by Anne Perry
“And you spent all evening talking about it?” she said blankly. Her eyes were full of misery.
“And similar sorts of things,” Vita agreed. “My dear, you should not allow it to disturb you. Why should it? It was only a little happiness in the midst of all our troubles. We must remain as close as we can to each other. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am to Dominic for his understanding and the courage and the strength he has shown throughout this nightmare. For a while it was a perfect companionship. Is it strange that I should be happy to share beautiful ideas with him?”
Clarice swallowed. She seemed to have to force herself to speak.
“No …”
“Of course not.” Vita reached over and patted her hand. It was a familiar gesture, gentle, comforting, and yet oddly condescending as well, as if Clarice had been a child, on the periphery of things.
Dominic was suddenly acutely uncomfortable. Somehow the conversation had run from his control, but it was impossible to cancel the misimpression without churlishness. To say it had meant nothing personal would be absurd. It would be denying something no one but Clarice had thought. It would embarrass Vita, and that would be inexcusable. It must be the last thing she had thought.
Clarice pushed her plate away, the toast half eaten.
“I have things to do. Letters to write.” And without further excuse she went out, closing the door behind her with a sharp snap.
“Oh dear,” Vita said with a sigh. She gave a quick little shrug. “Was I indiscreet?”
He was confused. It was not what he had expected her to say, and momentarily he could think of no answer.
Vita was looking at him with a faint flicker of amusement and tolerance. “I am afraid she is a little jealous, my dear. I suppose it had to happen, but it is most unfortunate it should be now.”
“Jealous?” He was lost.
Now she was really amused. It was plain in her eyes.
“You are too modest. It is one of your virtues, I know, but can you really be so blind? She is extremely … fond of you. She is bound to feel … excluded.”
He did not know what to say. It was ridiculous. It had not been a romantic evening—how could it be? Vita was Ramsay’s wife! At least she was his widow—of barely a couple of days! Clarice could not be so foolish. She had once suggested that Dominic was in love with Vita, but that had been a desperate and totally flippant attempt to distract them all from blaming her father for Unity’s death. No one could have thought it anything but a joke in extraordinarily poor taste. That was all it was. Wasn’t it?
“Oh, I’m sure …” he began. Then he was not sure. He started to rise to his feet. “I must go and explain to her.…”
Vita reached across and took his hand. “Don’t! Please?”
“But …”
“No, my dear,” she said softly. “It is better this way, believe me. You cannot alter the way things are. It is kinder to be honest. Leave her to grieve for her father the way she needs to. Later she will understand. They all will. Just be true to yourself; never fail in that, never waver.”
He felt confused. Somewhere he had made a mistake, and he was not sure where; only there was a deepening fear in him that it had been a serious one.
“If you think so,” he accepted, loosening himself from her hand. “I had better go and start making the arrangements for the service. The bishop asked me to. I wish I could like him more.” And before she could chide him for lack of charity, he made his escape.
But upstairs in his room he could not compose his mind to the subject of Ramsay’s funeral. What could he say of him? Where did compassion and gratitude end and hypocrisy begin? If he excluded what seemed to be the truth of his death, might not the whole event descend into farce? What did he owe, and to whom? To Ramsay himself? To his children, especially Clarice, and Clarice was more and more often on his mind lately. What Vita had said about her was absurd. She liked him, most of the time, but it was certainly not love. The idea was foolish. Clarice was not that sort of person. If she loved it would be totally, with extravagant generosity. She would be honest, too honest.
He sat back in his chair, smiling at the thought, his papers forgotten. How could any man with ambitions in the church even consider marrying a woman like Clarice Parmenter? She was devastatingly outspoken; her humor was lethal. Clarice was … unconventional. She had beautiful eyes, and with a little attention her hair could be dressed quite well. It was thick and shiny. And he rather liked dark hair. And her mouth was pretty—very pretty.
But Vita was wrong.
The thought of Vita made him extremely uncomfortable. There was something in her face, in her eyes, which alarmed him. She seemed to have misunderstood his friendship and read it as … he was not sure what. Something for Clarice to be jealous of.
He was still sitting turning it over in his mind, trying to escape from a feeling of being hemmed in, almost claustrophobically so, his thoughts in increasing turmoil, when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said, his voice almost a squeak with nervous tension in case it was Vita.
But it was Emsley who stood in the entrance. The relief was intense. He could feel the sweat prickle over his skin.
“Yes?” he asked.
Emsley looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mr. Corde, but Superintendent Pitt is back again, and says he would like to see you, sir.”
“Oh. All right.” He rose and followed Emsley without any sense of foreboding. It would only be final details to tidy up. He did not wish to discuss the tragedy. He still felt the pain of loss sharply. He was realizing only now how much he had liked Ramsay. Certainly Ramsay had been a little dry, full of doubts and haunted by a sense of his own weaknesses. But he had also been gentle, extremely patient, tolerant of the shortcomings of others, and sometimes his humor had been startling, far quicker than Dominic had expected, and irreverent. Clarice was not unlike him, except she had a stronger will for life, less doubt of herself. And she seemed to have a more emotional faith, rather than intellectual, as Ramsay’s had been. Although she could argue theology with anyone. Dominic knew that to his cost. Her knowledge was both wider and deeper than his own.
Pitt was in the withdrawing room, standing alone in front of the fire, which had been lit early. He looked profoundly unhappy. In fact, Dominic could not remember ever having seen him look so wretched, not since Sarah’s death. His face was white, his whole body stiff.
Dominic closed the door with a sinking feeling so overwhelming the room seemed to waver around him.
“What is it?” he said hoarsely. He had no idea what Pitt was going to say. Was it something to do with Charlotte? Had there been some fearful accident? “What’s happened?” he demanded, going forward quickly now.
“You had better sit.” Pitt waved his hand at a chair.
“Why?” Dominic remained where he was. “What is it?” His voice was growing louder. He could hear the fear in it himself, but he could not control it.
Pitt’s face tightened; his eyes looked almost black. “I’ve been to Haverstock Hill.”
Dominic’s stomach knotted, and for a moment he thought he was actually going to be sick. The sweat broke out on his skin. Even as the fear gripped him, part of his conscious mind was telling him it was absurd. Why should he be terrified? He had not killed Unity. He was not even the father of her child—not this time. The thought of that other time still hurt like a raw wound. He’d thought it had healed, that time had covered the scar. He had found new hopes, new things to care about, labor for. He could laugh as easily as before. One day perhaps he would love, more than he had loved Sarah. Certainly more than he had loved Unity—if he could honestly say he had loved her at all. It was the child that tore at him, leaving that awful emptiness inside. It was his greatest task, to forgive her for that. He had not succeeded yet.
Pitt was staring at him. There was misery and contempt in his eyes.
Dominic wanted to be angry. How dare Pitt feel such superiority. He had no
idea of the temptations Dominic had faced. He sat at home smug and safe with his beautiful, warm and happy wife. No real difficulty crossed his path. He who is never tempted can very easily be righteous.
But he knew all that was a lie which would not deceive Pitt. It did not even deceive him. He had behaved appallingly to Jenny. It had been as much stupidity as malice, but that pardoned nothing. If a parishioner had offered excuses like that, he would have torn him to shreds for the dishonesty they were.
Why should it hurt to see that scorn in Pitt’s face? What did he care what a gamekeeper’s son turned policeman should think of him?
A great deal. He cared very much what Pitt thought. Pitt was a man Dominic liked, in spite of the fact Pitt did not like him. He understood why. In Pitt’s place he would have felt the same.
“I assume from that that you have found out I knew Unity Bellwood in the past,” he said, stumbling over the words more than he wished to. He would like to have been icily dignified, not stiff-tongued, dry-lipped.
“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “Intimately, apparently.”
There was no point in trying to deny any of it. It would only add cowardice to everything else.
“I did then … not since. I don’t suppose you will believe that, but it is true.” He squared his shoulders and clenched his hands to stop them from shaking. Should he tell Pitt that Mallory was the father? How could he believe that, knowing what he did about the past? No one would. It would sound cowardly and self-serving. And there was no proof, only Mallory’s word, which he could easily take back. When he knew about Dominic and Unity he probably would. She could have lain with either of them, or both. Unity would do that. Anyone looking at her history would find that easy to accept.
“Who killed her, Dominic?” Pitt said grimly.
It had to come. For a moment his voice was strangled in his throat. He had to try twice to speak.
“I don’t know. I thought it was Ramsay.”
“Why? Are you going to tell me he was the father of her child?” Pitt’s voice was only mildly sarcastic. He still looked more hurt than angry.
“No.” Dominic swallowed. Why was his mouth still so dry? “No, I thought it was because of her constant erosion of his faith. She undermined him all the time. She was one of those women who made a crusade of proving people wrong and showing them every occasion. She never let an error slip.” His hands were clammy. He clenched and unclenched them. “I thought … I thought in the end he lost his temper and pushed her, without meaning even to injure her, let alone kill her. I thought that afterwards he was so horrified he refused to believe what he had done. Then it preyed on his mind and drove him to suicide in the end.”
“Suicide?” Pitt’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s hardly what Mrs. Parmenter said.”
“I know.” Dominic shifted his weight, not because he was lying but because his legs were cramping, his muscles were so tense. “I thought she made up that story to cover for him. Suicide is a crime in the eyes of the church.”
“So is murder.”
“I know that! But nobody’s proved murder against him. We could still say it was an accident.”
“His death … or Unity’s? Or both?”
Dominic shifted his weight again. “Both, I suppose. I know no one would believe that … but there would be nothing they could do. It—it is hardly a good answer, but it is all I can think of.” He was stammering, and that was ridiculous, because he was speaking the truth. “It’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense,” he went on desperately. “I can understand how she would defend him the only way she could think of. I know it’s hopeless.”
“I don’t think Ramsay killed Unity, accidentally or with intent,” Pitt replied. He seemed able to stand in the same spot without needing to move. His face was implacable. However much he hated this, he was not going to evade it or to stop until he was finished. “I think it was either Mallory or you.”
Dominic could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He could think of nothing to say except denial.
“I didn’t …” It was not much more than a whisper.
“Ramsay thought you did.”
“Wh-why?” It was a blow so hard it left him reeling. Ramsay had believed that of him? That he had killed Unity, which could be an accident, or at least an understandable crime? Heaven knew, she provoked people to the limits. It was almost a surprise, when one thought of it, that no one had hurt her physically before.
But he had never acknowledged, even in his worst thoughts, that Ramsay believed he was guilty. How it must have crushed him. He had hoped so much of Dominic, believed so much. It was his one real success, the achievement no one could take from him, no one would draw doubt on or call into question. He could no longer believe in God. His fragile faith could not stand up to Darwin’s ruthless reasoning. Evolution had swept away the foundation of his theology, leaving nothing behind. If God did not exist, how could one love Him? He had been left alone in a dark universe. But he had loved people—not all of them, but some. He had truly loved some. Dominic was one of them. That final failure must have been more than he could bear. Clarice was the only one who had never let him down, and in the end that was not enough.
“I didn’t,” he repeated helplessly. “I can’t say I didn’t have reason, if one can have reason for killing another person. She tried to manipulate me back into the old relationship, but I refused. There was nothing she could do except make a nuisance of herself, and she did that. But she couldn’t afford to lose this position, and she knew I knew that.” He smiled bitterly. There was a sour humor in it. “We had an equal power over each other.”
“Was she in love with Ramsay?” Pitt asked.
“What?” It was an incredible question. Pitt could have understood nothing about Unity to have asked that. Or was he playing some devious game?
The sunlight faded at the far side of the room and rain spattered against the windows. Pitt moved to the ornate chair beside the fire and sat down at last.
“Could she have been in love with Ramsay?” he said again, carefully. He was watching Dominic’s face for the tiniest change in his expression.
Dominic could have laughed, but he was too close to losing control of himself.
“No,” he said more levelly than he had thought he was capable of. He sat down as well, a little sharply, as if his legs were not entirely in his control. “If you think that, then you don’t understand Unity. Ramsay had qualities which might have made a woman love him, but she didn’t see that sort of integrity as interesting or exciting.” He loathed having to say this, but it was the truth, and Pitt had to understand. “She thought he was a bore, because she never saw his emotions. He didn’t like her, so he never showed her his humor or his imagination or his warmth. She was always criticizing.” A score of instances came to his mind. He could see the sneer on her face, the triumph in her eyes as if it had been only a moment ago. “She prevented the best in him from even showing itself in her company. I don’t think she realized that, but it doesn’t make any difference. He wasn’t even worth a challenge. He was unobtainable, perhaps because to her there was nothing to obtain.”
“A challenge?” Pitt lifted his eyebrows. “To destroy?”
“Yes … I suppose so. She resented the closed world of academia, which was entirely male dominated, to the exclusion of women no matter how excellent their scholarship—and hers was excellent.” This also was true, and he could remember the finer part of her in saying it. “In her own field she was brilliant, far better than most men. I—I can’t blame her for hating them. Their patronizing was insufferable, and in the end they paid lip service to her intellect and her talent, and then denied her the real chances. Appetite of the flesh was their one vulnerability, where she could beat them, wound them, even destroy them.”
“Including Ramsay Parmenter?”
“I don’t think so. I doubt she was a match for Vita, even had she wanted to be.” He was reluctant to say this, but he had left himself no choice. “No. H
er challenge here was Mallory. He was far more vulnerable, and a better victory anyway. Much more personable in the taking, and a deeper wound for Ramsay and to the Establishment. After all, he is not only sworn to chastity but to celibacy as well.”
Pitt said nothing, but Dominic could see in his eyes that that at least he could believe.
Dominic swallowed. His tongue was sticking to his teeth. “I did not kill her,” he said again. He could feel the panic welling up inside him to the verge of hysteria. He must control himself. He must keep his grip. It would pass. There would be a way out.
He rose to his feet, barely realizing he was doing it. The rain was beating against the windows now, a sudden spring storm.
There was no way out. It was tightening around him. The panic was there again, high in his throat. His heart was beating too fast. His skin was clammy. Pitt did not believe him. Why should he? Why should anyone? The judge would not; the jury would not.
They would hang him! How long was it from trial to the rope? Three weeks … three short weeks. The last day would come, the last hour … and then the pain … and nothing.
“Dominic!” Pitt’s voice was sharp.
“Yes …” Pitt must be aware of his terror. He must be able to see it, even smell it. Would he believe it could be in an innocent man?
“You’d better sit down. You look dreadful.”
“No … no. I’ll be all right.” Why had he said that? He was not all right. “Is that all you wanted?”
Pitt was still watching him closely. “For the moment. But I don’t believe Ramsay killed her, and I mean to find out who did.”
“Yes … of course.” Dominic turned to leave.
“Oh …”
Dominic stopped. “What?”
“I found love letters between Ramsay and Unity, very passionate, very graphic. Do you know anything about those?”
“Love letters?” Dominic was amazed. Had the circumstances been any different he would have suspected Pitt of making a bad joke, but he searched Pitt’s face and saw no humor at all, only pain and harsh disappointment. “Are you sure?”
