Charlotte felt the tension ease away from her. Memories of Vespasia"s son-in-law Eustace March were mixed with tragedy, rage and mirth, and most recently high farce and an uneasy alliance which had ended in victory.
"Eustace does have certain redeeming qualities," she said, honesty compelling her. "Grandmama is impossible. I suppose she did concentrate my mind on aspects of Thomas"s new case." She stopped, wondering whether Vespasia wished to hear about it or not.
"Your luncheon rests upon it!" Vespasia warned with a glitter in her eyes. "I am very fond of you, my dear, but I refuse to sit and discuss the weather with anyone, even you. And we have no society acquaintances in common whom we may criticize with any degree of entertainment, and I do not care to speak of friends except to pa.s.s on news. Emily has written, so I have no need to enquire how she is. I know she is doing excellently."
"Very well," Charlotte agreed with a smile. "Do you think a man whose religious faith is his profession and his status, as well as his moral code, would be so deranged by doubts, the attacks or the mockery of atheists as to lose control of himself and kill...in temper?" Had she stated the case fairly?
"No," Vespasia said with barely a hesitation. "If he appears to have done so, I should look for a motive more rooted in the real man, less of the brain and more of the pa.s.sions. Men kill from fear of losing something they cannot bear to live without, be it love or status or money. Or they kill to gain the same thing." Her expression was filled with interest, but no doubt whatsoever. "Sometimes it is to avenge a wrong they find intolerable or from jealousy of someone who has what they believe should be theirs. Sometimes it is hatred, usually based in those same feelings that somehow they have been robbed of love or honor...or money."
She smiled very slightly, just curling the corner of her lips. "They will fight over an idea, but only kill if their status is threatened, their belief as to how they perceive themselves in the world, in a way their life...or what makes it valuable to them, their conception of its importance."
"She threatened his faith," Charlotte said with a little shiver. She did not want it to be true, but then there was not any answer that she did want-not one that was possible. "Isn"t that his status...as a clergyman?"
Vespasia laughed with a slight lift of one thin shoulder under its ivory lace and silk. There was anger and pity in her eyes as well as amus.e.m.e.nt. "My dear, if every clergyman in England who had doubts were to resign his living there would be precious few churches left open. Those that were would be mostly in villages where the minister is too busy spending his time with the frightened, the sick and the lonely to read anything but the Four Gospels, and no time at all for learned disputations. He does not think about who G.o.d is, because he already knows."
Charlotte sat silently. She could not feel that Ramsay Parmenter had any such knowledge. Perhaps it was that absence, that hole at the core of what should have been, which had allowed his faith to collapse in upon itself so tragically.
"It troubles you." Vespasia"s voice was gentle. "Why? Is your anxiety for Thomas?"
"Not really. He will do what he has to. It will be unpleasant, of course, but then these things always are."
"Then for whom?"
She had never lied to Vespasia, even by implication or omission. To do so would destroy something which could never be replaced and which was of immeasurable value to her. She shifted her position very slightly on the chair.
"There are three men in the house, any of whom could have been at the bend of the stairs when Unity fell," she said slowly. "The second is Mallory, the son of the house, who is about to become a Roman Catholic priest ..." She ignored Vespasia"s suddenly risen eyebrows, silver, arched and elegant. "The third is the new curate there...who is my brother-in-law, Dominic. He was married to my elder sister, Sarah, who was murdered in Cater Street."
"Go on, my dear ..."
There was no escaping Vespasia"s gaze, nor the feeling of heat creeping up her own cheeks.
"I used to think myself in love with him before I met Thomas," she began. "No, that is not quite true...I was in love, obsessively. I got over it, of course. I realized how...how shallow and fragile Dominic was, how easily he gave in to his appet.i.tes." She was talking too quickly, but she did not seem to be able to help it. "He was very handsome indeed. He is even more so now. Something of the smoothness of youth is gone, a callowness. His face is...refined...by experience."
She met Vespasia"s clear, silver-gray eyes. She made herself smile back. "I feel no more than friendship for him now- indeed, I have for a long time. But I am afraid for him. You see, Unity was with child, and I know Dominic"s frailty. He wants pa.s.sionately to succeed in his vocation, I believe that, I can see it and hear it in him. But one cannot cast off the temptations and needs of the body merely at will."
"I see." Vespasia was very grave. "And what of the other two men, Mallory and the man of whom you spoke first? Could they not also be tempted?"
"Mallory...I suppose so." Charlotte gave a dismissive little shrug. "But not the Reverend. He"s at least sixty!"
Vespasia laughed. It was not an elegant little murmur but a rich gurgle of hilarity.
Charlotte found herself blushing. "I mean...I didn"t mean ..." she stammered.
Vespasia leaned forward and put her hand on Charlotte"s. "I know precisely what you mean, my dear. And I daresay from thirty-three, sixty seems like dotage, but when you get there it will look quite different. So will seventy-and even eighty, if you are fortunate."
Charlotte"s cheeks were still hot. "I don"t think the Reverend Parmenter is fortunate. He is as dry as dead wood. He is all arguments in the mind."
"Then if something awakens his pa.s.sions at last, it will be all the more dangerous," Vespasia answered, sitting back again. "Because he is unused to them and will have little experience in controlling them. That is when it is most likely to end in a disaster such as this."
"I suppose it is ..." Charlotte said slowly, with a mixture of pain and relief. The realization of such an answer exonerated everyone else, but it left one person with the extra burden to bear. Yet still, for all the rationality of it, she found herself unable to believe it. "I could sense no pa.s.sion in him," she repeated. "Except the doubt. Although I realize that most of what I know of that comes from Dominic, still I think that is Reverend Parmenter"s overriding emotion. He and Unity used to quarrel terribly. They had a fearful row just minutes before she fell. It was overheard by several people. You see, she challenged his belief in everything to which he had given his life. That is an awful thing to do to anybody. It is saying, in effect, that they are worth nothing, that all their ideas are silly and wrong. If you believed that, you could hate them very much."
"If she really was the one to shake his faith, then yes, indeed, he could," Vespasia agreed. "There is nothing quite so frightening as an idea or a freedom which negates your own sacrifice and obedience when it is too late for you to avail yourself of it. But from what you say, your Reverend was not in this position. Surely it is the initiators of the idea he should hate, not the followers?" She sighed. "Although you are quite right, of course. It was the unfortunate young woman who was standing at the top of the stairs, not Mr. Darwin, who was safely out of reach. I am very sorry. It sounds like a sad affair."
She rose to her feet with a little stiffness, and Charlotte stood instantly also, offering her arm to a.s.sist, and together they went into the breakfast room. It was filled with sunlight, and the perfume of narcissi blooming in a green glazed pot. Smoked salmon was already served with wafer-thin slices of brown bread, and the butler was waiting to pull out Vespasia"s chair for her.
Charlotte felt compelled to go again to Brunswick Gardens. Her brain told her there was little she could accomplish, but she could not simply wait to see what happened. If she went she might learn something more, and knowledge would enable her to act.
She was received somewhat coolly by Vita Parmenter.
"How kind of you to call again, Mrs. Pitt," she said. "It is generous of you to give up so much of your time." "And take up so much of ours" was implied.
"Family loyalties are very important in times of trouble," Charlotte answered, and hated hearing herself mouthing such plat.i.tudes.
"I am sure you are a very loyal wife," Vita said with a smile. "But we cannot tell you anything that we did not already tell your husband."
This was dreadful. Charlotte felt herself blushing hot. Vita was a far sharper adversary than she had supposed, and as determined to protect her husband as Charlotte was to protect Dominic. Charlotte ought to have admired her for it, and reluctantly part of her did, in spite of her own discomfort. The two of them stood facing each other in the gracious, very modern withdrawing room, Vita small and elegant in soft patterned blue edged with black, Charlotte at least three inches taller in last year"s muted plum, which flattered her warm skin and mahogany-brown hair.
"I did not come to enquire into the details of your tragedy, Mrs. Parmenter," she said very politely. "I came to ask after your well-being and to see if there was anything I could do to be helpful."
"I cannot imagine any help you might give." Vita kept the air of courtesy, but it was very thin. "What had you in mind?"
There was obviously nothing anyone could do, and they both knew it.
Charlotte looked straight back at her and smiled. "I have known Dominic for many years, and we have experienced tragedies and difficulties together in the past. I thought he might find comfort in speaking freely, as one can to friends of long standing, and to people who are not immediately involved and therefore will not be hurt in the same way." She was pleased with that. It sounded very reasonable, and it was almost true.
"I see," Vita said slowly, her face a little harder, a little colder. "Then no doubt we should call him and see if his duties will allow him the time." She reached for the bell rope and pulled it sharply. She did not speak again until the maid appeared, then she simply asked her to inform Mr. Corde that his sister-in-law had called and wished to offer him her companionship, if it was convenient for him.
They discussed the weather until the door opened and Dominic came in. He looked pleased to see Charlotte, his face lighting immediately, but she noticed the shadows around his eyes and the strain in the fine lines beside his mouth.
"How kind of you to come," he said sincerely.
"I was concerned for you," she replied. "You could hardly help being distressed."
"We all are." Vita looked from Charlotte to Dominic. Her expression had altered since he came into the room. There was a softness to it now, a respect bordering on admiration in her eyes. "It has been quite the worst time in any of our lives." She turned to Charlotte as if her previous coldness had not existed. Her face was so innocent Charlotte wondered if her own guilt had manufactured the rebuff.
"But we have also discovered strengths in one another we had not known," Vita went on. "You said, Mrs. Pitt, that you had endured great difficulties yourself some time ago. I daresay you had the same experience? One finds that those one had thought to be friends, and people of unquestioned strength, are not of the...the quality one had hoped. And then that others have compa.s.sion, courage, and"-her eyes were soft and bright-"a sheer goodness that surpa.s.ses all one had imagined." She did not speak any names, but her momentary glance at Dominic made him blush with pleasure.
Charlotte saw it. It was delicate, a flattering directed most precisely where he was vulnerable. He yearned not to be desired, found amusing or romantic or clever, but to be found good. It might be that Vita was simply fortunate in touching on the one hole in his armor, but Charlotte was perfectly sure it owed nothing whatever to chance. And yet even if she had wanted to warn Dominic of it, she could not. It would be both cruel and pointless. It would hurt him and turn him against Charlotte, for the pain. Catching Vita"s eye for a moment, she was perfectly certain that Vita knew that also.
"Yes, I did," Charlotte agreed with a forced smile. "It is the one thing that lasts even after all the other mystery is solved, the new knowledge one has gained of people we thought we knew. It can never be exactly the same again."
"I am sure it will not be," Vita agreed. "There are new debts...and new loyalties. It is a turning point in all our lives, I think. That is what makes it so frightening ..." She let the words hang in the air. "One tries hard to hope, and that also hurts, because it matters so very much." She smiled and glanced at Dominic, then away again. Her voice dropped. "Thank heaven one does not have to do it all alone."
"Of course not," Dominic said firmly. "That is about the only good thing we can cling to, and that I promise."
Something in Vita relaxed. She turned to Charlotte and smiled, as if she had made a profound decision.
"Perhaps you would care to stay to tea, Mrs. Pitt. You would be most welcome. Please do."
Charlotte was surprised. It was a sudden change, and although she had every intention of accepting, it also filled her with an awareness of unease.
"Thank you," she said quickly. "That is most generous of you, especially in the circ.u.mstances."
Vita smiled, and the expression lit her face with conviction and warmth. It was easy to see that in other circ.u.mstances she would be a woman of extraordinary charm, having both intelligence and vitality, and almost certainly a ready wit.
"Now please, you must spend a little time with Dominic, which is what you came for, and I am sure he would appreciate it. Tea will be at four o"clock."
"Thank you," Dominic said earnestly, and there was a light and a gentleness in his face, then he turned to Charlotte. "Shall we walk in the garden?"
She followed him, taking his arm, very conscious of Vita watching them leave. Vita had changed her att.i.tude completely. She was a different woman when Dominic was present. Was that trust, the knowledge that Charlotte was the wife of the policeman investigating Unity"s death and therefore inevitably linked with blaming Ramsay with murder? Vita could hardly help being suspicious of Charlotte, even disliking her regardless of every natural personal impulse. Charlotte would have hated anyone who posed a threat to Pitt. Knowing it was unjust would make no difference. It would touch her mind but not her instinct.
And Vita must know Dominic"s loyalty to Ramsay, his immense sense of grat.i.tude and debt. She could count on him to do all that was humanly possible to help.
They went out through the side door into the garden, still leafless and dappled with light through the branches. The snowdrops were over and the narcissus spears were high and already bending their heads, ready to open. If Charlotte had had this land she would have planted primroses, celandine and a drift of wood anemones under those trees. The gardeners here had been a trifle unimaginative with periwinkle and ferns, their heads barely through the ground.
Dominic was talking about something and she was not listening. Her mind was filled with memory of the emotion in Vita"s face as she had looked at him. There was such admiration in it. Did she cling to him because Ramsay was weaker, a flawed vessel, and she knew it? Charlotte remembered how he had sat at the table and allowed Tryphena to make offensive remarks without defending himself or his beliefs. It was as if he had in some way already surrendered.
Vita did not seem like a woman who gave up. She might be beaten by circ.u.mstance, but she would not simply cease to try. It was not surprising she was drawn to Dominic, admiring his spiritual energy and conviction. It matched her own strength of will. Charlotte had seen her flatter those aspects of his nature, and how precious it had been to him. Surely Vita knew that, too?
She made an appropriate reply to Dominic, her mind less than half upon what he was saying. It was of the past, memories shared. It did not need her attention. They were under the trees, looking towards the azaleas. They would not bloom for another two months. They looked miserable, almost dead against the naked earth, but in late spring they would blaze with color, orange, gold and apricot flowers on bare branches. It took an effort of imagination to see it now. But then that was what gardening was about.
They walked together in companionable silence, the occasional remark made not for meaning but simply to establish some sense of being together. All the things that mattered must remain unsaid. They were only too aware of the suspicions and the overshadowing fear, the knowledge that something ugly and irreversible was waiting in the future to be discovered, and coming closer with every hour.
They were still talking when Tryphena came across the gra.s.s with a message that Dominic was needed, and he excused himself, leaving the two women together. It was an opportunity for Charlotte to learn a little more of Tryphena, a chance which might not occur again, and too good for her not to seize it.
"I am very sorry for your bereavement, Mrs. Whickham," Charlotte said quietly. "The more I hear from my husband of Miss Bellwood"s achievements, the more I realize it may be a loss to women in general."
Tryphena looked at her skeptically. She saw a woman in her early thirties who had adopted the most usual, most comfortable, and by far the easiest role for women. Her contempt for this was clear in her eyes.
"Are you interested in scholarship?" she asked only barely politely.
"Not particularly," Charlotte answered with equal candor and with just as forthright a gaze. "But I am interested in justice. My brother-in-law is a member of Parliament, and I have hopes of influencing his views, but,"-she took a plunge-"I should prefer to have the power to do it more directly, and without being dependent upon a relationship, which is quite chancy and arbitrary."
Now she had Tryphena"s interest. "You mean the vote?"
"Why not? Don"t you believe women have the intelligence and the judgment of human character to exercise it with at least as much wisdom as men?"
"More so!" Tryphena said instantly, stopping and turning where she stood so she faced Charlotte. "But it is only a tiny beginning. There are far greater freedoms we cannot legislate for. Freedom from the convention of ideas, from other people deciding what we shall want, what we shall think, even what will make us happy." Her voice was rising and sharp with emotion. She stood in the sunlight stiff with anger, her black dress pulling across her shoulders. "It is the whole patriarchal order of society which oppresses us. If we are to be free to use our intellectual and creative abilities, and not merely our physical ones, then we must be freed from the rigid ties of the past and the moral and financial dependence we have suffered for centuries."
Charlotte had seldom felt shackled or dependent, but she was honest enough to know that few women had marriages as satisfying as hers, or that granted them as much freedom. Because of the difference in their social background, she and Pitt were more equal partners than most. Because of Pitt"s toleration of her either helping or meddling with his cases, depending upon one"s point of view, she had a variety and interest in her life, and a fulfillment of far more sides of her nature than domesticity alone could have given. Even Emily, with her money and position, was frequently bored by the narrowness of her acquaintances and limitations, the sameness of one day to another.
"I think we shall change things only a small step at a time," she said diplomatically and realistically. "But we can ill afford to lose people like Miss Bellwood, if she was all I hear."
"She was far more!" Tryphena responded quickly. "She not only had a vision, she had the courage to live it through, no matter what the cost. And it could cost dearly." The impatience and the contempt crept back into her face, and she started to walk across the gra.s.s, not with any direction but simply for the release of movement. "But that is the courage to face life, isn"t it? To grasp hold of it and cling to it even if at times it stabs you to the soul."
"You mean her death?" Charlotte kept up with her.
Tryphena turned away, a shadow over her face. "No, I mean life itself, the living of it. She had the bravest heart of anyone I know, but those who love pa.s.sionately can be hurt in ways lesser people cannot even imagine by those who are unworthy of them." She jerked her body angrily, as if thinking of the people and the lives behind them, and dismissing their feelings as superficial.
Charlotte wanted intensely to say the right thing. She must not anger Tryphena, nor allow her curiosity to betray itself. Had Tryphena known Unity had been with child? She must say something intelligent, sympathetic, something to prompt a continuing confidence. She kept pace with Tryphena, step for step across the gra.s.s towards the gravel path by the herbaceous border, its flowers still little more than dark mounds in the damp earth, a few green shoots here and there.
"Well, if there were not pain in it, and no risk," she mused, "then anyone would do it. It would hardly need someone special."
Tryphena said nothing. Her face was sunk deep in thought, and perhaps memory.
"Tell me something about her," Charlotte said at last as they reached the path and their boots crunched on the gravel. Subtlety was not going to work. "She must have been much admired. I expect she had many friends."
"Dozens," Tryphena agreed. "Before she came here she lived with a whole group of like-minded people who believed in freedom to live and love each other as they chose without the superst.i.tions of society, and the hypocrisies, to limit them."
Charlotte thought it sounded more like license, but she refrained from saying so-what was freedom to one person frequently appeared selfishness and irresponsibility to another. Some of the difference was merely the pa.s.sage of time-and having children of one"s own for whom one could see all the dangers of the world; the desire to protect them was overwhelming.
"It takes a lot of courage," she said aloud. "The risks are great."
"Yes." Tryphena stared at the ground as they walked, very slowly, along the path to the shallow steps. "She spoke about it sometimes. She told me of the sense of exhilaration they had, how intense pa.s.sion could be when it is utterly true, no law binds you, no superst.i.tious dread holds you or inhibits you, no rituals make you wait or try to hold you in an anchor after the fire and the honesty had gone out of it." There was such bitterness in her voice, such a depth of emotion, that Charlotte could not help wondering at Tryphena"s own experience of marriage. She glanced at her and saw no softness in her eyes or mouth, no warmth in her memories at all. Had she wanted the marriage herself? Or was it something arranged by her family, and she had agreed to it, willingly or unwillingly?
"It is all so"-Tryphena furrowed her brow, looking for the word-"so...clean! There is no pretense." Her eyes became fierce, her lips pressed together. "No ownership by one person of another, no slow eating away of independence, of self-esteem and the knowledge and beliefs of who you are. n.o.body says "You must think this way, because I do." "You must believe that, because I do." "This is where I want to go, so you must come, too." A marriage of equals is the only sort that is worth anything! It is the only sort which has honor or decency or any inner cleanliness." Her fists were clenched at her sides, and her arms seemed locked right up to her shoulders. "I will not be second-rate...second-cla.s.s...worth only second-best!"
Charlotte wondered if Tryphena had any idea how much of her own hurt she betrayed in her words. Some of this might be Unity"s thoughts, but the pa.s.sion was Tryphena"s. "I think if somebody loved you, they would want you to be the best you possibly could," Charlotte said gently, walking up the steps beside her. "Isn"t that what love is, wanting someone to fulfill all the best in themselves? But then you would want the same for him, wouldn"t you? And be prepared to give something that might cost you quite a lot, to that end?"
"What?" Tryphena turned her head, looking surprised.
"If you love, you stay, even when it isn"t convenient, or fun, or easy," Charlotte elaborated. "If you leave the moment you no longer feel like staying, isn"t that simply selfishness? You are talking about freedom to please yourself, freedom from hurt or boredom or duty. Life is about giving and being vulnerable, which is precisely why it needs both courage and self-discipline."
Tryphena stared at her, stopping on the gravel close to the gla.s.shouse. "I don"t think you understand at all, Mrs. Pitt. You may think you are a fighter for freedom, but you sound just like a traditional woman who is prepared to do exactly as her father and then her husband tell her to." Her words were so angry they had to come from her own experience. "People like you are the ones who really hold us back. Unity truly loved, and she was terribly hurt. I could see it in her eyes, and sometimes catch it in her voice." She looked at Charlotte accusingly. "You are speaking as if she were selfish, as if her kind of love were less than yours, just because you are married and she wasn"t. But that is blind and false and utterly wrong. You don"t win great victories by playing safe!"
The scorn in her face now was as plain as the sunlight across the gra.s.s. "I am sure you meant to be kind, and I daresay you thought you supported the women of the new age, but you really haven"t any understanding whatever." She shook her head sharply, the wind catching the stray pieces of her fair hair. "You want to be safe...and you can"t be...not if you are fighting a great battle. Unity was one of the finest and the best...and she fell. Pardon me, but I don"t want to talk about her to you anymore." And with that she turned and walked stiffly into the rose arbor, head high as if she were struggling against tears.
Charlotte remained where she was for several minutes, thinking over the conversation. Did Tryphena know of one real tragedy in Unity"s past, or was she being melodramatic? Had Unity loved someone intensely, and was the result of that love the child she had been carrying when she died? The child of one of the three men in this house?
Had she been hurt by this man? If so, she would not be the first to retaliate blindly out of pain and fear. Was she afraid? Most women would be terrified of the ruin unmarried motherhood would bring them, but Charlotte had no idea whether that was true of Unity or not. If Pitt had explored that, he had not told her. But then perhaps he could not imagine the emotions a woman might feel: the mixture of elation at knowing of the life within her, that it was part of the man she loved, in a sense an indissoluble bond between them; and yet also a reminder of him she would never lose, and with it a reminder of his betrayal of her...if he had betrayed her!
And then there was the fear of childbirth itself, of being left alone at one"s most vulnerable both emotionally and physically. Charlotte could remember how she had felt when carrying each of her children. She had been radiantly happy one day, and plunged into misery another. She remembered the excitement, the aching back, the tiredness, the clumsiness, the pride, the self-consciousness. And she had had parents who were steady and calm, and a husband who made her laugh and kept his patience most of the time, when it mattered-and the approval of society.
Unity would have been alone. That was altogether different.
Had she tried to blackmail him? It would be understandable.
Charlotte started to walk back to the house, wondering about Dominic and about the love by which Unity had apparently been so hurt in the past. Perhaps knowing that would prove who the father was-and that it was not Dominic.
Or that it was.
That was a cold, sickening thought. What did she think of Dominic that she feared to find that out? And, she was afraid, the feeling was sharp and far too familiar to deny. She could remember being in love with him herself, and behaving stupidly, feeling so vulnerable, hurting when he seemed to ignore her, floating on air if he smiled or spoke, being consumed with jealousy if he favored someone else, dreaming, imagining all kinds of things. She blushed hot to think of it now.
But that was what obsession was like, the kind of love which is all in one"s own mind, not the kind that is sure and sweet, as she had with Pitt. That had its pain and its darkness as well, its racing pulse and burning embarra.s.sment, but it was rooted in reality, in sharing thoughts and ideas and, above all, feelings about the things that cut the deepest.
She came through the side door into the short pa.s.sage to the hall. At this point the floor was carpeted, and her feet made no sound. She saw Dominic and Vita standing near the foot of the stairs, close together, almost touching. They stood just about where Unity must have lain when she fell. Vita was looking up at him, her eyes wide, her expression filled with softness as if she had just said something private and very tender. He moved his hand to touch her, then changed his mind and smiled, then he stepped back. She hesitated a moment, then, with a little shrug, went lightly up the stairs.
Charlotte"s mind raced. How could Dominic be so incredibly foolish, so dishonest? Vita was older than he, but she was also charming, beautiful, and acutely intelligent, a woman of pa.s.sion and wit. He could not possibly be considering having an affair with her, could he? Not the wife of his mentor, his friend, the man in whose home he now lived?