Cardington Crescent (38 page)

Memory of death came back sharp and cold, physically painful, and the tears stung in her eyes. She found she was clinging to his hand so hard she must be hurting him, but he did not pull away. Instead he put his arm round her and held her, touching her hair with his lips, whispering words that had no meaning, but whose gentleness she felt with an ease that made weeping not an ache but a release from pain, an undoing of the hard, frightened knots inside her.

She realized that she wanted the solution to the crime almost as much for him as for herself. She longed with an intense need to know that he was untouched, unmarked by it.

Charlotte also was happy to be alone, and spent some time in the dressing room which was her bedroom, repeating in her mind all that she had learned since the first news of George’s death right up to Pitt’s departure this morning.

It was half past three when she went downstairs with the small spark of an idea she wanted to disbelieve. It was ugly and sad, and yet it answered all the contradictions.

She was in the withdrawing room, almost at the curtains which half covered the French doors to the conservatory, when she heard the voices.

“How dare you say such a thing in front of everyone!” It was Eustace, loud and angry. His broad back was to the doors and beyond him she could just see the sunlight on William’s flaming hair. “I can forgive you a lot in your bereavement,” Eustace went on. “But that insinuation was appalling. You as good as said I was guilty of murder!”

“You were perfectly happy to see Emily blamed—or Jack,” William pointed out.

“That’s entirely different. They are not part of us.”

“For God’s sake, what has that got to do with it?” William demanded furiously.

“It has everything to do with it!” Eustace was growing angrier, and there was an ugly note in his voice, as if the dark and unrefined mass of inner thoughts were too close to the frail surface of manners that overlaid them. “You betrayed the family in front of strangers! You suggested there was something secret and shameful which you knew and others didn’t. Have you no conception what a meddling and inquisitive busybody that Pitt woman is? The dirty-minded little chit will never rest until she either uncovers or invents something to fit your wild ramblings. God knows what scandal she’ll start!”

William moved back a step; his face was twisted with pain and contempt. “She’ll have to be very dirty-minded indeed to get to the depths of your soul, if that is not too grand a word for it. Perhaps
belly
would be more apposite?”

“There’s nothing wrong with a man having stomach,” Eustace said with answering scorn. “I sometimes think if you had more stomach and fewer airy-fairy ideas you’d be more of a man! You mince around dabbling in paints and dreaming of sunsets like a lovesick girl. Where’s your courage? Where’s your heart, your manliness?”

William did not answer. Beyond Eustace, standing with his back to her, Charlotte could see the white, almost deathlike look on William’s face, and she could feel pain in the air like the hot settling of condensation on the lily leaves and the vines.

“Great God!” Eustace shouted with unutterable disgust. “No wonder Sybilla took to flirting with George Ashworth! At least he had something in his trousers besides his legs!”

William winced with revulsion so acute Charlotte thought for a moment he had actually been struck. She was so offended for him herself that she felt sick; her hands were clammy and hurt with the strength of her clenched fists. Yet she still stood transfixed, listening, with a terrible foresight.

William’s answer when it came was quiet, heavy with irony.

“And you expect me to be discreet for you in front of Mrs. Pitt? Father, you have no sense of the ridiculous—indeed the grotesque.”

“Is it grotesque to expect a little responsibility from you?” Eustace shouted. “Family loyalty? You owe us that, William.”

“I owe you nothing but my existence!” William said gratingly between his teeth. “And that was only because you wanted a son for your own vanity’s sake, it was nothing to do with me. You want to continue your name. A perpetuation of little Eustace Marches all down through eternity, that’s your idea of being immortal. With you it would be the flesh! Not an idea, not a creation, but an endless reproduction of bodies!”

“Ha!” Eustace said explosively, with overpowering derision. “Well, I missed my chance with you, didn’t I? In twelve years of marriage you couldn’t beget a child till now. And it’s too late! If you’d played about less with paints and more in the bedroom, perhaps you’d have been more of a man, and none of this damn tragedy would have happened. George and Sybilla would be alive, and we wouldn’t have the police in the house.”

The conservatory was motionless; it seemed even the water did not drip.

Charlotte realized the tragic truth. The explanation was clear, like the hard, white daylight of early morning, showing every weakness, every flaw and pain. Without taking time to think or weigh any consequence she seized a china vase off the nearest small table and smashed it on the parquet floor, sending the pieces shivering noisily across the wide surface. Then she turned and ran back across the withdrawing room, through the dining room, and out into the hallway to where the telephone instrument was installed.

She picked it up and clicked the lever urgently. She was not used to it and was unsure exactly how it worked. Her ears were straining to catch the sound of Eustace coming after her.

There was a woman’s voice coming through the speaker at her ear.

“Yes!” she said quickly. “I want the police station—I want to speak to Inspector Pitt. Please!”

“Do you want the local police station, ma’am?” the voice asked calmly.

“Yes! Yes, please!”

“Hold the line, please.”

It seemed an age of clicking and buzzing, during which she was acutely aware of the dining room door behind her and every tiny creak of boards or whisper which could be a door opening wider or the softness of a shoe on carpet. At last she heard a man’s voice at the other end of the line.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, Inspector Pitt ain’t here. Can I give ’im a message when ’e comes in? Or can somebody else ’elp you?”

It had not occurred to her that he might not be there. She felt helpless, cut off.

“You there, miss?” The voice sounded anxious.

“Where is he?” She was beginning to panic. It was stupid, and yet she did not seem to be able to help herself.

“I can’t rightly tell you that, miss, but ’e left about ten minutes ago in a cab. Can I ’elp you?”

“No.” She had been so sure she could reach him, the thought of having to manage alone was worse now. “No, thank you.” And with stiff fingers, shivering, she replaced the instrument in its hook.

She had no proof anyhow, only the certainty within her own mind. But now that she knew, there would be ways. The police surgeon ... That was what Sybilla had gone to Clarabelle Mapes for: not to get rid of a baby, but to buy the one William could never give her, to silence the nagging, cruel tongues of the family, the condescension and the demand to satisfy the thoughtless, insatiable, dynastic vanity.

Charlotte was sick with grief for her, her aloneness, her need, the hopeless sense of rejection. No wonder she had had affairs, had turned to George. Was that what George had died for? Not because he had made love to her, or stolen her affections, but because in a moment’s foolishness, from a need to justify herself, she had betrayed to generous, indiscreet George the secret too agonizing to be spoken even in the mind—let alone aloud for others to know, to pity, to make obscene and humiliating jokes over. There would always be the nudges and the jeers, the brazen manhood exhibited with a snigger. To men like Eustace virility was more than a physical act—it was proof of his existence, of potency and value in all of life.

And William had loved Sybilla—that Charlotte knew from far more than the words in the letters from the vanity case—with a love worth infinitely more than Eustace’s narrow, physical mind could climb to. But in that one instance of weakness she had threatened his belief in himself, the respect every man must have to survive—not inwardly, where he had learned to bear it, but in Society, and, worst of all, among his family. Eustace was so close to the truth already, cruel and thrusting, intruding, like a rape of the spirit. What would he do if he knew? Forever pry at it till there was no dignity left, nothing unviolated by the constant remarks, the prurient, mocking eyes, the knowledge of superiority.

And so Sybilla had died, too, strangled by her own, beautiful hair before she could betray him again, perhaps to Jack.

The bought child William might have accepted, even understood, perhaps more easily than one conceived to another man. But he could never have accepted the shame.

Charlotte was still standing in the hallway wondering what to do. Both Eustace and William must have seen her; she had smashed the vase precisely so they should know she was there and stop that terrible hurting. Did they know how much she had overheard? Or were they so caught up in wounding each other that her momentary interruption was incidental, to be forgotten as soon as she left?

Without knowing what she intended other than perhaps to stop Eustace, she began back towards the dining room, past its gleaming, sunlit table, through the double doors to the withdrawing room, all smooth greenness and pale satins reflecting the light, and back to the entrance to the conservatory. There was silence now, and no sign of Eustace or William. The French doors were open wider, and the smell of damp earth came into the withdrawing room.

She stepped through them slowly onto the walk between the vines. She need not have come; there was nothing for her to do, except wait until she could find Pitt and tell him. If it were not for Emily and the fear that would hang over her forever, she would be tempted not to say anything. She did not feel any desire to be an instrument of justice, no sense of satisfaction or resolved anger.

The camellia bush was covered with flawless blooms, perfect rosettes. She did not like them. The canna lilies were better; irregular, assymetrical. The condensation dripped heavily into the pool. Someone should have opened the windows, even though it was a dull day.

She came to the space cleared at the end, where William had his studio, and stopped abruptly. She wanted to weep, but she was too tired and too cold inside.

There were two easels set up. On one was the finished painting of the April garden full of subtle loveliness, dreams, and sudden cruelty. The other was a portrait of Sybilla, realistic, without flattery, and yet with such a tenderness it laid open a beauty in her few had perceived so clearly in life.

In front of them, crumpled rather awkwardly on the stone floor, William lay, the palette knife having slipped from his hand, the blade of it scarlet, only inches away from the wound in his throat. With an artist’s knowledge of anatomy he had sliced the vein in one clean movement. He had understood the smashed vase perfectly and saved her the last ghastly confrontation.

She stood staring at him. She wanted to bend and lay him straighter—as if it could make any difference now—but she knew that she must not touch anything. She remained there, silent, hearing the water trickling on the leaves and the sound of a flower head dropping, petals rotted.

At last she turned and walked slowly under the vines, back through the French windows, and saw Eustace coming in from the dining room. With a violence that startled her, the long path up to the tragedy stood out clearly in her mind; the years of demanding, expecting, the subtle cruelties. Her fury exploded.

“William is dead,” she said harshly. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I liked him—probably far more than you ever did.” She looked at his shocked face, the open mouth and pallid skin, without any gentleness. “He killed himself,” she went on. “There was nothing else left for him, except arrest and hanging.” She found her voice was choking as she said it. She let all her scalding emotions pour out at Eustace.

“I—I don’t know what you mean!” he said helplessly. “Dead? Why? What happened?” He moved towards her, floundering a little. “Don’t just stand there, do something! Help him! He can’t be dead!”

She blocked his way. “He is,” she repeated. “Don’t you understand yet, you stupid, blind man?” She could feel the thickness tightening her throat. She wanted him to know the maiming he had caused, absorb it into itself and become one with it.

He stared at her as if she had struck him. “Killed himself!” he repeated foolishly. “You are hysterical—he can’t have!”

“He has. Don’t you know why?” She was shivering.

“Me! How could I know?” His face was ashen, the first pain of belief beginning to show in his eyes.

“Because it was you who drove him to it.” She spoke more quietly now, as if he were an obstinate child. “Trying to make him into something he wasn’t—couldn’t be—and ignoring all that he was. You with your obsession with family, your pride, your vulgarity, your—” She stopped, not wanting to expose William to his contempt, even now.

He was bewildered. “I don’t understand... .”

She closed her eyes, feeling helpless.

“No. No, I suppose you don’t. But maybe you will one day.”

He sat down on the nearest chair, huddled as if his legs had failed him, still looking up at her.

“William?” he repeated very quietly. “William killed George? And Sybilla—he killed Sybilla?”

Now the tears burned in her eyes. She saw Vespasia in the dining room doorway, white as the wall behind her, and beyond, gentle and untidy, the figure of Pitt.

She made her decision. “He thought there was an affair,” she said slowly to everyone, the words difficult, the lie catching on her tongue. “He was wrong—but it was too late then.”

Eustace was staring at them with the beginnings of comprehension, a glimmer of what she was doing, and even why. It was a world he had not imagined, and he was frightened by his own crassness.

In the doorway Pitt put his arm round Vespasia, supporting her, but he looked over her shoulder at Charlotte. He smiled, his face blurred with pity.

“That’s right,” he said deliberately. “There’s nothing more for us to do now.”