by Anne Perry
“But not helpful,” Narraway pointed out. “We need the truth if we are to obtain justice, for any of the people concerned.”
Maris gestured for both men to be seated. As soon as they were, Quixwood spoke.
“Justice.” He seemed to be turning the word over in his mind. “I began wanting justice for Catherine as a starving man wants food. Now I am less certain that it is really what I wish. Silence might be more compassionate. After all, she can no longer speak for herself.”
Maris looked down at her hands folded in her lap, white-knuckled.
“Rawdon, you have been the essence of kindness to me,” she said gently. “In spite of the fact that it is my husband the police have arrested for the terrible wrong done to your wife. But Alban is not guilty, and he needs justice also. Apart from that, do you not wish the real monster to be caught, before he goes on and does something similar to another woman?”
Quixwood’s face reflected an inner conflict so profound, so intense, he could barely keep still. His hands in his lap were more tightly twisted than Maris’s. In that moment Narraway knew beyond any doubt that Quixwood was certain that Alban Hythe was guilty, and he was here to do what he could to help the man’s wife face that fact. It was a startling generosity. But … well, what did he know that Narraway and Maris did not?
Quixwood was still searching for words, his eyes on Maris’s face, troubled and almost tender. “I don’t think it is likely,” he said at last. “It is far better that you do not know the details, but I assure you, it was not a random maniac who did this deed. It was very personal. Please, think no more of it. You must concern yourself with your own well-being. If there is anything I can do to help, I will.” He gave a very slight smile, wry and self-deprecating. “It would be a favor to me. It would give me someone to think of other than myself.”
A warmth of gratitude filled her face, and also a very genuine admiration. Narraway was sure that Quixwood had seen it, and it must indeed have given him some small comfort.
THE FOLLOWING DAY NARRAWAY called early at the club where Quixwood was still living. He had to wait until the man rose and came into the dining room for breakfast, then joined him without asking permission, because he had no intention of accepting a refusal.
Quixwood looked startled, but he made no objection. He regarded the older man with some curiosity.
Narraway smiled as he finished requesting poached kippers and brown toast from the steward. As soon as the servant left, he answered Quixwood’s unspoken question.
“I hear several different accounts of Catherine,” he said, watching Quixwood’s eyes. “I assume that you loved her, and also that you knew her better than anyone else. Nothing need come out in court that puts that in doubt, and still less in the newspapers, but I think it is time we discussed her without the glittering veil of compassion that usually shrouds the dead.”
Quixwood sighed, but there was no resistance in him. He leaned back a little and his dark eyes met Narraway’s. “Do you not think it was Alban Hythe who killed her?” he said anxiously. “It will bring terrible grief to poor Maris if it is, of course. She still believes in him.”
Narraway did not answer the question directly.
“If they were lovers, Catherine and Hythe, why on earth would he suddenly turn on her like that?” he said instead. It was a reasonable question.
“Does it matter now?” Quixwood wrinkled his brow.
“If we are going to convict the man and hang him, it has to make sense,” Narraway said bluntly.
Quixwood winced. “Yes, of course, you are right,” he conceded. He began to speak in a very low voice. His eyes were downcast, as if he was ashamed of being forced into making such admissions.
“Catherine was a very emotional woman, and she was beautiful. You never saw her alive, or you’d understand. She hated going to the sort of functions where you and I might meet. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t press her. It wasn’t only out of kindness to her, but also because she was so charming, so very alive, that she attracted attention she was not able to understand for what it was, or deal with.”
Narraway was puzzled, but he did not interrupt.
“She loved attention,” Quixwood continued, a warmth lighting his face, probably for the first time since the night of Catherine’s death. “She responded to it like a flower to the sun. But she also was easily bored. When someone did not live up to her expectations, or have the imaginative enthusiasm she did, she would drop their acquaintance. It could cause, at the very least, a degree of embarrassment.”
At last he looked up and met Narraway’s eyes. “I loved her, but I also learned not to take her sudden passions too seriously. She lived a good deal of her life in a world of her own creation: mercurial, entertaining, but quite unreal.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I fear young Alban Hythe would have had no idea how changeable she was, how … fickle.”
He made a slight gesture of dismissal. “She would mean no cruelty, but she had no concept of how deeply an idealistic, rather naïve young man might fall in love with her, and—when she rejected him—feel utterly betrayed.”
He blinked and looked away. “If they were lovers, or he thought she had implied they would be, and then without warning she felt he had not lived up to what she expected of him, he surely would have felt utterly cheated. He might have damaged irreparably his relationship with a wife who was devoted to him in favor of a woman who seemed incapable of loyalty to anyone—who had built a castle in the air out of his dreams and then destroyed it in front of him. Do you see?”
Narraway did. It was a persuasive image. And yet he did not quite believe it.
“But what about taking the laudanum to end her life?” Narraway asked, his voice sounding harsher than he had meant it to.
“Perhaps she realized what she had done,” Quixwood said with a small, helpless gesture of his hands, barely a movement at all. “She was passionate, but she was not strong. If she had been, she would have lived in the real world …” He left the rest and all its implications unsaid.
“Thank you,” Narraway responded quickly, as the steward arrived with his poached kippers, and bacon, eggs, sausage, and deviled kidneys for Quixwood. They both turned, with little joy, to their food and harmless, matter-of-fact subjects of conversation as the dining room filled up.
AFTER LEAVING THE CLUB, Narraway decided that he still did not know enough about Catherine Quixwood. The woman her husband had described was very different from the one Alban Hythe had seen and believed he knew and had liked so deeply. Moreover, both were different again from the one Narraway had seen in death.
Who would have known all of her, fitted the disparate pieces into a whole, however complex? No one wished to speak ill of the dead, and most particularly of someone who had died so horribly.
Would there be any point in asking Knox for his help? Probably not. He had arrested Alban Hythe, which meant that he had formed a picture of Catherine he could now not afford to alter.
Narraway circled back to the idea that perhaps the person who knows a woman best is her lady’s maid. But he had already spoken to Flaxley, more than once. Did she have anything left to tell him? He decided it was worth one more try.
Narraway stepped into the street and hailed a cab, giving Quixwood’s address.
Then the obvious way around Flaxley’s reluctance came to him like sudden daylight. If anyone could persuade a loyal servant to discuss the details of her mistress’s character, it would be Vespasia.
He leaned forward and knocked on the front of the cab, asking the driver to take him instead to Vespasia’s house.
“REALLY, VICTOR,” SHE SAID with slight surprise when he told her what he wished her to do. “And what shall I give the poor woman as a reason why I consider her mistress’s character to be any of my concern?”
They were sitting in her morning room, all cool colors and stark white frames to the windows. There was a bowl of early blooming white roses on the low table, and the sunlight through
the glass was hot and bright. In spite of his reason for calling, Narraway found himself relaxing. It was extraordinarily comfortable here.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He found himself telling her not only what Alban Hythe had said of Catherine, and what Quixwood himself had said, but also his own impressions and the depth of feeling it aroused in him.
She watched him gravely the whole time, without interrupting.
“I see,” she said when she was certain he had no more to add. “It is not possible for both opinions to be entirely true, and perhaps neither of them? It would be a curious thing to see yourself as others do. I imagine it would seldom be comfortable.” She smiled very slightly. “I am very glad that I shall not be present at my own funeral, even to hear the eulogies that, I’m sure, will make me sound quite unreal.”
He was caught with a sudden icy coldness. He had never imagined Vespasia dying. The thought was so painful, it shocked him.
“My dear, don’t look so tragic,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I quite see the necessity of someone speaking to Flaxley, and your argument that it should be I who does so is perfectly sensible. I shall make the arrangements.”
“Thank you,” he said a little awkwardly, afraid she might suddenly understand what it was that had really shaken him so much.
NARRAWAY DINED WITH VESPASIA the following evening. He chose to make it a formal affair—a dinner at the finest restaurant he knew. For his own pleasure, he wished to behave as if it were a celebration of something, rather than the pursuit of the last act of a tragedy.
She flattered him by dressing with all the glamour he had associated with her when they had first met. She wore heavy ivory silk with guipure lace at the neck and over the bodice, and as she did so often, she ornamented it with ropes of pearls. He saw other diners, especially several gentlemen and senior members of Parliament, look at him with distinct envy.
Vespasia conducted herself with the nonchalance he would have expected, although a slight flush of pleasure did rise in her cheeks as they entered the dining room.
He wanted to find out if she had succeeded in learning anything, but it would be unbecoming to ask too soon. Additionally, it might give her the totally mistaken idea that that had been his sole motive in inviting her.
They had reached the dessert (a most exquisite French apple tart) before the subject was raised, by Vespasia.
“I spoke at some length to Catherine’s maid,” she said, setting her fork down on her plate. “At first she was naturally reluctant to say anything but the sort of respectful praise that loyalty would dictate. I’m afraid I took the liberty of mentioning that if we did not prosecute the right man, the real murderer would escape detection and very probably commit a similar crime against someone else. I am not certain if that is true, of course, but I am quite sure that Catherine herself would not wish the wrong man convicted.”
“I’m afraid it probably is true,” he replied gravely. “What did she tell you? Is Quixwood right about Catherine?”
“No,” she said without hesitation. “But, of course, I can’t say whether he believes he is. It is quite clear that she did not find in him either the love or the friendship she wished for. His defense against that may have been to see her as the cause of the problem rather than he himself, or the simple fact that perhaps they were mismatched.”
“And you are sure the maid was not merely being loyal?” he pressed.
She smiled. “Yes, Victor, I am quite sure. I have had a lady’s maid all my life. I can read between the lines of what they say, or decline to say.” Her eyes were bright with amusement, but there was no impatience in them, no condescension. He had the distinct feeling that she was pleased to have been asked for her help.
“Would you like Armagnac, perhaps?” he said impulsively.
“Champagne is sufficient for me,” she answered, smiling.
He hesitated.
She looked at the light, sparkling wine in her glass and raised her delicate eyebrows. “Is this not champagne, then?” she asked.
For a moment he was not certain of the compliment. Then, meeting her eyes, he understood and found himself coloring with pleasure, and even a little self-consciousness. He raised his glass to hers without answering.
IN THE MORNING NARRAWAY went to find Knox again. He began at the police station and was told that there had been an unpleasant brawl down on the waterfront and Knox had been called to the scene.
Narraway obtained the precise location, thanked the constable, and left to find a hansom to take him there. It was not a long journey but it took time weaving in and out of the traffic, dense at that time of day, the roads crowded with drays, wagons, and men and women on foot busy with their early errands. He passed lightermen, stevedores, crane drivers, wagon masters, and ferrymen, already busy. Gulls wheeled and dived, screaming as they fought over fish. Up and down the highway of the river Narraway saw strings of barges ride the tide, and on the land behind them men shouted at one another and the rumble of wheels jolted over the uneven cobbles.
He found Knox standing on the stone slipway where the fight had taken place, his jacket collar high round his ears, wind whipping his hair.
Fortunately, in this crime no one was dead, although there was still blood on the stones from a knife wound.
“I know you didn’t want Hythe to be guilty,” Knox remarked after he had greeted him. “Neither did I. Sometimes I don’t understand people at all. I’d have sworn he hadn’t it in him, but you can’t argue with that letter.” He pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “And don’t tell me it isn’t in her hand, because it is. First thing I did was have it checked by the experts who can spot a forgery. Although I don’t know why anybody’d bother with that; it’s not as if we had any other suspects.”
Narraway felt crushed by the logic of it. “Then there’s something about this case that we’ve missed,” he said stubbornly, although he could think of nothing.
Knox looked at him with a frown, puzzled. “Haven’t you ever found that an anarchist, who wanted to bring the whole social order down around our ears, was actually quite a nice fellow if you met him down at the pub, my lord?”
“Yes, of course I have,” Narraway said irritably. “But Hythe liked Catherine Quixwood, and he understood her a lot better than her husband did.”
Knox hunched his shoulders and pulled his coat more tightly around him, as if he were cold, although the wind off the river was mild.
Water slopped noisily on the stones as the wash from a string of barges reached them.
“My lord, we both know what was done to Mrs. Quixwood. Think what you like about Hythe, but if he’s the guilty party—and he is the one charged—there was no like nor understanding between him and Catherine Quixwood at the end.”
Narraway said nothing. He stood in the sun by the water. The rising tide would wash away the bloodstains at his feet, but, remembering the injuries Dr. Brinsley had described, he thought nothing would ever rid his mind of the images they conjured, or the sick misery that filled him.
CHAPTER
13
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, CHARLOTTE was attending a luncheon at the very beautiful town house of her sister Emily, which she had inherited from her first marriage to Lord Ashworth. His early death had left her with a considerable fortune, and several very fine properties, held in trust for her son, who was heir to his father’s title as well as the benefits that went with it.
Her very happy second marriage was to Jack Radley. Early in his career he had been a gentleman of fashion, and little else. Now he was a member of Parliament, and had grown into a position of considerable responsibility.
Half a dozen ladies were sitting in the large garden room, which was open onto the paved terrace and the sloping lawn with flowers beyond. It was as beautiful a place in which to dine as any in London, and they were taking full advantage of the very pleasant weather. Pastel silks and muslins fluttered in the fitful breeze. Parasols carefully placed kept the sun’s harsher
light from fairer skins.
“Everything seems to be in such turmoil,” Marie Grosvenor said with a slight frown. “People are talking about all kinds of wealth, and loss. I have friends who are saying they’ll end up with unimaginable money, and others who are terrified they’ll be ruined. Some say Dr. Jameson’s a true patriot, and others that he’s an irresponsible madman. I really don’t know what to believe.”
Charlotte glanced at Emily and saw her attention quicken. The presumably harmless conversation had suddenly taken a darker turn with talk of financial ruin. Was she going to struggle against the tide, or go with it? It was her duty as hostess to govern the mood of the party, but it would require a very strong will to alter its course. Not that Emily was without such a will; it was more about her desire to use it when not doing so might prove far more entertaining.
“Will you attend the trial?” Arabella Scott asked, her fair eyebrows raised, interest sharp in her pale blue eyes. “I’m thinking of it myself. Poor Dr. Jameson. But heroes are often vilified, do you not think?” She looked from one to the other of them, her gaze finally resting on Charlotte.
Everyone else turned to look at her also, clearly thinking she had some special knowledge. They had heard, at the very least, that Pitt had been in the police. Of course it was not an occupation for a gentleman, but there was a certain gruesome fascination in it, all the same.
Charlotte was annoyed. She had to guard her tongue in so many things, she was compensating for it by being less conciliatory in others. Right now she was ready for battle. She looked at Arabella with a smile.
“Oh, yes, I agree with you,” she replied, ignoring Emily’s look of surprise. “We are very hard on heroes, exactly as you say. And often we praise the wrong people, not even realizing who has done what. We can accept the most superficial of explanations and attribute courage to people who are merely foolhardy, or even stupid and self-serving. Then we totally ignore those who set the good of others before their own profit. How wise you are to see it, and brave to point it out, if I may say so.”
