Anne Perry: Brunswick Gardens

He could not argue with her. Put into those words, it was monstrous.

“She was fighting for artistic freedom?” he asked.

“Oh, a great deal more than that!” she said hotly. “She was fighting for freedom of all kinds: the right of people to be themselves, not to have to conform to other people’s old-fashioned ideas of what they ought to be. Do you know what it is like to be alone in your fight, really alone? To have to pretend you don’t understand things in order to pander to the vanity of stupid people, just because they are born a different gender from yourself?” Her face tightened with impatience. “No, of course you don’t! You’re a man, part of the Establishment. You take power as your birthright. Nobody questions you or tells you you haven’t the nature or the intelligence to achieve anything-or even to make your own judgments and decide your own fate!” She looked at him with wide, round blue eyes glowing with contempt. Her slender shoulders were still locked rigid, and her hands were clenched at her sides.

“My father was a gamekeeper and my mother did the laundry,” he replied, looking straight back at her. “I know quite a lot about birthrights and different people’s places in society. I also know what it is like to be cold and hungry. Do you, Mrs. Whickham?”

She flushed a deep pink.

“I… I’m… not talking about… that,” she said, stumbling on her words. “I’m talking about intellectual freedom. It’s a… far bigger thing.”

“It’s only a bigger thing if you are warm and safe and have food in your stomach,” he responded with just as much feeling as she. “There are lots of battles which are worth fighting, not only Miss Bellwood’s belief in equality of intellectual opportunity and recognition.”

“Well…” Honesty struggled with grief and anger within her. Honesty won, but only just. “Well, yes, I suppose so. I didn’t mean there weren’t. You asked me about Unity. She challenged the rigid ideas of society, and of the church, and she upset the hypocrites and the cowards who don’t have the spiritual honor or the bravery to dare to think for themselves.”

“Does that include your father?”

She lifted her chin. “Yes… yes, it does.” She dared him to disapprove her devastating candor. “If you need the truth, then he’s a moral coward and an intellectual bully. Like most academic men, he’s terrified of new ideas or anything that challenges what he was taught. Unity was full of new perceptions that he was too limited to understand, and he wouldn’t try. Anyway, he hasn’t the imagination. He knew she was surpassing him, so he tried to overpower her, shout her down, intimidate her. I’m speaking metaphorically, or course. You do understand that?”

“I heard that this morning it was fairly literal,” he pointed out.

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she blinked hard, trying to dispel them, and failed. They slid down her cheeks. She looked like an angry and frightened child.

Pitt found she stirred his sympathies at the same time as she exasperated him.

“I am sure such people as Miss Bellwood are very rare,” he said with more humor, and gratitude for that fact, than she was aware.

“Unique,” she agreed urgently. “You must seek justice, Superintendent… no matter what that is or who stands in the way. You must, for honor’s sake! You mustn’t be afraid of anyone. Unity wasn’t. And she deserves that of her avenger. You mustn’t let privilege or superstition deter you, or… or even pity for who else is affected.” Her voice was husky with the power of her feeling. “If people can be dismissed simply because they are dead, if we don’t owe them anything because they are powerless to demand it from us, then we are worth nothing.” She slashed her hand in the air. “All civilization is worth nothing! The past is meaningless, and the future will forget us just the same. Only we shall have deserved it. Can you fulfill your role in history, Superintendent Pitt?” she demanded. “Are you equal to it?”

“I have every intention of trying, Mrs. Whickham, because that is my job, whether I like the results or not,” he replied, keeping his expression perfectly straight. Her words were pretentious enough, but behind them she was not unlike his almost-nine-year-old daughter, Jemima. She fed on just such unself-conscious extremes. And her feelings were very easily hurt if she thought anyone was laughing at her.

Tryphena studied him. “I am glad. It is what must be. I… I only wish my father were not so… implacable, so domineering.” She shrugged. “But I suppose weak people are very often stubborn because they don’t know what else to cling to.”

There was no courteous answer he could make to that, and he let it pass.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have had to ask you these things,” he said formally. “I appreciate your frankness, Mrs. Whickham. Now, would you be kind enough to ask your sister if she would come and see me, either here or in some other room in which she would prefer to talk.”

“I’m sure she’ll come here,” she replied. “Although I don’t suppose she can tell you anything. She didn’t know Unity as well as I did. And she’ll defend Papa. She’s loyal to people.” Again the flicker of contempt crossed her face. “She cannot see that ideas are more important. Principles must govern us or they are not principles. If we can bend them to suit us, then they are worth nothing! ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more!’ Richard Lovelace, you know?” She raised her eyebrows. “No, I don’t suppose you do. Never mind, it is true. I’ll get Clarice for you.” And without waiting for his answer she turned and went out, leaving the door wide open behind her.

It was more than ten minutes before Clarice Parmenter came in. He heard her quick footsteps moving across the tiles of the hall before he saw her. She was of similar height and build to her sister, but her hair was dark and she was not as pretty. Her mouth was wider and her nose was fractionally crooked, giving her face a lopsided air, perhaps unconsciously humorous.

She came in and closed the door behind her.

“I can’t help,” she said without preamble. “Except to say that the whole thing is ridiculous. It must have been an accident. She tripped over something and fell.”

“Over what?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” She waved her hands impatiently. They were very fine hands, slender and expressive. “But you don’t push people downstairs because they don’t believe in God! That’s absurd! Well… of course you don’t, if you are a Christian yourself.” She shrugged and made a face. “Actually you burn them at the stake, don’t you.” She did not laugh, she was too near hysteria to dare, but there was a wild flash of humor in her eyes. “We haven’t got any stakes here, but it would be very infra dig to heave someone down the stairs. Execution for blasphemy has to be done with all the proper ceremony or it doesn’t count.”

He was startled. She was not like anything he could possibly have foreseen. Perhaps she cared more than he had been led to believe. “Were you very fond of Miss Bellwood?” he asked.

“Me?” She was surprised. Her very gray eyes widened. “Not in the slightest. Oh… I see. You think I am emotionally overwrought, because I made remarks about burning atheists? Yes, I probably am. It isn’t every day that someone dies in this house and we have the police supposing it was murder. That is why you’re here, isn’t it? Doesn’t it upset most people a bit? I thought you would be used to people weeping and fainting.” It was almost a question. She waited for a moment to give him time to answer.

“I am used to people being very shocked,” he agreed. “Not many people actually faint.” He moved back, inviting her to be seated.