Midnight at Marble Arch (26 page)

Charlotte must have heard his footsteps because she greeted him in the hall, kissing him quickly and then pulling away.

“Is it true?” she said urgently. “Have they arrested a man for the rape and murder of Catherine Quixwood? Is he the same man who raped Angeles? They won’t have to charge him with both, will they? Or would it be better if they did, then at least people would know she was a victim. I heard that he and Catherine were lovers. Is that true? Then why would he rape Angeles?”

“Where would you like me to begin?” Pitt said with a half smile. The warmth of his own home, the smells of clean laundry, of lavender, of furniture wax on polished wood all closed around him, and he wanted to forget the violence and loss of other people’s lives. He needed to build a barrier around himself and, for a time, push all the questions and worry outside, beyond his awareness. But he looked at Charlotte’s troubled face, the anxiety in her eyes, and knew he could not.

“Don’t equivocate, Thomas!” she said. “Tell me!”

“I know what you would like me to say,” he replied, his lips stiff, his tongue fumbling with the words. “That yes, we have someone. That he’s locked away and we’ll prove him guilty. That one day everyone will know Angeles was an innocent victim and her good name will be restored.”

“You think I want a comfortable lie?” she said incredulously. “We’ve been married for fifteen years, Thomas, and that’s what you think? It makes me wonder how many times you have told me what you imagined I wanted to hear rather than the truth. Sometimes? Often? Always?”

“Why are you so invested in this?” he demanded furiously. “You think someone’s going to attack you? No one is.”

“No one is?” She looked at him with real anger and fear. “Who’s to say? Or are you implying these brutes attack only foreigners? Catherine Quixwood was as English as I am!” She drew in a deep breath and went on. “You said he was her lover! So it was someone she knew and trusted. That could happen to any of us, especially someone young, who doesn’t know the difference between real love and—”

“Charlotte!” He cut across her words sharply. “I didn’t actually say anything at all; I just asked which question you wanted answered first.”

She was hurt, all the more so because he was right. “I want all of them answered. Have you told the Castelbrancos?”

“Yes, I have. They would hear of it soon enough, but I wanted to take this as an opportunity to warn Rafael not to do anything foolish.”

She paled, the anger in her eyes instantly replaced by horror.

He put his arm around her and gently led her toward the parlor. When they were inside he closed the door.

“They have arrested a very respectable young married man named Alban Hythe,” he told her, his voice calmer now. “His wife is young and charming, and so far still believes in him totally.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened, all fury turned to pity. “Poor woman,” she whispered. “I imagine she loves him—loves what she thought he was. She won’t be able to bear thinking anything else … until she has to.” She shook her head, and all the tiny muscles in her face tightened as she imagined the other woman’s pain. “I didn’t think there would be anything worse than losing a child, but perhaps this would be. It has robbed her not only of the present and the future, but of all that she believed of the past.”

“We don’t know that he’s guilty,” Pitt said gently. He wanted to comfort her, but he would not dare say anything less than the truth.

“Narraway isn’t at all sure that Hythe is guilty,” he said, watching her face.

She was startled. “Victor isn’t?”

Pitt didn’t mind that Charlotte had used his given name, that there was a degree of familiarity between his wife and his friend. He was perfectly aware that Narraway had been in love with Charlotte during the Irish adventure, and for some time before that, and that
Charlotte knew it. She was quite certain that the feelings would pass, if they hadn’t already. Pitt wasn’t sure he agreed, but he trusted Narraway entirely.

“No,” Pitt agreed. “And he has been doing some investigating of his own.”

“So this Hythe man, he was Catherine’s lover?” she asked.

“He says not. She was lonely, intelligent, starved for someone with whom to share ideas, discovery, beauty.”

“And her husband is …” she chose her words delicately, “… a bore?”

“Perhaps insensitive,” he amended. “Yes, from her point of view, very possibly a bore. Maybe he was too involved in his business affairs.”

“And she was lonely enough to take a lover?” she pressed.

“Enough to seek a friend,” he corrected. “At least that is what Narraway thinks. He says Mrs. Hythe is also warm and interesting, and quite individual.”

Charlotte smiled. “For him to have noticed, she must be! So do they have the wrong man?”

“I don’t know, but it seems quite possible.”

“And what about Neville Forsbrook?” she challenged. “There is no doubt he is the one Angeles Castelbranco was terrified of.”

“Isn’t there?” Pitt thought back to his conversation with Stoker. “I wanted to ask you about that. You don’t think it could have been one of the other young men he was with? Think carefully, remember exactly what you saw.”

“Would that be his defense, if you charged him?” she said quickly.

“I imagine so.”

“Well, it was him. The others were only following his lead. She was looking at him all the time she backed away.” There was absolute conviction in her voice and in the bright anger in her eyes. “I’ll swear to it if I have to,” she added.

“You won’t.” Suddenly he was weary. “There’s nothing with which to charge him.”

“So Hythe may be innocent, and yet he’ll go to trial, whereas Forsbrook is guilty, and he’ll walk away without anyone even mentioning
his name? What’s the matter with the world?” Now there was fear in her face again: fear of the unreason, the lack of justice.

Pitt wanted desperately to give her an answer that would offer comfort, or at least hope. She was looking at him, wanting it not only for herself but for everyone, for her children, and there was nothing he could say.

“Hythe hasn’t been tried yet,” he said quietly. “He may be found not guilty, clear his name.”

“Will it clear his name?” she asked. “Or will people go on thinking it was him, but that he just got away with it? Do you suppose people in general will really listen to the evidence?”

“We may get someone else for it,” he said, trying to force hope into his voice and his eyes.

“And Forsbrook?” she went on. “Will justice ever catch up with him? Or will people go on, happy with the easy answer that Angeles was a foreigner who lacked propriety?” Then she saw his face, and blushed miserably. “I’m sorry, Thomas. I know there’s nothing you can do. I wish I hadn’t said that.”

He smiled and kissed her gently. “I’m still looking for proof.”

“Be careful,” she warned. “It won’t help anybody if the government throws you out.”

“I won’t give them the excuse. I promise.” But even as he said it, he wondered if that was possible.

T
HEY ATE DINNER AT
the kitchen table with the late sun streaming in through the back windows. The smell of clean cotton emanated from the sheets on the airing rail, and there was fresh bread on the rack above the oven.

Daniel ate with relish, as usual, but Jemima pushed her food around her plate. Her face was miserable, eyes down.

“If you don’t want that potato, can I have it?” Daniel asked hopefully, looking at her plate.

“ ‘May I,’ ” Charlotte corrected him automatically.

Daniel was disappointed. “You want it?” he said with surprise.

“No, thank you.” She stifled a smile. “The word ‘like’ is better than ‘want,’ in that way. ‘I would like it, please.’ But ‘can’ refers to ability. If you are asking permission for something you say, ‘may I please.’ ”

Wordlessly Jemima passed the potato over to her brother.

“Papa, what happened to Mrs. Quixwood? Why did she kill herself?” she asked suddenly.

Charlotte drew in her breath, held it a second, staring at Pitt, who looked quite taken aback. Then she let it out in a sigh.

“Was she in love with someone she shouldn’t have been in love with?” Tears brimmed in Jemima’s eyes and her cheeks were pink.

“You don’t kill yourself over that!” Daniel said with disgust. “Well, I suppose girls might …”

“It’s usually men who run out of control in that area, not women,” Charlotte said sharply. “And we don’t know what happened yet. Maybe we never will.”

“She was attacked in a very personal way,” Pitt replied, looking at Daniel. “Parts of the body that are private. And then she was badly beaten. She drank some wine with medicine in it, possibly to dull the pain, and she took too much, perhaps by accident, and that is what she died of.”

Daniel looked startled by all of this information, and suddenly very sober.

Pitt plowed on. “When you are older you will develop certain appetites and desires toward women. It’s a natural part of becoming a man. You will learn how to control them and, most important, that you do not make love to a woman unless she is as willing as you are.”

“You do not make love to her unless you are married to her!” Charlotte corrected him firmly, with a quick glance at Jemima, then back to Pitt.

In spite of himself, Pitt smiled. “We will have a long talk about that, a little later,” he told his son. “And not at the dinner table.”

“If he really hurt her, and it was his fault, why does everybody seem angry with her?” Jemima asked.

“Because they’re frightened,” Charlotte said before Pitt could
frame an answer he thought suitable for his daughter, not really knowing how much she knew of the whole subject.

Jemima blinked and a tear slid down her cheek. “Why are they frightened?”

“Because rape can happen to any woman,” Charlotte said. “Just like being struck by lightning.”

“Hardly anyone gets struck by lightning,” Daniel pointed out. “And if you don’t go out and stand in the middle of a field in a thunderstorm, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte smiled at him. “That was the point I was trying to make. But when it does happen to someone, then people become afraid and they blame the person it happened to, because if it was their own fault, rather than the lightning’s fault, then everyone else is safe.”

“Was it her own fault?” Jemima did not seem comforted.

Charlotte looked at her steadily. “We have no idea, and it would be cruel of us to assume it was until we know. But perhaps you and I should have a longer talk about it this evening, at a more suitable time. Now please eat the rest of your dinner, and let us discuss something more pleasant.”

T
HE CONVERSATION COULD NOT
be avoided. Charlotte knew from Jemima’s unhappy face that something was troubling her profoundly, something more than the usual day-to-day dreams and nightmares of being fourteen.

“Would it be my fault if—if I … really liked someone?” Jemima asked, her eyes lowered, too afraid to look up at her mother.

“What you feel is not your fault,” Charlotte picked her way through the minefield. “But what you do about it is your responsibility. Perhaps in view of what everyone is talking about, it is a good time to discuss what is wise behavior, what is becoming, and what is very likely to be misunderstood and taken as permission you really do not mean to give.”

“We’ve already talked about it, Mama.”

“Then why are you still unhappy and apparently confused?”

Jemima looked up and blinked, tears in her eyes again. “What is rape? I mean exactly? Could it happen to me? Would I die? I mean, would I have to commit suicide? That’s a terrible sin, isn’t it?”

“If someone is so desperately unhappy that she is driven to suicide, then I think I would forgive her,” Charlotte answered. “And I am certain God is better than I am, so I think He would forgive her too. There might be a price to pay, I don’t know. There normally is for anything done less well than we could have done it, for acts of omission as well as commission. But it is not my place, thank heaven, to judge anyone else. And as far as Mrs. Quixwood is concerned, we don’t know if she meant to die.”

“So she’ll be all right? In heaven, I mean?” Jemima said earnestly.

“Certainly. It is the man who raped her who will not.”

“Everybody says ‘rape,’ but they don’t say what he actually did to her.”

Charlotte knew that she must face the issue now, or make it even worse.

“We have talked about love and marriage before, and having children,” she said frankly. “If you love someone, and he is gentle and funny and wise, as your father is, then the acts of intimacy are wonderful. You will treasure them always. But if you imagine that kind of act with someone you do not know or like, and he tears your clothes off you and forces you and hurts you—”

Jemima let out a gasp of horror.

“That is what is called rape,” Charlotte finished. “It is terrible at the time—it must be—but that is not all. You may find that you are with child, which will have consequences for the rest of your life, because the child is a person, and one you have brought into the world. You will love him, or her, but the child will also remind you of what happened.”

Jemima stared at her, blinking slowly, tears on her cheeks.

“And as you have already heard, people will tend to blame you,” Charlotte continued. “They will say that somehow it was your own
fault. You were dressed in such a way that he thought you were willing, or that you invited him and only said ‘no’ at the last moment. Or he may even say you were perfectly happy at the time, but that you are now claiming it is his fault now so that you are not to blame for losing your virginity, and therefore your reputation.”

“I think I might kill myself too,” Jemima said slowly.

“There will be no need,” Charlotte told her steadily. “It will not happen to you. You will not see young men alone until you are a very great deal older, by which time you will also be wiser and more able to make your own wishes known, unmistakably. No one ever treated me that way, nor will they treat you less than as the woman you choose to be.”

Jemima nodded. “And Papa will catch the man who did that to Mrs. Quixwood, won’t he?”