Page 51 of A Conspiracy in Belgravia
When Mr. Finch “comes back”? From where?
“There better,” said Bridget saucily. “It’s out of my way.”
Charlotte followed her. She was sure she would be found out within a few steps, but the maid paid little mind to a woman walking behind her.
At the service entrance behind the tea shop, she knocked and a waitress wearing a long apron opened the door.
“I got you Mr. Finch’s basket. He won’t be coming ’round for a bit—got sent to Manchester for work, he is.”
“Ah, you’ll miss him, won’t you, Bridget?” teased the waitress.
Bridget giggled. “I will. I won’t lie. Such a sweetheart. And none of that nice-to-you-only-to-reach-under-your-skirt nastiness.”
Charlotte slipped away as the two women exchanged their good-byes.
She wasn’t familiar with the lives of accountants. Lawyers sometimes traveled for professional reasons, so it didn’t seem unreasonable for accountants to be sent to another city for work-related purposes. But Mr. Finch’s movements of the past ten days were beginning to appear calculated. He left on his holiday soon after Lady Ingram’s notices appeared in the paper. And even when he returned, it was only to leave again.
One might almost conclude that he wished to avoid Lady Ingram.
Charlotte sipped the tea—no doubt Mrs. Woods’s best Darjeeling served in her best Crown Derby china—and sniffed. “Really? Manchester? What sort of business?”
She didn’t quite duplicate Henrietta’s nasal voice, but the sniff was rather spot-on.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Mrs. Cumberland,” said Mrs. Woods, wringing her hands, as if the fact that Mr. Finch failed to inform her of the specifics of his trip were a personal failure on her part.
Charlotte emitted a small sigh, a whiff of air calibrated halfway between magnanimity and irritation, but not before she gave Mrs. Woods’s highly chintzed parlor a pitying look. “Of course you can’t possibly be expected to know everything. But this is vexing nonetheless.”
“I’m sure it must be.”
The landlady was nearly simpering—and at the outset she had not looked at all the simpering sort.
Henrietta Cumberland, Charlotte’s eldest and only married sister, wielded an interesting kind of power over other women. The Lady Ingrams of the world parted the seas with their unassailable glamour. Other leaders of Society relied on their ability to cull an enviable guest list or pull off the event of the Season. Henrietta was neither elegant nor well-connected, and she presided over one of the cheapest tables in the history of dining.
And yet she had the uncanny ability to put herself into the dominant position in almost any exchange, an inner aggressiveness that discomfited most other women. So they accommodated her and tried hard to please her, rather than risk any unpleasantness.
“Do you know where he is expected to lodge in Manchester?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that either.”
“His date of return?”
Mrs. Woods’s voice grew smaller and smaller. “No, ma’am.”
Charlotte sighed again, an expression of open displeasure. “I imagine you also don’t have the address of the firm he works for?”
“Oh, but that I do. It is listed on his application, which I have in my office. If you will wait a minute, Mrs. Cumberland.”
Mrs. Woods rushed off. Charlotte relaxed her face from the expression of barely-held-back disapproval that was Henrietta’s trademark. Henrietta used this technique a great deal, demanding a series of items she knew she couldn’t have, each time responding with greater dissatisfaction, until the beleaguered other party leaped with relief at a chance to prove her own knowledge, ability, or authority.
Mrs. Woods returned, holding two pieces of paper. “This is the list of references he provided. I have written down his employer’s address for you, Mrs. Cumberland.”
Charlotte accepted the offering. “Let me see his references.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Charlotte scanned the three items on the list. Besides the London firm, there was a landlady in Oxfordshire and a solicitor in the same town. “Thank you. I will see myself out,” she said, handing back the references.
“Would you like to leave your address, ma’am, for him to call on you, in case he returns before you find him?”
