Anne Perry - Rutland Place

"Perhaps not." Eloise was looking down at the dead face. She did not seem to care, and Charlotte knew suddenly that she had not reached the core of it yet. There was more truth to come, and worse. The self-hatred in Eloise, the despair, was more than a knowledge of incest, and then rejection, deeper than anything she had yet understood.

"How old were you when it began?" Charlotte asked.

Eloise reached out and touched the winding-sheet.

"Thirteen."

Charlotte felt the tears well up inside her, and she experienced an overwhelming hatred of Tormod so profound she could look on his mangled body and his dead face without regret, so coldly as if he were fish on the market slab.

"You didn't kill Mina, did you?"

Eloise shook her head. "No, but it doesn't matter if the police think I did, because I'm guilty anyway."

Charlotte opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"I let Tormod kill my baby." Eloise's voice was no more than a whisper. "I was with child, about four months. I didn't realize for a long time-I didn't know enough. Then when I did realize, I told Tormod. That was when I first met you. We didn't go to the country because of Mina's death. I went to get an abortion. I didn't know till we got there. Tormod said I had to because I am not married, and what we were doing was wrong, He said the child was not formed, that it would only be like-like a little blood."

She was so ashen Charlotte was afraid she would not be able to stand, but she dared not move to help her. These words came from an agony so deep it must burst.

"He lied to me. It was my child!"

Charlotte felt the tears run down her face and, without thinking, her hands went to the surface that contained her womb and the child in it.

"It was my baby," Eloise said. "They never let me touch it. They just got rid of it."

Silence filled the room, but it seemed nothing could be vast enough to contain the pain.

"That is why I killed him," Eloise said at last. "As soon as I was well enough, he took me out for a drive in the carriage. I pushed him off, and the other carriage and horses drove over him. It didn't kill him. It only crippled him. We brought him back here to lie in that bed upstairs, tormented with pain, knowing he would never walk again. I used to go in and look at him. He was paralyzed, did you know? He couldn't move, couldn't even speak. He would just stare at me with hatred so strong I felt it would burn his body up. My own brother, whom I had loved all my life. I stood at the end of the bed and stared back. I wasn't sorry. I hated myself, and I hated him. I even thought of killing myself. I'm not sure why I didn't do it. But I wasn't sorry for him. I couldn't pity him.

"I can still see my baby's body-in my mind. The doctor said I shall never have another. It was something they did."

Charlotte moved at last. She walked around the coffin and closed the lid; then very gently she took Eloise's hand, holding it in both her own.

"Are you going to tell the police?" Eloise said quietly.

"No." Charlotte put her arms around her and held her hard, the sobs inside her struggling to get out. She must control herself. She took a deep breath. "No. He killed Mina-he would have been hanged for that anyway. It was wrong to kill him, but it's done now. I shall never speak of it again."

Slowly Eloise relaxed and let her head rest on Charlotte's shoulder. At last, for the first time since she had seen the tiny body of her child, she began to weep.

For a long time, beyond counting, they stood together beside the closed coffin, letting the tears come, sharing the pain.

It was not until Inigo Charrington stood in the doorway, his eyes full of sympathy and affection, that at last Charlotte let go of Eloise.