Ashworth Hall (23 page)

“And I did! God forgive me.”

“Perhaps he has never been really in love, wildly, utterly and madly in love, as you were—until now?”

“Is that an excuse?” Kezia demanded, her pale eyes blazing.

“No. It is a lack of understanding, or even the effort to imagine,” Charlotte answered.

Kezia was surprised. “What are you saying?”

“That you have been so in love, why can’t you imagine how he feels now about Iona, even if you can’t condone it?”

Kezia said nothing, turning away again, the flames’ reflection warm on her cheek.

“If you are honest, absolutely honest,” Charlotte went on, “would you be so bitterly angry if you had not loved Cathal and been forced to give him up? Isn’t a lot of your rage really your own pain?”

“What if it is?” Kezia still had the poker in her hand, gripped like a sword. “Is that not fair?”

“Yes, it is fair. But what will be the result?”

“What do you mean?”

“What will be the result of your not forgiving Fergal?” Charlotte elaborated. “I don’t mean you should say it is all right—of course it isn’t. Iona is married. But that will carry its own cost. You don’t need to exact it. I mean your cutting yourself off from Fergal.”

“I … I don’t know ….”

“Will it make you happy?”

“No … of course not. Really, you ask the strangest questions.”

“Will it make anyone happy, or wiser, or braver, or kinder, or anything you want?”

Kezia hesitated.

“Well … no …”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because … he’s so … unjust!” she said angrily, as if the answer should have been apparent to everyone. “So self-indulgent! He’s a total hypocrite, and I hate hypocrisy!”

“Nobody likes it. Although it is funny, sometimes,” Charlotte rejoined.

“Funny!” Kezia’s brows rose very high.

“Yes. Don’t you have any sense of the ridiculous?”

Kezia stared at her. At last her turquoise eyes began to sparkle a little and her hands unclenched.

“You are the oddest person I ever met.”

Charlotte shrugged lightly.

“I suppose I shall have to be content with that.”

Kezia smiled. “Not a wholehearted compliment, I admit, but at least there is no hypocrisy in it!”

Charlotte glanced at the newspaper lying on the table where it had been left.

“If Mr. Parnell loses his leadership, who do you think will succeed him?”

“Carson O’Day, I imagine,” Kezia answered. “He has all the qualities. And he has the family as well. His father was brilliant, but he’s an old man now. He was a great leader in his day. Absolutely fearless.” She relaxed, retreating into memory, her inner vision far away. “I remember my father taking Fergal and me to hear him at a political meeting. Papa was one of the finest preachers in the north. He could stand there in the pulpit and his voice rolled all around you like a breaking sea with all the foam white and the tide so strong it took you off your feet.” Her voice grew stronger, rich with feeling. “He could make you see heaven and hell, the shining pavements and the angels of God, the endless joy and the singing; or the darkness and the fire which consumes everything, and the stench of sin like sulfur which chokes the breath out of you.”

Charlotte did not interrupt, but she found herself wanting to move closer to the fire. That kind of passion frightened her. There was no room for thought in it, and certainly no room for considering the possibility you might have something wrong. When you take a stand like that in public, you can never go back on it, no matter what you learn afterwards. You have left yourself no room to change, retreat or grow.

“He was a marvelous man,” Kezia repeated, perhaps as much to herself as to Charlotte. “He took us to see Liam O’Day. It was his brother, Drystan, who was shot by the British, so they said, for his love of Neassa Doyle.”

“Why? Who was she?”

“A papist. It’s an old story. She and Drystan O’Day fell in love. This is thirty years ago. A British soldier called Alexander Chinnery was a friend of Drystan’s, and he betrayed him, raped and murdered Neassa, then fled back to England. Drystan went to her brothers and there was a terrible fight. Two of her brothers were killed, and so was Drystan, by the English, of course, to cover up what Chinnery had done. But neither side ever forgave the other for their part in it. The Doyle family felt Drystan had seduced her, and will talk of nothing else. The O’Days thought she had seduced him. And the O’Days all hate the Nationalists. Carson is the second son, but Daniel, the eldest, is an invalid with tuberculosis. He was supposed to be the one who rose to lead the cause, but now it’s all fallen to Carson. He hasn’t the fire of Daniel.” She smiled. “I saw Daniel when he was young, before he became ill. He was so handsome, like his father. But maybe Carson is better anyway. He has a steadier head. He’s a good diplomat.”

“But you don’t agree with him entirely, do you?”

Kezia smiled widely. “No, of course not. We’re Irish! But close enough to face the papists beside him. We’ll fight among ourselves afterwards.”

“Very wise,” Charlotte agreed.

Kezia gave her a quick glance, then laughed abruptly. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

Later that morning Charlotte was not far from Jack, standing on the terrace outside the withdrawing room doors, when one of the urns on the balcony above crashed down. It missed him by about three feet and broke to smithereens on the flags, sending earth and ivy over several yards.

Jack was very pale, but he made fight of it and forbade her to say anything whatever to Emily.

She promised, but found herself shaking and suddenly desperately cold when she went inside, in spite of the sharp sunlight.

Pitt traveled on the train up to London. It was a journey which in the usual circumstances he would have enjoyed. He liked watching the countryside flying past, he liked the steam and the clatter and the sense of incredible speed. But today he was thinking of what he would say to Cornwallis, and he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

There were no excuses. He had failed to protect Ainsley Greville, and three days later he could not offer any proof as to who was responsible. By process of elimination it looked to be either Doyle or Moynihan, and he had no idea which.

“Good morning, Pitt,” Cornwallis said gravely when Pitt arrived and was shown to his office.

“Good morning, sir,” Pitt answered, taking the seat that was offered beside the fire. It was a courteous act. Rather than having Pitt sit in front of the desk with Cornwallis behind it, in a gesture he had placed them in the same situation. This did not, however, ease Pitt’s conscience or diminish his sense of having failed a trust.

“What happened?” Cornwallis asked, leaning forward a little and unconsciously placing the tips of his fingers together. The firelight glistened on his cheeks and head. He was a man in whom baldness seemed completely natural. It became him, throwing into strong relief his powerful features.

Pitt told him everything he knew that was pertinent. It seemed a lot, and yet it amounted to nothing that was conclusive.

When he had finished Cornwallis stared at him thoughtfully.

“So it might be Moynihan, for political reasons. His father was certainly a rabid enough Protestant. Conceivably, he has the idea that any settlement will reduce the Protestant Ascendancy, which I suppose it will. But it will also create a far greater justice, and therefore peace, and a greater safety and prosperity for everyone.” He shook his head. “But the hatred runs deep, deeper than reason or morality, or even hope for the future.” He bit his lip, regarding Pitt steadily. “The other possibility is Padraig Doyle, either for political reasons again, or because of Greville’s treatment of his sister.” He looked doubtful. “Do you really think it was gross enough to prompt murder? A great many men treat their wives badly. She wasn’t beaten or kept short of money, or publicly humiliated. He was always extremely discreet. She had no idea, you say?”

“No …”

Cornwallis leaned back and crossed his legs, shaking his head very slightly. “If she had found him in bed with a serious rival for his affections, she might have killed him on impulse, a crime of passion. Although women don’t often do that, especially women of the breeding of Eudora Greville. She had far too much to lose, Pitt, and nothing whatever to gain. Unless you have some idea she wanted her freedom to marry elsewhere, and you’ve shown nothing of that …?” He left it as a question.

“No,” Pitt said quickly. He had never suspected Eudora. He could not imagine her in such violence. “She is … Have you met her?”

Cornwallis smiled. “Yes. Very beautiful. But even beautiful women can have powerful feelings at having been betrayed. In fact, especially so, because they do not think it will happen to them. The outrage is greater.”

“But he didn’t do anything at Ashworth Hall,” Pitt said sharply. “All we discussed was the past, and nothing which threatened her position as his wife. As you say, it was all simply indulgence of appetite, not love.”

“Then why should Doyle murder Greville on her account?”

Pitt had no reply.

Cornwallis narrowed his eyes. “What is it, Pitt? There’s something else, or you wouldn’t have raised it. You are as capable as I am of seeing the fallacy of your argument; more so.”

“I think she is afraid it was Doyle,” Pitt said slowly, putting words to it for the first time himself. “But maybe I have the motive wrong. Perhaps it is political … Irish nationalism, like everything else.”

“Not everything.” Cornwallis shrugged. He looked faintly embarrassed. There was a very slight flush in his lean cheeks. “The O’Shea divorce verdict is due in today.”

“What will it be, do you know?”

“Legally, I think they’ll grant Willie O’Shea’s petition. His wife was unquestionably guilty of a long-standing adultery with Parnell. The only question was did Captain O’Shea collude in the affair, or was he actually a deceived party.”

“And was he?” Pitt had read little of it. He had not had time, and until now, not the interest either. He was still uncertain what bearing it had upon events at Ashworth Hall.

“Thank God it’s not mine to judge,” Cornwallis replied unhappily. “But if it were …” He hesitated. This sort of thing made him acutely uncomfortable. He thought there were aspects of life a man should keep private. He was embarrassed by the exposure of that part of a man’s life which should be personal to himself.

“But I would find it hard to believe anyone as gullible as he claims to be,” he finished. “Even though some of the evidence seems to border upon the farcical.” His lips twitched in a curious mixture of irony and distaste. “Climbing out of fire escapes while the husband came in at the front door, then a few minutes later presenting yourself at the same front door as if you have just arrived, is beneath the dignity of anyone who would presume to lead a national movement for unity and represent his people in the Houses of Parliament.”

Pitt was astonished. It must have shown in his face.

Cornwallis smiled very slightly. “It isn’t even as if the man had a sense of humor and could be presented as a charming rogue who got away with it. He has done it with a sanctimoniously straight face and been caught!”

“Will it ruin him?” Pitt asked, watching Cornwallis closely.

“Yes,” Cornwallis replied unequivocally, then thought for a moment. “Yes, I am almost sure it will.”

“Then the Nationalist movement will be seeking a new leader?”

“Yes, if not immediately, then within a relatively short time. He may stagger on as long as he can, but his power is finished … I believe. Others must believe so too, if that is what you mean. But either way, the case will have set back the cause of Irish unity, unless the Ashworth Hall Conference can come to an agreement. That rests primarily upon Doyle and O’Day, helped or hurt by Moynihan and McGinley.”

Pitt took a deep breath. “The first morning I was there Moynihan’s sister went to talk to him about their strategy—apparently she is just as politically minded as he—and she found him in bed with McGinley’s wife.”

“What?” Cornwallis looked as if he had not understood.

Pitt repeated what he had said.

Cornwallis stared into the fire and rubbed his slim, strong hand over his head, then he turned and looked at Pitt.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot send you more men,” he said quietly. “We’re keeping Greville’s death secret for the moment. I hope by the time we have to make it public we will be able to say that we have also caught the man who killed him.”

Pitt had known he must say that, but it still tightened the knot inside him, the sense of being pressed into a steadily decreasing space.

“Any further information about Denbigh?” he asked.

“A little.” Now it was Cornwallis’s turn to look apologetic. “We’ve traced his movements for several days before he was killed, and we know that that evening he was at the Dog and Duck on King William Street. He was seen talking with a young man with fair hair, and then they were joined by an older man, broad-shouldered with an unusual walk, from the sound of it a bit bowlegged.” He looked at Pitt steadily. “The barkeeper said he had unusual eyes, very pale and bright.”

“Greville’s murderous coach driver …” Pitt let out his breath with a sigh. “That gives me two reasons for finding the devil.”

“Us, Pitt,” Cornwallis corrected. “We’ll find him in London. You put all your mind to proving which of those four Irishmen killed Ainsley Greville. We need to know that before they leave Ashworth Hall, and we can’t keep them there more than another few days.”

“Yes, sir.”

7

G
RACIE ARRANGED
the white chrysanthemums and placed the vase on the table in the dressing room, then drifted downstairs in a vague, delicious daydream. In the hallway she did not see the ancestral portraits or the wood paneling; she saw light on glass and smelled the earth and the damp leaves and rows and rows of flowers. One moment she wanted to remember every word of the conversation, the next it did not matter in the slightest; the way she felt, the warmth of it was everything. Examine it too closely and it might disappear, like taking a tune apart. She had seen the black notes written on the page, and they meant nothing. The magic was gone; it was not music anymore.

She had Charlotte’s dress for the evening over her arm, and it was difficult to hold it high enough to keep the long skirts at the back from trailing on the floor.

“Gracie!”

She only dimly heard the voice.

“Gracie!”

She stopped and turned.

Doll was running down the stairs after her, her face pinched with anxiety.

“What is it?” Gracie asked.

“What are you doing here?” Doll said, taking her by the arm. “We aren’t supposed to carry clothes along these stairs! What if someone came to the door! It’d look terrible. That’s what back stairs is for. You only come down these if you’re sent for to one of the front rooms.”

“Oh. Oh, yeh. O’ course.” She had known that. She was not thinking.

“Where’s yer wits?” Doll asked more gently. “Yer out woolgathering?”

“What? What’s woolgathering?” Without realizing it, her arms were lowering and the blue dress was trailing on the floor.

Doll took it from her. She was six inches taller and it was an easy task for her.

“Picking bits o’ sheep wool that’s got caught in the hedges. I mean your wits are wandering.” She shook her head. “Yer going to iron this? If you weren’t before, you’d better now … and clean the hem of that skirt train.” She looked at the silk appreciatively. “It’s a lovely color. I always imagine the sea looks like that ’round desert islands and such.”

Gracie had no time for desert islands. The best things happened in gardens in England, in the dying blaze of the year. Green and white were the most beautiful colors. She followed Doll obediently through the baize door, along the passageway, turned left, and then past the stillroom, the footmen’s pantry, the room where they hung the pheasants and other game, the coal room, and on to the various laundry rooms and ironing rooms.

Doll put the blue dress on a hanger and inspected it carefully, flicking off specks of dust, wringing out a cloth till it was barely damp, and then wiping the places where Gracie had inadvertently let the hem of the dress brush on the floor.

“It doesn’t look bad,” she said with a slight lift in her voice. “Let it dry a minute or two, then iron it. Mrs. Pitt won’t find fault. You’ve got a good place. You’re lucky.”

Suddenly Gracie put Finn Hennessey from her mind and remembered the moments of unhappiness she had seen in Doll’s face, the deep, searing loneliness and sense of pain, not fleeting, but there all the time, breaking through in an unguarded instant.

“In’t you lucky?” she said very quietly. She nearly asked if Mrs. Greville found fault, but she did not think that was the answer. It seemed too surface, too insubstantial. And although one could not judge someone’s private treatment of their servants by the public face they presented, she had not felt that Eudora was of that nature. Mr. Wheeler was not in the least nervous in his duties. He was deeply shocked at his master’s death, and aware of at least some of what murder meant, but that was not the same thing.

Doll’s back was stiff, her shoulders set as if all her muscles were locked.

“In’t you lucky, then?” Gracie repeated. It was important; it had suddenly come to matter very much.

Doll started to move again, reaching up to the cupboards as if she were looking for starch, or blue, or some other laundry aid, although they were all there in labeled jars, and she took none of them.

“You been very pleasant to me,” Doll said, choosing each word, then delivering it as if it were of no importance. “I wouldn’t like to see you hurt.” She moved a couple of jars around to no purpose, still keeping her back to the room. “Don’t go falling in love, Gracie. Kiss and a cuddle’s all right, but don’t ever let no one take it further than that. There’s grief in it you wouldn’t think to imagine … for the like of us. Don’t take offense. It isn’t my business. I know that.”

“I don’ take no offense,” Gracie said softly. Although she felt the hot blood surge up her face, it was embarrassment. If Doll could read her so well, maybe everyone could. Maybe even Finn could! She must concentrate her mind. She should know how to be a detective. She had had enough example. “Did you fall in love, then?”

Doll laughed, a bitter, tearing sound close to a sob.

“No … I never fell in love. I never met anyone … anyone I felt like that about, not as’d be likely to look at me.”

“Why wouldn’t anybody look at you?” Gracie said frankly. “You’re one of the prettiest girls I seen.”

Some of the rigidity eased out of Doll’s back. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “But that’s not all a man wants. You’ve got to be respectable too, have your character.”

“You mean your reputation?” Gracie asked. “Well, I s’pose so, mostly. But it don’t always count.”

“Yes, it does.” Doll’s voice was flat, allowing no argument, as if she had already hoped and been beaten.

Gracie was almost sure she must have someone in particular in her mind.

“Is that why you stay, even though it in’t a good place?”

Doll froze. “I didn’t say it wasn’t a good place!”

“I in’t goin’ ter go an’ tell anyone you said that,” Gracie protested. “Anyway, maybe she’ll change now. Things is goin’ ter be different now Mr. Greville’s dead, poor creature.”

“He wasn’t a poor creature.” She almost choked on the words.

“I meant ’er. She looks terrible pale and scared, like she knew ’oo done it.”

Doll turned around very slowly. Her face was white; her hands gripped the marble ledge of the sink top as though if she let go she might fall.

“ ’Ere!” Gracie started forward. “Yer goin’ ter faint?” She looked around but there was no chair. “Sit on the floor. Afore yer fall over. Yer could hurt yourself rotten on this stone.” Against Doll’s will, Gracie clasped her and threw her inconsiderable weight to catch her and made her ease downwards instead of falling.

Doll crumpled, carrying Gracie down with her. They sat together in a heap on the cold stone floor.

Gracie kept her arm around her, comforting, as she would have one of the children. “You know ’oo done it too, don’t yer?” she pressed. She could not afford to let it go.

Doll started to shake her head, gasping to catch her breath.

“No! No, I don’t know!” She gripped Gracie’s hand, holding it hard. “You have to believe me, I don’t know! I just know it wasn’t me!”

“Course it wasn’t you!” Gracie kept her arms around Doll. She could feel her shaking as the fear ran through her and seemed to fill the air.

“It could have been,” Doll said, clinging to her, her head bent low, her fair hair beginning to straggle out of its pins and its cap. “God knows, I wished him dead often enough!”

Gracie felt the chill take hold of her, as if something dreaded had become real. “Did yer?” She had to ask. She needed to know for Pitt, who was in bad trouble, and anyway, Doll could not keep it all tied up inside her anymore. “Why were that?”

Doll did not answer but just wept quietly as if her heart would break.

Gracie thought of the maid she had seen in the passage near the Grevilles’ bathroom. She hurt almost physically with her desire that it should not have been Doll and her fear that it might have been. She did not want to remember, but the question of denying it did not arise. Apart from the fact that she had seen her, she had told Pitt. He would not forget. Not even if she could let him.

She did not even want the picture cleared in her mind, but she had to see it if she could.

Still Doll said nothing, just huddled there, consumed with pain and fear.

Gracie tried hard to remember, to recapture the picture in her mind. Perhaps there would be something to prove it was not Doll? Nothing came at all. The harder she tried the more elusive it was. She took a deep breath.

“Why did you wish ’im dead, Doll?” she said with far less fear than she felt inside. “What’d ’e do to yer?”

“My child …” Doll said in an agonized whisper. “My baby.”

Gracie thought about all the babies she had known, the living ones and the dead, the unwanted, the loved and cherished who still got sick or had accidents, the ones she cared for at home in Bloomsbury, although they were hardly babies now, only in moments when they were tired and frightened or hurt. Perhaps everyone was then.

She held Doll as if she too was a child. There was nothing absurd in the fact that Doll was taller, older, handsomer. In this instant it was Gracie who had the strength and the wisdom.

“What’d ’e do to yer baby?” she whispered.

For another long moment there was silence. Doll could not bring herself to say the words. Gracie knew what it would be before Doll did at last manage to say it.

“He made me … have it killed … before it was born ….”

There was no possible answer. The only thing she could do was hold her closer, rock her a little, nurse the grief.

“Were it ’is baby?” she said after a few moments.

Doll nodded her head.

“Did yer love ’im, afore that?”

“No! No, I just wanted to keep my job. He’d have thrown me out if I’d said no to him. Then if I kept the baby he’d have put me out without a character. I’d have ended up walking the streets, in a whorehouse, and the baby would probably still have died. Least this way it never knew anything. But I loved that baby. It was mine—just as much as if it’d been born. It was part of my body.”

“Course it was,” Gracie agreed. The coldness inside her was now a hard, icy anger, like a stone in her stomach. “ ’Ow long ago were it?”

“Three years. But it doesn’t hurt any less.”

That was some small relief. At least it was not so very recent. If she had been going to kill him in revenge, she had already had three years and not done it.

“ ’Oo else knows about it?”

“No one.”

“Not Mrs. Greville or the cook? Cooks can be awful observant.” She nearly added “so I hear,” then realized that would give away that Charlotte had no cook.

“No,” Doll answered.

“They must ’a thought summink. Yer must ’a looked like yer’d broke yer ’eart. Yer still do.”

Doll gave a sigh that ended in a sob, and Gracie held her tighter.

“They just thought I’d fallen in love,” Doll said with a fierce sniff. “I wish I had. It couldn’t hurt this much.”

“I dunno,” Gracie said softly. “But if you din’t kill ’im, ’oo did?”

“I don’t know, I swear. One of the Irishmen.”

“Well, if I were Mrs. Greville, an’ I knew wot yer just told me, I would ’ave killed ’im, no trouble,” Gracie said candidly.

Doll moved back and sat up. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained.

“She didn’t know!” she said vehemently. “She didn’t, Gracie! She’d never ’ave been able to hide it. I know. I was with her every day.”

Gracie said nothing. Doll was right.

“Come on,” Doll urged, her face full of urgency now, her own fear temporarily forgotten. “You’re a lady’s maid. You know everything in your house, don’t you? Everything about your mistress. You know her better than anyone, better than her husband or her mother!”

Gracie did not want to argue that point. Her house was not like Doll’s, and Charlotte was certainly nothing like Eudora Greville.

“I suppose,” she said with a sigh.

“You won’t tell no one.” Doll gripped her arm. “You won’t!”

“ ’Oo’d I tell?” Gracie shook her head a little. “Could ’appen ter anyone, if they was pretty enough.”

But it ate at Gracie all day and she could not get her pity or her anger at it out of her mind. And more than that, Doll’s trust in her tore at her loyalty to Pitt. She had made up her mind that she could say nothing. She really did believe that Doll had not killed him, and Doll would surely know if Eudora knew of Greville’s treatment of her. How could any woman hide the knowledge that her husband had behaved that way and hide it from the victim, of all people? If Charlotte had had such a terrible secret, Gracie would have known.