Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘Are you sure you are not letting your fondness for her make you overlook her faults?’ she asked gently. ‘Wouldn’t you rather think she was flighty and on rare occasions selfish, rather than dead? After all, who could she be so afraid of that she would run off into the night without a word?’ Dare she take it any further? If she did, it must be now! She hesitated only a moment. ‘Wouldn’t you have sensed it? A look in her face, a clumsiness perhaps, an inattention to detail? It is very hard to conceal fear great enough to make you run off alone into a winter night! It was January then, wasn’t it? I don’t really like to go out in January even wrapped up and in a carriage, and knowing I will come back to my own bed.’

Rosalind turned a little and stared at her, hollow-eyed. ‘Neither do I,’ she said in a little above a whisper. ‘But I have been safe, physically safe, all my life. I’m not a servant, and I don’t know anything that could be dangerous.’

‘What could she know?’ Emily seized the chance offered her. ‘It would have to have been something she couldn’t tell you …’

‘That is what frightens me,’ Rosalind replied, her voice now so strained it was barely recognisable. ‘There is nothing about me that is even interesting, let alone threatening to anyone. It must be about my husband, or my sister-in-law.’ She took in a deep breath and let it out. ‘Or Bennett. He’s been dead nearly nine years, and yet it is as if he still lived in the house somewhere just out of sight. No one ever forgets him.’

Emily thought for only a moment. ‘You mean Ailsa still loves him too much to consider marrying again?’

Rosalind did not answer immediately. She appeared to give the matter thought. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said at length. ‘She does accept various social invitations from other men, but they seem to cool after a while. So yes, perhaps you are right. That is what she tells Dudley, anyway. But Dudley loved Bennett profoundly. Even for brothers, they were very close.’ She smiled, and there was a deep warmth to it. ‘That is one of the nicest qualities about Dudley: he is totally loyal and, if he judges at all, then he is kindly. He was always protective of the young, and of course Bennett was younger than he. I remember Dudley with our sons. He was patient, no matter how exasperating they were at times … and they were. In fact, he was gentler than I … I am ashamed to admit.’

‘And your daughters?’ Emily said with interest.

Rosalind shrugged. ‘Oh, he was always patient with the girls, and with me. And with Ailsa, for that matter. Women don’t tempt him to be otherwise. I’m not certain if that is because he doesn’t expect so much of us …?’

‘Some men just are patient,’ Emily agreed. She thought momentarily of Jack with Evangeline. She could twist him around her little finger, and he did not even bother to deny it.

She looked at Rosalind, deciding what line next to pursue, intensely aware of the distress in her. ‘Ailsa seems to be strong-willed enough not to need a great deal of protection,’ she observed. ‘Am I jumping to too quick a judgement?’

‘No, not at all,’ Rosalind said instantly. ‘I …’ she shook her head. ‘No, I am at fault. I should not judge either. To me Ailsa seems immensely strong, but she was torn apart by Bennett’s death. It was just that with her it seemed on the outside to be anger, even rage that fate had taken from her the one man she loved. I …’ She shook her head again. ‘I never loved in that kind of way. Perhaps because I have children? I don’t know. If Dudley died I would miss him terribly. I expect every day I would be aware of the emptiness, all the things he said, did, cared about … everything. I would weep inside, as he still does for Bennett, I know. But I don’t believe I would rage at fate.’

Emily thought how she would feel if Jack were to die. Alone … as if she would be alone for the rest of her life. If she knew beyond doubt that he really had left her, either openly, physically, or just by being emotionally absent, then she would rage! Her anger might be beyond control, at times, but it would be a defence against tears. She knew that almost as if it had actually happened. It would be as if the sweet wine of life had turned to vinegar. The thought was cold and real inside her.

‘What was he like … Bennett?’ she asked.

Rosalind gave a little laugh. ‘Like this picture, with the sunlight in the trees,’ she answered. ‘Do you think we should move on? Are we stopping other people from studying this one?’ She glanced around to see if anyone were waiting, but no one else was in the room except a couple of men staring at a different picture over on the opposite wall.

‘Probably,’ Emily agreed. ‘We’ll see what’s in the next room.’

It turned out to be landscapes in various moods, all of them profoundly beautiful in their own way. With so much passion around them it was easier to be honest than it might have been in a more conventional place with the politeness one was accustomed to, and the usual pretences of good manners.

‘What was Bennett like?’ Rosalind repeated Emily’s question. ‘When I think back on it, I didn’t see him nearly as often as one would think, from the impression he made on me. He was very like Dudley in some ways: his interests, his mannerisms, his sense of humour. But he was quicker, more certain of himself. He had boundless dreams and he had few doubts that one day he would achieve at least most of them. In a way that’s why it was so difficult to realise he was dead. It all happened very quickly. One day he was ill, and in a week he was gone. We couldn’t grasp it — especially not Dudley. After all that had-’ She stopped.

Emily waited. They were standing near a broad, sweeping landscape with huge skies: the left side was filled with blue distance, the right a driving storm coming in rapidly, darkening everything, heavy with threat.

‘We thought the worst was past,’ Rosalind said simply, as if everyone would know what she meant.

Perhaps it was indelicate, but Emily could not now leave it.

‘He had been ill before?’ she asked.

‘Bennett was in Sweden,’ Rosalind said after a moment or two. ‘Many years ago now. Before he ever met Ailsa. I don’t know what happened. Dudley was frantic. I’ve never seen him so desperate. He received a message and dropped everything. He went to Sweden the very next day and I didn’t hear from him for weeks. When he returned he brought Bennett with him, and they never told me what happened. Bennett looked ashen, and thin. He stayed with us. Dudley wouldn’t let him out of his sight.’

Two gentlemen walked past them talking earnestly.

‘He used to have nightmares,’ Rosalind continued when they were out of earshot. ‘I heard him crying out in the night. Dudley never told me what it was, and gradually it passed. Bennett regained his strength and went back to his work. A year or two after that he met Ailsa and shortly after they were married.’

‘Then the illness returned?’ Emily said with a heavy sense of tragedy herself. ‘But this time it was too swift, and there was nothing they could do to help him?’

‘I suppose so,’ Rosalind answered, looking suddenly away from the painting and at Emily. ‘But that was all long before Kitty came to us, and there was definitely nothing about it that was anything except tragic. I … I wish I could do something to help! Dudley has had more than enough pain.’

Emily looked at the racing clouds in the painting and the heavy shadow they cast on the land. She shivered involuntarily.

‘That sounds self-pitying, doesn’t it!’ Rosalind said, annoyed with herself. ‘We have a beautiful home. Dudley’s work is terribly important and he is extremely good at it. We have money and position, and healthy sons and daughters, and here am I with the arrogance to speak of pain.’