Death in the Devil's Acre

9

GENERAL BALANTYNE COULD NOT put the devil’s acre murders out of his mind. He had never heard of Dr. Pinchin or the last victim, Ernest Pomeroy, before the newspapers made them synonymous with terror and abomination in the dark. But the face of Max Burton, with its lidded eyes and curling lip, raised in him disturbing memories of other murders, hideous incidents from the past that he had never fully understood.

And Bertie Astley belonged to Balantyne’s own class, something less than true aristocracy, but far more than merely gentry. Anyone might come by money, and manners could be mimicked or learned. Wit, fashion, and even beauty were nothing; one enjoyed them, but no one worth a thought was taken in by them. But the Astleys had breeding; generations of honorable reputation, of service to church or state, had made them part of a small world of privilege that had once seemed golden—and safe. Occasionally some knave or fool stepped out of it—but no invader had beaten his way in.

How had Bertram Astley’s body come to be found in a doorway to a male brothel? Balantyne, of course, was not naïve enough to exclude the possibility that Astley had gone there for the obvious purpose, or that he had been murdered by a chance lunatic. Neither could he dismiss the fear that it was not accident but design that had selected him. He mistrusted the comfortable belief in a random killer that chose two men, Max and Bertie, so dramatically dissimilar, yet both known to him.

He broached the subject to Augusta. She immediately assumed he wished to discuss the Devil’s Acre itself, and some plan for reform of prostitution and its ills; her face closed over.

“Really, Brandon, for a man who has spent the best part of his adult years in the army, you are singularly ingenuous!” she said with some contempt. “If you imagine you are going to alter the baser instincts of human nature by a little well-meaning legislation, then you belong in some nice village pulpit where you can dispense tea and platitudes to unmarried ladies of earnest disposition, and do very little harm by it. Here in a sophisticated society, you are ridiculous!”

He was stung. It was not only cruel, but totally unjust. And it was not what he had meant. “There are many words I have heard applied to the murder of Bertie Astley,” he said cuttingly. “But you are the first to choose ‘sophisticated.’ It is an allusion whose appropriateness escapes me!”

A dull color marked her cheeks. He had misunderstood her willfully, and as painfully as she had mistaken him. “I do not appreciate sarcasm, Brandon,” she answered. “And you have not the wit to do it successfully. Bertie Astley was an unfortunate victim of whatever lunatic is perpetrating these outrages. What purpose took him to that area we will probably never know, and it is none of our business. Suffer him to be buried in peace, and his family to mourn him decently. It is indelicate in the extreme to remind anyone of the circumstances of his death. I imagine a gentleman would not do so.”

“Then it is time we had fewer gentlemen—and a greater number of police, or whatever it is that it takes to get something done!” he retorted. “I, for one, do not desire to see any more mutilated corpses turning up in London.”

She looked at him wearily. “We have few enough gentlemen already. I would wish there were more, not less!” She turned and walked away, leaving him with the feeling that he had lost the argument in spite of the fact that he was in the right.

The following day, Christina had luncheon with her mother but declined to go calling. Balantyne found himself in the withdrawing room alone with his daughter. The fire was blazing halfway up the chimney, and the room was full of warm, flickering light. It seemed familiar, comfortably timeless, almost as if they could have slipped back into his youth and her childhood, when affection was taken for granted.

He sat back in his chair and stared at Christina as she stood by the round piecrust table. Her face was remarkably pretty: the small features, rounded lips, wide eyes, shining hair. Her figure, in its fashionable dress, still had the freshness of a girl’s. She was a strange mixture of child and woman—perhaps that was her charm. Certainly she had had many admirers before she married Alan Ross. And, to judge from the social occasions at which he had seen her, she still had, even if they were now more discreet.

“Christina?”

She turned and looked at him. “Yes, Papa?”

“You knew Sir Bertram Astley, didn’t you.” He did not allow it to be a question, because he would not accept denial.

She faced him when she spoke, but bent her eyes to a china ornament on the table. The subject was trivial, not worth a conversation.

“Slightly,” she replied. “One is bound to meet most of the people in Society at some time or another.” She did not ask why he had mentioned it.

“What sort of a man was he?”

“Pleasant, as far as I could judge,” she answered with a slight smile. “But quite ordinary.”

She was so confident that he could not disbelieve her. And yet he knew she moved in circles that were neither bland nor artless. She was far less innocent than he had been at her age—perhaps than he was even now?

“What about Beau Astley?”

She hesitated a moment. Was there a touch of color on her skin, or was it only a reflection of the firelight?

“Charming.” she said without expression in her voice. “Very agreeable, although I admit I do not know him well. It is something of a hasty judgment. If you are expecting me to come up with any profundity, Papa, I am afraid I shall disappoint you. I had no idea Sir Bertram had perverted tastes. I fully thought he was after that silly Woolmer creature, and meant to marry her. And since she has no money at all, and no family to speak of, I can only imagine it was for the most physical of reasons.” She glanced over at him. “I’m sorry if I shock you. Sometimes I find you incredibly stuffy!”

He was aware that she found him so, but it still hurt to hear it in such words. He did not wish to pursue the matter by defending himself and, at the same time, was conscious that he should. She had no business to speak to him with so little respect.

“Then either he did not go to the Devil’s Acre for the reason supposed—or else he was a man of very diverse tastes,” he said dryly.

She laughed outright. Her hands held the china ornament up in the air; she had beautiful fingers, small and slender. “You know I quite expected you to be furious! Instead you turn out to have a sense of humor.”

“A sense of the absurd,” he corrected, which was a pleasant feeling. “If Bertie Astley was as diligent in his pursuit of Miss Woolmer as you suggest, I find it hard to believe he was also satisfying quite different appetites in the Devil’s Acre. Or had Miss Woolmer declined him?”

She gave a little snort. “Far from it. She grasped onto him like a drowning woman. And her mother was even worse. If they can manage it, they’ll catch poor Beau now! She’s a great lump of a girl, like clotted cream.”

“And ‘poor Beau’ is unwilling?”

Again she hesitated, her fingers tightening on the ornament. “I really have no idea. As I said before, I do not know them except in the briefest way. It is really none of my concern.” She set the ornament down and smiled, turning from the table to come toward the fire. The light shone on the satin of her dress, gleaming brilliantly for a moment, then falling into rich shadows again.

“Have you ever heard of any of the other victims?” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a ridiculous question, and wished he could withdraw it. “Apart from Max, of course!” he added by way of making it at least logical within itself, even if it was stupid in the whole.

Perhaps some memory of Max’s service in this house stirred in her. She swallowed. He felt guilty for having mentioned it.

“Hardly,” she said casually. “Wasn’t one a doctor and one a schoolteacher, or something? Not exactly my social circle, Papa. Isn’t there a saying about necessity making strange bedfellows, or something of the sort?” She laughed a little harshly. “Maybe they were all possessed of the same vice. Maybe they gambled in the Devil’s Acre, and lost. I seem to have heard that Bertie Astley gambled. Not to pay one’s debt is a social sin of monstrous proportions, you know. Didn’t they teach you that in the officers’ mess?”

“They blackballed welshers,” he said soberly, watching her. “They didn’t kill them and—” He hesitated to use a graphic word in front of her, embarrassed for himself, and then ashamed of his embarrassment. Why should he falter around in euphemisms like an old woman? Why should he speak of masculinity in a whisper? “Castrate them,” he finished.

She did not seem to notice the word. The firelight on her face made her skin warm anyway; he could see no extra blush.

“We are not dealing with officers and gentlemen in the Devil’s Acre, Papa,” she pointed out with some sarcasm. “Blackballing them would hardly serve!”

Of course she was right. Whatever use would that threat be to a man? It would get the gambler not a penny of his debt repaid. The losers would simply go to another place in future—if not in the Acre, then in some slum back room elsewhere. And the man owed would not dare broadcast the fact or he would lose face everywhere, and from then on no one would pay him.

“Actually,” she continued, turning to look at him, “I would have thought that this method would be most effective. I’m amazed it has needed four men dead to have made the point.”

“It is more than amazing.” He spoke slowly, turning it over in his mind and finding himself inexplicably cold. “In fact, it is incredible.”

She was not looking at him. The light on her dress accented the slender curve of her body as she turned away. She did not look very different from when she had been seventeen, yet he felt as if she were unreachable. Had she always been so, and only his complacency had allowed him to imagine he knew her because she was his daughter?

“One does not hate someone so passionately over a gambling debt.” He went back to the subject because he had not yet exorcised it.

“Perhaps they are mad?” She shrugged. “Who knows what it was? Really, it is a most unpleasant affair, Papa. Must we discuss it?”

An apology was on his tongue, and then he changed his mind. “Do you find you can dismiss it?” he asked instead. “I cannot.”

“Apparently.” She had an excellent shadow of Augusta’s cold scorn. “Yes, I can. I do not find the goings-on of the denizens of the slums as fascinating as you do. I greatly prefer the society in which I was brought up.”

“I thought you found it tedious.” He was surprised how sharp his own tongue had become. “I have frequently heard you say so.”

She lifted her chin a little and moved away. “Do you suggest I should look in the Devil’s Acre for a little variety then, Papa?” Her voice was brittle. “I don’t think Alan would care for that! And Mama would be appalled.” She walked over to the bell and pulled it. “I am afraid that, like most other women, I shall just have to put up with a certain tedium and a great deal of trivia in daily life. But I find your moralizing insufferably pompous. You have not the faintest idea what caused these murders, and I can’t think why you want to go on talking about them, unless it is to make yourself feel superior. I don’t care to discuss it anymore. As Mama says, it is unbelievably sordid.”

The bell was answered by the footman.

“Please call my carriage, Stride,” she said coolly. “I am ready to return home.”

Balantyne was filled with a mixture of relief and a sense of loss as he watched her go. Was it the difference between men and women, or one generation and another that set the gulf between their understanding? It seemed these days there were fewer and fewer people he could talk to with ease, and feel that they were discussing something significant, not merely exchanging conventional words that one neither believed in nor cared about.

Why had he wanted to talk about the murders with Christina? Or with anybody? There were a thousand other things to discuss, all pleasant or interesting—even amusing. Why the Devil’s Acre? ... Because in remembering some of the things Brandy had spoken of, the poverty and the pain, he could understand the hatred that might drive someone to kill a creature like Max—even if the savage mutilation was beyond his understanding. He would have executed the man, simply, with a shot through the brain. But perhaps, after all, if it were his wife or his daughter Max had used in his whorehouse, he might have felt the need not only to kill but to destroy the offender’s manhood, the means of his power and the symbol of his abuse. There was a kind of justice in it.

He could not put it from his mind. And there was no one with whom he could discuss it without arousing anger or being accused of fatuity and empty moralizing. Was that how his family, the women he loved, saw him? An insensitive man, pompous, obsessed with a series of sordid killings in an area that he knew nothing about?

Surely Charlotte did not see him like that. She had seemed so interested. Could it have been only kindness? He remembered the letters from Wellington’s soldier in Spain, she had affected to find them so exciting. Could that light in her face have been just a politeness? The thought was abhorrent.

He stood up and walked smartly out of the room and across the hallway to the library. He pulled out paper and wrote a letter to Emily Ashworth. She was Charlotte’s sister; she would pass on the message tactfully that the soldier’s letters were available if Charlotte cared to read them for herself. He sent it off with the footman before he had time to reconsider whether he was being foolish.

The following afternoon, at the earliest hour acceptable for calling, the parlormaid came in with a message that Miss Ellison was in the morning room, and did the general wish to receive her?

He felt a rush of excitement boil up inside him, sending the blood into his face. That was ridiculous—she had come to see the letters. It was not personal. She would have come just as quickly, whoever had possessed them.

“Yes.” He swallowed and tried to meet the parlormaid’s eyes quite casually. “By all means. She has come to see some historical documents, so show her into the library, and then bring tea.”

“Yes, sir.” If the parlormaid found it strange, there was nothing in her face to betray it.

He stood up and pulled his jacket a little straighter. Without thinking, he raised his hands to his cravat. It seemed tight. He loosened it a fraction, and made sure in front of the glass that it was properly tied.

Charlotte was in the library. She turned and smiled as the general came in. He did not even notice the warm reds of her street gown, or that her boots were soaked. All he saw was the light in her face.

“Good afternoon, General,” she said quickly. “It is most kind of you to allow me to read the letters. I do hope I have not called inconveniently?”

“No—not at all.” He wished she would use his name, but it would be grossly familiar to ask her to. He must behave with dignity or he would embarrass her. He kept his face cool. “I have no other engagements for the meantime.” He was going to have late tea with Robert Carlton, but that was unimportant; they were old friends and the arrangement was quite informal.

“That is very generous of you.” She was still smiling.

“Please sit down,” he said, indicating the big chair near the fire. “I have asked the maid to bring tea. I hope that is acceptable?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.” She sat down and put her feet on the fender. For the first time, he noticed how wet her boots were, and that they were quite worn. He looked away, and went for the letters out of the bookcase.

They studied them together for half an hour. The maid brought tea, Charlotte poured it, and they returned to the utterly foreign world of Spain at the beginning of the century. The soldier wrote with such intense honesty that they knew his thoughts, felt his emotions, sensed the closeness of other men and the impact of battle, endured with him endless marches over dry hills, his hunger, and the long hours of waiting followed by sudden fear.

At last Charlotte sat back, her eyes wide, seeing far away. “You know, with his writing that soldier has given me a portion of his life. I feel very rich. Most people are restricted to one time and place, and I have been privileged to see another so vividly it is as if I had been there but come away without the injury or the cost.”

He looked at her face, alive with pleasure, and felt ridiculously rewarded. The sense of being alone vanished like night when the whole earth whirls suddenly upward toward the sun.

He found himself smiling back at her. Instinctively he put out his hand and touched her for a moment. The warmth of her spread right through him till his whole body felt it. Then, reluctantly, he withdrew his hand. It was a moment he dared not linger over. The intensity with which he wished to was warning enough.

What could he say that was honest? He would shatter the moment if he were to descend to platitudes, ordinary and born of someone else’s mind. “I’m glad,” he said simply. “It mattered to me, too. I felt as if I knew that soldier better than I know most of the people I see and talk to, and whose lives I thought I understood.”

Her eyes moved away from his and she took a deep breath. He observed the smooth curve of her body, her throat, the fine line of her cheek.

“Merely living close to people does not mean you know them,” she said thoughtfully. “All you know is what they look like.”

Christina came to his mind.

“One tends to believe that other people care about the same things,” she went on. “It comes as a shock to discover sometimes that they don’t. I cannot get the murders in the Devil’s Acre out of my thoughts, and yet most of the people I know prefer not to hear anything about them. The circumstances remind us of poverty and injustices that hurt.” She swung around to look at him, her eyes level. She felt a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry—do you find it unbecoming that I should mention it?”

“I find it offensive and frightening that anyone should be prepared to ignore it,” he said honestly. Would she think him as pompous as Christina did? She could not be more than a few years older than Christina. That was a realization that shot through him with sudden and startling pain. His face flushed and he felt self-conscious. The past hour’s comfort fled. He was being ridiculous.

“General Balantyne?” She spoke very gravely, her hand touching his sleeve. “Are you being kind to me? Are you sure I have not offended you by raising such a subject?”

He cleared his throat. “Of course I’m sure!” He leaned back hard against the upright of his chair, where he could not feel the warmth of her, or smell the faint aroma of lavender and clean hair, a sweet musk of the skin. Wild sensations stirred inside him, and he strained after intelligent thought to drown them. He heard his voice as if it came from far away. “I have tried to discuss the matter. Brandy is most concerned, and Alan Ross as well. But it distresses the women.” Already he was becoming pompous!

But she did not seem to notice. “It is natural Christina should be upset,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands in her lap. “After all, she knew Sir Bertram Astley, and she knows Miss Woolmer, whom he was engaged to marry. It must be much more painful to her than to you or me. And it is only natural that the police will wonder if Mr. Beau Astley could have envied his brother enough to wish him harm, since he stood to inherit both the title and the estates. And of course Miss Woolmer is very fond of him also—I gather he is most charming. As his friend, Christina is bound to feel for him. His situation must be painful because of his bereavement, and most unpleasant in the suspicions that the uncharitable are bound to exercise.”

He considered it, but Christina had expressed no sympathy. In fact, she had given him the impression that she was impatient of the whole affair. But then Charlotte was crediting Christina with the emotions she would have felt herself.

“And, of course, that wretched creature Max Burton used to be footman here,” she continued. “Although you can hardly care about his fate, it is unpleasant to think that any human being you have known should meet such an end.”

“How did you know it was the same man?” he asked in surprise. He did not recall any mention of Callander Square in the newspapers, or of Max’s previous career. And Burton was not an uncommon name.

The color rose in her cheeks and she looked away.

He was sorry for embarrassing her, and yet honesty between them, the ability to say what was truly in the mind, was of overpowering importance to him. “Charlotte?”

“I am afraid I have been listening to gossip,” she said a little defensively. “Emily and I have been engaged in a great effort to bring the conditions of certain people, especially the young involved in prostitution, to the attention of those who have influence. Apparently one cannot legislate against it, but one can move public opinion until those who practice these abuses find their positions intolerable!” Now she looked up and met his eyes, challenging him to disapprove. Nothing he could say would alter her beliefs in the slightest. He felt a surge of joy well up inside him as he realized it.

“My dear,” he said candidly. “I should not wish to be able to.”

A flicker of confusion showed in her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you not defying me to try to change your mind, to disapprove of you?”

Her face relaxed into a smile, and he realized with horror how much he wanted to touch her. A unity of minds was not enough; there were things at once too strong and too delicate to be transmitted by such limited means as speech. Things long dormant inside him broke open their barrier with great currents of movement, destroying the balance. He wanted to stretch out this afternoon into an indefinite future with no nightfall, to prevent Augusta from returning and bringing back normality—and loneliness.

Charlotte was looking at him. Had she seen that thought in his face? The light died out of her eyes and she turned away.

“Only on that subject,” she said quietly. “Because I know I am right. There are plenty of other things in which I might well be obliged to agree with you if you were to find me at fault. I find myself at fault!”

He did not know what she was referring to, and it would be an intrusion to ask. But he did not think she was saying it for effect, a false modesty. There was some sense of guilt that disturbed her.

“Everyone has faults, my dear,” he said gently. “In those we love, the virtues outweigh them, and are what matter. The qualities less than good we do not choose to observe. We know them, but they do not offend us. If people were without weakness or need, what could we offer them of ourselves that they could value?”

She stood up quickly, and for a moment he thought there were tears in her eyes. Did she know what he was thinking—what he was trying to say—and at the same time not to say? He loved her. It was there in words in his mind at last.

It would be unforgivable to embarrass her. At all costs, he must behave properly. He pulled his shoulders back and sat up straighter. “It sounds a most excellent work that you and Emily are engaged in.” He prayed that his voice sounded normal, not too suddenly remote, too pompous.

“Yes.” She kept her back to him and stared out the window at the garden. “Lady Cumming-Gould is also concerned, and Mr. Somerset Carlisle, the Member of Parliament. I think we have already accomplished something.” She turned at last and smiled at him. “I’m so glad you approve. Now that you have said so, I can confess I should have been hurt had you not.”

He felt the heat burn his cheeks again, with a mixture of pleasure and pain. He stood, then picked up the soldier’s letters from the desk. He could not bear for her to go, and yet it was equally intolerable now that she should stay. He must not betray himself. The emotion he felt was so profound and so very unreliable inside him that he must excuse her and be alone.

“Please take these, and read them again if you wish.”

She understood the convention well. She accepted them and thanked him. “I will take the greatest care of them,” she said quietly. “I feel he is a friend of both of us. I do thank you for a unique afternoon. Good day, General Balantyne.”

He took a deep breath. “Good day, Charlotte.” He reached for the bell. When the footman came, he watched her go, her back straight, head high. He stood exactly where he had been when she left, trying to keep her presence with him, to wrap himself in a golden cocoon before the warmth died and he was left alone again.

Balantyne did not sleep well that night. He chose to be out when Augusta returned, and when he came back to the house he was already late for dinner.

“I cannot imagine why you wish to walk at this hour,” she remarked with a little shake of her head. “It is totally dark, and the coldest night of the year.”

“It is quite fine,” he answered. “I imagine presently there will be a moon.” It was irrelevant. He had walked to put off the time of meeting her and having to step out of his dream and back into the pattern of life. To try to explain that would be cruel and incomprehensible to her. Instead he broached another unpleasant subject.

“Augusta, I think it would be advisable for you to take some counsel with Christina, give her a little advice.”

Augusta raised her eyebrows and sat motionless, her soupspoon halfway to her mouth. “Indeed? Upon what subject?”

“Her behavior toward Alan.”

“Do you consider that she is failing in her duty?”

“It is nothing so simple.” He shook his head. “But duty does not beget love. She is contrary, too unkind with her tongue. I have seen no softness in her. She is quite unlike Jemima, for example.”

“Naturally.” She carried the spoon to her mouth and ate elegantly. “Jemima was brought up as a governess. One would expect to find her manner a good deal more obedient and grateful. Christina is a lady.”

It was not necessary to remind him that Augusta’s father had been an earl, and his own possessed of no distinction but a military one. “I was thinking of her happiness,” he said steadily. “One may be a princess and yet not necessarily inspire love. She would serve herself better if she were to charm Alan a little more, and take him for granted a good deal less. He is not a man to be dazzled by appearances, or to have his affections heightened by the awareness that other men find her pleasing.”

Augusta went suddenly quite white, her arm frozen, fingers rigid around the spoon.

“Are you ill?” he said in confusion. “Augusta!”

She blinked. “No ... no, I am perfectly well. I swallowed my soup a little carelessly, that is all. What did you mean about Christina? She has always been something of a flirt. It is natural for a pretty woman. Alan can hardly take exception to that.”

“You are talking about social customs!” Why did she seem unable to understand? “I am talking about love, gentleness, sharing things.”

Her eyes widened and there was a shred of bitter humor in them he found confusing. “You are being romantic, Brandon,” she said. “I had not expected anything so—so very young of you!”

“You mean naïve? On the contrary, it is you and Christina who are naïve—in imagining that a relationship can survive without honest emotion and the occasional sacrifice to unreason in the name of kindness. You can argue people into a business arrangement, but not into affection.”

Augusta sat still for several minutes, considering what he had said and what she should reply to him. “I think we should be interfering where it is no longer our concern,” she said at last. “Christina is a married woman now. Her private life is Alan’s responsibility, and you would be trespassing upon his rights if you were to offer her advice, especially about such personal matters.”

He was surprised. That was the last answer he had expected from her. “You mean you would stand by and watch her destroy her marriage because you consider it interfering to offer her advice? She did not cease to be our daughter just because she became Alan’s wife, nor did our affection stop!”

“Of course our affection did not stop,” she said impatiently. “But if you regard the law, as well as the practices of daily life, you will find that Alan is responsible for her now. For a woman to marry is a far bigger change in all her circumstances than you seem to appreciate. What passes between them is private, and we would be deeply mistaken to interfere.” She smiled faintly. “Would you have appreciated it, Brandon, had my father offered you advice upon your conduct toward me?” “I was speaking of advising Christina—not Alan!” “Would you have accepted it from your own father?” The thought was an entirely new one to him. It had never occurred to him that anyone else might have concerned himself in the more private aspects of his life. It was appalling—offensive! ... But this was a totally different matter. Christina was his daughter, and he was seeking for Augusta, as her mother, to counsel her so that she might amend her behavior and forestall a great deal of unhappiness for herself.

He opened his mouth to point out all this, then saw from his wife’s expression that to her it was precisely the same. He smiled in dry appreciation and looked back at her.

“I would not have minded had your mother counseled you toward affection rather than duty, if she had considered it necessary. Indeed, I have no idea whether she did or not!”

“She did not!” Augusta said a trifle sharply. “And nor shall I offer advice to Christina unless she asks it of me. To do so would be to assume that I know what passes between them, and would require an explanation from her as to things which are extremely personal. I shall not place her in that position, nor do I wish her to believe me inquisitive.”

He could think of nothing more to say. They were arguing in words; they were not really even speaking of the same emotions. He let the silence close the subject, and he did not raise it again. He could not speak to Christina himself; he did not know how to begin, how to avoid her either laughing at him or becoming offended. But he could speak to Alan Ross.

Feeling he could not afford to wait for an opportunity to present itself, Balantyne went the following day to visit Alan Ross, at a time when he believed it likely Christina would be out. Even if, by misfortune, she was at home, it would not be awkward to excuse himself from her presence and talk alone with Ross.

It was not an interview he looked forward to, for he had abandoned any idea of trying to be oblique. Since his own emotions had been stripped of their usual protections of ritual and words, he found it surprisingly easier now to contemplate speaking honestly.

Christina was not at home. Alan Ross welcomed him and showed him into his study where he had been writing letters. It was a pleasant room, entirely masculine, but obviously a place where someone spent a great deal of time and kept personal possessions that were both treasured and frequently used.

They exchanged trivialities for a few minutes. Normally it would have been a comfortable introduction into any of a dozen subjects of mutual interest, but today Balantyne was too conscious of the reasons for his visit to descend to mere companionship. As soon as the footman had left the tray with sherry and glasses, he turned to Ross.

“Did you know Bertie Astley well?” he asked.

Alan Ross seemed to pale. “Not very,” he said quietly.

Balantyne waited, unsure how to continue. Was there pain underneath that polite reply, the memory of Christina laughing, flirting, being entertained? Somehow he imagined both the Astleys as fashionable and witty, amusing in a way that Alan Ross had never been. He was a graver man, deeper and infinitely harder to win.

“I never met him,” Balantyne went on. “Do you think he was where they found him of his own accord?”

Ross smiled slightly and his blue eyes met Balantyne’s. “I should be surprised. He seemed eminently normal on the occasions I saw him.”

“You mean he flirted a great deal?”

Ross’s smile widened tolerantly. “No more than usual for a young man who feels the noose of matrimony closing round him, and wishes to taste of freedom to the full while he still may. Miss Woolmer’s mother has a fearsome grip.”

Balantyne remembered his own last few weeks of freedom, before he had asked Augusta’s father for her hand. He had known he was going to, of course, but it was still sweet to play with the idea that he might not, to savor in imagination all sorts of other possibilities he would never indulge.

He looked across and caught Ross’s eyes. They understood each other perfectly. “I suppose Christina is very distressed by his death.” It was more an observation than a question. It would account for the strain he saw in her. She hated mourning and would absorb the sorrow in her own way.

“Not especially, though she was rather fond of him,” Ross replied. Ross had turned away and his face was tight. “She was fond of a number of people,” he said quietly.

Balantyne felt the sweat prickle on his skin. Fond of? Was that a euphemism for something much coarser, more promiscuous? Or was it only his own rush of feeling for Charlotte, the strong physical desire that made his face burn at the memory, that put in his mind far uglier thoughts of Christina? Had she been drenched with that hunger, but without the love?

He looked at Ross’s face, still turned toward the fire. As he had observed before, it was a private face, strong-boned but with a very vulnerable mouth. To intrude into his emotions would be unforgivable.

In that moment Balantyne believed he understood what Ross would never say: Christina was a loose woman. How it had come about he would never know. Perhaps Ross had expected too much of her, a maturity, a delicacy of which she was not capable. Perhaps he had compared her with Helena Doran. A mistake—you should never compare one woman with another. And yet, dear God, how easy to do when you have loved! Was there not at the back of his own mind, painful and bright, a memory of Charlotte’s eyes looking at him that would forever be a comparison with every other relationship—and a damning of it?

He must think of Christina. Christina as a young bride would have been confused, hurt, not knowing in what way she had failed to please Ross. A man should teach a woman gently, be prepared to wait while she learned such an utterly new life ... the physical... His thoughts stopped. Or was it new to Christina? Memories floated back from the time of the murders on Callander Square, things Augusta had refused to discuss. She had dealt with so much, been so competent—and never told him.

Was Christina seeking from other men the reassurance that she was desired because the husband she loved had rejected her, shut her out? Or was she simply a vain and immoral woman for whom one man was not enough?

But whatever the desire, surely faithfulness ...

What sort of faith did he keep with Augusta? It was the knowledge of hurting Charlotte that had kept him from excess yesterday, from touching her, from holding her—and ... And what? Anything—everything! And it was selfishness, fear of the rejection he would see in Charlotte’s eyes, her horror when she understood what he really felt. It was not any thought of Augusta.

And, more than that, Charlotte would have been irreparably hurt to know what storms she had created in him. He would lose her; she would certainly never come to Callander Square again, never be alone with him to share even the sweetness of friendship. Would she think him ridiculous? Or, worse, pitiful? He thrust the thought away; there was nothing absurd in loving.

But what about Christina? Had she inherited from him this betraying hunger? He had never talked to her of fidelity or modesty; he had left all that sort of thing to Augusta. It was a mother’s duty to instruct her daughter in the conduct of marriage. For him to have done so would have been indelicate, and would have caused only embarrassment.

But he could have spoken of chastity—simple morality. And he had never done so. Perhaps he owed Christina a great deal? And heaven knew what he owed Alan Ross! ... He looked up and saw Ross’s eyes, waiting for him. Could he have any idea what had been passing through his thoughts?

“She knew Adela Pomeroy,” Ross said with a slight frown, as if it puzzled him.

The name meant nothing to Balantyne. “Adela Pomeroy?” he repeated.

“The wife of the last man who was murdered in the Acre—the schoolteacher,” Ross explained.

“Oh.” He thought for a moment. “How on earth did Christina come to know a schoolteacher’s wife?”

“She’s a pretty woman,” Ross answered painfully. “And bored. I think she sought diversion in”—he moved his hand slightly—“in wider company.”

Whatever did he mean by that? Thousands of women were probably bored now and then. You could not simply extend your social circle upward unless you were remarkably pretty, and willing to ... Then was Adela Pomeroy another loose woman? But if so, why was it Ernest Pomeroy who was killed? It should have been Adela. And Bertie Astley—had he been Adela’s lover? And what connection had the doctor with any of them?

Were they all victims of the same lunatic? Or perhaps was one a crime fitted in and made to look like the others, an opportunity taken brilliant advantage of: to inherit a title and an estate; or to be rid of a tedious husband; or—and the sweat broke out on his body at the thought—to avenge a cuckolder of one’s bed, one’s home.

“What was the doctor’s wife like?” he asked huskily, swallowing.

Ross looked away. “I’ve no idea. Why?”

Balantyne’s face was stiff. “No reason. My mind was wandering,” he said lamely. He forced the thought away; it was unworthy of such a man.

Ross offered him the sherry, but he declined it. Its warmth did not reach deep enough inside him. He noticed that Ross himself took none either. How long had he known Christina’s nature? He cannot have understood it when he married her. Had the knowledge come slowly, a gathering pain? Or in a single act of discovery, like a sharp wound?

He looked at Ross’s face. It would be unpardonable to discuss the subject with him. It was his own private grief, and no matter what Balantyne might guess, he must be silent. He could not bear Ross to know—even for an instant—the thoughts that had come to him.

He wanted to run away, to exist in some fantasy land where he could be with Charlotte, talk with her, see her face, touch her, learn to share a multitude of things.

No doubt Alan Ross would like to be in just such a place, with someone clean and generous. But he understood duty, and so far he had found the courage to fulfill it.

Balantyne sat quite still. His mind fumbled for something to say, anything that would let Ross know that he was not alone; that, far from pity, he felt the most intense admiration for him, and a regard that was perhaps as close to love as one man comes for another. But no words were right; they had all been used too lightly. None of them conveyed the reality of the pain.

The two men sat for a long time, the untouched sherry decanter between them, the logs settling in the hearth. Finally, Balantyne stood up. Christina would doubtless soon be arriving home, and he did not wish to see her.

His goodbyes were trivial, the same things he always said, and Ross gave the same replies. But once, as they shook hands, he had the feeling for a moment that perhaps the unsaid things had been understood after all—at least the good things. And there would be other times, other chances to show a gentleness, to allow Ross to perceive that he cared, not blindly, but because he suffered some of the same loneliness, the same ties to duty that would destroy him if he let them go.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Ross said with a faint smile. “Thank you for calling.”

“Good afternoon, Alan. Pleasure to see you.”

Neither of them mentioned the women. There was no message, no regards.

Balantyne turned and walked away into the sharp winter afternoon. He had not brought the carriage. He preferred the isolation and the exercise, the wind hard on his face, and it would take longer to get home.