked; then knew the moment she had said it that it was not so. Women did not vote, and subtle though it was, a very great deal of society was governed one way or another by women. Men might do all manner of things if they were sufficiently discreet, indulge tastes they would not acknowledge even to their fellows. But publicly and in the domestic tranquillity of