She tensed slightly. "Yes. Do you want to see him? I don"t suppose he can help either, but you have to go through the motions, don"t you? I"ll fetch him." She stood up and went to the door, and then turned as he rose also. "What are you going to do, Superintendent? You can"t arrest my father, can you, without proof or a confession?"
"No, I can"t."
"And you don"t have either, do you." That was a challenge, a statement she desperately wanted to be true.
"Not so far."
"Good! I"ll get the curate for you." She went out with quick, light steps, and Pitt was left alone to turn over in his mind the peculiar situation in which he found himself. It seemed, from Tryphena"s evidence, and that of the maid and the valet, as if Unity Bellwood had quarreled violently with Ramsay Parmenter, and after being highly abusive, stormed out of the room in temper. He had followed her, continuing the quarrel, and there had been some sort of struggle at the top of the stairs. She had called out, and then had fallen with such impetus she had pitched right to the bottom and broken her neck. It was absurd to enter into a physical struggle over issues of theories of G.o.d and the origin of man. It was the last way on earth to prove either argument true. Any bodily conflict between a middle-aged clergyman and a young female scholar was unseemly and held elements of farce. Clarice, the one person who disbelieved it, was certainly right.
And yet it seemed undeniably what had happened.
He did not hold any hope that the young curate would be any use whatever. He would probably support Ramsay Parmenter, out of professional and religious loyalty, and disclaim any knowledge of the whole matter.
The door opened and a startlingly handsome man came in. He was slender, almost Pitt"s height, dark haired with fine aquiline features and a mouth of humor and sensitivity. He was wearing a clerical collar.
"h.e.l.lo, Thomas," he said quietly, closing the door behind him.
Pitt was so stunned for a moment he could not find speech. The man was Dominic Corde, the widower of Pitt"s wife"s sister, who had been murdered nearly ten years before, when Charlotte and Pitt had first met. If Dominic had not remarried, then presumably they were still brothers-in-law.
Dominic walked over to the chair by the fireplace and sat down. He looked noticeably older than when Pitt had last seen him. He must be at least forty now. There were fine lines around his brow and around his eyes. The furrows from nose to mouth were deeper, and there were a few gray hairs at his temples. The brashness and the smoothness of youth were gone. Pitt thought, with some reluctance, that it became him. He had not entirely forgotten that when he and Charlotte had met, Charlotte had been in love with Dominic.
"I can"t believe it," Dominic said gravely, watching Pitt. "Ramsay Parmenter is a serious and compa.s.sionate man dedicated to learning and a life in the church. Unity Bellwood could be enough to try the patience of a saint, at times, but it is outside reality to imagine that Reverend Parmenter would deliberately have pushed her downstairs. There has to be some other explanation."
"Accident?" Pitt asked, finding his tongue at last but still standing. "How well do you know him?" What he meant, what was racing through his head, was: What on earth are you doing here in this house, taking holy orders? You, of all people! You who were married to Sarah and seduced maids and at the very least flirted inexcusably with other young women.
Dominic almost smiled, but the smile died on his lips before it was real.
"Ramsay Parmenter helped me when I was close to despair," he said earnestly. "His strength and patience, his calm belief and endless kindness, brought me back from the brink of self-destruction and set me on the best path possible. For the first time I can remember, I am looking towards a future with purpose and use to others. Ramsay Parmenter taught me that-and by example, not word."
He looked up at Pitt.
"I know it is your job to learn what happened here this morning, and you are honor-bound to do that, wherever it leads you. But you want the truth, and that will not include Ramsay Parmenter indulging in violence against another person, even Unity, no matter how far she provoked him." He leaned forward a little, his face creased with urgency. "Think about it, Thomas! If you are a rational man and are trying to persuade someone of the reality and the purpose and the beauty of G.o.d, the very last thing you would do is attack them. It makes no conceivable sense."
"Religious emotion very seldom makes sense," Pitt reminded him, sitting in the opposite chair. "Didn"t you have to study that before you were allowed to wear that collar?"
Dominic flushed very slightly. "Yes, of course I did. But this is 1891, not the sixteenth century. We are in an age of reason, and Ramsay Parmenter is one of the most reasonable men I have ever known. When you have spoken with him more, you will know that, too. I cannot tell you anything about what happened. I was in my bedroom reading, preparing to go out and visit parishioners."
"Did you hear Miss Bellwood call out?"
"No. My door was closed, and my room is in the other wing of the house."
"Mrs. Whickham seems to believe her father could be guilty. And both the maid and the valet heard Unity call out his name," Pitt pointed out.
Dominic sighed. "Tryphena will be much distressed at Unity"s death," he said sadly. "They were very fond of each other. She admired Unity enormously. In fact, I think she adopted quite a few of Unity"s beliefs." He took a deep breath. "The servants I cannot explain. I can only say that they must be mistaken. I don"t know how." He was obviously confused by their evidence. He searched for something to explain it away and found nothing. He looked deeply unhappy.
Pitt could understand torn loyalties, the sense of shock at sudden death. It left most people physically shaken, emotionally raw, and mentally lacking the ability to think with their normal ease or to follow reason.
"I am not going to arrest him," he said aloud. "There is insufficient evidence for that. But I must pursue it. There is too much to indicate murder for me to walk away."
"Murder!" Dominic was ashen. He stared across at Pitt with eyes almost black. "That"s ..." He dropped his head into his hands. "Oh, G.o.d...not again!"
For a moment both of them remembered Sarah, and the other dead women in Cater Street, and the fear and the suspicion, the crumbling of relationships and the pain.
"I"m sorry," Pitt said, barely above a whisper. "There is no choice."
Dominic did not speak.
The coals settled in the fire.
2
AFTER PITT LEFT, Dominic Corde was acutely aware of the distress which at least to some extent had been masked during the presence of strangers. Unity"s body had been removed. The police had seen everything they needed to and notes had been taken of the scene. Now the house was unnaturally quiet. The curtains and blinds were closed in decent respect for death, and to signify to all pa.s.sersby and potential callers that this was now a house of mourning.
No one had wanted to continue with normal pursuits until the last formalities were completed. It looked callous-or worse, as if they might be afraid of something. Now they stood in the hall, self-conscious and unhappy.
Clarice was the first to speak.
"Isn"t it absurd? So much has happened and yet everything looks the same. Before this, I had a dozen things to do. Now every one of them seems rather pointless."
"Nothing is the same!" Tryphena said angrily. "Unity has been murdered in our house by a member of our family. Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Of course everything you were going to do is pointless! How could it have meaning?"
"We don"t really know what happened ..." Mallory began tentatively, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I think we should not rush into saying things ..."
Tryphena glared at him, her eyes red-rimmed, the tears standing out in them.
"If you don"t know, it is because you refuse to look at it. And if you start preaching to me I shall scream. If you come up with your usual plat.i.tudes about the mysteries of G.o.d and abiding G.o.d"s will for us, I swear I"ll throw something at you, and it will be the heaviest and sharpest thing I can find." She was struggling for breath. "Unity had more courage and honesty than all the rest of you put together. n.o.body can ever replace her!" She turned on her heel and ran across the mosaic floor and up the stairs, her heels loud on the wood.
"You might," Clarice murmured, presumably referring to Tryphena"s replacing Unity. "I think you"d do it rather well. You"ve got just the same sort of wild ideas and you never listen to anyone else or look where you"re going. In fact, you"d be perfect."
"Really, Clarice!" Mallory said impatiently. "That is uncalled for. She is distraught."
"She"s always distraught about something," Clarice muttered. "She lives her life being distraught. She was beside herself when her marriage with Spencer was arranged. Then when she decided he was a bully and a bore, she was even more beside herself. And she still wasn"t satisfied when he died."
"For heaven"s sake, Clarice!" Mallory was aghast. "Have you no decency?"
Clarice ignored him.
"Aren"t you distressed?" Dominic asked her quietly.
She looked at him, and the anger melted out of her face. "Yes, of course I am," she admitted. "And I didn"t even like her." She looked at her father, who was standing near the newel post. He was still very pale, but he seemed to have regained at least some of his composure. He was usually a man of great calm, and reason always prevailed over emotion, self-indulgence, or any kind of indiscipline. So far he had avoided meeting anyone"s eyes. Naturally he was aware of what Stander and Braithwaite had told the police, and he must be wondering what the rest of his family made of the extraordinary charge. Now he could no longer put off some kind of communication.
"I don"t think there is anything new to be said." His voice was husky, thin, totally lacking its usual timbre, his face white. "I don"t know what happened to Miss Bellwood. I sincerely trust that no one else in the house does either. We had best continue with our duties as far as possible in the circ.u.mstances, and bear ourselves with dignity. I shall be upstairs in my study." And without waiting for any reply, he turned and left them, walking with measured and rather heavy tread.
Dominic watched him with a mixture of sadness and guilt because he knew of no way to help him. His admiration for Ramsay Parmenter was profound, and it had never been long absent from his mind. Ramsay had found him at a time of acute distress-despair would not be too strong a word for it. It was Ramsay"s patience and strength he had leaned on, and which had helped him eventually to find his own. Now, when Ramsay needed someone to believe in him and to offer a hand to lift and sustain him, Dominic could think of nothing to say or do. would not be too strong a word for it. It was Ramsay"s patience and strength he had leaned on, and which had helped him eventually to find his own. Now, when Ramsay needed someone to believe in him and to offer a hand to lift and sustain him, Dominic could think of nothing to say or do.
"I suppose I might as well continue my studies, too," Mallory remarked miserably. "I don"t even know what time it is. I don"t know why the maid m.u.f.fled the clock. It"s not as if a member of the family were dead." He shook his head and walked away.
Clarice left without explanation, going to the side door to the garden and closing it behind her, leaving Vita and Dominic alone.
"Did I do the right thing?" Vita asked softly, her voice little more than a whisper as she looked up at him. She was an extraordinary woman, not beautiful in an accepted way-her eyes were too large, her mouth too wide, her whole face a little short. And yet the longer one looked at her, the more beautiful she became, until the cla.s.sic features of other women seemed too thin, too elongated, possessed of a uniformity which became tedious. "Should I have told that policeman nothing?"
He wanted to comfort her. She was in a most appalling situation, a dilemma no one should have to face. With the faith he had found in these last years, how could he advocate lying, even to protect a husband? The greatest loyalty of all must be to the right. That was never a question. The difficulty was in knowing what was the right, which of all the ways was the least evil. For that, one needed to be able to see the outcome, and too often it was impossible.
"Did you hear her cry out?" he asked.
"Of course I did." She looked at him with clear, steady eyes. "Do you imagine I would say such a thing if I had not? I did not mean it was not true, I meant should I have kept silent?"
"I know that," he answered quickly. "I thought your knowing it was the truth would tell you that you must speak it...I think ..." Would he have said it had he been in her place, had he been the one to hear the cry? Would grat.i.tude and loyalty have held his tongue? What then? What if murder was provable in some other way, and then another person was blamed? Even if that did not happen, should murder go unknown, unpunished? "No, of course you had to speak," he said with confidence. "I am just so terribly sorry that burden had to fall on you. I cannot imagine the courage it must have taken you, or how deeply you must be hurt now."
She reached out and laid her fingertips on his arm.
"Thank you, Dominic," she said softly. "You have no idea how you have comforted me. I am afraid we have terrible times ahead of us. I don"t know how we are going to bear it, except by supporting one another." She stopped and gazed at him for a moment with her pain completely undisguised. "I don"t think we are going to persuade Tryphena...do you? I am afraid she is very angry and very hurt. She regarded Unity in quite a different light from the way the rest of us did. Her loyalties are very...torn."
He would have liked to disagree with her, but a lie would be of no comfort; it might only make her feel more alone in her distress.
"Not yet," he said quietly. "But she has barely had time to think or to realize that the rest of her family is going to need her."
"We are, aren"t we, Dominic?" Her voice was tense, husky with fear as she realized more and more sharply what must happen. "This policeman is not going to go away. He is going to persist until he has the truth. And then he is going to act upon it."
That was the one thing Dominic knew without any doubt at all. "Yes. He has little choice."
She looked wistful, a half smile on her lips. "What miserable luck! We might have had someone foolish, or more easily impressed by the church, or diverted by difficulties, or afraid to say something uncomfortable and unpopular. And it will be unpopular. I have no doubt influence will be exerted-by Bishop Underhill, if no one else. I think it is largely on his recommendation that Ramsay may become a bishop himself." She sighed almost silently. "Sometimes it is very hard to know what is right, what is best for the future. It is not always what seems best now. The world"s judgments can be very harsh."
"Sometimes," he agreed. "But they can be kind as well."
Again the smile hovered about her lips, and then it vanished.
"You are going to tell me I shall find out who my true friends are?" A shadow of humor crossed her mouth. "When the scandal comes, newspapers are writing dreadful things about us and hardly anyone comes to call anymore?" She lifted one shoulder in a characteristically graceful gesture, but one of denial. "Please don"t. I really don"t think I wish to know. There are bound to be most unpleasant surprises, people I cared for and trusted, and believed that they cared for me." She was looking away from him, across the extraordinary hall, her voice very low. "We shall discover cowardice in places we least thought, and prejudice, and all sorts of ugly things. I would far rather not know. I would prefer to look at smiling faces and not see behind them to the weakness or the fear or the spite." She turned back to face him. "Dominic, I"m terribly afraid ..."
"Of course you are." He wished to touch her, but it would have been unseemly. It was the most instinctive way to offer comfort when there were no words that could help, but it was not a way available to him, not even with her, nor with any parishioner. He must find the words. "We all are. There is nothing to do but face each day with the best courage we can and love one another."
She smiled. "Of course. Thank G.o.d you are here. We shall need you desperately. Ramsay will need you." She lowered her voice still further, and there was a fragile edge to it. "How can this have happened? I know Unity was an exceedingly difficult young woman, but we have had difficult people here before." She searched his eyes. "Heaven knows, we have had some curates who would drive a saint to desperation. Young Havergood was such an enthusiast, always shouting and waving his arms around." She moved her hands delicately in imitation of the remembered curate. "I can"t count how many things he broke, including my best Lalique vase, which my cousin gave me as a wedding present And there was Gorridge, who was always sucking his teeth and making bad jokes." She smiled at Dominic. "Ramsay was so good with them. Even Sherringham, who would keep on repeating things and remembered everything you ever said to him, but slightly wrong, just enough to ruin the meaning completely."
Dominic was about to say something, but she moved towards the conservatory door and led the way in. The damp smell of leaves was very pleasant, almost invigorating. The conservatory was all gla.s.sed arches and white wood above the palms and lilies.
"What was so different about Unity?" Vita went on, walking along the brick path between the beds. Twenty feet away, the chair where Mallory had been studying was empty, but his books and papers were still there, piled on a white-painted, cast-iron table. She was moving very slowly now, looking down at the ground. "Ramsay has changed, you know," she went on. "He is not the man he used to be. You couldn"t know that, of course. It is as if there is a dark shadow over him, something that eats away at the confidence and the belief he had before. He used to be...so positive. Once he was full of fire. The very quality of his voice would make people listen. That"s all changed."
He knew what she was referring to: the secular doubts that had afflicted many people since the popularity of Charles Darwin"s theories on the origin of mankind, an ascent from lower forms of life rather than a unique descent from a divine Father in Heaven. He had heard the doubts in Ramsay"s voice, the lack of pa.s.sion in his belief and in his reiteration of it for parishioners. But Unity Bellwood was not responsible for that. She was certainly not the only person to believe in Darwinism, or the only atheist Ramsay had encountered. The world was full of them and always had been. The essence of faith was courage and trust, without knowledge.
Vita stopped. There was a dark stain of something across the pathway, at least four feet wide and in a spreading, irregular pattern. She wrinkled her nose at the faint, sharp smell which still came from it.
"I wish that gardener"s boy would be more careful. Bostwick really shouldn"t let him in here. He keeps forgetting to put the tops on things."
Dominic bent down and touched the stain with his finger. It was dry. The brick must have absorbed it. It was brown, like the mark on Unity"s shoe. The conclusion was inescapable. But why had Mallory lied about having seen her?
"What is it?" Vita said.
He stood up. "I"ve no idea. But it"s dry, if you want to walk over. It must have gone into the brick very quickly."
She picked up her skirts anyway, and stepped over the stain lightly. He followed her into the open central area amid the palms and vines. She gazed past winter lilies, oblivious of their delicate scent, her face pale and set.
"I suppose it was the unbearable frustration," she said quietly. "She went on and on, didn"t she?" She bit her lip, and there was acute sadness in her eyes and in the angle of her head. "She never knew when to allow a little kindness to moderate her tongue. It is all very well to preach what you believe to be the truth, but when it shatters the foundations of someone else"s world, it isn"t very clever. It doesn"t help; it only destroys." She reached out and touched one of the lilies. "There are people who cannot cope with losing so much. They cannot simply rebuild. Ramsay"s whole life has been the church. Ever since he was a young man, it is all he has lived for, worked for, sacrificed his time and his means for. He could have been outstanding in university life, you know."
Dominic was not sure if that was true. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Ramsay"s scholarship was limited. He had thought it brilliant when he had first known Ramsay, but gradually over the last three or four months, as Unity Bellwood had worked with Ramsay, Dominic had overheard remarks, discussions and arguments which he had been unable to forget. He had tried not to be aware that she was quicker than Ramsay to see a possibility, an alternative meaning to a pa.s.sage. She could grasp an idea she did not like, instead of refusing to consider it. She could make leaps of the imagination and connect unlikely concepts and then visualize the new. Ramsay was left angry and confused, failing to understand.
It had not happened often, but enough for Dominic now to think, painfully against his will, that academic jealousy might have been at the root of some of Ramsay"s dislike of Unity. Had her intellect, its speed and agility, frightened him, made him feel old, inadequate to fight for the beliefs he cared about and to which he had given so much?
Dominic"s own mind was confused, uncertain what to think. Violence was so unlike the man he knew. Ramsay was all reason, words, civilized thought. In all the time Dominic had known Ramsay, the older man"s kindness and his patience had never failed. Was it a veneer beneath which there was emotion only barely controlled? It was hard to believe it, yet circ.u.mstance forced it into Dominic"s mind.
"Do you really believe he meant to push her?" he asked aloud.
She looked at him. "Oh, Dominic, I wish I could say no. I"d give anything to be back in yesterday again, with none of this having happened. But I heard her, too. I couldn"t help it. I was just coming into the hall. She cried out "No! No, Reverend!" And the moment after that, she fell." She stopped, her breathing rapid and shallow, her face white. "What else can I believe?" she said desperately, staring at him with horror.
It was as if someone had closed a door on hope, an iron door without a handle. Until this moment some part of him had believed there was a mistake, a hysteria prompting ill-judged words. But Vita would never have confirmed such a thing. She had no love for Unity, no divided loyalties, and no one had questioned or pressured or confused her. He tried to think of an argument, but there was nothing that did not sound foolish.
Vita was looking at him with frightened eyes. "As the policeman said, there is nothing up there to trip over."
He knew that was true. He had gone up and down those stairs hundreds of times.
"It is something I would much rather not face," she went on softly. "But if I run away, it will only make it worse in the end. My father-you would have liked my father, I think-he was a truly great man. He always used to teach me that lies get more dangerous every day. Every time you feed them by another lie, they grow bigger, until in the end they become bigger than you are, and consume you." She looked down at last, and away from him. "And dearly as I love Ramsay, I must honor my own beliefs as well. Does that sound selfish and disloyal?"
"Not at all," he said quickly. She looked very fragile in the dappled light through the leaves. She was a smaller woman than she at first appeared. The strength of her personality sometimes made one forget. "Not at all," he repeated with greater conviction. "No one has the right to expect you to lie about such a thing in order to protect him. We must do what we can to contain the damage, but that does not include denying either the law of the land or G.o.d"s law." He was afraid he sounded pompous. He would have said the same words to a parishioner without a moment"s hesitation, but with someone he knew well, saw every day, it was different. And she was in every way senior to him; that she was older in years did not matter, but she was so much senior in the life of the church.
He was startled by her reaction. She swung around and gazed at him with wide eyes, bright, almost as if he had offered her some real and tangible comfort.
"Thank you," she said sincerely. "You don"t know how much you have strengthened me with your conviction of what is right and true. I don"t feel as if I am alone, and that is the most important thing. I can bear anything if I do not have to do it alone."
"Of course you are not alone!" he a.s.sured her. In spite of the chill of shock inside him, and a strange tiredness, as if he had been up all night, with her words a kind of ease spread through him, an unraveling of long-knotted muscles. He would never have wished such a tragedy upon anyone, least of all upon the family who had given him so much, but to have the strength and the compa.s.sion to be of help to them was the core of the faith he believed and upon which he built his calling. "I shall be here all the time."
She smiled. "Thank you. Now I think I must compose my thoughts for a while ..."
"Of course," he agreed quickly. "You would prefer to be alone." And without waiting for her response, he turned and went back along the brick path to the hall. He was crossing towards the library when Mallory came out. As soon as he saw Dominic his face shadowed.
"What have you been doing in the conservatory?" he said sharply. "What did you want?"
"I wasn"t looking for you," Dominic replied guardedly.
"I would have thought you"d be seeing what you could do to help Father. After this, he"s barely going to be able to carry on with his pastoral care. Isn"t that what your duty is supposed to be?" The criticism was sharp and brittle in his voice.
"My first care is in this house," Dominic replied. "As yours is. I was speaking to Mrs. Parmenter, trying to rea.s.sure her that we would all support one another during this time ..."