Brunswick Gardens (49 page)

“Do you know which ones he was wearing the day Miss Bellwood died?” Dominic asked.

“I’m not sure, sir. It would be either these”—he pointed to a pair of fairly well worn black leather boots—“or these.” He indicated another pair, rather newer.

“Thank you.” Dominic reached forward and picked up the first pair, taking them over to the window and holding them to the sunlight. They were immaculate. The soles were thin with use, but there were no stains on them, nor any marks of recent scraping such as might be needed to remove a chemical.

He put them down and picked up the other pair Stander had indicated. He examined them in the same way. They also were perfectly clean.

“Had he any more he might have worn that day?” he asked.

“No sir, I believe not.” Stander looked totally mystified.

“I’ll look at them all anyway.” Dominic made it a statement. He was not asking permission. Certainly he would not be diverted now from finding the truth or be misled by the wrong pair of shoes. He picked them up one by one and searched the entire collection, not that there were so many. Mallory was far from extravagant, seven pairs in all, including a very old pair of riding boots. None of them had any chemical stains.

“Did you find what you were looking for, sir?” Stander asked anxiously.

“No. But then I don’t think I wanted to.” He did not explain what he meant. He was not even sure if it were true. “Are these all? I mean, there isn’t a pair missing? In the last two weeks?”

Stander was confused and unhappy, his normally smooth face puckered with concern.

“No sir. These are all the shoes Mr. Mallory has owned since he has been home again, so far as I know. Apart from those he has on, of course.”

“Oh … yes. I forgot about those. Thank you.” Dominic closed the wardrobe door. There were two more things to do, check the shoes that Mallory was wearing at the moment, and speak to the gardener’s boy and find out exactly where the chemical was spilled, what it was and how long it would have remained wet enough to have marked anything that touched it.

“I dunno wot it’s called, sir,” the boy answered with a frown. “Yer’d ‘ave ter ask Mr. Bostwick about that. But it don’t stay wet more’n an hour, outside. I stood in it meself arter that, an’ it din’t mark nothin’.”

“Are you sure?” Dominic pressed him. They were standing on the stone paving just outside the conservatory. It was bright sunlight through an ever-widening rent in the clouds, but every leaf and blade of grass was tremulous with drops of rain.

“Yes sir, pos’tive sure,” the boy replied.

“Do you know what time you spilled it?”

“No … not really …”

“Even a guess? Before Miss Bellwood fell down the stairs, but how long before? You remember that?” Dominic stood on the wet stones, oblivious of the beauty around him, his mind filled only with times and stains.

“Oh, yes sir! ‘Course I do.” The boy looked shocked at the idea that anyone could think he might forget such a thing.

“Think back to what you were doing, and what you did after that, until you heard about the—the death,” Dominic urged.

The boy considered for several moments. “Well, I were cleaning out the pots for the ferns. That’s w’y I ’ad the stuff,” he said seriously. “Gotter be terrible careful o’ red mites an’ them little spiders. Eats leaves summink rotten, they do.” His face expressed his opinion of such things. “Never get rid o’ them. Then I watered the narcissuses and the ’yacinths. Smell lovely, they do. Them ones wi’ the little orange centers is me favorites— narcissuses, I mean. Mr. Mallory were studyin’, so I couldn’t sweep up ’is end. ’E don’ like ter be interrupted.” He did not comment as to what a nuisance this was, but his expression was eloquent. Theological studies were all very well in their place, but their place was not the conservatory, where people were busy attending to growing things.

“Did you sweep the rest?” Dominic persisted.

“Yes sir, I did.”

“Did Mr. Mallory leave at all?”

“I dunno, sir. I went out ter work in the garden fer a while, seein’ as I couldn’t finish inside. S’pose I must’a spilt the stuff about ’alf an hour afore Miss Bellwood fell, mebbe a few minutes more’n that.”

“Not an hour?”

“No sir,” he said vehemently. “Mr. Bostwick ’d’ave ’ad me fer dinner if I’d took an hour ter do that!”

“So it must have been still wet when Miss Bellwood fell down the stairs.”

“Yes sir, must ’ave.”

“Thank you.”

There was only one thing left to do, although he was sure in his mind that it would yield nothing, and so it proved. The shoes Mallory was wearing were as clean as all those in his wardrobes.

“Thank you,” Dominic said bleakly, without explaining himself any further, and went back to his own room feeling wretched.

Mallory was not guilty. He believed it. He was not sure whether he was glad or not. It meant Ramsay had been, and that
hurt deeply. But at least Ramsay himself was beyond pain now, beyond earthly pain anyway. What lay farther than that was more than he dared imagine.

But Pitt believed Ramsay was innocent. Which meant he would have to believe Dominic guilty.

He paced back and forth from the window to the bookcase, and to the window, turned and back to the bookcase. The sunlight was bright across the floor and he barely noticed it.

Pitt would be hurt. He would hate having to arrest Dominic, for Charlotte’s sake. But he would do it! Part of him would even find satisfaction in it. It would vindicate his judgment of all those years ago in Cater Street.

Charlotte would be terribly grieved. She had been so happy for him that he had found a vocation. There had been no shadow in her pleasure. This would crush her. But she would not believe Pitt had made a mistake. Perhaps that was something she could not afford to believe. And if she did, it would not help Dominic. All it would do would be to tear her emotions.

But what cut him the most deeply was what Clarice would feel. She had loved her father, and she had believed in Dominic. Now she would think of him with loathing and the kind of contempt he could not bear to imagine. It took his breath away even to stand in this familiar room—with its red Turkish carpet, polished wooden clock on the mantel, and the sound of leaves beyond the window—and think of it. And it had not even happened yet! He had never realized before how much Clarice’s opinion of him mattered. There was no reason why it should. It should be Vita he thought of. Ramsay had been her husband. This was her home. She was the one who had turned to him in her anxiety, her grief. She was the one who trusted him, saw in him a good man, full of strength and courage, honor, faith. She even believed he could make a great leader in the church, a beacon to guide others.

Clarice had never professed to think him destined for any kind of greatness. It was Vita whose dreams he would break,
whose disillusion would be crippling on top of her bereavement and the total loss of not only what her husband was but of what he had been. She would have to believe that Dominic had killed Unity. Pitt would surely tell her why. At least what he thought was why: about their past love affair—if
love
was the word?

Had Unity loved him? Or merely been in love, that consuming need for another person which might include gentleness, generosity, patience and the ability to give of the heart, but also might not. It could so easily be simply a mixture of enchantment and hunger, a loneliness temporarily kept at bay.

Had Unity loved him?

Had he loved her?

He thought back on it, trying to remember it honestly. It hurt for many reasons, but mostly because he was ashamed of it. No, he had not loved her. He had been fascinated, excited, challenged. When she had responded it had been uniquely exhilarating. She was different from all his past acquaintances, more intensely alive than any other woman he had known, and certainly cleverer. And she was passionate.

She had also been possessive and at times cruel. He could think more sharply now of her cruelty to other people than to him. He had felt no gentleness, and nothing like the kind of pity that would have satisfied his present need. With the harsh honesty of hindsight, everything he had felt for her had been innately selfish.

He stood at the window staring at the new, unfolding leaf buds.

Had he ever truly loved anyone?

He had cared for Sarah. There had been far more tenderness in that, more sense of sharing. But he had also become bored by her, because he was concerned primarily with his own appetite, his desire for excitement, change, flattery, the sense of power in new conquests.

How childish he had been.

He could retrieve something now by going to Pitt and telling
him that Mallory was innocent. Pitt might well decide to check the stain on the conservatory floor for himself. But he might not. Mallory would tell him, as he had told Dominic. Would he be believed?

The shadow of the noose was already forming over Dominic, and it would take real and tangible shape soon enough. He was innocent. Ramsay believed himself innocent.

Mallory was innocent.

What could Pitt believe? The only other person in the house unaccounted for was Clarice. Vita and Tryphena had been together downstairs. It was physically impossible they could be guilty. The servants had all been within each other’s sight, or so occupied as to have been unable to leave their positions unobserved.

He simply could not bring himself to think Clarice guilty. Why would she? She had no possible reason.

Except to save Mallory, if she knew the truth about Unity’s child and her power to ruin Mallory because of it.

Or if she had read the love letters Pitt spoke of, which defied explanation, and she panicked. Had Unity even told her, and threatened to ruin Ramsay?

He could not believe it. Perhaps Clarice, like everyone he knew, could have gone into a moment’s rage or pain, a fear beyond her to master or in which to think clearly or see beyond the terrible, overwhelming moment?

But Clarice would never have allowed Ramsay to have been blamed. Whatever the cost would have been to herself, she would have come forward and told the truth.

Would she? He believed it. He had not realized he held her in such extraordinary esteem, but he did. Suddenly it filled his mind. There was pain in it, but also a kind of elation which was more than simply a recognition of truth.

Still he was startled some time later when there was a knock on his door and she stood in the entrance, white-faced. He found himself stammering slightly.

“Wh-what is it? Has something—”

“No,” she said quickly, attempting a smile. “Everyone is alive and well—at least I believe so. There have been no screams in the last half hour.”

“Please, Clarice!” He spoke impulsively. “Don’t …”

“I know.” She came in and closed the door behind her, but stood with both hands still on the knob, leaning against it. “It is a time to be deadly serious—I mean … grave.” She shut her eyes. “Oh, God!” she whispered. “I can’t get it right, can I?”

He was obliged to smile in spite of himself. “No,” he agreed gently. “It would seem not. Do you want to try again?”

“Thank you.” She opened her eyes wide. They were clear and very dark gray. “Are you all right? I know you had another visit from that policeman. He’s your brother-in-law, but …”

He meant to be discreet, not to burden her with the decisions he had to make, the uncertainties, the cost.

“You aren’t all right, are you?” she said softly. “Did Mallory do it?”

He could not lie. He had struggled for hours with what to do, what to say to Pitt, with the fear of what would happen, what his own conscience would do to him if he did nothing. Now the decision was taken from him.

“No, he didn’t,” he answered. “He couldn’t have.”

“Couldn’t he?” She was uncertain. She knew it was not necessarily good news. There was apprehension in her eyes, not relief.

He did not look away. “No. The chemical that was spilled across the conservatory path was wet at the time Unity was killed. It was on her shoes, but it wasn’t on his. I checked it all with the garden boy, and with Stander. I looked at all Mallory’s shoes. He’s still lying about her going in there to speak to him. I don’t know why. It is completely pointless. But he didn’t come out, so he couldn’t have been at the top of the stairs.”

“So it was Papa …” She looked stricken. It was a truth almost more than she knew how to bear.

He responded instinctively, reaching out and taking her hands in his.

“He believed it was me,” he said, dreading her response, the moment when she would pull away from him in revulsion, as she must. But he could not let the lie build itself between them. “Pitt found his journal and deciphered it. He really believed I had killed Unity …”

She looked puzzled. “Why? Because you knew her before?”

He felt a numbness creep through him, a prickling.

“You knew that?” His voice was hoarse.

“She told me.” A smile flickered over her face. “She thought I was in love with you, and she wanted to stop me from doing anything about it. She thought it would anger me or make me dislike you.” She gave a jerky little laugh. “She told me you had been lovers and that you had left her.” She waited for him to respond.

At that instant he would have given anything he possessed to be able to tell her it was untrue, the fabrication of a jealous woman. But one lie necessitated another, and he would destroy the only relationship he had which had a cleanness to it, an unselfishness not spoiled by appetite, illusion or deceit. When it was shattered, at least it would be by the past, not the present. He would not sacrifice the future for a few days, or hours, until Pitt broke it.

“I did leave her,” he admitted. “She aborted our child, and I was so horrified, and grieved, I ran away. I realized we did not love each other, only ourselves, our own hungers. That doesn’t justify any of it, or what I did afterwards. I didn’t set out to be dishonest, but I was. I had other loves, was innocent enough to believe a woman could share a man with another woman. And then when she was … vulnerable … to discover she couldn’t.” He still could not put the true words to it. “I should have known that. I could have, had I been honest. I was old enough and experienced enough not to have believed that lie. I allowed myself because I wanted to.”