The Angel Court Affair

by Anne Perry

  She lowered her eyes. “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “He is very practical. He would rather have many people beginning their journey toward faith than a few who accept it all.”

  “And Sofia would rather have the few?” Pitt asked curiously.

  She looked up. “You can have everybody, if you make the gate wide enough, and the climb shallow.” Her contempt was scalding.

  “Do you like Melville Smith?” he asked.

  She gave a very slight shrug of her gaunt shoulders. “No. But that is irrelevant. I don’t like him because he is a harsh judge, in all the dark, painful things that matter to me. And perhaps I am the same to him. We will smooth the rough places in each other…if we survive it!” The amusement was bright in her eyes for an instant.

  “But he is ambitious?” Pitt pressed.

  “For the faith, or for himself?” she quibbled. An obvious part of her was savoring the exchange. Perhaps it was a relief to quarrel openly with someone and not have to care if she hurt him.

  “You’ve already answered the first,” he pointed out.

  She smiled suddenly, and he saw an echo of the beautiful woman she had once been. “And the second also,” she told him.

  “And Sofia?” he asked. “You say Smith is softening the message, robbing it of truth. Was she an even harsher judge than he, then?”

  “You didn’t listen, did you!” It was an accusation filled with memories of some old wound. She was explaining to him only because she saw no alternative. “The way is hard. Life is hard, if you want anything of real value—knowledge, passion, love. If you hunger for all there is, then you have to learn wisdom. You have to fight all the battles, not just some of them. You can’t pick and choose the easy parts.” She bit her lip until it must have hurt; her eyes were full of tears.

  “But no matter how far you fall, there is a way to get up again. Sofia knew that, and she helped. She never blamed.”

  “And Melville Smith does blame?” he asked in little above a whisper.

  “Oh, yes.”

  He changed the subject. “And Ramon? Is he ambitious?”

  “Ramon is a good man!” she said between her teeth, her anger back in full force. “If you suspect him of harming her, or of altering a word of her teachings, then you are a fool!” She closed her eyes momentarily. Seeing the pain in her, the white skin stretched across the knuckles of her hands, Pitt could imagine the scenes that might be playing across her imagination.

  “Tell me,” he asked.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, weighing her decision.

  “Ramon grieves for the dead in his family who sinned, at least according to the Church, in his own land,” she said finally, her voice filled with pity. “Perhaps it was no more than the sin of doubt—and who can help that, if they are honest? We all stumble, in our different ways.”

  He did not speak his answer because he knew she could see it on his face.

  “He cannot bear that they should be shut out because they fell now and then, because they doubted and feared, and wanted above all to be loved.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Do not hurt Ramon. It would not only be wicked, it would be pointless.”

  “What do you know of Barton Hall?” Pitt changed the subject. “Why was it so important to Sofia that she see him? Would she have gone away voluntarily before speaking with him?”

  The watchfulness was back in Henrietta’s face, and indecision.

  He waited.

  “I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I don’t know what she wanted with him, only that it was desperately important to her. She feared something too terrible to share with any of the rest of us. She said it was for all our sakes.”

  —

  PITT SPOKE TO RAMON next, and he could tell at once that the man was frightened. He hid it well, but Pitt had seen fear too often not to know it with a familiarity. Old ghosts were back again from times he had thought forgotten.

  In that moment Pitt was certain Ramon had not hurt Sofia. But had he feared she would be attacked, even assassinated, and taken her against her will in order to save her life?

  How many times had he rescued Charlotte from an impossible situation because she was on a crusade for some cause, and had taken a risk from which she could not escape?

  “Do you know why Señora Delacruz wished so much to speak with Mr. Hall?” Pitt asked. “He does not seem to me to be likely to change his opinions about her cause, or his judgment, and I don’t believe Señora Delacruz is naïve enough to think that he would.”

  “It was nothing to do with reconciliation,” Ramon agreed quietly. “It was something she wished to help him with, or at least try. She did not tell me what it was. She trusted me, but she did not wish me to know it, for my own protection.”

  “She was afraid of it?” Pitt asked.

  “Yes. I think she was,” Ramon admitted.

  Pitt searched his face and saw no guile in it at all. Pitt suddenly wondered Sofia have gone of her own accord, just to escape the weight of living up to everyone else’s unbearable need. He could understand that, he thought with a shiver that for a moment took his breath away.

  “Thank you,” he said to Ramon. “You have given me an awareness of thoughts that had not occurred to me. Would she have gone away willingly before seeing Mr. Hall, do you think?”

  When Ramon spoke his voice was hoarse. “No, señor. In my opinion, she would not.”

  —

  PITT WAS LATE HOME, after going through the threatening letters yet again. He still found himself disturbed by the anger in them, the hatred generated by those who professed to worship a God of universal mercy and love for all mankind.

  “It’s fear,” Charlotte said quietly. They were sitting in their usual chairs in the parlor, a brisk fire burning in the hearth, and the curtains drawn against the sudden, hard spring rain and the wind that drove it against the glass. Daniel was upstairs in his room, his head buried, as usual, in the Boy’s Own Paper. Jemima was having supper with her aunt, Emily Radley, and her cousins. She would very probably stay the night, which pleased Pitt more than it should have. He could delay any further questions at least for a day. He imagined Charlotte had arranged it so.

  A momentary shadow crossed her face. “I don’t want Sofia to be hurt, but I realize I would almost rather that than proof that she is actually a fraud.” Charlotte shook her head. “What she said was frightening and different, but it was beautiful. I would like it to be true…I think.”

  Pitt thought of Ramon and his fierce defense of mercy. The man needed the tenderness, the hope that Sofia gave him. In fact, it seemed that he could not bear to live without it. In defending her he was clinging to the most precious thing he knew, spiritual survival.

  And Henrietta needed something also, a mercy perhaps for herself, and everyone else she had known who was like her. To destroy that hope would take away her courage to live.

  What did Melville Smith need, other than to be valued, respected, perhaps to be leader rather than one of the many followers of a woman? Did that offend his own sense of manhood, of that order of things that some of the angriest letters had expressed?

  Charlotte was waiting for him to speak again. Ever since they had first met, at the time of the murders in Cater Street, they had found it easy to talk to each other, to explain possibilities, to disagree without rancor.

  “How much do you believe what Sofia teaches?” he asked. “Really?” He wanted to know, not to understand the case, but because it intruded into his own life, his thoughts and above all the memories that suddenly would not stay silent in his mind. Mostly they were of his mother. There were so many things he had not said to her. He had not thought of the words until it was too late.

  In spite of all his efforts to block it out, the day he returned and heard the news of her death came back to him now, sitting quietly beside his own fire. He could remember the light from the windows slanting across the hallway of the big manor house, and Sir Arthur Desmond’s voice gentle and full of g
rief. He could smell the floor polish, and the scent of flowers in the big vases on the side table.

  Did he want there to be an eternity where it could all be put right, pain forgotten, guilt healed, where there was laughter and friendship rather than some amorphous existence in spirit? Sofia’s idea of eternal learning and creating seemed so much better, filled with purpose, even joy.

  Charlotte had considered for several minutes before she replied, and when she did, her words were measured.

  “It makes more sense than what I can remember from when I was growing up,” she said. “That was comfortable, if rather boring. Of course, the music was marvelous and the light through the stained-glass windows of the church was beautiful, calming. I think a lot of the comfort came from the sense of timelessness inside. People had worshipped God there for a thousand years, maybe longer.”

  A log settled in the fire and sent up a shower of sparks. Outside the wind gusted, and then was quiet again.

  “I suppose if you accept something long enough,” she went on. “And everybody around you does, you come to believe that it must be true.” She looked at him with a brief smile. “If we change, we lose all that. We’re sort of…adrift…”

  She stopped for a moment but he did not speak, wanting her to continue.

  “I don’t understand it,” she admitted, looking at him earnestly. “I remember being taught about Thomas Cromwell, in the religious struggles during the Reformation, signing away his freedom to be Protestant, and then later being burned alive for his change of mind. He thrust the hand that had held the pen into the flames himself, to pay for that denial.” She winced. “I’ve burned myself on the flat iron once or twice. How it hurts! I admire a faith so powerful, but I’m also frightened of it. If you would burn your own living flesh, and bear the pain without screaming, what else would you do?”

  Pitt drew in breath to argue that Cromwell had been one man, and nothing like others. Then before he could speak, he realized that he had no idea how many other people might care as much. They may not even know it themselves, until the certainties beneath them shifted violently, like the ground in an earthquake, opening up fissures in the earth’s crust and bringing mountains down. To imagine wars over religion could happen only in the past was naïve to the point of irresponsibility.

  The Reformation, with all its dreams, its slaughter and martyrdoms, was born in the minds of individual people, visionaries convinced they were acting for the greater good. Was Sofia one of those? The idea that one could know someone of that passionate vision and belief was strange.

  Charlotte interrupted his thoughts.

  “Do you think Sofia is still alive?” There was urgency in her face.

  “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I think her own people may have hidden her in order to keep her safe. But if she doesn’t reappear soon, with an excellent explanation, then she will have destroyed her reputation.”

  “Could that be the purpose?” Charlotte asked quietly. “To let someone more moderate take over? Like Melville Smith? He’s turning the message much more into being not a break from tradition but merely an addition to it.”

  “That’s what Frank Laurence is suggesting in the paper, anyway.”

  “Is he supporting Smith?” There was a look of distaste on her face.

  “I doubt it,” he said seriously. “He’s probably just commenting in a way most likely to stir up controversy.”

  “He’s right.” She did not hesitate. But, Smith hasn’t the passion for it, the blazing light that stops you in your tracks and makes you suddenly see a new way. It’s steep, but you can climb it if you want to enough.”

  “Do you?”

  She laughed suddenly, breaking the tension. “I shouldn’t think so.” Then she was desperately serious again. “But I’m happy. I have all I love and want. All I need is to keep it…but that’s a big thing, perhaps the biggest.”

  —

  THE NEXT DAY WAS the fourth since Sofia Delacruz had disappeared, and there was new speculation in the newspapers that she was either dead or had intentionally run off to escape the responsibility of the position she had chosen, leader of a cult in which she had lost faith. Perhaps she had even eloped with some lover no one knew about.

  Neither Pitt nor Brundage commented on the articles, but both were aware that there could be truth in them. Instead they studied new threatening letters that had arrived at Angel Court. Some were warnings to Sofia not to bring her foreign heresies across the Channel into a Christian and Protestant country. One even referred to Queen Mary’s marriage to the Catholic King of Spain, and then to the Spanish Armada and the attempt to conquer England in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

  The current war between Spain and America was brought unpleasantly back to Pitt’s mind at that. He reached for another letter.

  “She’s not preaching Roman Catholicism,” Brundage said in disgust. “I should think the Catholics dislike her even more than we do.”

  “Did you see this one?” Pitt passed across the letter he had just read, watching Brundage’s face as he read it.

  He went through it twice, then turned it over and looked at it carefully. “It’s different,” he said at last. “There’s something wrong with it, but I don’t know what. It seems the same as some of the others, but not quite.”

  “Read it again,” Pitt requested. He did not want to say anything further, in case he influenced Brundage’s response to the contents.

  Brundage obeyed, and then looked up again, frowning. “All the phrases are right, falling exactly in line with others, but that’s it…they’re all picked from other letters.”

  “Right,” Pitt agreed. “Which means it was written by someone who had access to all the others.”

  “One of her followers at Angel Court.” Brundage spoke the obvious conclusion.

  Pitt studied the letter again. “But why? To frighten her further? To convince her to hide?” He had a sudden thought. “See if there’s some old family place, under a different name. Maybe she repeated there. What was her name before she married Delacruz? I can’t believe we didn’t check that earlier.”

  Brundage stood up. “I’ll have it within half an hour, sir.”

  —

  IT WAS BARELY A few minutes more than that when he returned and handed an address to Pitt.

  “This is a family home, sir. It was actually in Sofia’s mother’s name. The only place I could find. Do you want to go alone, sir? I don’t think we should warn anyone.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Pitt replied. He put away the reports he was reading and stood up. He walked over toward the door and took his coat from the stand. “The two of us should be sufficient.”

  Brundage followed eagerly, matching his pace to Pitt’s, down the hall and out into the windy street. Neither of them even noticed the first spots of rain. They took a hansom to the address Brundage had provided, and sat silently for the short distance. It was mid-morning and the traffic was light.

  Pitt’s mind raced. Were they about to find Sofia? And if so, would they discover her there of her own will, or kept prisoner, unable to communicate?

  They pulled up at the curbside and alighted at number 17 Inkerman Road. Pitt paid the driver but told him to wait. It was a quiet residential area and some distance from any main thoroughfare. He followed Brundage across the pavement and up the short footpath to the front door. There were a few pink and blue lupines blooming in the garden, and pink tulips under the front window. The garden looked cheerful, and also well tended. There were no weeds at all and the earth was damp and rich.

  Brundage glanced at Pitt, then lifted the polished brass knocker and let it fall.

  There was no answer, and even after waiting, no sound of movement from inside. None of the lace curtains across the windows twitched.

  Brundage tried again.

  Still no answer.

  Pitt did not insult Brundage by asking if this was the right house. Instead he gestured for them to walk around the end of the short
block and go to the back. If they needed to break in, rear windows were less observed. Pitt had already made the decision not to ask the neighbors. According to Brundage’s check with the local police, the house was supposedly unoccupied.

  They opened the gate into the back garden. Brundage walked rapidly up the narrow path past the woodshed, across the paved yard to the rear doorstep and the scullery. He peered in the window, then stepped back, missed his footing and stiffened. When he turned toward Pitt, his face was ashen.

  Pitt pushed forward past him and stared in through the glass, his heart beating so hard in his chest he struggled for breath. Then he saw what Brundage had seen. There was a woman lying on the bare wooden floor, skirts crumpled around her, flies crawling across her face and a massive dark stain covering the lower part of her body.

  Pitt felt the sweat break out on his skin and a wave of nausea swept over him. It took all his strength not to stagger back as Brundage had, and he succeeded only because he had been forewarned. Slowly he swiveled round, keeping his balance.

  “We have to go in. I expect the door lock will hold. However, the window over there looks comfortably large enough to climb in through, with a bit of effort.”

  “Yes, sir.” Brundage straightened up, pulling his shoulders back. His face was almost gray. He walked over toward the shed with an effort not to stumble. He kicked the door open and came out a moment later with a long-handled garden spade. Within moments he had broken the pantry window and cleared away all the glass from the frame so they could climb in without the loose shards stabbing them.

  Even before Pitt opened the pantry door into the kitchen the smell caught in his throat, making him gag. The buzzing of flies was louder. He took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

  The body on the floor was that of a young woman. A glance at her face was enough to know she had been dead for at least twenty-four hours, and the heavy odor suggested at least that long. Her eyes were wide and glazed, her whole body slack. It was not Sofia Delacruz.