by Anne Perry
For a moment Charlotte was beaten. But then if it were so easy, it would not have eluded her thus far.
“You don’t know the mysterious woman in cerise?” The words were out before she had time to judge them. She saw Jack’s eyes widen and Aunt Vespasia let her fork fall onto her place with a little click. Veronica held her breath, staring at Charlotte as if she had cast aside a mask to reveal a reptile’s form. Garrard’s face was bloodless, his skin yellow-gray.
It was Loretta who broke the silence, her voice grating in the stillness. “Really, Miss Barnaby, you have a taste for the melodramatic which is unfortunate at best. I think you would be well advised to reconsider your reading matter.” There was only the slightest quiver in her words, barely a tremble. Of course she did not know Charlotte had seen her face in the conservatory doorway. “You should not read novels of the trashier sort,” she continued. “They coarsen the taste.”
“I think she has been reading the newspapers,” Jack said hastily.
“Certainly not!” Charlotte lied with a touch of irony. “I heard it from a running patterer! It was quite unavoidable; he was crying it out all over the street. Apparently this marvelously beautiful woman led some poor diplomat into revealing secrets, and then betrayed him. She was a spy.”
“Rubbish!” Felix said loudly. He stared straight at Charlotte, avoiding even the slightest glance at Harriet or her father. He might have wavered had he looked at Garrard-his face was so ghastly he seemed to be suffering some physical pain. “Rubbish!” Felix said again. “My dear Miss Barnaby, running patterers make their living by entertaining the masses. They invent half of it, you know.”
For a moment the tension eased. Charlotte could feel it slipping away. She must not lose it: the murderer was here at this shining dinner table with its silver and crystal and white flowers.
“But not out of nothing!” she argued. “People do fall passionately in love-so deeply they would forfeit everything, betray all the old loyalties.” She looked round at their faces as if she were appealing to them. Veronica was numb, her dark eyes enormous, absorbed with some inner horror-or was it fear at last? Was she after all the real Cerise, and was that why Garrard had known Charlotte was an imposter? He had just left Veronica in the withdrawing room. He said he came only because he feared blackmail, but if that were so, why did he not marry her himself? Or had she tired of him and chosen his son instead? Perhaps Julian was her mistake, her weakness-she had loved in return. Or was Julian simply a way into a more powerful position? He was destined for higher things than his father, perhaps even a cabinet position.
Did Loretta know that, or had she guessed? Her face was ashen, but it was Garrard she stared at, not Veronica. Piers was confused; he did not understand the meaning of what had been said, but he knew the fear and the passion that was in the air. He looked like a soldier readying himself to face enemy fire.
Harriet looked wretched, embarrassed, and Sonia was pale with defeat.
Aunt Adeline spoke. “Miss Barnaby,” she said quietly. “I am sure such things do happen, from time to time. If we are capable of great feeling of any sort, there is always the chance it may lead to tragedy. But does it serve any good end that we should delve into it? Have we a right to know other people’s griefs?”
Charlotte felt the blood hot in her cheeks. She liked Adeline and she doubted she would ever be forgiven this total hypocrisy and deceit. “Not tragedy,” she agreed a little less steadily. “Not if it concerns no one else. But treason concerns us all. It is our country, our people, who are betrayed.”
Harriet put her hands up to her face, white with horror.
“There was no treason!” Felix shouted. “Good God, any man can fall in love unwisely!”
Harriet drew her breath in a gasp of anguish so sharp it was audible to all of them.
Felix swung round. “Harriet-that’s all! I swear, I never betrayed anything!”
Garrard looked as if he had been struck. Veronica gaped at Felix, her mouth open, her eyes like sockets in her head.
“Felix, you-and Cerise?” Loretta started to laugh, at first a gurgle in her throat, then it rose higher till it was out of control, on the brink of hysteria. “You-and Cerise! Do you hear that, Garrard? Do you?”
Garrard shot to his feet, upsetting wine and water over the cloth.
“No!” he cried desperately. “It’s not true! For God’s sake, stop. Stop!”
Felix looked at him, appalled. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring past his wife to Harriet. “I’m sorry, Harriet. God knows I tried!”
“What?” Julian demanded. “What the hell are you all talking about? Felix! Did you have an affair with this woman-this Cerise?”
Felix tried to laugh and it died in his throat. “No! No I didn’t-of_course I didn’t.” There was such bitter humor in his voice that he could only be speaking the truth. “No. I was trying to protect Garrard, for Harriet’s sake. Isn’t that obvious? Sonia-I’m sorry.”
No one bothered to ask why. The answer was only too obvious in Harriet’s face, and indeed in his own. That domestic tragedy was laid bare; there was no mystery left to uncover.
“Father?” Julian turned to Garrard. Now realization was coming to him, and a dawning of pain. “If you did have an affair with this woman, what does it matter? Unless. . you killed her.”
“No!” The cry came from Garrard like the howl of a mortally wounded animal. “I loved”-his voice dropped-“Cerise.” He glanced at Loretta with a hatred stripped of all its veneer of irony, weariness, disillusion. “God-damn-you!” The words were choked from him. There were no tears on his face, he was past weeping, but his pain pulsated through the brilliant lights and the glittering reflections.
There was thick silence. For a long, hot moment no one understood. Then at last Julian grasped the sword. “You betrayed the department,” he said very slowly. “You told Cerise about the Anglo-German partition of Africa. That’s what Felix was covering up for you! Because of Harriet!”
Garrard sat down very slowly, suddenly stiff. “No.” His voice had lost its fire of hate, everything had gone out of him. “Felix didn’t know I took the papers, only that I loved Cerise. But the secrets had nothing to do with Cerise.” He looked up again at Loretta, and all the passion of hate flooded back. “I took them for her!” he cried, his voice shaking. “She blackmailed me into it!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Piers said quietly. “For pity’s sake, man, don’t make it worse than it has to be. What on earth would Loretta want with secrets like that? Anyway, as I understand it, the negotiations are going very well. Aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Julian’s brow furrowed. “Yes they are. No one has used your wretched information!”
“Well then.” Piers sat back, his eyes touched with sadness. Perhaps his dreams of Loretta had died a long time ago. “Your charge doesn’t make sense.”
Charlotte remembered Loretta’s face in the conservatory doorway and knew that in her was the consuming passion of desire and rejection that governed this tragic, violent story. “Yes it does,” she said aloud. “The information wasn’t taken to be used in negotiations-”
“Ha!” Julian exploded derisively. He had seen hope and he clung to it.
“Something much more powerful.” Charlotte cut across him. “Once you have paid blackmail, you have to go on paying; you have put yourself in your blackmailer’s power. That was what she wanted-power. To exercise whenever she wanted, power to destroy whomever she chose. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. York? He loved Cerise, not you. He didn’t love you, didn’t want you. You revolted him-and you never forgave him for that.” She met Loretta’s eyes and saw that she had drawn the ultimate pain, and a hate so terrible that Loretta would have murdered Charlotte if she could. In an instant, as their glances locked, they both knew it.
“Did you think that wretched woman in Seven Dials was Cerise?” Charlotte continued pitilessly. “Is that why you broke her neck? You wasted your effort. She wasn’t Cerise, she was just som
e poor maid who’d lost her character and fallen on hard times!”
“You murdered her!” Garrard accused Loretta, his voice high and harsh. “You thought it was Cerise so you broke her neck!”
“Be quiet!” Loretta was cornered, trapped, and she knew it. Her soul had been stripped naked in front of all the people round the table; her rejection had been exposed for them all to see and taste. And Garrard was lost forever, even the power to hurt him was gone. She did not know how to fight anymore.
Garrard had burned under her threat all these years, dreading the meetings with her, always afraid one day she would betray his weakness, ruin his reputation and strip him of his position, his career. Now it was gone anyway, and he took his revenge.
“You murdered her,” he repeated steadily. “You dressed that poor damn woman in that dress so you could blame that wretched policeman! How did you find the woman? Who was she? Some maid you’d dismissed, and still knew where to find?”
Loretta stared at him dumbly. It was the truth and it was painted on her face too clearly to be worth denying.
“And Dulcie?” he went on. “You pushed her out of the window. Why? What did she know-or see?”
“Don’t you know?” She started to laugh hysterically. “Oh dear, Garrard-don’t you know?” Tears streamed down her face, her voice getting wilder and higher every moment.
Jack stood up and moved towards her. “Asherson!” he said sharply.
In a daze Felix rose and came to help. Between them they half lifted her from her chair and took her from the room.
Vespasia stood also, stiffly, her face pale. “I am going to telephone the police. Superintendent Ballarat, I believe it is. And the home secretary.” She looked round the table at them. “I apologize for such an-an unfortunate dinner party, but you see, Thomas Pitt is a friend of mine. I cannot sit by and see him hanged for a murder he did not commit. Please excuse me.” Head high, back like a ramrod, she swept out of the room to exert all her influence, to call on old friendships and have Pitt released, now, tonight.
In the silence behind her no one moved.
But it was not over. There was still Cerise, the real Cerise. And who had murdered Robert York, and why? Had that also been Loretta? Charlotte believed not.
On shaking legs she rose too. “Ladies, I think we should retire. I cannot imagine anyone feels like eating anymore. I certainly don’t.”
Obediently they pushed back their chairs and straggled through to the withdrawing room. Adeline and Harriet went together, leaning a little on each other, as though physical proximity could give them strength. Sonia Asherson hugged her hurt to herself, tight-lipped.
Lastly Charlotte followed at Veronica’s elbow. In the hallway she drew her aside into the library. Veronica looked round, startled, as though the book-lined shelves unnerved her.
Charlotte stood against the door, blocking it.
“There’s still Cerise,” she said quietly. “The real Cerise. The woman Garrard loved. That’s you, isn’t it!”
“Me?” Veronica’s eyes widened. “Me! Oh God! How wrong you are! But why? Why do you care? Why have you done all this? Who are you?”
“Charlotte Pitt.”
“Charlotte-Pitt? You mean-you mean that policeman is your-”
“My husband. And I’m not going to let him hang for murdering that woman.”
“He won’t,” Veronica said harshly. “Loretta did it. We all heard her say so. You don’t have to worry.”
“It isn’t finished.” Charlotte turned the key in the lock. “There’s still the real Cerise, and whoever murdered your husband. I don’t think that was Loretta. I think it was you- and Loretta knew it. She protected you because of her own blackmailing of Garrard, even though you killed her son. That’s why you hated each other, and yet neither of you could afford to betray the other!”
“How-I …” Veronica shook her head slowly, incredulous.
“There’s no purpose in denying it.” Charlotte could not afford pity now. This was Cerise; she might not be a spy after all, but she was a ruthless, passionate woman, and a murderess. “Was it to marry Julian? Did you get tired of Robert and murder him, so you could marry Julian?”
“No!” Veronica was so ashen Charlotte was half afraid she was going to faint. And yet she was Cerise-Cerise with the flair, the panache, the courage.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot believe you.”
“I am not Cerise!” Veronica put her hands over her face and turned away, crumpling in a heap onto the sofa. “Oh God! I suppose I’d better tell you the truth. It isn’t what you think at all!”
Charlotte sat carefully on the edge of a chair, waiting.
“I loved Robert. You’ll never believe how much, not now. But when we were married, I thought I had everything a woman could want. He was-he was so handsome, so charming and sensitive. He seemed to understand me. He was a companion, more than any other man I’d ever known. I–I loved him so much.” She closed her eyes, but the tears seeped through, and she gulped.
In spite of herself Charlotte was filled with pity. She knew what it was to love so much your whole world was filled with it. She, too, had suffered loneliness.
“Go on,” she said softly. “What about Cerise?”
Veronica made an intense effort, her body shaking, her voice husky as if the words cut her.
“Robert grew-cool towards me. I-” She swallowed and her voice sank to a whisper. “He became-uninterested in the-the marriage bed. At first I thought it was me, that I didn’t please him. I did everything I could, but nothing …” She took a moment to control herself, then struggled on. “It was then I began to think there might be someone else.” She stopped, the pain of memory too strong for her.
Charlotte waited. Instinct made her want to rush forward, put her arms round Veronica and hold her, enfold the pain and ease it, touch her so she was not alone. But she knew she must not, not yet.
At last Veronica mastered herself. “I thought there must be another woman. I found a kerchief in the library. It was a bright cerise color, vivid, vibrant. I knew it wasn’t mine, or Loretta’s. Then a week later I found a ribbon, then a silk rose-all that dreadful color. Robert spent a lot of time away from home; I thought it had to do with his career. I could accept that; we all have to. Women, I mean.”
“You found her?” Charlotte said very quietly.
Veronica drew a deep breath and let it out with a shuddering sigh.
“Yes, I–I saw her, very briefly-right here in my own home. Just the back of her as she left through the front door. She was so-so graceful! I saw her a second time, at a theater I shouldn’t have been at. I only saw her at a distance across the balcony. When I got there she was gone.” She stopped again.
Charlotte believed the story in spite of herself; the wound was too real to be painted. The memory still hurt Veronica with a raw and twisting pain.
“Go on,” Charlotte prompted, this time more gently. “Did you find her?”
“I found one of her stockings.” Veronica’s voice was thick with the agony of reliving it. “In Robert’s bedroom. It was so … I wept all that night. I thought I should never feel worse in my life.” She gave a little choking sound, half laugh, half sob. “That’s what I thought then! Until the night I knew Cerise was in the house. Something woke me. It was after midnight and I heard a footstep on the landing. I got up and saw her come out of Robert’s bedroom and go downstairs. I followed her. She must have heard me and slipped into the library. I-” She stopped again; her voice died away, thick with tears.
“I went in too. I faced her,” she managed after a time. “She was-beautiful. I swear she was.” She turned and looked up at Charlotte, her face smudged, blurred with misery and defeat. “She was so. . elegant. I faced her, accused her of having an affair with Robert. She started to laugh. She stood there in the library in the middle of the night and laughed at me as if she would never stop. I was so furious I picked up the bronze horse from the desk and threw it at her. It hit her on
the side of the head and she fell. I stood still for a moment, then I went over to her, but she didn’t move. I waited a moment and still she lay there. I felt for her pulse, listened for her breath-nothing! She was dead. Then I looked at her. . more closely.” Her face was ashen; Charlotte had never seen anyone look so exhausted. Her voice was so low it was barely audible. “I touched her hair-and it came away in my hand. It was a wig. It wasn’t till that moment that I realized who it was. It was Robert himself-dressed as a woman! Robert was Cerise!” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to them. “That was why Loretta blackmailed Garrard. He was in love with Robert, and he knew all the time who he was. That’s why she protected me. She hated me for it, but she couldn’t bear to have the world know her beloved son was a transvestite.
“After I knew he was dead I went upstairs. I think I was too shocked then even to weep; that came later. I went to Loretta and told her, and she came down with me. I didn’t even think of lying then. We stood there in the study, she and I, and stared at Robert lying on the floor in that terrible dress, and the wig beside him. There was rouge on his face, and powder. He was beautiful, that was the most obscene thing about it!” Weeping overtook her, and without thinking this time Charlotte knelt beside her and put her arms round the thin, aching shoulders.
“And you and Loretta changed his clothes, dressed him in his own nightshirt and robe and destroyed the cerise dress and wig, and then broke the library window?” she concluded; she knew this was what must have taken place. “Where are the things that were supposed to be stolen?”
But Veronica was sobbing too deeply to tell her. Three years of fear and pain had broken at last, and she needed to weep till she had no strength left, no emotion.
Charlotte held her and waited. It hardly mattered where those few objects were. Probably in the attics. They had not been sold, that much Pitt had made sure of.
The rest of the house must be busy with private tragedies: Piers with Loretta and the police, poor man; whatever disillusion he had suffered in the years since the first bloom of his marriage, no loneliness of closed doors of the heart could have prepared him for this. Felix would be smarting from the newly opened wound of his love for Harriet. It was quite hopeless; divorce would ruin all of them and no happiness could lie that way; and now Sonia had been forced to see it, understand it, and know that others saw it also. She could no longer hide her pain behind pretended blindness. Or perhaps it had been real-maybe she had known nothing. And Aunt Adeline would grieve for them all.
