Chapter 7 #2
I did not acknowledge him. I continued to move through the room, accepting greetings, exchanging pleasantries, performing the role of the dignified widow with the same precision I brought to every other role I was required to play.
But my peripheral vision, which I had trained with the same rigour I brought to every other faculty, tracked his movements as he shifted position, moving from the potted palm to a position near the doorway, from the doorway to a spot beside the drinks table, from the drinks table to a chair near the quartet, each relocation bringing him marginally closer to me without appearing to do so.
He was manoeuvring, I realised, not with the clumsiness of a man who does not understand social convention, but with the tactical precision of someone who was using the conventions themselves as cover for an approach that, if conducted more directly, would have been conspicuous.
Lady Ashford arrived as I was accepting a glass of champagne from a footman, materialising at my elbow with the opportunism of a woman who had been waiting for precisely this moment.
She was wearing a gown of burgundy silk that was, by the standards of half-mourning, audaciously colourful, and her expression carried the particular brightness of someone who has obtained information and is eager to deploy it.
"Cecilia, my dear. How wonderful to see you out again. You look remarkably well, if I may say so. Remarkably well indeed."
"Penelope. How kind."
"One does worry, you know. In these difficult times. A woman alone, with so much to manage. The estate, the household, the poor brother. It is a great deal for one person to bear."
The emphasis on poor brother was deliberate, a small dart aimed at Edmund, whose condition was known to Lady Ashford and who was, in her estimation, a weakness to be exploited.
I received the dart with the same composure I brought to all her provocations and returned it with a smile that was, by any objective measure, warmer than it needed to be.
"Edmund is quite well, thank you. He is with Dorothea this evening, which is his preference when I am engaged socially. He does not enjoy parties."
"Such a pity. Though one understands, of course.
The poor boy has his limitations." She paused, and her eyes moved, very slightly, toward the far wall of the drawing room, where a dark figure stood beside the quartet, watching.
"Though I must say, Cecilia, you seem to have attracted an admirer.
That man has been watching you all evening.
I don't recognise him. A new acquaintance? "
"I couldn't say."
"No? He has the look of a professional man. A solicitor, perhaps? Or a doctor? One reads so much these days about ladies of quality being pursued by men of the professional classes. It is quite the trend."
"Is it? I had not noticed."
"Well, you have been in mourning, dear. One does not notice these things when one is in mourning.
But I assure you, the trend is quite pronounced.
" She smiled, and the smile carried the particular satisfaction of a woman who has delivered an observation that she believes to be damaging.
"Though I daresay you have nothing to worry about.
A woman of your accomplishments and your attractions would have no difficulty managing such attentions, should they become troublesome. "
She drifted away, her burgundy gown sweeping the floor with the proprietary air of a woman who believes she has scored a point, and I was left standing beside the drinks table with my champagne and my composure and the uncomfortable awareness that Sebastian Aldric's presence at this gathering was not the clandestine surveillance I had assumed it to be.
Lady Ashford had noticed him watching me.
Others would have noticed as well. His cover, whatever it was, was already beginning to fray, and a detective whose cover frays is a detective who becomes conspicuous, and a detective who becomes conspicuous is a detective who ceases to be effective.
Unless that was what he wanted. Unless the conspicuousness was itself a strategy, a way of announcing his presence and his interest, of letting me know that he was watching and that he intended to continue watching, regardless of whether I approved.
The thought was a disquieting one, because it implied a level of boldness that I had not previously attributed to him, and boldness, in an adversary, was a quality that disrupted calculations.
The quartet finished their piece, and the room filled with the sound of applause, and in the interval of noise and movement that followed, I saw Aldric begin to move through the crowd toward me.
His approach was direct, abandoning the oblique manoeuvring of the previous hour for a straightforwardness that was, in this context, almost aggressive.
I held my position. To retreat would be to acknowledge that his approach was significant, and to acknowledge significance was to concede a measure of control.
He reached me and bowed, a gesture that was technically correct but that carried, in its execution, the slight awkwardness of a man who was not entirely comfortable with the rituals of formal introduction.
"Lady Ashworth. I hope you will forgive the intrusion. I am afraid I am not acquainted with your host."
"You are here on the invitation of Lord Pemberton, I assume.
" My voice was calm, measured, and carried just enough warmth to suggest that I was pleased rather than alarmed by his approach.
"Lord Pemberton is a great admirer of the Metropolitan Police.
He considers the maintenance of public order to be the highest form of public service. "
"Something like that, yes."
"Then you are among friends, Inspector."
The word inspector hung in the air between us, audible to anyone within earshot, and I noted, with the professional appreciation I brought to every social manoeuvre, the way the word recalibrated the dynamic of our interaction.
I had named him. By naming him, I had announced to the room, without saying so directly, that I knew who he was and why he was there, and that I was not, as his presence might suggest, an unsuspecting subject of investigation but a woman who was fully aware of the attention she was receiving and was capable of managing it.
A flicker of something crossed his face, too brief and too well-controlled to classify.
Surprise, perhaps. Or recognition, the momentary acknowledgment that his quarry was more formidable than he had anticipated.
It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by the neutral mask of professional composure that I had come to associate with him.
"I hope I have not caused you any discomfort, Lady Ashworth."
"Not at all. I am always pleased to see members of the police at social gatherings. It reassures me that the forces of order are vigilant, even in the drawing rooms of Mayfair."
A small silence. The quartet was tuning their instruments, the thin, precise sounds of strings being adjusted cutting through the murmur of conversation.
Aldric stood before me with the particular stillness of a man who was weighing his words, and I waited, with the composure of a woman who understood that silence, in the right circumstances, was a more powerful tool than speech.
"You are the first widow I have encountered," he said, "who treats the presence of a detective as a social reassurance."
"I am the first widow of many kinds, Inspector. I find that novelty has its advantages."
Another silence, longer this time. His eyes held mine, and I noted, with the diagnostic precision I brought to every encounter, the quality of his gaze.
It was not social. It was not, despite his efforts to present it as such, the appreciative assessment of a man admiring a woman.
It was analytical, penetrating, the look of a man who was trying to read a text written in a language he only partially understood.
He was searching my face for something, and I could not determine whether he was finding it or merely imagining that he might.
"The musical programme is excellent this evening," I said, shifting the ground of the conversation to a safer terrain. "Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, I believe. Do you have an interest in music, Inspector?"
"I have an interest in patterns," he said, and the word patterns, in the context of our acquaintance, carried a weight that elevated it above the merely musical.
"Music is, at its best, a study in patterns.
Structure. Anticipation. The tension between what the listener expects and what the composer delivers. "
"A surprisingly sophisticated observation from a policeman."
"I read, Lady Ashworth. When the occasion permits."
"Then we have something in common. I also read. Though I confess I find patterns more interesting in theory than in practice. Practice, in my experience, tends to complicate what theory makes elegant."
I watched the words land. They were innocuous on their surface, a general observation about the relationship between theory and practice that could have been applied to any subject.
But in the context of our conversation, they carried an additional resonance, a suggestion that I was aware of the patterns he was pursuing and that I considered them, from my vantage point, to be less clear and less damning than he might believe.
He received the observation with a slight narrowing of his eyes that told me he had caught the undertone. "Theory has a way of being refined by evidence," he said.
"Evidence can be misleading, Inspector. It can suggest patterns where none exist, or obscure patterns that do. The human mind, in my observation, has a tendency to find patterns in randomness and to impose meaning on coincidence. It is one of our more endearing weaknesses."