Rutland Place by Anne Perry

recover the stolen article, whatever it is! And if she were the victim, maybe it was something that mattered to her so much, was so dangerous for her, that she would rather die than face having it known!”
    There was silence. A pan was dropped in the scullery, and the dim echo of it penetrated the room. Very slowly the hard anger died out of Caroline’s face as she understood. Charlotte watched her without speaking.
    “What could there be that was worse than death?” Caroline said at last.
    “That is what we need to find out.” Charlotte finally relaxed her body enough to sit properly in her chair and lean against the back. “Thomas can find facts, but it may take you or me to understand them. After all, you cannot expect the police to know the feelings of someone like Mina. Something that would seem trivial to them might have been overwhelming to her.”
    It was not necessary to explain all the differences of class, sex, and the whole framework of customs and values that lay between Pitt and Mina. Both Charlotte and Caroline understood that all the sensitivity or imagination he was capable of would not guide him to see with Mina’s eyes or recognize what it was that had accomplished her death.
    “I wish I didn’t have to know,” Caroline said wearily, looking away from Charlotte. “I would so much rather bury her in peace. I have no curiosity. I can abide a mystery perfectly well. I have learned that one is not very often happier for having found all the answers.”
    Charlotte knew that at least half her mother’s feeling sprang from a desire for privacy herself, the need to keep her own secrets. So much of the pleasure of a flirtation was that other people should see your conquest, and this realization added to her fear. Caroline must be very enchanted with Paul Alaric if she was content for the relationship to be unobserved. That meant it was far more than a game; there was something in it that Caroline wanted very much, something more than admiration alone.
    “You cannot afford not to know!” Charlotte said sharply, wanting to shock her mother into fear acute enough to bring her to some sense. “If Mina were the thief, then she may still have your locket! When her possessions are sorted out, Alston will find it—or Thomas will!”
    This had all the jarring effect she intended. Caroline’s face tightened into a mask. She swallowed with difficulty.
    “If Thomas finds it—” she began; and then the enormity of it hit her. “Oh, dear heaven! He might think I killed Mina! Charlotte—he couldn’t think that—could he?”
    The danger was too real for soft words and lies.
    “I don’t suppose Thomas himself would think so,” she answered quietly. “But other police might. There must have been some reason why Mina died, so we had better find it first, before the locket turns up and anyone else has the chance to think anything at all.”
    “But what?” Caroline shut her eyes in desperation, searching blindly for some explanation in the darkness of her mind. “We don’t even know if it was suicide or murder! I did tell Thomas about Tormod Lagarde.”
    “What about him?” Thomas had not mentioned Tormod or any possible connection.
    “That Mina might have been in love with him,” Caroline replied. “She definitely had an admiration for him. It could have been more than we thought. And she did go to the Lagardes’ house just before she died. Perhaps she had some kind of interview with him and he rejected her in a way that she could not bear?”
    The idea of a married woman finding the end of such a relationship cause for suicide disturbed Charlotte. It was frightening and pathetic in a way that repelled her, especially since she could not put Caroline and Paul Alaric from her mind. But then she did not know how disagreeable or empty the Spencer-Browns’ marriage might have been. She had no right to judge. So many marriages were “appropriate”—and even those born of love could sour. She