Cardington Crescent

7

EMILY WOKE EARLY the next morning. It was the day of George’s funeral. She felt cold immediately, and the white light on the ceiling was bleak, without warmth or color in it. She was filled with the kind of misery that is edged with anger and intolerable loneliness. This would make it all final. Not, of course, that it was not final anyway. George was dead, there was no going back or recapturing anything of the past warmth, except in memory. But a funeral, a burial, made it certain in the mind, took the immediacy out of it, and relegated the man to the past.

She hunched up under the blankets, but there was no comfort in it. It was too early to get up, and anyway she did not want to see other people. They would be full of their own business, making a show of it, thinking what hat to wear, how to behave, how they looked. And above all they would be watching her, suspiciously. Most of them believed she had killed George, deliberately crept into old Mrs. March’s room, stolen her digitalis, and slipped it into the coffeepot.

Except one. One of them would know she had not—because that one had. And that person was prepared to see her suspected, perhaps charged—even tried, and ... She let her thoughts continue, even though it was stupid, self-inflicted pain. And yet she went on, visualizing the courtroom, herself in drab prison dress, hair screwed back, face white and hollow-eyed, the jury that could not look at her, the odd women among the spectators whose eyes reflected pity—perhaps who had suffered the same rejection, or felt they had. Then the verdict, and the judge with a face like stone, reaching for the black cap.

There she stopped. After that it was too frightening. In her imagination she could smell rope and damp, inky darkness. It was not just a morbid thought; it could be real, with no warm bed, no relieved awakening.

She sat up and threw off the bedclothes, then reached for the bell. It was a long, flat five minutes before Digby knocked and came in, her hair a little hastily pinned up and her apron tied unevenly. She looked nervous but determined.

“Good morning, m’lady. Would you like a cup of tea straightaway, or shall I draw your bath?”

“Draw the bath,” Emily replied. There was no need to discuss what she would wear; it could only be the formal black barathea with black hat and black veil which she had sent for. Not a fashionable, flattering veil that lent mystery, but a widow’s weeds, hiding the face, disguising the ravages of grief.

Digby disappeared and came back a few minutes later, sleeves rolled up, a tentative smile hovering uncertainly on her lips. “It’s a fine day, m’lady. At least you won’t get rained on.”

Emily really did not care, but perhaps it was a minor blessing. Standing at a graveside with water trickling down her neck, wetting her feet, and making the edges of her skirts heavy and sodden would add a physical dimension to the bleakness that consumed her mind. It might even have been welcome; it was easier to think of frozen feet and wet ankles than of George lying white and rigid inside the closed coffin, being lowered into the ground and covered up, gone for the rest of her life. He had been so warm, so important, always at the foundation of her thoughts for so many years. Even when he was not with her, the sure knowledge that he would be there in a little while was a safety she had never considered losing.

Suddenly the tears came, catching her by surprise; all the sniffing and swallowing did not control them. She sat down again and covered her face with her hands.

Quite unexpectedly she found Digby’s arms round her and her head resting against Digby’s stiff, sloping shoulder. Digby said nothing; she just gently rocked Emily back and forth, stroking her hair, as if she were a very young child. It was so natural, Emily felt no embarrassment, and when the pain inside her eased and the relief of tiredness came over her, she let go, and went to her bath without the need to explain or reassert in any way that she was the mistress and Digby the maid. There were no questions or answers. Digby knew precisely what was needed, and the silence was one of understanding.

She took breakfast alone with Charlotte. She did not wish to see anyone else, except perhaps Aunt Vespasia, but she did not appear.

“She did not say so,” Charlotte said quietly as they took a thin slice of toast each and spread them with butter, then poured themselves cups of hot, weak tea from the flowered pot, “but I think she is busy massing a sort of defense.”

Emily did not ask what she meant; they both knew the ranks were closing against the police, against intrusion and scandal—and that meant against Emily also. If she were guilty it could all be over in a few days. No more investigation. They could grieve in decency for the appropriate time and resume their lives again.

Charlotte smiled bleakly. “I don’t think even Mrs. March will give her tongue full rein with Aunt Vespasia there. I feel there is not much love lost between them.”

“I wish I could think it was Mrs. March who killed George,” Emily said thoughtfully. “I’ve been trying to scrape up any kind of reason why she should.”

“Did you succeed?”

“No.”

“Nor I. But there must be an enormous amount that we don’t know.” Charlotte’s face was dark and tense, as if she was afraid. “Emily, I woke up in the night and I thought I heard you walking around.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No, it wasn’t you! It was coming from the stairs, so I got up to follow, but when I got the landing I saw it was Tassie. She was coming up and she walked past me to her bedroom. I saw her quite clearly. Emily, her sleeves were smeared with blood, and there were splashes down the front of her skirt and at the hem. She was smiling! There was a sort of peace about her. Her eyes were shining and wide open, but she didn’t even see me. I kept back in the small passage to the dressing room, and she walked so close I could have touched her.” She felt a little sick again as the smell came back, nauseating and sweet.

Emily was dazed—this was unbelievable. She offered the only explanation she could conceive of. “You had a nightmare.”

“No, I didn’t,” Charlotte insisted. “It was real.” Her face was tight and miserable but she did not waver. “I thought I might have been dreaming, with everything that’s happened, so I went down to the laundry room this morning and found the dress soaking in one of the coppers.”

“And was it covered in blood?”

Charlotte shook her head no more than an inch. “No, it was washed out. But then it would be; she’d hardly leave it like that for the maids to find, would she.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Emily still protested. “Whose blood? Why? Nobody’s been murdered that way”—she swallowed—“that we know of.”

Another hideous memory stirred in Charlotte’s mind, of parcels in a graveyard, but she refused to allow it to take shape. “Do you think she could be mad?” she said wretchedly. It seemed the only explanation left—and one must be found, for Emily’s sake.

“I suppose so,” Emily said reluctantly. “But I’m sure George didn’t know—unless he’d just found out. Which could be a reason for old Mrs. March to have killed him.”

“Do you think so?” Charlotte pursed her lips. “Would George ever have told anyone?”

“Yes! If she were dangerous—which she must be, if it was human blood.”

Charlotte said nothing, but she looked increasingly unhappy.

Emily knew why: she liked Tassie also. There was something in her that was immediately appealing, frankness, humor and generosity. But she had seen her coming up the stairs with blood bright on her sleeves and staining her dress. She shivered. Please God, it mustn’t be Tassie.

“It doesn’t have to be her,” Charlotte said quietly. “I suppose there could be some other explanation. An animal? An accident in the street? We don’t know anything. I just find it too hard to believe Tassie is ... Anyway, if the family knew they’d lock her up in an asylum, for her own sake.”

“Perhaps they didn’t know how bad she was,” Emily said quietly. “Maybe she has suddenly got worse.”

“But there is still Jack Radley,” Charlotte argued. “You can’t forget him. Or Sybilla. And William has to be an obvious choice. It could even be Eustace. I don’t know why, but maybe George found out something about him. After all, this is his house. Perhaps he’s doing something very wrong, or has a secret in his past that he couldn’t afford to have known.”

Emily looked up. “Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an illegitimate child—or a love affair with someone wildly inappropriate.”

Emily’s fair eyebrows shot up. “Eustace? A love affair? That taxes the imagination! Can you visualize Eustace in love?”

“No,” Charlotte admitted. “But I wasn’t thinking of love so much as lust. The most unlikely people can feel that, even pompous and unctuous middle-aged men like Eustace. And anyway, it doesn’t have to be recent. It could have been something that happened years ago, even when Tassie’s mother was alive. And there are other, even worse possibilities. People have the strangest obsessions, you know. Maybe she found that out.”

“You mean something truly disgusting?” Emily said slowly. “Like a child? Or another man? Do you suppose Olivia could have found out, and he killed her?”

“Oh ...” Charlotte let out her breath with a sigh. “Actually I hadn’t thought of anything quite like that. Rather, a servant, or a farm girl. I heard of a highly respectable man who only liked big, dirty scrubwomen.”

“That’s rubbish!” Emily scoffed, taking another slice of thin toast and biting into it without any enjoyment.

“No, it isn’t, and one wouldn’t want it known.”

“No one would believe it, would they? Not to the point where it was worth murdering to keep them quiet.”

“Maybe. And certainly, if he killed Olivia it would be.”

“But unless he did kill Olivia—and I don’t believe that—George wouldn’t have told anyone. He wouldn’t want it known any more than Eustace would. After all, Eustace is family.” She swallowed the toast like a lump in her throat. “And George was rather conventional about things like that.”

“That’s true,” Charlotte said more gently. “But perhaps he didn’t trust George not to tell his friends, as a joke. George did not always think before he spoke. Or he might even have brought pressure on him to stop.”

“He wouldn’t!”

“Maybe not, but perhaps Eustace could not be sure enough of it.” She shook her head. “But all I’m saying is that we don’t know. There could be all kinds of things.”

Emily sat still. “Well, we’d better find at least one piece of evidence about some of them for Constable Stripe—and soon.”

“I know.” Charlotte bit her lip. “I’m trying.”

The service was to be held in the local church, which had also been the last resting place of the Ashworths since the family had acquired its first town house in the parish, nearly two hundred years ago.

Naturally Emily had informed her own household. That had been the most difficult of all the letters to write, and the only one with which Charlotte could not help her. How does one say to a five-year-old son that his father has been murdered? She knew he could not read her letter now; it would be his nanny, large, comfortable Mrs. Stevenson, who would try to explain to him, help him to understand death and allow his mind to grasp it slowly through the confusion of great and terrible emotions round him. Emily knew, too, that the gentle woman would try to comfort him, so he did not feel betrayed because his father had left him so soon, nor guilty that in some indefinable way it was his fault.

Emily’s letter would be for later on, when he was older, something he would keep and reread in quieter moments. He would find by the time he was a young man that he knew it by heart. So she had written it only once, letting her own loss and wholehearted grief come through. Inelegance of style would matter little; insincerity would clang like a false note with louder and harsher echoes through the years.

Today, of course, Edward would be there, small, cold and frightened but performing the rites expected of him. He was now Lord Ashworth: he must sit in the church, upright and well-behaved, and follow his father’s coffin to its grave, and mourn as was seemly.

Edward would come from home with Mrs. Stevenson and afterwards return with her. Charlotte and Emily would return to Cardington Crescent; the peculiar circumstances of murder made that necessary. They rode with Aunt Vespasia and Eustace in the family carriage, for this occasion draped in black and pulled by black horses. The hearse, of course, was provided by the undertaker and was draped and plumed as always.

Mrs. March and Tassie came next in the second-best barouche. Both Charlotte and Emily stared at Tassie, but she wore a veil, and beneath it her expression was invisible. It could have been one of sorrow and awe as everyone presumed, or it could equally easily have been remnants of the strange happiness Charlotte had seen in her on the stairs—or complete forgetfulness of it and whatever ghastly episode had preceded it. One could not even guess.

There was some argument as to where Jack Radley should ride; in the end, with great unease, Mrs. March took him with her, and William and Sybilla went in their own vehicle.

They alighted at the lych-gate one by one, and walked up the narrow earth and gravel path towards the old smoke-darkened, stone-towered church. The gravestones on either side were worn and green-rimed with age, inscriptions long since softened into blurred edges till one had to peer to distinguish them. Far towards the yew hedges and the long grass there were white ones, like new teeth. Here and there a bunch of flowers, laid by someone who still cared.

Charlotte took Emily’s arm and walked close to her. She could feel her shaking and she seemed thinner, smaller than she had thought. She could not forget for a moment that she was the elder sister. This was oddly like Sarah’s funeral⁴—only the two of them left—but Emily was far less vulnerable then. Then there had been boundless optimism under the sorrow, a sureness of herself that lay like a wide certainty underneath the surface grief and fear and was strong enough to outlast it.

This was different. Emily had not only lost George, the first man she had loved and committed herself to, but she had lost the confidence in her own judgment. Even her courage was a barer thing; not instinctive, but fought for—a broken-nailed, desperate clinging.

Charlotte’s fingers tightened and Emily reached for her hand. Mr. Beamish, the vicar, was waiting at the door, a thin, fixed smile on his face. His cheeks were red and his white hair fluffed, as if he had run his hands through it nervously. Now, as he recognized Emily, he stepped forward, extended his arm, and then hesitated and dropped it again. He murmured something indistinguishable that fell away in a downward cadence. To Charlotte it sounded like a bad psalm. Behind him his maiden sister shook her head fractionally and gave a little sniff. She touched her handkerchief delicately to her cheek.

They were embarrassed. Rumor, supposition, had reached them. They did not know whether to treat Emily as a bereaved aristocrat to whom it was their social and religious duty to extend every pity, or a murderess, a scarlet woman, a creature they should shun, as a good Christian example, and before they themselves were contaminated by her double sin.

Charlotte returned their stare without smiling. Part of her knew a moment’s empathy for their predicament, but a much larger part despised them; she was aware it showed in her expression. Her feelings always did.

Inside the church Mrs. Stevenson, somber and gentle, was holding Edward by the hand. His face was pale and looked so like Emily’s it was painful. He let go of Mrs. Stevenson’s hand and came to her, awkwardly at first, conscious of a new gravity; then as she put her arms round him he relaxed and sniffed fiercely, before straightening up again and walking beside her.

Mungo Hare was standing in the aisle beside the March family pew at the front. He was a large man with a fair, open face and blunt features. He held his head up and his eyes looked at Emily squarely.

“Are you all right, Lady Ashworth?” he said quietly. “I’ve put a glass of water on the ledge there, if you need it. It’ll not be a long service.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hare,” Emily said absently. “That is most thoughtful of you.” She slid into the pew with Edward, leaving Charlotte to follow her, then Aunt Vespasia and Eustace. She could hear Mrs. March clattering irritably in the pew behind and banging the hymnbook. She resented not being at the front, and she intended to make her displeasure known.

Tassie sat beside her, head down, hands folded in her lap. It was incredible to think of her as she had been last night; calm, blood-smeared, tiptoeing along the landing. The curate passed beside her and spoke to the old lady.

“Good morning, Mistress March. If I can be of any service to you, or offer you any comfort—”

“I doubt it, young man,” she said tersely, “except to keep my granddaughter sufficiently occupied in good works that she doesn’t run off and marry unsuitably, and end up getting murdered for her money!”

“That would be rather pointless,” Tassie murmured. “You wouldn’t leave me any if I did that.”

“If anyone murdered you it would be for your tongue!” the old lady snapped at her. “Kindly remember you are in church, and don’t be flippant.”

“Good morning, Miss March.” The curate bowed his head.

“Good morning, Mr. Hare,” Tassie said demurely. “Thank you for your concern. I expect Grandmama would be grateful if you called upon her.”

“I’d rather have Mr. Beamish,” the old lady interrupted. “He’s a good deal nearer to death than you are. He understands bereavement, loss, seeing one’s own blood caught up in unholy passions, to fall victim to its rages, and pay its price.”

The curate gasped, and turned it into a sneeze.

“Indeed?” Vespasia said from the row in front, without turning her head. “If that is so then you know a great deal about Beamish that I do not.”

Tassie was making a curious little gurgling noise into her handkerchief, and the curate moved on to speak to William and Sybilla. Charlotte dared not twist around to observe.

The service was somber and intoned in the curious singsong voice of formalized grief. At moments, though, there was something vaguely comforting about it, perhaps no more than an expression of darker emotions that had been suppressed till now. This was an acknowledgment of what was unspeakable in the house; here was death and its physical corruption given name, instead of closed into the mind and forbidden the tongue, but always waiting just beyond, behind the spoken word. Even the organ notes shivered through the ear and held an eternal quality, so that one could hear them long into the next note. They seemed to come from the whole fabric of the church and the away into it again. The stonework and the jewel windows and the pipes were all one with the sound.

Emily stood straight and silent, and under her veil it was impossible to see her face. Charlotte could only guess her feelings. Between them Edward was stiff and upright, but he pressed very close to Emily and his free hand was clenched hard.

The last organ notes faded into the high arches of stone, and they turned slowly to face the worst. Six men in black, all expression wiped from their faces, lifted the coffin and walked in step, carrying it sedately out into the hard sunlight. Two by two the congregation followed, led by Emily and Edward.

The grave was a neat-edged hole in the damp earth. The Ashworths had never cared for a family crypt or mausoleum, preferring to spend their money on the living, but of course there would be a marble headstone, perhaps carved and gilded in time. Now all that seemed irrelevant, even vulgar.

Beamish, still pink-faced, his thick white hair ruffled by the wind till it looked like a pie frill round his head, was beginning to recite the familiar words. He was happy with these because they gave him no option, no room to have to invent his own, but still he avoided Emily. He glanced once at Aunt Vespasia and tried to smile, but she looked so drained and frail it died on his lips. He continued waveringly, his mind fogged with dawning suspicion.

Charlotte looked round at the faces. One of them here had killed George. Had it been a moment of passion, perhaps now turned to terror or remorse? Or did whoever it was feel justified, perhaps released from some danger? Or was the murderer grasping at a reward?

The most obvious suspect was Jack Radley. Could he have imagined Emily would ... what? Marry him? Surely that was the only answer. If he were capable of thinking she would accept him at all, then merely to be her lover would hardly merit killing George. If Emily were a widow she would almost certainly be a rich one, and at thirty, with a young child, a very vulnerable one.

Charlotte had also worn a light veil, partly for decorum, but more to give her the opportunity to watch people without their being aware of it. Now she looked across the grass and the turned earth with its open hole at Jack Radley on the far side. He was standing with his hands folded, very sober, his face suitably grave. But his suit was fashionably cut, his tie elegant, and she imagined she could see the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek as he lowered his gaze. Had he the monumental vanity to think he could kill George and then take his place? Had envy given way to temptation, and then a slow-forming plan, and had at last opportunity turned it into act?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aunt Vespasia!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sybilla?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the money?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The room was warm and full of light, and the chair was very comfortable. She closed her eyes and leaned back, her face to the sun. It was totally silent up here; the rest of the house need not have existed. She could be anywhere, their quarreling and spite, the whispers, the fear and the malice a hundred miles away in another city. There were the smells of dust and old toys, the cotton of dolls’ dresses, the wood of the horse, the sharp, bitter smell of lead and tin boxes and toy soldiers. It was all vaguely pleasing, perhaps because it was different, half a memory from a simpler, infinitely safer time of her own life.

She was half asleep when the voice broke in, quite quietly but so startling that she felt as if she had been struck.

“Couldn’t you bear us anymore? I don’t blame you. No one knows what to say, but they go on saying it anyway. And the old woman is like something out of a Greek play. I came up here to find you because I was afraid you weren’t well.”

Her eyes flew open and she stared up, squinting in the sun. Jack Radley was standing gracefully, leaning a little against the doorway. He had changed out of his funereal black and was in a pleasant brown. She could think of nothing at all to answer him. The words froze in her brain.

He moved forward and sat on a nursery stool at her feet. The sun made a halo out of the edge of his hair and cast the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek. It all reminded her of the conservatory, and her conscience wrenched at her again. George had been alive then... .

She found an answer at last. “I’m not in the mood for conversation. I don’t feel like forcing myself to be polite anymore, with everyone trying—very clumsily—not to mention murder, while at the same time making it perfectly clear they think it was me.”

“Then I shall avoid the subject,” he replied without a qualm, looking at her with exactly the same warm candor she had seen in him that night he had kissed her so intimately. It brought back very precisely the taste of his mouth, the smell of his skin, and the thick, soft, texture of his hair under her fingers. Her guilt was overwhelming.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped with unreasonable fury. Normally she could have exchanged harmless banter indefinitely, but the knack had abandoned her. She did not want to talk to Jack Radley at all, about anything. She could not get out of her mind the thoughts she feared he might have with regard to her, the idea that she could have been so attracted to him that when George was dead she would be prepared to think of marrying anyone else—let alone a man who might have murdered him!

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know it’s impossible not to think. I suppose you can’t even put it out of thought for half an hour.”

She looked at him reluctantly. He was smiling and looked so agreeable and innocent here amid these childish things she felt bizarre thinking of murder. And yet the knowledge would not be banished. It was true! Someone had murdered George. She had not done it; she found it hard to think it was Sybilla—she had nothing to gain and so much to lose—and impossible to think it was William. She would love to think it was old Mrs. March, but she could rake up no possible reason. And of course there was the abominable picture of Tassie creeping up the stairs in the night, tired and smelling of blood. Could she have killed George in a fit of madness? But even madness has some reason!

Or even at a very wild extreme, Eustace, to hide Tassie’s affliction? Perhaps she had done something else dreadful before. Could it be to conceal that? But that did not make sense. If Eustace knew Tassie was mad he would hardly seek to marry her to anyone; he would have her locked away, for all their sakes.

Surely it had to be Jack Radley, sitting here two feet away from her, the sun shining on his hair, his shirt dazzling white. She could smell the clean cotton just as she could smell the dust and the sun’s heat on the chair and the tin soldiers.

She avoided his eyes, afraid he would see the fear in her own. If he did see her thoughts and understand them, how would he feel? Hurt, because he cared what she thought of him? Because it was unjust, and he had hoped for better? Angry, because she misjudged him? Or because his plans were failing? How angry? Angry enough to strike out at her?

Or worse, far worse, fearful that she would betray him, become a danger to his safety?

Now she dared not look up. What if he saw all that in her eyes? If he had killed George, then he would now have to kill her too. But he would be caught!

Not if he made it look like suicide. The Marches would be only too glad to accept it and dismiss the whole matter and send the police away, and Thomas would have to go, to accept the obvious. The family would not question it or make an issue—far from it! They would be grateful.

Charlotte would never believe it, of course. But who would take any notice of her? There would be nothing she could do. And even if she could, it would hardly help Emily.

She was sitting in the nursery in the silence and the sun. It was so bright it dazzled her. She felt a little dizzy and the chair was suddenly very hard under her. It seemed to be tilting. This was ridiculous, she must not faint! She was alone here with him, out of hearing of everyone. If he killed her here it could be days before anyone found her—weeks! Not till a maid came again to do a little perfunctory dusting. They would think she had run away—admitting her guilt.

“Emily, are you all right?” His voice sounded anxious. She felt his hand warm on her arm, very strong, tight.

She wanted to pull away violently. A sweat of terror broke out on her skin, wetting the black cloth of her dress and trickling cold down her back. If she tore away from him he would know she was afraid, and he would know why. She would not be able to get up and run away before he could catch her. It was possible she would reach the door behind him, and race along the passage to the steep stairs. It would be so easy to push her, a headlong fall. She could already see her own crumpled body at the foot, hear his voice with the explanation. So simple, so sorry. Another tragic accident—she was beside herself with grief and guilt.

There was only one way: pretend innocence, convince him she had no suspicions, no ideas, no fear of him.

She swallowed hard and gritted her teeth. She forced herself to look up at him, meet his eyes without flinching, speak without biting her tongue or fumbling.

“Yes—yes, thank you. I just felt dizzy for a moment. It’s warmer in here than I expected.”

“I’ll open the window.” He stood up as he said it, reaching for the catch, and lifted the heavy sash. That was it! A fall out of the window! They were three stories up; she would hit the hard walk outside once and that would be the end. Who would hear her if she screamed? No one, up here. That was precisely why it was the nursery, so the cries of the children should not disturb anyone. But if she stayed seated he would find her hard to pick up, a deadweight. It was a little, a very little, but there was nothing she could do but take it a step at a time, searching for the next one.

“Yes. Yes, perhaps that would help,” she agreed.

He turned round, facing her, silhouetted against the sun and the blue dazzle of the leaves and the sky through the window. He walked over and leaned forward a little, taking her hand. He was warm, and she felt with a shudder how strong. She could not possibly get out of the chair now. He was standing almost above her, imprisoning her.

“Emily?” He looked at her face—in fact, he was staring. “Emily, are you afraid of them?”

She was so frightened her body ached and the sweat ran down her back and between her breasts.

“Afraid?” She feigned innocence, trying to look as though she were not sure what he meant.

“Don’t pretend with me.” He was still holding her hand. “Eustace and that fearful old woman are hell-bent on having you blamed for murder. But that’s only so they can get the matter hushed up and the police out of the house. Surely Pitt knows that. Isn’t he your brother-in-law? And I have the opinion that your sister will not let any accusations against you go by without doing her best to tear them to bits, let the pieces fall where they may.”

Did he have any idea what she was thinking? Could he smell her fear? Surely he would know it was immediate and physical, nothing so remote as the Marches’ suspicions. It was an obvious, compelling step from that to the knowledge that she thought he had killed George, and why.

“I find it very uncomfortable,” she said with a dry little swallow, her face hot. “Of course, it isn’t pleasant to have people, even someone like Mrs. March, imagine such a thing of you. But I know it’s because she’s afraid for her own.”

“Her own?” He sounded surprised, but she did not look at him.

“I think it would be better if I did not discuss it,” she said quietly. “But there are certain things ... in the family—”

“Who? Tassie?” There was disbelief in his voice now.

“Really, Mr. Radley, I would very much rather not talk about it. I don’t suppose it was anything to do with her, but Mrs. March may be very anxious.” She made her move at last, praying he would step back and allow her to stand. She was weak with relief when he did.

“But you think it was Tassie?” he pressed on, but she refused to look at him. Carefully, breath tight in her throat, she moved past him towards the door.

“No—probably because I don’t want to. I don’t want to think it of anyone, but I cannot avoid it.” She was in the night nursery now, and he was close behind her. “There was as good a reason for William to have done it as for me.” It was a miserable thing to say, but all she could think of was escaping, reaching the stairs and getting down them to the main landing where there would be people.

“Of course,” He was still beside her, very close, ready to catch her if she felt faint again. “If he cared. I never saw any sign that he did. And George was certainly not the first man to be besotted with Sybilla, you know.”

“I can imagine, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t mind!” She was walking rapidly now, too rapidly. The thought of safety only yards away was too sweet; relief welled up inside her, tightening her throat. She must just get down the stairs ahead of him, where he could not push or trip her. She wanted to run, to make sure of it now.

Then with almost unbearable horror she felt his hand close over her elbow. She wanted to wrench away, call out, scream. But there might be no one else, even beyond that flight of steps. Then she would have betrayed her fear and be left alone with him. She froze.

“Emily,” he said urgently. “Be careful!”

Was it a threat? At last she looked at him, almost involuntarily. But she had to know.

“Be careful of William,” he said earnestly. “If it was William, and he realizes you know, he might hurt you—even if only by trying to incriminate you somehow.”

“I will. In fact I shall try not to discuss it, if I can.”

He laughed without pleasure. “I mean it, Emily.”

“Thank you.” She gulped and all but choked. They were at the top of the stairs. She could not stay here; he would know she expected him to push her—and that knowledge would be enough to bring it about. He could not dare let her live, and he would never have a better chance than this. A simple slip of the foot and she would pitch down, breaking her back, or her neck. Her feet were already on the second step. She forced herself, shaking, knees weak—the third, the fourth. He was behind her; it was too narrow to come beside. The seventh step, the eighth—she tried not to hurry. With every second she was nearer. At last she was at the bottom—safe! For now.

She took an enormous breath, scuffed her shoes with the clumsiness of relief, and hurried across the landing towards the main stairs.