Brunswick Gardens (15 page)

She could imagine it, but her first thought was for Vita. Parmenter and the shock and distress she would feel, indeed must be feeling now. No matter how well Vita knew her husband, or what confidence she had in him, she could not help but be gripped by a terrible fear that he could be accused. Innocent people did sometimes suffer, even die. And Ramsay himself must be in a turmoil of emotions, every one of them painful,
whether he was guilty of anything at all or absolutely nothing. It must be a living nightmare for him.

“Perhaps I could persuade him to plead madness,” the bishop said aloud. He looked at Isadora. “He certainly must be quite mad. No sane man could embark on an affair with a woman of Unity Bellwood’s type, and then lose all touch with morality, his own lifelong beliefs and everything he has been taught, and in hysteria murder her. It would be a totally truthful plea.” He nodded, determined to convince her. “One cannot blame madness, one can only pity it. And of course put the person under suitable restraint, naturally.” He leaned forward. “He would be cared for in the best and safest institution we can find. He would be treated with the necessary care. It would be the best thing for everyone.”

She was dizzy with the speed with which he had moved from a question to a supposition and then to an assumption, and an answer where Ramsay Parmenter was judged and his sentence decided. It had taken less than three minutes. She felt detached from it, as if she were only in a sense present in the room. Part of her was far away, looking on at the quiet dignity of it with its deep wine patterned carpet, its gentle fire, the bishop standing with his hands clenched in front of him, rendering his judgment. He seemed so familiar in his physical presence, and yet a total stranger, a mind and soul she did not know at all.

“You don’t know anything about it yet.” The words were on her lips before she had considered how he would react to them. “He may not be guilty of anything at all.”

“I can hardly wait until he is charged, can I?” he demanded angrily, stepping back and closer to the fire. “I must act to protect the church. Surely you can see that? The damage will be appalling.” He stared at her accusingly, as if she were willfully slow-witted. “We have enemies enough in the modern world without this sort of disaster. There are people on every side denying God, setting up citadels of the mind dedicated to
reason as if it were a deity, as if it could answer all our desires and aspirations towards righteousness.” He poked at the air. “Unity Bellwood was just one apostle of the mind without morality, the indulgence of the basest instincts of the body, as if learning somehow set one free from the rules which govern the rest of us. Parmenter was quite mistaken to imagine he could teach her better things, reform her, convert her, if you like. It was the supreme arrogance, and look how he has paid for it.” He started to pace again, striding in decisive steps to the far end of the room, turning and coming back, turning and retracing his way exactly across the carpet. He was wearing marks in the pile of it. “Now I must think what is best for all. I cannot indulge the one at the cost of many. It is a luxury I do not have. This is no time for sentimentality.”

“Have you spoken with him?” She was searching for something to delay him. Without realizing it, she had made a decision to fight him.

“Not yet, but of course I shall. First I must think what to say. I cannot go unprepared. It would be dishonest to him, and disastrous.”

She felt even more separate from him, almost a stranger. And the most painful thing was that she wanted to be separate, apart from the thoughts he had as much as the action he would take.

“Well, perhaps he will tell you something which will explain it,” she argued. “You must not act before that. You would look dreadful to have condemned him and then find he was innocent. How would people view the church then … to have abandoned one of your own the moment he was in trouble? What about honor, loyalty, or even compassion?” She said the last word harshly, unable to keep back her anger any longer and, in truth, unwilling to hide it.

He stopped in the middle of the floor, staring at her. He took a deep breath. He looked worried, even frightened.

She wanted to be sorry for him. It was a wretched situation. Whatever he did there was a strong possibility it would be
wrong, and it would certainly be perceived as such by many. There were always people only too happy to criticize. They had their own reasons, political reasons. Church politics seethed with rivalry, hurt feelings, ambition, guilt, thwarted hopes. The bishop’s miter was in some ways as heavy and uneasy an ornament as a crown. Too much was expected of the wearer, a sanctity, a moral rightness beyond any mortal to achieve.

And yet as she looked at him she did not see a man struggling valiantly to do right in a dreadful dilemma. She saw instead a man seeking the expedient in case he was caught in the wrong, even a man relishing a certain self-importance as he thought of himself as the one person to save the reputation of the church under such pressure. There was even a certain joy of martyrdom in him. Not once had he expressed pity for any one of the Parmenter family, or grief for Unity herself.

“Do you suppose it will be misunderstood?” he asked seriously.

“What?” She did not know what he was talking about. Had he said something she had not heard?

“Do you think that people will misunderstand our reasons?” he said in what he must have supposed was a plainer form.

“Misunderstand what, Reginald?”

“Our counsel to Ramsay Parmenter to plead madness, of course! Where is your attention?” His face was furrowed with anxiety. “You sounded as if you believed they might see it as lack of loyalty or a certain cowardice, as if we had abandoned him.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you are proposing to do … abandon him?”

He flushed red.

“No, of course it isn’t! I don’t know how you could even think of such a thing!” he responded angrily. “It is simply a matter of putting the church first, and that means not only doing what is right but doing what is perceived to be right. I would
have thought after all these years you could have understood that.”

Her own ignorance astounded her, not of her lack of sympathy with the argument, but her lack of perception of herself, and of him. How could she have known him so little as not to have seen this in him before? It was a shabbiness which hurt so deeply she could have wept with the loneliness and the disappointment of it.

He was talking to himself, voicing his thoughts aloud. “Perhaps I should speak to Harold Petheridge. He could bring some influence to bear. After all, the government has an interest in this.” He started to walk again. “No one wants a scandal, and we should think of the family. This must be fearful for them.”

She stared at him, wondering if he thought for a moment about Ramsay Parmenter himself, how frightened he must feel, how torn with doubts, confusion, and perhaps guilt. Could anyone feel more alone than he must? Would Reginald think of going to offer him some kind of spiritual strength, the support of a friend if he were innocent, the courage to stand and fight for his vindication? Or if he were guilty, then the office of a priest to listen to his confusion and his sin, and to help him seek some form of repentance, at least the beginning of the long road back. She had to believe there was a way. The man she knew might have lost his path and committed some fearful error, but he was not a wicked man, not to be abandoned like an object no longer needed. Was not the whole essence of the church’s purpose to preach the Gospel to all people and to cry repentance to all who would hear … and that was everyone.

“You are going to see Ramsay, aren’t you?” she said with sudden urgency.

He was at the far window. “Yes, of course I am,” he answered crossly. “I told you that when you asked before. It is vital I speak with him. I need to know a great deal more about this situation, then I can make an informed judgment as to how we should deal with it … for the best.” He straightened his
jacket a little. “I am going upstairs to my study. I need to compose myself. Good night.”

She did not answer, and he seemed not to notice. He went out and closed the door with a click.

4

T
HE MORNING AFTER
Unity Bellwood’s death Pitt called at the office of the medical examiner. He did not expect to hear anything helpful, but it was a duty which must not be overlooked. It was another sharp early spring day, and in spite of the unpleasantness of his task, he walked with a lift in his step. So far he had seen nothing on the billboards, and the newspaper headlines were largely to do with Cecil Rhodes’s African politics, domestic economics and the perennial Irish Problem.

He went up the steps two at a time and along the corridors almost as if he were unaware of the carbolic and formaldehyde odor. He knocked on the examiner’s office door and went in. It was a small room, crowded with books on shelves, on the floor, and in piles on the desk.

“Good morning, Dr. Marshall,” he said cheerfully. “Anything for me?”

Marshall, a small, spare man with a graying beard, looked up from the paper he was writing on, the quill poised in his hand.

“Aye, I have, and ye’ll not like it,” he said with a smile of friendliness but no pleasure. “There are times I think my job is no’ fit even for a man on a fine sunny day. But then there are times I’d sooner have it than yours. And this is one o’ them.”

“What did you find?” Pitt asked with a sinking heart. “Wasn’t
it the fall that killed her? Don’t tell me she was strangled. There were no marks. I looked. Was she struck before she fell?” That was going to make accident impossible, even a quarrel resulting in a struggle and then a fall, which was what he hoped for. Parmenter’s lie could still possibly be explained and then concealed. It was only twenty-four hours. Shock could account for much distress and temporary mental aberration. It could be announced in such a way as to make it seem that Parmenter had acknowledged his part almost immediately.

“Oh, aye,” Marshall said dryly. “Not a thing wrong with the lassie except bruises, no doubt collected as she banged against the stairs and the banister and the wall as she went down, and of course a broken neck. If everyone were as healthy as she, I’d be out of a profession.”

“Then what am I not going to like?” Pitt asked, moving books off the only other chair and sitting sideways on it.

“She was about three months with child,” Marshall answered.

Pitt should have guessed it. It was the disaster he should naturally have foreseen. Unity’s reputation for radical thought could so easily have included the sexual freedom that was fashionable among certain of the intellectual and artistic elite. Throughout history there had been leaders in thought and creativity who had not considered the usual restrictions of behavior as applying to them. And they had always had their acolytes. No wonder Ramsay Parmenter had found her dangerous.

Had he also found her attractive … irresistibly so?

It could as easily have been Mallory—or Dominic Corde. Pitt thought of Dominic as he had first known him: handsome, charming with such ease he barely knew he did it, and availing himself of far too many opportunities, too many willing young women. Had he really changed so much, or was the same weakness only masked by the clerical collar, not eradicated?

He was aware, even as the thoughts came to his mind, that they were motivated by personal feelings as well as reason.

“I don’t know,” Marshall interrupted.

“I beg your pardon?” Pitt looked at him questioningly.

“I have no idea who the father was,” Marshall elaborated. “No way to tell, but nasty, considering the household she was living in.”

That was an understatement. Any one of the men would have been ruined by the scandal, possibly all of them if it were unresolved. This was exactly what Cornwallis had hoped to forestall.

“I suppose she would have known she was in that condition?” he said aloud.

Marshal made a slight gesture of doubt. “Probably, but I have met women who’ve gone to full term and been taken by surprise. But from what you say of this one, I expect she knew. Women usually do.”