Cardington Crescent (19 page)

She saw nothing on his face; he could have been a choirboy standing there. But then, if he were guilty of such a plan he was without conscience, and she should not expect to find any reflection of guilt in his face.

Eustace’s features were composed in pious rectitude and showed nothing but his sense of the occasion and his own part in it. Whatever else was in him, there was no guilt, and absolutely no fear. If he had committed murder it was without remorse. What could possibly, even to his mind, justify that?

That left the last, and the other most obvious, suspects: William and Sybilla. They stood side by side, and yet in only the barest and most literal sense were they together. William looked straight ahead of him over the grave, past Eustace and the figure of Beamish to the yew trees, perpetual guardians of death, skirting the burial yard from the living city, sheltering darkness in their needle leaves and dense, heavy wood. Nothing grew under them, and their fruit was poison.

Such knowledge could have been passing behind William’s silver-gray eyes as he stood listening. There was pain in his mouth, and the flesh of his cheeks was pinched. Charlotte felt pain watching him, as though his fair skin were a layer thinner than other people’s, and the wounds of nature reached the nerves beneath more readily. Perhaps that was necessary, to paint the shadows and the sweeping light in the sky as he did. All the skill in the world cannot interpret what has not first been felt.

Had that delicate, creative hand also stolen the digitalis and emptied it into the coffeepot for George to drink—and die? Why? The answer was glaring: because George had wooed Sybilla, and won her.

Automatically Charlotte’s gaze moved to Sybilla herself. She was a beautiful woman, and dressed in reliefless black she looked better than anyone else here. The white skin of her neck was perfect, almost luminous as pearl, her jaw slender. Her upper face was masked by her veil, and Charlotte had been watching her for several minutes, trying to read something into it, when she noticed the tears bright on her skin and the faint lines of strain, the tight muscles in her throat. She glanced downwards. The black-gloved hands were clenched and the lace was ripped off the handkerchief. Even as she looked the fingers unknotted, picking at the cambric, tearing fragments of the cotton off and letting them fall, little snowflakes of broken lace. Grief? Or guilt? For having seduced another woman’s husband, or for having murdered him when he tired of her?

Suddenly Charlotte felt a cold grip clutch at her, deep in the pit of her stomach. Was Sybilla’s guilt the belief that she had driven Emily to murder? How much had George loved her? There was only Emily’s word about the reconciliation. What had really happened that evening in her bedroom when George had come in? Was Emily now remembering the truth, or only what her pride and her pain told her to remember?

No! That was nonsense ... treacherous ... weak ... Get rid of the thought! Refuse to have it. But how do you refuse to have a thought? The more you try to reject it the stronger its hold on you, the more it consumes your mind.

“Aunt Vespasia!”

But Vespasia was unaware of her; her mind and heart were absorbed in a bright width of memory, nursery days and youth, old confidences and small pleasures shared, foolish hopes, unfettered dreams—all crumpled now into one hard, cold box, so close she might have stretched out her thin hand and touched it.

Then the coffin was lowered into the ground, and Beamish scattered something on the lid where it lay a little crooked deep in the hole. It looked ill-fitting. What did it matter? George would not care. All of him that was real had gone, gone somewhere bright and warm, leaving the fears of earth behind.

Emily bent and picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them in with a clatter. She started to say something, but her voice failed.

Charlotte took her arm and they turned away, keeping Edward between them.

They rode home in silence. Emily had said good-bye to Edward and left him with Mrs. Stevenson to go back to his own home, his nursery, safe and familiar. In her mind she was already alone.

She had not killed George. Someone else had crept into the pantry and slipped the digitalis into the coffeepot. But why? It was the last act at the end of a long succession of events and emotions. Perhaps many people had contributed, each a word, a small addition; but was it Emily herself who had given the major part?

It would be nice to think that George knew some secret that was worth killing to keep; it would drive out the dark thoughts that intruded more and more. There were three real suspects: William, Sybilla, and Jack Radley. And all of them had the same reason—George’s infatuation with Sybilla.

Emily had to be part of it. If she had been warm enough, interesting enough, generous, tactful, gay, witty, then George would never have felt more than a passing attraction to Sybilla. Nothing that mattered, nothing that hurt Emily or William, and nothing that Sybilla would be desperate over losing.

Was she? Had she been so much in love with George? Aunt Vespasia had said Sybilla had had many admirers, and William had never before shown jealousy. She was discreet, and however far it had gone, it was her secret. And even with George there had been nothing that anyone could be sure was more than they saw in the open. She had accepted his admiration, even encouraged it. But had she actually taken him into her bed? The thought hurt deeply; it was a betrayal of all her own most intimate and precious moments, but to try and skirt round it was idiotic. Emily did not know the answer, and there was no reason to imagine that William did.

No, it was far more likely to be a game for Sybilla, a compliment to her vanity, and perhaps a ripple of danger made it more fun.

If William were suddenly jealous, then the one thing he would guard would be his vanity. He had remained complacent all these years. He would not now make a spectacle, a laughingstock of himself by attacking George. There might be sympathy for the cuckolded husband but there was also laughter, a pity profoundly scarred with cruelty, relief that it was someone else. There were ribald jokes, slurs against manhood—and that was the ultimate insult, the unbearable thing that robbed the stuff of life but denied the peace of death. The victim was still sentient and raw to all the awareness of his loss. He would never have brought that upon himself, never—not in hot temper nor in cold revenge.

No. She did not believe William had killed George. It would only bring upon him the very thing every man found intolerable.

Sybilla?

George was charming, fun, generous, but only if she were totally hysterical would she fall so in love with a man she could not marry that a quarrel would turn her into a murderess. She had had other affairs. They must all have ended one way or another. Surely she knew how to conclude it gracefully, how to sense the coming of the break, see the signs, and be the first to cool. She was not eighteen, and far from inexperienced.

Could this affair really have been so radically different? Why should it? Emily could think of no reason.

That left Jack Radley, and the answer to that was the ugly thought she had been trying to avoid all the time. She had encouraged him, and she had enjoyed it. In spite of the misery inside her, the pain over George, she had liked Jack, enjoyed flirting with him, and had felt justified.

Justified! Perhaps—as far as George was concerned. Sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. But what about Jack himself? To begin with, she had hardly bothered to look at him as a person, but simply as an opportunity. He was extraordinarily charming, with outward warmth and virility. She had heard that he had very little money, but she had been uninterested; it made no difference to her.

But did it? If she had bothered to look more closely would she have seen a man in his mid-thirties, of good birth but with no money and no prospects, other than those he could make for himself with his wits? Might she have seen a weak man, grown accustomed to a very gracious style of living, envious of his financial betters and suddenly tempted by a pretty woman; a woman publicly ignored by her husband, vulnerable because she understood the conventions with her mind but not her heart?

Just how far had she encouraged him? Could she possibly have led him to imagine she would marry him if she were free to? Surely he realized her attention was merely a ruse to win George back. Even less than that—a by-product of her being charming rather than create a scene which could only drive George further away!

Perhaps not. Perhaps Jack Radley was even farther from families like the Ashworths or the Marches than she was—perhaps financial restriction and mounting ambition had eroded all other feelings.

She had judged him the sort of man too vain, too fond of his own pleasures and far too aware of his own interests to fall in love. Physical attraction was a different matter, but not to be taken seriously, never to be allowed to jeopardize the things of lasting importance, like means and status. Even the middle classes understood the necessities. One did not throw away everything on a whim. Certainly a man who had survived to thirty-five on his charm and wit knew a great deal better than to give in to romanticism or appetite.

Or did he? People did fall in love; some of the least likely were vulnerable. Had she really been so utterly delightful that he had thrown all sense to the winds—and in a fit of passion murdered George?

No. It would be a calculated greed. And he had chosen his moment so impetuously because somehow he also had heard the row between George and Sybilla and known that his opportunity was slipping away. Another day and it could be gone.

The carriage was passing in the dappled sunlight through an avenue of birch trees, and the wind in the leaves sounded like the rustle of skirts, black bombazine on the graveyard walk, the clink of jet beads round fat necks. She shivered. It was cold inside; the white silk handkerchief in her hand reminded her of lilies, and death.

Was she at heart responsible? She had not wished it, but neither had she cared. The moral guilt would remain, whatever the police discovered. And the social stigma too. The fact that she had done no more than be attentive would be forgotten. Society would remember her as the woman whose lover had murdered her husband.

And the money?

She had already received a quick note from the lawyer, a condolence merely, but she knew there was a great deal of money. Some of it was in trust for Edward, but she herself would still have a very considerable amount—enough to keep Jack Radley in very fine style indeed. And of course, she would have the houses.

The thought was frightening; a cold, clammy sickness gripped like a hand at her stomach. If he had murdered George then she must share the responsibility. If he was discovered she would be a social outcast at best—at worst she would be hanged with him.

If he were not discovered the suspicion would remain over her forever. She would spend the rest of her life with other people wondering and whispering about her. And she might be the only other person who would know without the worm of doubt that she was innocent—and he was guilty.

Could he afford to let her live, with the danger she might one day somehow prove it was he? She would have to try, for her own honor. Surely she would one day also have an “accident,” or maybe even “commit suicide.” The draft through the carriage window brought out goose pimples on her skin.

Luncheon was a chill, formal affair, as a funeral meal should be. Emily bore it with as much dignity as she could, but afterwards she excused herself and went not to her bedroom where Charlotte or Vespasia could find her, but beyond. She wanted time to think without interruption, and she did not want anyone pressing her with questions.

Anywhere in the main house there was the risk of running into one of the others, forcing her either to make some obvious excuse to leave or else to find conversation, knowing what they were thinking of her and going through the charade of forced politeness.

She went up the stairs, and then up the second, narrower flight to what had been the children’s floor a generation ago, where their games and their crying would not disturb the rest of the house. She passed their bedrooms—closed off now—the nurserymaid’s room, the night nursery—empty except for two sheet-covered cribs and a chest of drawers painted pink and white—and at the very end of the corridor came at last into the big main day nursery.

It was like a world apart, trapped in amber a decade ago when Tassie, the last child, had left it. The curtains were wide, and sunlight caught the walls with gold, showing the faded patches and the rime of dust on the tops of the pictures: little girls in crisp pinafores and a boy in a sailor suit. It must have been William, face softer in childhood, bones not yet formed, mouth hesitant in a half smile. In the sepia tint, without the red of his hair, he looked oddly different. In his young face there was something sharply reminiscent of the picture she had seen of Olivia.

The little girls were different, but all but one had Eustace’s round face, round eyebrows, and confident stare. The exception was Tassie, thinner, more candid, more like William, except for her mouth and the bow in her hair.

There was a dappled rocking horse by the window, its bridle broken, saddle worn. A frilled ottoman in patched pink was covered with a row of dolls, all sitting to attention, obviously tidied by the unloving hand of a maid. A box of tin soldiers was closed neatly and piled next to colored bricks, a dollhouse with a front that opened up, two music boxes, and a kaleidoscope.

She sat down on the big nursery chair and caught sight of her own black skirt spread across the pink. She hated black. In the sunlight it looked dusty and old, as if she were wearing something that had died. She would be expected to keep to it for at least a year.

Ridiculous. George would not have wanted it. He liked gay colors, soft colors, especially pale greens. He had always loved her in pale greens, like shaded rivers or young leaves in spring.

Stop it! It was an unnecessary hurt to keep on thinking of George, turning it over and over. It was too soon. Perhaps in a year she would be able to remember only the good things. She would be used to being alone by then, and the rough edges would have worn off the wound. The healing would begin.