Ashworth Hall

7

GRACIE ARRANGED the white chrysanthemums and placed the vase on the table in the dressing room, then drifted downstairs in a vague, delicious daydream. In the hallway she did not see the ancestral portraits or the wood paneling; she saw light on glass and smelled the earth and the damp leaves and rows and rows of flowers. One moment she wanted to remember every word of the conversation, the next it did not matter in the slightest; the way she felt, the warmth of it was everything. Examine it too closely and it might disappear, like taking a tune apart. She had seen the black notes written on the page, and they meant nothing. The magic was gone; it was not music anymore.

She had Charlotte’s dress for the evening over her arm, and it was difficult to hold it high enough to keep the long skirts at the back from trailing on the floor.

“Gracie!”

She only dimly heard the voice.

“Gracie!”

She stopped and turned.

Doll was running down the stairs after her, her face pinched with anxiety.

“What is it?” Gracie asked.

“What are you doing here?” Doll said, taking her by the arm. “We aren’t supposed to carry clothes along these stairs! What if someone came to the door! It’d look terrible. That’s what back stairs is for. You only come down these if you’re sent for to one of the front rooms.”

“Oh. Oh, yeh. O’ course.” She had known that. She was not thinking.

“Where’s yer wits?” Doll asked more gently. “Yer out woolgathering?”

“What? What’s woolgathering?” Without realizing it, her arms were lowering and the blue dress was trailing on the floor.

Doll took it from her. She was six inches taller and it was an easy task for her.

“Picking bits o’ sheep wool that’s got caught in the hedges. I mean your wits are wandering.” She shook her head. “Yer going to iron this? If you weren’t before, you’d better now … and clean the hem of that skirt train.” She looked at the silk appreciatively. “It’s a lovely color. I always imagine the sea looks like that ’round desert islands and such.”

Gracie had no time for desert islands. The best things happened in gardens in England, in the dying blaze of the year. Green and white were the most beautiful colors. She followed Doll obediently through the baize door, along the passageway, turned left, and then past the stillroom, the footmen’s pantry, the room where they hung the pheasants and other game, the coal room, and on to the various laundry rooms and ironing rooms.

Doll put the blue dress on a hanger and inspected it carefully, flicking off specks of dust, wringing out a cloth till it was barely damp, and then wiping the places where Gracie had inadvertently let the hem of the dress brush on the floor.

“It doesn’t look bad,” she said with a slight lift in her voice. “Let it dry a minute or two, then iron it. Mrs. Pitt won’t find fault. You’ve got a good place. You’re lucky.”

Suddenly Gracie put Finn Hennessey from her mind and remembered the moments of unhappiness she had seen in Doll’s face, the deep, searing loneliness and sense of pain, not fleeting, but there all the time, breaking through in an unguarded instant.

“In’t you lucky?” she said very quietly. She nearly asked if Mrs. Greville found fault, but she did not think that was the answer. It seemed too surface, too insubstantial. And although one could not judge someone’s private treatment of their servants by the public face they presented, she had not felt that Eudora was of that nature. Mr. Wheeler was not in the least nervous in his duties. He was deeply shocked at his master’s death, and aware of at least some of what murder meant, but that was not the same thing.

Doll’s back was stiff, her shoulders set as if all her muscles were locked.

“In’t you lucky, then?” Gracie repeated. It was important; it had suddenly come to matter very much.

Doll started to move again, reaching up to the cupboards as if she were looking for starch, or blue, or some other laundry aid, although they were all there in labeled jars, and she took none of them.

“You been very pleasant to me,” Doll said, choosing each word, then delivering it as if it were of no importance. “I wouldn’t like to see you hurt.” She moved a couple of jars around to no purpose, still keeping her back to the room. “Don’t go falling in love, Gracie. Kiss and a cuddle’s all right, but don’t ever let no one take it further than that. There’s grief in it you wouldn’t think to imagine … for the like of us. Don’t take offense. It isn’t my business. I know that.”

“I don’ take no offense,” Gracie said softly. Although she felt the hot blood surge up her face, it was embarrassment. If Doll could read her so well, maybe everyone could. Maybe even Finn could! She must concentrate her mind. She should know how to be a detective. She had had enough example. “Did you fall in love, then?”

Doll laughed, a bitter, tearing sound close to a sob.

“No … I never fell in love. I never met anyone … anyone I felt like that about, not as’d be likely to look at me.”

“Why wouldn’t anybody look at you?” Gracie said frankly. “You’re one of the prettiest girls I seen.”

Some of the rigidity eased out of Doll’s back. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “But that’s not all a man wants. You’ve got to be respectable too, have your character.”

“You mean your reputation?” Gracie asked. “Well, I s’pose so, mostly. But it don’t always count.”

“Yes, it does.” Doll’s voice was flat, allowing no argument, as if she had already hoped and been beaten.

Gracie was almost sure she must have someone in particular in her mind.

“Is that why you stay, even though it in’t a good place?”

Doll froze. “I didn’t say it wasn’t a good place!”

“I in’t goin’ ter go an’ tell anyone you said that,” Gracie protested. “Anyway, maybe she’ll change now. Things is goin’ ter be different now Mr. Greville’s dead, poor creature.”

“He wasn’t a poor creature.” She almost choked on the words.

“I meant ’er. She looks terrible pale and scared, like she knew ’oo done it.”

Doll turned around very slowly. Her face was white; her hands gripped the marble ledge of the sink top as though if she let go she might fall.

“ ’Ere!” Gracie started forward. “Yer goin’ ter faint?” She looked around but there was no chair. “Sit on the floor. Afore yer fall over. Yer could hurt yourself rotten on this stone.” Against Doll’s will, Gracie clasped her and threw her inconsiderable weight to catch her and made her ease downwards instead of falling.

Doll crumpled, carrying Gracie down with her. They sat together in a heap on the cold stone floor.

Gracie kept her arm around her, comforting, as she would have one of the children. “You know ’oo done it too, don’t yer?” she pressed. She could not afford to let it go.

Doll started to shake her head, gasping to catch her breath.

“No! No, I don’t know!” She gripped Gracie’s hand, holding it hard. “You have to believe me, I don’t know! I just know it wasn’t me!”

“Course it wasn’t you!” Gracie kept her arms around Doll. She could feel her shaking as the fear ran through her and seemed to fill the air.

“It could have been,” Doll said, clinging to her, her head bent low, her fair hair beginning to straggle out of its pins and its cap. “God knows, I wished him dead often enough!”

Gracie felt the chill take hold of her, as if something dreaded had become real. “Did yer?” She had to ask. She needed to know for Pitt, who was in bad trouble, and anyway, Doll could not keep it all tied up inside her anymore. “Why were that?”

Doll did not answer but just wept quietly as if her heart would break.

Gracie thought of the maid she had seen in the passage near the Grevilles’ bathroom. She hurt almost physically with her desire that it should not have been Doll and her fear that it might have been. She did not want to remember, but the question of denying it did not arise. Apart from the fact that she had seen her, she had told Pitt. He would not forget. Not even if she could let him.

She did not even want the picture cleared in her mind, but she had to see it if she could.

Still Doll said nothing, just huddled there, consumed with pain and fear.

Gracie tried hard to remember, to recapture the picture in her mind. Perhaps there would be something to prove it was not Doll? Nothing came at all. The harder she tried the more elusive it was. She took a deep breath.

“Why did you wish ’im dead, Doll?” she said with far less fear than she felt inside. “What’d ’e do to yer?”

“My child …” Doll said in an agonized whisper. “My baby.”

Gracie thought about all the babies she had known, the living ones and the dead, the unwanted, the loved and cherished who still got sick or had accidents, the ones she cared for at home in Bloomsbury, although they were hardly babies now, only in moments when they were tired and frightened or hurt. Perhaps everyone was then.

She held Doll as if she too was a child. There was nothing absurd in the fact that Doll was taller, older, handsomer. In this instant it was Gracie who had the strength and the wisdom.

“What’d ’e do to yer baby?” she whispered.

For another long moment there was silence. Doll could not bring herself to say the words. Gracie knew what it would be before Doll did at last manage to say it.

“He made me … have it killed … before it was born ….”

There was no possible answer. The only thing she could do was hold her closer, rock her a little, nurse the grief.

“Were it ’is baby?” she said after a few moments.

Doll nodded her head.

“Did yer love ’im, afore that?”

“No! No, I just wanted to keep my job. He’d have thrown me out if I’d said no to him. Then if I kept the baby he’d have put me out without a character. I’d have ended up walking the streets, in a whorehouse, and the baby would probably still have died. Least this way it never knew anything. But I loved that baby. It was mine—just as much as if it’d been born. It was part of my body.”

“Course it was,” Gracie agreed. The coldness inside her was now a hard, icy anger, like a stone in her stomach. “ ’Ow long ago were it?”

“Three years. But it doesn’t hurt any less.”

That was some small relief. At least it was not so very recent. If she had been going to kill him in revenge, she had already had three years and not done it.

“ ’Oo else knows about it?”

“No one.”

“Not Mrs. Greville or the cook? Cooks can be awful observant.” She nearly added “so I hear,” then realized that would give away that Charlotte had no cook.

“No,” Doll answered.

“They must ’a thought summink. Yer must ’a looked like yer’d broke yer ’eart. Yer still do.”

Doll gave a sigh that ended in a sob, and Gracie held her tighter.

“They just thought I’d fallen in love,” Doll said with a fierce sniff. “I wish I had. It couldn’t hurt this much.”

“I dunno,” Gracie said softly. “But if you din’t kill ’im, ’oo did?”

“I don’t know, I swear. One of the Irishmen.”

“Well, if I were Mrs. Greville, an’ I knew wot yer just told me, I would ’ave killed ’im, no trouble,” Gracie said candidly.

Doll moved back and sat up. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained.

“She didn’t know!” she said vehemently. “She didn’t, Gracie! She’d never ’ave been able to hide it. I know. I was with her every day.”

Gracie said nothing. Doll was right.

“Come on,” Doll urged, her face full of urgency now, her own fear temporarily forgotten. “You’re a lady’s maid. You know everything in your house, don’t you? Everything about your mistress. You know her better than anyone, better than her husband or her mother!”

Gracie did not want to argue that point. Her house was not like Doll’s, and Charlotte was certainly nothing like Eudora Greville.

“I suppose,” she said with a sigh.

“You won’t tell no one.” Doll gripped her arm. “You won’t!”

“ ’Oo’d I tell?” Gracie shook her head a little. “Could ’appen ter anyone, if they was pretty enough.”

But it ate at Gracie all day and she could not get her pity or her anger at it out of her mind. And more than that, Doll’s trust in her tore at her loyalty to Pitt. She had made up her mind that she could say nothing. She really did believe that Doll had not killed him, and Doll would surely know if Eudora knew of Greville’s treatment of her. How could any woman hide the knowledge that her husband had behaved that way and hide it from the victim, of all people? If Charlotte had had such a terrible secret, Gracie would have known.

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.

He began with the easiest question, the first thing to eliminate.

“When your husband was in the bath, you were here in your room, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” She looked puzzled. “I already told you that when you asked before.”

“And your maid, Doll Evans, was with you?”

“Yes, most of the time. Why?” There was a shadow in her eyes. “Even if I had known how Ainsley was behaving, I would not have harmed him.” She smiled. “I had imagined you understood me better than that, Mr. Pitt.”

“I did not imagine you hurt him, Mrs. Greville,” he said honestly. “I wanted to know where Doll was.”

“Doll?” Her delicate eyebrows rose in disbelief. It was almost laughter. “Why on earth would Doll wish him any harm? She is as English as you are, and completely loyal to me. She has no cause to hurt us, Mr. Pitt. We looked after her when she was ill, and kept the position for her return. She would be the last person to harm either of us.”

“Was she with you all that quarter hour when your husband was in the bath?” he repeated.

“No. She went to fetch something, I don’t recall what. It may have been a cup of tea, I think it was.”

“How long was she away?”

“I don’t know. Not long. But the idea that she would attack my husband in the bath is absurd.” It was plain in her face that she had no fear it could be true. She sincerely thought it was preposterous.

“Did Mr. Doyle visit you often, either in London or at Oakfield House?”

“Why? What is it you are seeking after, Mr. Pitt?” She was frowning now. “Your questions do not make any sense. First you ask about Doll, now Padraig. Why?”

“What illness did Doll suffer? Did Mr. Doyle know of it?”

“I don’t remember.” She tightened her hands in her lap. “Why? I don’t know what illness it was. What can it matter?”

“She was with child, Mrs. Greville—”

“Not by Padraig!” She was horrified, denial was fierce and instant.

“No, not by Mr. Doyle,” he agreed. “By Mr. Greville, and not willingly … by coercion.”

“She … she had a child!” She was really finding it difficult to catch her breath. Unconsciously, she put her hand up to her throat as though her silk fichu choked her.

He wanted to lean forward and take her hand, steady her, but it would have appeared like an overfamiliarity, even an intrusion. He had to remember where he was, formal, removed, going on hurting her, watching her face to judge whether she had known this before or not.

“No,” he answered. “He insisted that she abort it, and she could not afford to defy him. She would be out on the street with no money and no character. She could not have cared for a child. He had it done away with.” He chose the words deliberately and saw her face lose every shred of its color and her eyes darken with horror. She stared at him, trying to probe into his mind and find something that would tell her it was not true.

“She was … different … when she came back,” she said slowly, more to herself than to him. “She was … sadder, very quiet, almost slow, as if she had no will anymore, no laughter. I thought it was just because she was not yet fully recovered.”

Once she saw he was sincere, she did not fight against it. She was looking backward, trying to remember anything which would disprove it, and there was nothing. It was almost like examining a wound. Part of her was clinical, logical, exact. And yet she was looking at the death of part of herself.

“Poor Doll,” she said in a whisper. “Poor, poor Doll. It is so awful I can hardly bear to think of it. What worse thing could happen to a woman?”

“I wish I had not had to tell you.” It sounded lame, an excuse where there was none. He was certain she had not known. But then neither did she disbelieve it now. Had Doyle known, and would he have cared? Not on Doll’s behalf. She was a servant. Servants frequently get with child.

“Who else might have known?” he asked. Wheeler had. He was the only one of the Greville servants at Ashworth Hall, apart from Doll herself. Unless they had brought a coachman. They were close enough not to have taken the train. He had not asked. “Did you drive over?”

She understood immediately. “Yes … but … but no one else knew. We thought she was ill … a fever … I feared it might have been tuberculosis. People with tuberculosis can have those flushed cheeks, the bright eyes. She looked so …”

“Wheeler knew.”

“Wheeler?” Again she was not afraid. She did not even consider it possible. “He would … never …”

“What?”

“He would never have hurt Ainsley.”

“What were you going to say, Mrs. Greville?”

“That once or twice I thought perhaps he did not like him, but he was far too well trained to show it, of course.” She shook her head to dismiss it. “It was just an impression I had. And he did not have to stay with us. He could easily have found a position elsewhere. He was excellent at his job.”

Pitt thought it was his feeling for Doll which had kept him in the house of a man he despised, perhaps even hated, but he did not say so. He would have Tellman make sure Wheeler’s time was as closely accounted for as they had supposed.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Eudora said reluctantly.

Justine appeared, followed immediately by Charlotte. They both looked flushed and tired, as if they had been too close to the withdrawing room fire and had found the evening’s forced conversation trying. But even weary and with a few tendrils of her hair escaping Gracie’s coiffure, Charlotte looked marvelous in the blue silk gown. It was one of Vespasia’s. Pitt wished he could afford to buy his wife clothes like that. Again he was reminded how naturally she fitted in here. It was the life she could so easily have had if she had married a man of her own social station, or rather better, as Emily had.

Justine was quick to notice Eudora’s pallor and the tension in her hands as they twisted together on her lap. She came over immediately, filled with concern.

Charlotte remained in the doorway. She had the feeling that she and Justine had intruded. It was not specific, just a look on Pitt’s face and something of regret in Eudora, a way in which she turned back to him before speaking to Justine.

She asked Pitt about it later, when they were preparing to go to bed. She tried to sound casual. As usual he was ready before she was. Gracie had gone, and Charlotte was combing her hair. There were considerable knots to get out after the way it had been dressed, and they would be worse by morning. Also there was rose milk to smooth into her skin, and she loved the luxurious feel of that, whether it did any good or not.

“Eudora seemed distressed,” she said, avoiding meeting Pitt’s eyes in the glass. He had already told her what little had transpired in his meeting in London, but she knew there was something else since then, something which had moved him far more deeply. “What have you discovered since you returned home?” she asked.

He looked so weary there were shadows around his eyes, and he sat up against the pillows awkwardly. He was still very stiff.

“Greville forced himself on Doll and got her with child,” he said quietly. “Then he insisted she do away with it or he would have her put out on the street with nothing.”

Charlotte froze. She heard the rage in his voice, but it barely matched the horror she felt, as if something icy had torn a wound inside her. She thought of her own children. She remembered the first time she had held Jemima, fragile, immeasurably precious, herself and yet not herself. She would have given her life to protect her daughter, given it without thought or hesitation. If Doll had killed Ainsley Greville, then Charlotte would do all she could to save her, let the law go to perdition.

She turned around slowly on the stool and stared at Pitt.

“Did she kill him?”

“Doll or Eudora?” he asked, staring at her.

“Doll, of course!” Then she realized that it could also be Eudora, from the same act, for different reasons. Was that why Pitt had looked so very gentle with her? He understood and pitied her? She was beautiful, vulnerable, so desperately in need of strength and support. Her world had been shattered, the present, the future, and some of the past too. In a space of days she had been robbed of all that she was. No wonder he was sorry for her. She called out to all that was best in him, the gentleness, the ability to see without judgment, to pursue truth—and yet still suffer for the pain it brought.

There was much of the knight errant in him, the hunger to be needed, to struggle and to rescue, to measure his strength against the dragons of wrong. Eudora was the perfect maiden in distress. Charlotte was not, not anymore. She was vulnerable in quite different ways, only inside herself. She stood in no danger, just a faint sense of not being entirely included, not factually but in some depth of the emotions.

“No, I don’t believe so,” he said, answering her question about Doll.

“Does it have anything to do with Greville’s death?”

“I don’t know … directly or indirectly. I hope not.”

She turned back to the dressing table, reaching for the rose milk. She was not ready to go to bed yet. She smoothed the milk into her face over and over again, then into her neck, then her face once more, pressing her hands up to her temples, regardless of getting it into her hair. It was ten more minutes before she turned out the gas lamp and crawled into bed beside Pitt. She touched him gently, but he was already asleep.

Breakfast was extremely trying. Charlotte made the effort to rise early, though she did not feel in the least like it, but she could not leave Emily to cope alone. As it was, she was the first to arrive, followed almost immediately by Padraig Doyle. She welcomed him, watching with interest as he helped himself to food from the sideboard and took his place. As he had been every day since he arrived, he was immaculately dressed, and his sleek, dark hair was brushed almost to a polish. His long face, with its humorous eyes and mouth, was set in lines of perfect composure.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pitt,” he said with a slight lift to his voice. She was not sure if it was genuine indifference to the distress in the house, a determination to overcome it, a natural will to fight despair and the courage to sustain the battle, or simply the music of the Irish brogue. She could not help responding to it. Regardless of its reason, one felt better for it. She liked him so much better than Fergal Moynihan, with his somber, rather dour air. If she had been Iona, looking for someone to fall in love with, she would have chosen Padraig Doyle far sooner, regardless of the twenty years or so between them. He would have been so much more interesting, more fun to be with.

“Good morning, Mr. Doyle,” she replied with a smile. “Have you seen what a clear sky it is? It will make walking in the woods very pleasant.”

He smiled back; it was a gesture of understanding as well as friendship.

“A relief,” he agreed. “It is rather difficult to find sufficient to do on a wet day, when conversation is as full of pitfalls as ours.”

She allowed herself to laugh very slightly, and reached for the toast and apricot preserves.

Iona came in, greeting them both and taking her place. As usual, she declined the food on the sideboard and took instead toast and honey. She was dressed in a deep, romantic blue which heightened the shadowed blue of her eyes. She ate without speaking again. She was remarkably self-contained. Her beauty was dramatic, almost haunting, but it had a remoteness to it which to Charlotte was cold. Was it because she was absorbed in her own problems and they consumed everything else she might have felt? How deeply did she love Fergal Moynihan? Why? Had she ever loved her own husband, or had it been a marriage made for other reasons? Charlotte did not know how old Iona had been at the time of her marriage. Perhaps only seventeen or eighteen, too young to have realized much of the woman she would become in the next fifteen years, or what hungers would waken in her during that time.

Did Lorcan love her? He had seemed angry and embarrassed at the awful scene in the bedroom, rather than emotionally shattered. If she had been deceived by Pitt like that, her world would have ended. Lorcan looked far from so destroyed. But then, people do not always wear their emotions where everyone else can see them. Why should they? Perhaps his way of dealing with such pain was to hide it. It would be natural enough. Pride was important to most people, especially men.

Was Iona lurching from one disaster to another, looking for companionship, some passion or shared charm, where she would never find it? Was it to fire Lorcan with jealousy, to waken in him a hunger or a need which had grown stale? Or was it the simple outrageousness of it, something no one else would do, something to make her talked of, a name to run like fire on every tongue, a bid for her own immortality, another Neassa Doyle, only alive?

As Charlotte was thinking, Fergal came in. “Good morning,” he said politely, looking at each of them in turn. Everyone murmured a reply, Iona glancing up quickly and then down again.

Fergal took a portion of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and kidneys, and sat down almost the length of the table away from Iona, but where he could look at her—in fact, where he could hardly avoid it. His face in the hard morning light was smooth, only the faintest of lines around his eyes, and a deeper score from nose to mouth. There seemed an inner complacency about him. If any emotion tore him apart, he hid it with a consummate skill. There were slight shadows under his eyes, but no tension, not the ravages of sleeplessness Charlotte thought she would have suffered in a like situation.

Was that what Iona saw in him, what she needed, some cold challenge to thaw with the heat of her dreams, some icebound heart upon which to exercise her magic?

Or was Charlotte being unfair because she did not like Fergal herself? And was that because she saw him through Kezia’s eyes, through her hurt and anger?

“Looks like another agreeable day,” Padraig observed, regarding the sky beyond the long windows. “Perhaps we shall have an opportunity for a little walk after luncheon.”

“The rain might hold off,” Fergal agreed.

“I don’t object to a touch of autumn rain.” Padraig smiled. “Patter of it among the fallen leaves, smell of the damp earth. Better than the conference room!”

“You’ll not get away from the conversation,” Fergal warned. He did not look at Iona, but Charlotte had the sense that he was acutely conscious of her, as if he had to exercise an effort of will to keep his eyes from her.

Iona was concentrating on her tea and toast as single-mindedly as if it were a complicated fish full of bones.

No one had brought in the morning newspapers. Was that because the verdict of the Parnell-O’Shea divorce would be in them?

The atmosphere was crackling stiff, like overstarched linen. Charlotte could not decide whether she should try to say something, artificial as it would sound, or if that would only make it worse.

Justine came in, greeting everyone.

“Good morning. How are you?” She hesitated a moment for the tacit reply of nods and half smiles.

“Well, thank you,” Padraig answered. “And you, Miss Baring? This can hardly be what you expected when you arrived here.”

“No, of course not,” she said gently. “No one ever expects tragedy. But we must support each other.” She took a small serving from the sideboard and then sat opposite Charlotte, smiling at her, not blindly in mere politeness, but with a sharp light of understanding, and not without a dry humor.

“I noticed a wonderful bank of hawthorn beyond the beech trees to the west,” she observed, mostly to Charlotte. “That must be wonderful in the spring. I love the perfume of them, it is almost intoxicating in the sun.”

“Yes, it’s marvelous,” Charlotte agreed. She had no idea because she had never been there in the spring, but that was irrelevant now. “And the flowering chestnuts,” she added for good measure. “Do you have them in Ireland?” She looked directly at Iona.

Iona seemed surprised. “Yes, yes, of course we do. I always think it’s a pity we can’t bring them inside,” she added.

“Why can’t you?” Fergal took the excuse to speak to her.

“It’s bad luck to bring the May blossom into the house.” She fixed him with her brilliant blue gaze, and he seemed unable to turn himself away.

“Why?” he whispered.

“It’s unlucky for the housemaid who has to clean up after them,” Charlotte said quickly. “They drop hundreds of little petals … and little black dots of something too ….”

“Insects,” Justine offered with a smile.

Padraig winced, but not with distaste.

Suddenly the conversation was easier. Charlotte found herself relaxing a little. By the time Lorcan and Carson O’Day joined them there was even a glimmer of laughter, which did not stop even when Piers came in.

Jack, Emily and Pitt came not long after, and everyone was drawn into at least a semblance of involvement.

O’Day was either in very optimistic spirits or was determined to appear so.

“Have you ever been to Egypt?” he asked Jack with interest. “I have recently been reading some most fascinating letters. They are quite old. I cannot think how I came to miss them.” He smiled at Emily, then at Charlotte. “Written by women. One was Miss Nightingale, whose name we all know, of course. But there were several other extraordinary women who traveled as far and were profoundly moved by their experiences.” And he proceeded to repeat what he had read of Harriet Martineau and Amelia Edwards, to everyone’s interest. Justine in particular was obviously fascinated. At another time, Charlotte would have been also.

Kezia was the last to come, dressed in pale green with a trimming of flowered silk. They were Emily’s colors, if not her style, and with her similarly fair hair and skin she was extremely handsome. Charlotte wondered what would happen to her. She was far nearer thirty than twenty. She was highly intelligent, at least politically if not academically. She had fallen in love once, passionately and utterly, and her family and her faith had denied her a consummation. She then made a sacrifice of her heart in order to further her conviction. Would she now feel that something bought at such a price must be made to yield her a return?

Or would she feel that Fergal’s betrayal had freed her from her own obligation?

Sitting across the table from her, Charlotte was still sharply aware of the anger in her movements, the tightness with which she gripped her fork, the rigidity of her shoulders, and the fact that she spoke pleasantly to everyone else but did not speak to her brother at all, or to Iona.

The discussion had moved from Egypt, the Nile and its temples and ruins, its hieroglyphics and tombs, to Verdi’s recent opera on the story of Othello.

“Very dark,” O’Day said appreciatively, passing the orange marmalade to Charlotte. “A truly heroic voice is required, and immense stamina.”

“And a fine actor too, I should have thought,” Justine added.

“Oh, indeed.” O’Day nodded, helping himself to more tea. “And for lago also.”

Kezia glanced across at Charlotte, as if about to speak, then hesitated. Her thoughts on adultery, betrayal, jealousy and villains in general were plain in her eyes.

“An equally great baritone role,” Justine said with a smile, looking to left and right. “I assume Othello is the tenor?”

“Naturally.” Padraig laughed. “The heroes are always tenor!”

“In Rigoletto the tenor is appalling!” Emily rejoined, then blushed with anger at herself.

“Quite,” Kezia agreed. “A hypocritical womanizer with no morals, no honor, and no compassion.”

“But sings like an angel,” Padraig interrupted almost before she had finished speaking.

“If angels sing,” Fergal said dryly, “perhaps they dance, or paint pictures.”

“Is there paint and canvas in heaven?” Lorcan asked. “I thought it was all insubstantial … no body, parts or passions?” He looked sideways at Fergal, and then at Iona. “Sounds like hell to me … at least for some.”

“They take messages,” Charlotte stated decisively. “Which would be very difficult to make clear if you had to dance them!”

Justine burst out laughing, and almost everyone else did also, at the release in tension if nothing else. Absurd pictures of mime filled the imagination, and one or two offered suggestions in good humor. When they sobered a little, O’Day asked Jack about the local countryside.

Charlotte wondered as she watched them all if O’Day would be the next leader of the Nationalist cause if Parnell were forced to resign.

He seemed far more open to reason and to compassion. And yet he had a heritage, just as they all had, and a powerful man’s shoes to step into. His elder brother was crippled by tuberculosis, or it would have been his duty; now Carson had to achieve it for both of them. It was a heavy burden.

She looked sideways at his face, with its straight angles, smooth, rather heavy cheeks and level brows. It was in every way different from the face of Padraig Doyle; there was imagination in it, but not the wit or sudden laughter. Instead there was a directness, a concentration and a clarity. He would be a very difficult man to get to know, but she felt that once you had it, his loyalty would be complete. She would have understood it had Iona ever pursued him for the challenge. Except that challenges were no fun unless you believed there were some chance of success, however remote. Charlotte did not think anyone manipulated Carson O’Day, except for his own inner compulsions to succeed.

Pitt also found breakfast difficult, but not for the same reasons as Charlotte. He felt no duty to try to ease the social difficulties, although he was sorry for Emily’s predicament. He would not willingly have distressed her. His mind was absorbed in the problems of who had killed Ainsley Greville, and his fear that in spite of her protestations, Eudora did know something that she resolutely refused to say, perhaps even to herself.

He could not blame her. She had been hurt so very much; if she chose to be loyal to her brother, even in thought, it was easy to understand.

Pitt looked around the table also, weighing and judging. Doyle was talking eloquently, his face full of concentration, his hands held a little up from the white linen cloth with the Ashworth crest embroidered in self-color on the edges. He used his hands to emphasize what he was saying.

Fergal Moynihan was listening as if he were interested, but every few moments his eyes would go to Iona. He was not very good at covering his feelings.

If Lorcan McGinley noticed, he was far cleverer. His thin face with its intense expression and almost-cobalt-blue eyes stared into the far distance, then when Padraig made some especially telling point he would smile suddenly, illuminating his face, making himself dazzlingly alive. When the moment was past, he would relapse into his private world again, but it did not seem one of pain so much as dream, and not one which hurt or displeased him.

Pitt caught Charlotte’s eye several times. She looked lovely in the sharp, autumn light, her skin the warm color of honey, her cheeks very slightly flushed, her eyes dark with anxiety. She seemed to be worried for everyone. Many times she looked at Kezia, nervous of what she might say in her still-smoldering temper. She was busy supporting Emily, guiding the conversation, attempting to be cheerful and avoid the pitfalls of controversy.

He was delighted when he could acceptably excuse himself and go to look for Tellman, who would be curt and still ruffled by his situation, by the house and its wealth, by the fact that four-fifths of the people in it were servants, but Pitt would not have to defer to his feelings. He could be blunt.

He was followed from the room almost immediately by Jack, and he stopped until Jack drew level with him at the foot of the stairs.

Jack pulled a slight face and smiled at him ruefully. He looked tired. Standing close to him now as Pitt was, he could see the fine lines about Jack’s eyes and mouth. He was not the same elegantly fashionable young man with whom Emily had fallen in love, and whose easy charm had rather frightened her, fearing him too shallow. His eyes were just as beautiful, his lashes as long and dark, but there was a substance to him that had been lacking before. Earlier in his life he had had no money, only a silken tongue, a quick wit, and the ability to flatter with sincerity and to entertain without ever appearing to have to try. He had moved from one home to another, always a welcome guest. He had made it his business to be liked, and taken no responsibility.

Now he had Ashworth Hall to worry about, a seat in Parliament, and far deeper than that, a standard he had set himself to live up to. He was discovering the exact nature of its weight this weekend, and Pitt had not heard him complain once. He had accepted the burden of it with unobtrusive grace. If it frightened him he gave no sign, except now, as Pitt met his eyes, there was a shadow in their depths, something he was hiding even from himself.

“My collar’s too high,” Jack said with self-mockery. He ran his finger around inside it, pulling it away from his throat. “Feels as if it’s strangling me.”

“Is it as bad in conference as it is around the meal table?” Pitt asked.

Jack hesitated and then shrugged. “Yes. You need the patience of Job even to bring them to the point where they will discuss anything that actually matters. I don’t know what Greville thought could be accomplished by this. Every time I think I have them to the brink of some kind of agreement, one of them will change direction and it all falls apart again.” He put his hand on the newel post and leaned a little against it. “I never realized the power of old hatreds until now, how deep they run. They are in the blood and the bone of these people. It is part of who they are, as if they have to cling to the old feuds or they would lose part of their identity. What do I do about that, Thomas?”

“If I knew, I would have told you already,” Pitt answered quietly. He put his hand on Jack’s arm. “I don’t think Greville could have done any better. Gladstone didn’t!” He wanted to say something better, something that would let Jack know the warmth of respect he felt for him, but none of the words that came to his mind seemed appropriate. They were too light, too flippant for the reality of the hatred and the loss that filled the conference room, and which Jack had to fight alone every morning and every afternoon.

He took his hand away and pushed it into his pocket.

“I don’t know where I am either,” he confessed.

Jack laughed abruptly. “Trying to keep our heads above a sea of insanity,” he replied. “And probably swimming in the wrong direction. I must get a better collar. By the way, yours is crooked, but don’t bother to straighten it. It’s a touch of familiarity in a world that is frighteningly unfamiliar. Don’t do up your cuff either, or take the string out of your pocket.” He smiled quickly, as lightly and easily as used to be characteristic, then before Pitt could say anything further, went up the stairs two at a time.

Pitt moved away, but as he was crossing the hall and about to turn towards the green baize door to the servants’ quarters, he heard quick footsteps on the wood behind him and his name called.

He turned to see Justine coming towards him, her face filled with concern. Instantly he was afraid it was for Eudora. She had not been at breakfast, but of course no one had expected her.

Justine caught up with him.

“Mr. Pitt, may I speak with you for a few moments, please?”

“Of course,” he agreed. “What is it?”

She indicated the morning room, which was opposite where they stood and next to Jack’s study.

“May we go in there? No one else will wish to use it so early, I think.”

He obeyed, walking ahead of her and holding the door while she went in. She moved with a unique kind of grace, head high, back very straight, and yet with more suppleness than most women, as if dancing for sheer, wild pleasure would come easily to her.

“What is it?” he asked when the door was closed.

She stood in front of him, very earnest. For the first time he noticed signs of strain in her, a momentary hesitation, a small muscle working in the side of her jaw. This must be appalling for her. She had arrived at the house of strangers, at the invitation of the man she intended to marry, in order to meet his parents. They had stumbled into a political conference of the most delicate and volatile nature. And the very next morning they had awoken to the murder of Greville, and then the long, draining task of trying to comfort and sustain Eudora when Justine should have been the center of attention and happiness herself.

He admired her courage and her unselfishness, that she had borne it not only with dignity but considerable charm. Piers had found a remarkable woman. Pitt was not surprised he was determined to marry her—and had informed his parents rather than sought their permission. He respected Piers for that more than he had previously realized.

“Mr. Pitt,” Justine began quietly, “Mrs. Greville told me what you have been obliged to tell her about her maid, Doll Evans.” She breathed in deeply. He could see the fabric of her gown tighten as her body stiffened. She seemed to be weighing her words with intense care, uncertain even now whether to say this or not.

“I wish it had not been necessary,” he said. “There is much I wish she did not have to hear.”

“I know.” The ghost of a smile crossed Justine’s face. “There are many truths it would be better to hide. Life can be difficult enough with what we have to know. Things can be rebuilt more easily if we do not shatter them before we have the strength to cope with the magnitude of it. When you see the whole task, it can be too much. One loses the courage even to try, and then you are defeated from the beginning.”

“What is it you want to say, Miss Baring? I cannot take back what I told her. I would not have spoken at all without having done all I could to make sure it was true.”

“I understand that. But are you sure it was, Mr. Pitt, really sure?”

“Doll told Mrs. Pitt’s maid. Gracie hated breaking the confidence, but she realized that it might be at the core of this crime. It is a very real motive for murder. Surely you can see that?” he asked gently.

“Yes.” Her face was tight with emotion. “If he really did that to her, then I can … I can see how she might have felt he deserved to die. And it seems he did … have affairs with other women, acquaintances … but, Mr. Pitt, they are none of them here in this house now! Isn’t all that matters who is here now, and could have killed Mr. Greville? Can’t you let all the past indiscretions be buried with him, for Mrs. Greville’s sake, and Piers … and even for poor Doll? After all, Doll was with Mrs. Greville almost all the time you are speaking about. And …”

“And what?”

Again she stiffened, her face tight with anxiety.

“And you do not know that the story is true. Yes, of course Doll was with child, and unspeakable as it is”—her eyes were hard with suppressed fury—“she had little chance but to have the child aborted. That would be a better death than any other it faced. But you don’t know that Mr. Greville was responsible.”

He stared at her, for a moment taken aback.

“But she said it was Greville. Who … what are you saying? That she blamed him when it was someone else? Why? Greville’s dead … murdered. To blame him makes her a suspect when no one would have thought of her otherwise. It makes no sense.”

She looked back at him with wide eyes, almost black, her body tense like an animal ready to fight. Was she so in love with Piers she must defend his father with this fierceness and determination? He admired her for it. The uniqueness of her face was no accident, the sudden strength where one had expected only beauty.

“Yes it does,” she argued. “If she had already said it was Greville, before, she couldn’t go back on it now. And better she tell someone first, before anyone else did, and she appear to have hidden it and lied. So she told Gracie, knowing it would come back to you.”

“She didn’t know it would. Gracie very nearly didn’t tell me.”

She smiled with a flash of humor. “Really, Mr. Pitt! Gracie’s loyalty to you would always win in the end, for a dozen reasons. I know that. Doll must know it too.”

“But Doll didn’t know that anyone else was aware of her tragedy,” he argued back.

“She said so?” Her eyebrows arched delicately.

“Perhaps that is not true,” he conceded. “At least one other servant knew, although I doubt she told him.”

“Him?” she said quickly. “No, more likely she confided in another woman, or they guessed. It is one of the first things that would come to a woman’s mind, Mr. Pitt. They would know something was wrong at the time she was raped … if it was rape. Or seduced, which is more likely. Women are very observant, you know. We notice the slightest change in other people, and we can read our own sex very clearly. I would be surprised if the cook and the housekeeper didn’t know, at least.”

“So she told them it was the master, rather than say who it really was?” He still found the idea difficult, but it was making more sense all the time. “Why? Wouldn’t that be a very dangerous thing to say? What if it were reported back to him?”

“Who would do that?” she asked. “And if it were one of the menservants, surely they would be willing to protect their own? After all, she didn’t say it outside the house. Mr. Greville himself never knew of it, and certainly neither Mrs. Greville nor Piers did.”

He thought about it a little more seriously. It was not impossible.

She saw his indecision in his face.

“Do you really think a politician and diplomat of Mr. Greville’s standing is going to seduce a maid in his own household?” she urged. “Mr. Pitt, this is a political murder, an assassination. Mr. Greville was brilliant at his task. For the first time in a generation it seems there may really be some improvement in the Irish Problem, and he was responsible for that. It was his skill at diplomacy, his genius at the conference table that was bringing it about. This is what was unique about him. Surely that was why he was killed … here … and now?”

Her face became suddenly more grave. There was a new and greater tension in her body. “Perhaps he did not tell you—he may have wished not to frighten anyone further—but there was a very unpleasant happening yesterday when an urn was crashed onto the terrace only a yard away from Mr. Radley. If it had struck him he would unquestionably have been killed. That can only be because he has been out to step into Mr. Greville’s place in the conference. It is political, Mr. Pitt. Please give his family the opportunity to recover from their grief, and mourn for him, without destroying the memories they have.”

He looked at her earnest face. She meant passionately what she said, and it was easy to understand. He would like to protect Eudora himself.

“You have a high opinion of Mr. Greville,” he said gravely.

“Of course. I know a lot about him, Mr. Pitt. I am going to marry his son. Look for the person who envied his brilliance, who was afraid of what he could achieve … and above all, in whose interest it is to keep the Irish Problem unsolved.”

“Miss Baring—”

He got no further. There was an explosive crash. The walls shook, the ground trembled. The looking glass above the mantel shattered outwards, and suddenly the air was full of dust.

The gas mantles fell in shards onto the floor, and out in the hall someone started screaming over and over again.