Callander Square Read Online Free PDF

without displeasure.
    “So you are the policeman? What an odd-looking creature you are, to be sure. Pray do not be vulgar with me. I am extremely delicate. I suffer.”
    “I am sorry to hear it.” Pitt controlled his face with an effort. “I hope to disturb you very little.”
    “You have already disturbed me, but I shall put up with it in good grace, in the name of necessity. I am Georgiana Duff. This,” she pointed to a slightly younger, better-upholstered version of herself in the other chair, “is my sister, Laetitia Doran. She is the one to have the misfortune, or the ill-judgment, to own a house in such a disastrous place; so you had better address your remarks to her.”
    Pitt turned to Laetitia.
    “Indeed, Mrs. Doran, my apologies again; but owing to the tragic discovery in the gardens, I am sure you understand it is necessary for us to question the servants, especially the younger, female servants, in all the houses that face onto the square.”
    Laetitia blinked.
    “Of course,” Georgiana said sharply. “Is that all you’ve come to say?”
    “To ask your permission to speak to your servants,” Pitt replied. Georgiana snorted. “You’ll do it anyway!”
    “I would prefer to do it with your permission, ma’am.”
    “Don’t keep calling me ‘ma’am.’ I don’t like it. And don’t stand there towering over me. You make me feel quite giddy. Sit down, or I shall faint!”
    Pitt sat down, stifling a smile.
    “Thank you. Have I your permission to interview your servants?” he looked at Laetitia.
    “Yes, yes I suppose so,” she said uncomfortably. “Please endeavor not to upset them. It is so hard to replace a servant satisfactorily these days. And poor Georgiana must be properly looked after.”
    Pitt privately thought that “poor Georgiana” would see to it herself that, come hell or high water, she would be properly looked after.
    “Of course,” he stood up again and moved to the door before Georgiana had time to feel affected by his presence. “Have you had any servants dismissed in the last half year, young women who have left the house?”
    “None,” Laetitia said quickly. “We have been exactly as we are for years! Years and years!”
    “You have no children, ma’am? Daughters who have married and taken a lady’s maid with them?”
    “None at all!”
    “Thank you. I shan’t need to disturb you again,” he went out and closed the door softly.
    He remained in the Doran house for two hours, but he learned nothing there either.
    Charlotte was perfectly correct, Emily was beginning to find that the fashionable life lacked something, a certain bite, for which she was increasingly developing a taste. Beyond question, she enjoyed her life; it was the ideal mode of existence for her. When she and Charlotte were still at home in Cater Street with Mama and Papa, when poor Sarah was alive, Emily had known precisely what suited her. She had determined from very early in their acquaintance that she would marry Lord George Ashworth; and a very satisfactory arrangement it had proved. Of course George had his faults, but then what man did not? His overriding virtue was that he appreciated her, and was constantly both generous and civil; and he was undoubtedly handsome to look at, and witty when he chose. It would be pleasant if he would gamble a little less, it was a shocking waste of money. But if he flirted, he was eminently discreet about it, and he very seldom went out without inviting Emily also; and he did not nag her as to her occupations or the female society she kept. And that was a considerable point in his favor. Emily knew any number of wives who were forever being left at home while their husbands went to places wholly unsuitable for a woman of any decency at all, and yet criticized them for extravagance or for the afternoon parties they themselves put on.
    But undeniably there was a certain lack, a purposelessness to her present round. Since she was Lady Ashworth, she had