Ashworth Hall (24 page)

Pitt came back after dark, his clothes grimy after the long train journey. He was still horribly stiff from his horseback ride across country, and now he was so tired he looked as if he would rather go to bed than change and go downstairs again to the dining room with the effort of civility that would entail. He had to watch what was said all the time, the emotional tension. He looked defeated, and Gracie could only guess at what they had said to him up in London.

Charlotte had already dressed in the blue silk and gone down for dinner, looking wonderful. She felt it was best if she watched and listened as much as possible, just in case she observed something, but it left her no time to do more than welcome him home and ask anxiously what Cornwallis had said.

Only Gracie knew what an effort it had cost her. She was so tensed up it was a hard job to lace up her straps tight enough, her back hurt, and she had the kind of headache no amount of lavender oil or feverfew would lift for long. Half an hour after you thought you got rid of it, it was back again. But Charlotte did not mention it.

Gracie stood in the dressing room doorway and watched Pitt fiddle to put the studs in his shirt. That Tellman was useless. He should have been doing it.

“I’ll do that for yer, sir,” she offered, coming forward.

“Thank you.” Pitt handed the shirt to her, and she picked up the studs and threaded them through, her fingers quick and supple.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Gracie?” He swiveled to face her, his attention complete.

She had not been going to tell him, but she found herself doing so. The words spilled out and it was impossible to equivocate or pretend she had not asked Doll the next question, and the next.

She felt guilty. It was too late to draw any of it back. She had betrayed Doll, who had already suffered so much. But what if Mrs. Greville had killed her husband? She had good reason, if she knew what he had done. And Gracie could not lie to Pitt, and saying nothing would be the same as a lie. She owed him far more than that, and Charlotte too. She could never forgive herself if she knew the truth and Pitt were blamed for failure, when all the time Gracie could have told him what he needed to find the answer.

And Pitt also had no choice. He sat all through dinner turning over in his mind what Gracie had told him. He was only vaguely aware of the conversation around him, of Emily bright-eyed and nervous, trying to watch everyone and the servants at the same time, of Jack being immeasurably more genial than he must have felt, and of Charlotte looking a little pale, not eating much, and trying to fill in the gaps in the conversation.

He took no pleasure in the food on his own plate, exquisite as it was, food he could normally only imagine. Gracie’s words filled his thoughts and drove out everything else. It was one of the most wretched stories he had ever heard, and only over the gooseberry tart and iced meringues did he realize with surprise that he had never doubted it. It was a reflection on his personal estimate of Ainsley Greville that he had not even considered that Gracie had been lied to. It was too much like the man revealed in the letters in the study in Oakfield House. The arrogance was there, the callousness towards women. He would regard Doll as his own, paid for with every week’s wages. That he had used her was bad enough, if not as uncommon as one would wish. Forcing her to have the child aborted or face a life alone on the streets was beyond forgiveness.

He could not ignore it, neither could he forget it, and it was too powerful a motive for murder for him to leave it unexamined.

He excused himself from the table before the port was passed. He went to the servants’ hall to find Wheeler. If he had no knowledge of it, it would be brutal to tell him. But murder was brutal, so were the fear, misery and suspicion that fell on innocent people, their lives taken apart, then other, irrelevant, secrets torn open.

“Yes sir?” Wheeler said with a frown when Pitt took him aside to the butler’s pantry, Dükes being occupied in the withdrawing room.

Pitt closed the door. “I wouldn’t ask you this if it were not necessary,” he began. “I regret it, and if I can keep it from going any further, then I will.”

Wheeler looked anxious. He was really a very agreeable man, perhaps younger than Pitt had supposed earlier, when he had first seen him on the morning of Greville’s death. He was serious, but there was something gentle in his face, and perhaps in other circumstances he could laugh or dance like anyone else.

“Wheeler, you must know Mrs. Greville’s maid, Doll?”

Wheeler’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, perhaps no more than a tightening of muscles.

“Doll Evans? Yes, sir, of course I do. She’s a very good girl, hardworking, good at her job, never gives any trouble.”

Pitt sensed the defensiveness in Wheeler. The answer had been too quick. Was he fond of her, or simply protecting his own household?

“Did she have an illness about three years ago?” Pitt asked.

Wheeler was guarded. A sharpness in his eyes betrayed a need to be careful. Pitt was sure in that moment that he did know.

“She was ill for a while, yes sir.” He did not enquire why Pitt asked.

“Do you know what she suffered from?”

There was a slight flush of pink in Wheeler’s cheeks.

“No sir. It was not my place to ask, and she did not say. That kind of thing is personal.”

“Was she changed in any way when she recovered?” Pitt pressed.

Wheeler’s face smoothed out until it was bland, almost defiant, but the long-trained courtesy did not vanish, only became remote, a thing of habit.

“Was she?” Pitt asked again.

Wheeler looked straight at him. His eyes were gray—and completely guarded.

“She took a long time to recover herself, sir, yes. I think she must have been ill indeed. Sometimes it can take a person that way.” He took a breath and made a decision to go on. “When you have to work to support yourself, it can be very frightening to be seriously ill, sir. There’s no one’ll look after a girl like Doll if she can’t work, and we all know that. You try not to think of it, but sometimes circumstances makes you.”

“I know,” Pitt said quietly, meaning it. “I think you forget, Mr. Wheeler, I am a policeman, not one of the gentry here. I have no private income. I have to earn my way just as you do.”

Wheeler flushed very slightly. “Yes sir. I did forget that,” he apologized without retreating an inch. “I don’t know why you’re asking about Doll, but she’s an honest and decent girl, sir. She’d tell you the truth about anything, or keep silent, but she wouldn’t lie.”

“Yes, she would,” Pitt said gently. “To protect Mrs. Greville’s feelings, and when the harm can’t be undone.”

Wheeler stared at him. Pitt saw in his face he was never going to admit he knew. It might be for Eudora’s sake, but Pitt thought it was for Doll’s. There was a color in Wheeler’s cheeks which was emotion, not mere loyalty. Pitt did not need to press it any further. He had seen all he wanted to, and Wheeler knew he had.

“Thank you,” he said with a little nod, and opened the pantry door.

He went up the servants’ staircase, then through the baize door upstairs. He did not want to chance meeting anyone on the main staircase who would ask him where he was going. This was something he had to do, though he dreaded it. But like Gracie, the knowledge left him no alternative.

He knocked on Eudora’s door. She had left the dining room even before he had, so he knew she would be there. He hoped she would be alone. Doyle would be with the other men, probably still drinking port, and if Piers were not there also, he would probably be with Justine.

He heard her answer, and went in.

She was sitting in the large chair near the fire again. Her dark gown spilled around her in a dense shadow against the delicate pastels of the room with its flowers and curtains and linens.

Her face tightened when she saw him, and he felt a knot of guilt inside himself. He closed the door.

“What is it, Mr. Pitt?” she asked, the tremor still in her voice. “Have you learned something?”

He walked over and sat down opposite her. He would like to have been able to talk about anything else. She was frightened, perhaps for Doyle. Surely it could not be for Piers? Why did she imagine Doyle might have killed her husband? How violent was his Irish nationalism? On the surface he seemed the most rational of the four of them, certainly more amenable to reason and compromise than Fergal Moynihan or Lorcan McGinley.

“Mrs. Greville,” he began a little awkwardly, “when someone dies, one can discover many things about him one did not know before, sometimes things which are very painful and at odds with what one saw of him, and loved.”

“I know,” she said quickly, putting out her hand as if to stop him. “You do not need to tell me. I appreciate your gentleness, but I already realize that my husband had affairs with women which I knew nothing about. I would prefer not to know now. I daresay in time I will hear all sorts of things, but just at the moment I fee) too … confused ….” She looked at him earnestly. She seemed to care very much what he thought. “I expect you find that weak of me, but I simply don’t know exactly who it is I have lost. Some of what I have learned has horrified me.” She bit her lip, staring up at him. “And what horrifies me almost as much is that I didn’t know. Why didn’t I? Did I deliberately close my eyes, or was it really hidden from me? Who was the man I thought I loved? Who am I, that he chose me, and that I did not see it all those years?” She blinked, as if to close out something, only to find it was within her. “Did he ever love me, or was that false too? And if he did, when did it die? Why did it?” She searched Pitt’s eyes. “Was it my fault? Was it something I did … or didn’t do? Did I fail him?”

He drew in breath to deny it, but she waved her hands. “No, don’t answer that. Above all, don’t tell me kind lies, Mr. Pitt. I have to come to the truth one day, but let me do it slowly … please. I can answer my own question. Of course, I failed him. I did not know him. I should have done. I loved him … not passionately, perhaps, but I loved him. I can’t suddenly stop that feeling, no matter what I learn about him. It is the habit, the pattern of thought and feeling, of more than half my lifetime. I shared so much with him … at least I did with him whether he did with me or not. In a few days everything I thought I knew has been thrown into chaos.” She smiled bleakly. “Please, Mr. Pitt, don’t tell me anything more yet. I don’t know how to change so quickly.”

She looked very vulnerable. She was a woman over forty, yet the softness of youth was still in her face, the curve of her cheek, the unbroken line of her chin and throat, the full lips. She was probably Pitt’s own age. She could have given birth to Piers before she was twenty.

He must remember why he was there: to uncover the truth. He could not afford to protect everyone who needed or deserved it. No matter what his own feelings, he had no right to choose whom to guard and whom not to, nor could he foresee what the results might be of such an act.

“Mrs. Greville, you already know that your husband had liaisons with certain women which were of a physical nature and had nothing to do with any kind of affection.” How could he phrase this to cause as little distress as possible? She was the kind of woman in front of whom even the more violent realities of the daily news should not be discussed, far less the coarseness of private appetite, even if it were of a stranger and not her husband. He felt guilty for forcing her to know something so repugnant. He was about to shatter her memories, her world, to even smaller pieces, so what was left was beyond salvaging.

“Yes, I know, Mr. Pitt. Please don’t tell me. I prefer not to imagine it.” She was quite open about it, not hiding behind any pride, as if she trusted him as the friend he had appeared to be before she knew who he was.

He hesitated. Did she have to know about Doll? He had to investigate it. The motive for murder was intense. The other philanderings were not enough to draw most men to murder, even on a sister’s account, but this was. Even more was it motive for Doll, or anyone who loved her. Could that be Wheeler? He thought not, but it was not impossible.

“Your husband was murdered, Mrs. Greville. I cannot refuse to look at anybody who had a powerful motive for that, no matter how much I would prefer to.”

Unconsciously, her body tensed. “Surely you know the motive? It was political.” She said it as if there could be no doubt. “Ainsley was the one man who might have drawn the two sides together to agree on some compromise. Some of the Irish extremists don’t want a compromise.” She shook her head, her voice gathering strength and conviction. “They would rather go on killing and dying than give up an inch of what they think is theirs. It goes back centuries. It has become part of who we are. We have told ourselves we are a wronged race so often and so long we can’t let go of it.”

She was speaking more and more rapidly.

“There are too many men, and women, whose whole identity is bound up in being people who fight for a great cause. To win would make them nobodies again. What does a war hero do in peacetime? How do you become great when there is nothing to die for? Who are you then, how do you believe in yourself anymore?”

Without intending to, perhaps without even thinking of herself, she had discussed her own confusion and grief as well, the loss of what she had believed her life and her values to be. In the space of hours it had dissolved and taken new and horrible shape. What had she built with her life? She would not be embarrassingly frank enough to say that to him, it would be indelicate, and she would never be that, but it was there in her eyes, and she knew it was understood between them.

He ached, almost physically, to be able to offer her the strength and the comfort, the protection she needed, and he could not. He was going to do the very opposite, make it almost immeasurably worse. Perhaps he was even going to take from her the one person she had left to believe in who cared for her, her brother. Even Piers offered her largely duty and no real understanding. He was too much in love with Justine to see anyone else, and too young to comprehend her distress. He had not yet truly discovered himself, not had time to invest so much of himself in anything that disillusion could tear apart his identity.