A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

n the morning, breakfast was eaten, largely in silence. Then Mr. Netheridge asked the guests to leave the withdrawing room for a certain matter of business he had to attend to, all but Joshua, Caroline, and Vincent. Perhaps no one except Caroline noticed that the butler and three footmen were waiting in the hall.

“Is this about Alice … Miss Netheridge?” Vincent asked curiously when the doors were closed.

“No,” Netheridge replied. “I think perhaps Mrs. Fielding will explain it best.”

Vincent was standing in front of the great stained-glass window. His back was to the magnificent view it partially concealed, even though it was possible to see through its paler sections the sunlight on the snow beyond.

“How melodramatic,” he said, looking at Caroline. “You seem to have acquired a taste for acting yourself. But you need more practice. Your timing is poor, and timing is everything.”

“Actually, I prefer to work with the lights,” she responded. “So much depends on which light you see things in. Anton Rausch has taught me that,” she replied.

Vincent paled. Suddenly his body was stiff, his hands clenched.

“I found his body,” she added simply. She touched her own cheek. “The makeup had slipped, and I recognized him from a photograph I once saw in a theater. He was a great actor, better than you, Vincent. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Nothing to do with that actress, beautiful as she was.”

Vincent’s face hardened. “He came for revenge. He didn’t know who had fixed the blade at the time it happened, and of course they jailed him. He must have worked it out, or somebody else did, and told him. He attacked me. He came at me with that broom handle, spiked at the end like the blade of a halberd.” He lifted his shoulder a little, his gaze steady on her face. “Wicked-looking thing. I barely had time to defend myself and turn his lunge back against him.”

“Vincent, don’t make more of a fool of yourself than necessary,” Joshua said wearily. “You are at the end of this. There is no way you could have turned a weapon that length against the man holding it. And there are no wounds on you. You attacked him, to keep the truth from coming out. I’m sure he did want revenge, at a price you could not afford.”

It was Netheridge who moved toward Vincent. “The snow is thawing. We’ll be able to get a man out to fetch the police by tomorrow. Until then we’ll lock you in one of the storerooms—”

Vincent sprang suddenly and without any warning. He leaped forward and grasped a light wooden chair. If he smashed it, then one of its legs would make a dagger of hard, sharp-pointed wood. But Caroline was faster; she picked up the onyx ashtray from the table nearest her and threw it at him. He ducked it, caught his arm in the huge velvet curtain, and lost his balance. He fell backward, dragging the curtain with him, fighting hard and panicking. There was a splintering crash and the whole vast stained-glass window buckled and flew outward, Vincent with it. His thin scream echoed back in the air, and then stopped abruptly.

Caroline felt the sudden rush of cold air, and at the same moment heard in the silence the church bells in the distance, ringing out Christmas morning in Whitby.

Slowly she walked over to the gaping space and forced herself to look down. Vincent lay on his back on the paved courtyard two stories beneath, arms and legs splayed like a broken doll in the snow.

She heard movement and felt Joshua’s arm around her, holding her tightly, close to him.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he said, his voice catching a little. “I’d rather it were this way, for Vincent as well as for us.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed softly. She turned back from the clean, icy air, retreating into the room again.

Eliza was staring at the remnants of the window, her face ashen.

“I’m so sorry,” Caroline apologized.

Netheridge cleared his throat and put his arm around Eliza. “Not your fault, Mrs. Fielding. It was a tragedy that just happened to end here. It isn’t a quick thing. Mr. Singer let the evil in a long time ago, and it must have been like a rat, gnawing at his soul all these years. I’ve learned a thing or two from your play, the bits I’ve seen, and what Eliza’s told me about. Made me think I’ve been holding on too tightly to things I shouldn’t have. Kept too many doors shut for too long. Time to open them, time to let the good in, too.”

Caroline nodded very slowly, and smiled at him.

Behind her, other church bells joined in the welcome of the day when, briefly, gloriously, all mankind is at home.