Anne Perry: Brunswick Gardens

“I am not going to arrest him,” he said aloud. “There is insufficient evidence for that. But I must pursue it. There is too much to indicate murder for me to walk away.”

“Murder!” Dominic was ashen. He stared across at Pitt with eyes almost black. “That’s…” He dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, God… not again!”

For a moment both of them remembered Sarah, and the other dead women in Cater Street, and the fear and the suspicion, the crumbling of relationships and the pain.

“I’m sorry,” Pitt said, barely above a whisper. “There is no choice.”

Dominic did not speak.

The coals settled in the fire.

A FTER PITT LEFT , Dominic Corde was acutely aware of the distress which at least to some extent had been masked during the presence of strangers. Unity’s body had been removed. The police had seen everything they needed to and notes had been taken of the scene. Now the house was unnaturally quiet. The curtains and blinds were closed in decent respect for death, and to signify to all passersby and potential callers that this was now a house of mourning.

No one had wanted to continue with normal pursuits until the last formalities were completed. It looked callous-or worse, as if they might be afraid of something. Now they stood in the hall, self-conscious and unhappy.

Clarice was the first to speak.

“Isn’t it absurd? So much has happened and yet everything looks the same. Before this, I had a dozen things to do. Now every one of them seems rather pointless.”

“Nothing is the same!” Tryphena said angrily. “Unity has been murdered in our house by a member of our family. Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Of course everything you were going to do is pointless! How could it have meaning?”

“We don’t really know what happened…” Mallory began tentatively, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I think we should not rush into saying things…”

Tryphena glared at him, her eyes red-rimmed, the tears standing out in them.

“If you don’t know, it is because you refuse to look at it. And if you start preaching to me I shall scream. If you come up with your usual platitudes about the mysteries of God and abiding God’s will for us, I swear I’ll throw something at you, and it will be the heaviest and sharpest thing I can find.” She was struggling for breath. “Unity had more courage and honesty than all the rest of you put together. Nobody can ever replace her!” She turned on her heel and ran across the mosaic floor and up the stairs, her heels loud on the wood.

“You might,” Clarice murmured, presumably referring to Tryphena’s replacing Unity. “I think you’d do it rather well. You’ve got just the same sort of wild ideas and you never listen to anyone else or look where you’re going. In fact, you’d be perfect.”

“Really, Clarice!” Mallory said impatiently. “That is uncalled for. She is distraught.”

“She’s always distraught about something,” Clarice muttered. “She lives her life being distraught. She was beside herself when her marriage with Spencer was arranged. Then when she decided he was a bully and a bore, she was even more beside herself. And she still wasn’t satisfied when he died.”

“For heaven’s sake, Clarice!” Mallory was aghast. “Have you no decency?”

Clarice ignored him.

“Aren’t you distressed?” Dominic asked her quietly.

She looked at him, and the anger melted out of her face. “Yes, of course I am,” she admitted. “And I didn’t even like her.” She looked at her father, who was standing near the newel post. He was still very pale, but he seemed to have regained at least some of his composure. He was usually a man of great calm, and reason always prevailed over emotion, self-indulgence, or any kind of indiscipline. So far he had avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. Naturally he was aware of what Stander and Braithwaite had told the police, and he must be wondering what the rest of his family made of the extraordinary charge. Now he could no longer put off some kind of communication.

“I don’t think there is anything new to be said.” His voice was husky, thin, totally lacking its usual timbre, his face white. “I don’t know what happened to Miss Bellwood. I sincerely trust that no one else in the house does either. We had best continue with our duties as far as possible in the circumstances, and bear ourselves with dignity. I shall be upstairs in my study.” And without waiting for any reply, he turned and left them, walking with measured and rather heavy tread.

Dominic watched him with a mixture of sadness and guilt because he knew of no way to help him. His admiration for Ramsay Parmenter was profound, and it had never been long absent from his mind. Ramsay had found him at a time of acute distress- despair would not be too strong a word for it. It was Ramsay’s patience and strength he had leaned on, and which had helped him eventually to find his own. Now, when Ramsay needed someone to believe in him and to offer a hand to lift and sustain him, Dominic could think of nothing to say or do.

“I suppose I might as well continue my studies, too,” Mallory remarked miserably. “I don’t even know what time it is. I don’t know why the maid muffled the clock. It’s not as if a member of the family were dead.” He shook his head and walked away.

Clarice left without explanation, going to the side door to the garden and closing it behind her, leaving Vita and Dominic alone.

“Did I do the right thing?” Vita asked softly, her voice little more than a whisper as she looked up at him. She was an extraordinary woman, not beautiful in an accepted way-her eyes were too large, her mouth too wide, her whole face a little short. And yet the longer one looked at her, the more beautiful she became, until the classic features of other women seemed too thin, too elongated, possessed of a uniformity which became tedious. “Should I have told that policeman nothing?”

He wanted to comfort her. She was in a most appalling situation, a dilemma no one should have to face. With the faith he had found in these last years, how could he advocate lying, even to protect a husband? The greatest loyalty of all must be to the right. That was never a question. The difficulty was in knowing what was the right, which of all the ways was the least evil. For that, one needed to be able to see the outcome, and too often it was impossible.

“Did you hear her cry out?” he asked.

“Of course I did.” She looked at him with clear, steady eyes. “Do you imagine I would say such a thing if I had not? I did not mean it was not true, I meant should I have kept silent?”

“I know that,” he answered quickly. “I thought your knowing it was the truth would tell you that you must speak it… I think…” Would he have said it had he been in her place, had he been the one to hear the cry? Would gratitude and loyalty have held his tongue? What then? What if murder was provable in some other way, and then another person was blamed? Even if that did not happen, should murder go unknown, unpunished? “No, of course you had to speak,” he said with confidence. “I am just so terribly sorry that burden had to fall on you. I cannot imagine the courage it must have taken you, or how deeply you must be hurt now.”

She reached out and laid her fingertips on his arm.

“Thank you, Dominic,” she said softly. “You have no idea how you have comforted me. I am afraid we have terrible times ahead of us. I don’t know how we are going to bear it, except by supporting one another.” She stopped and gazed at him for a moment with her pain completely undisguised. “I don’t think we are going to persuade Tryphena… do you? I am afraid she is very angry and very hurt. She regarded Unity in quite a different light from the way the rest of us did. Her loyalties are very… torn.”