Brunswick Gardens (18 page)

    Dr. Sixtus Wheatcroft was an entirely different matter. He lived in Shoreditch, five stops away on the train and another short cab ride. His rooms were spacious but without a garden. If anything, he possessed even more books than Glover.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked with a touch of impatience. He was obviously in the middle of studying something of great interest to him and he made no secret of having been interrupted.

Pitt responded formally, stating his name and rank. “I am enquiring into the violent death of a Miss Unity Bellwood …” And he described the circumstances very briefly.

Wheatcroft clicked his tongue. “Very regrettable. Most unfortunate.” He shook his head. “I must visit the Reverend Parmenter and convey my condolences. Distressing thing to have happen in one’s home, most particularly to an assistant in one’s work, of whatever quality. No doubt he will find someone more suitable quite quickly, but it is bound to be most disturbing. Poor young woman. How does this concern you, Superintendent?” He peered at Pitt over his spectacles. He was still standing and he did not offer a seat.

“We need to know more precisely what happened …” Pitt began.

“Is it not plain enough?” Wheatcroft’s eyebrows rose over his round, light brown eyes. “Can it take so much observation and deduction?”

“She fell downstairs and broke her neck,” Pitt answered. “It appears she was pushed.”

Wheatcroft took a moment or two to digest this startling information, then he frowned, his impatience returning.

“Why, for heaven’s sake? Why should anyone push a young woman downstairs? And what can I possibly tell you? I am familiar with his scholastic reputation and her political and radical views, which I abominate. She should never have been permitted into serious study of theological matters.” His lips tightened, and unconsciously the attitude of his body had altered to be more rigid, as if under his rather ill-fitting jacket, his muscles were knotted. “It is not a fit subject for women. They are constitutionally unsuited to it. It is not an area for emotion but for pure spirit and reason, free from the clouding of the natural feelings and prejudices.” He mastered his own emotion with something of an effort. “Still, that is all past now and we cannot alter it. Poor Parmenter. Sometimes we pay heavily for our errors of judgment, and I am sure he intended only to be liberal in his views, but it does not pay.”

“Was she not a good scholar?” Pitt asked, wondering if conceivably
Ramsay had formed some attachment for her and employed her for personal rather than professional reasons.

Wheatcroft remained standing, as if he had no intention of allowing Pitt to be comfortable enough to forget he was an interruption. He lifted his shoulders very slightly, frowning as he spoke. “I thought I had already explained to you, Superintendent. Women are, by their nature, unsuited to serious intellectual study.” He shook his head. “Miss Bellwood was no exception. She had a quick mind and could grasp the mere facts and remember them as well as anyone, but she had no deeper understanding.”

He peered at Pitt as if trying to estimate his probable educational level. “It is one thing to translate the words of a passage; it is quite another to be at one with the mind of the writer of that passage, to grasp his fundamental meaning. She was not capable of that, and that is the essence of pure scholarship. The other is mere”—he spread his hands—“is merely technical. Very useful, of course. She might have served an excellent purpose in teaching young people the mechanics of a foreign tongue. That would have been the ideal place for her. But she was willful and headstrong, and would not be guided. She was a rebel in all things, Superintendent. Her personal life was completely without discipline. That in itself should demonstrate the point to you perfectly.”

“Why do you suppose the Reverend Parmenter would have employed her, if he was such an excellent scholar himself?” Pitt asked, although he had little hope of a useful answer.

“I have no idea.” Wheatcroft was obviously not interested in considering the matter.

“Might it have been a personal reason?” Pitt pursued.

“I cannot think of one,” Wheatcroft said impatiently. “Was she the daughter of a relative, perhaps, or a friend or colleague?”

“No.”

“No … I thought not. She was a different type of person altogether. From a liberal and artistic background.” He said the
words as if they were a condemnation in themselves. “Really, Superintendent, I don’t know what it is you wish to hear from me, but I fear I cannot help you.”

“What did you think of the Reverend Parmenter’s academic publications, Dr. Wheatcroft?”

He spoke without hesitation.

“Excellent, quite excellent. Outstanding, in fact. He is a man of the most profound and intricate understanding. He has chosen to explore some of the deepest subjects and with exhaustive study.” He nodded enthusiastically, his voice rising. “His work is taken most seriously by those few men who value such things in their true worth. His work will live long after him. His contribution is priceless.” He fixed Pitt with a grim stare. “You must do all you can to deal with this matter with the utmost dispatch. It is all most unfortunate.”

“It appears to be murder, Dr. Wheatcroft,” Pitt said with equal severity. “To be right is more important than to be quick.”

“One of the servants, I expect,” Wheatcroft said irritably. “I am sorry to speak ill of the dead, but in this case, no doubt, to be honest is more important than to be charitable.” He mimicked Pitt’s tone. “She was a woman who believed self-discipline in matters of the fleshly appetites was neither necessary nor desirable. I am afraid such behavior gathers its own rewards.”

“You are as good as your word,” Pitt said acidly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You have decidedly favored honesty above charity.”

“Your remark is in poor taste, sir,” Wheatcroft said with surprise and annoyance. “I find it offensive. Please be so good as to remember your position here.”

Pitt wriggled his shoulders and changed his balance as if uncomfortable. He smiled, baring his teeth. “Thank you for your hospitality, Dr. Wheatcroft. It was remiss of me not to have mentioned it earlier.”

Wheatcroft flushed.

“And for your assistance,” Pitt went on. “I shall convey your
condolences to the Reverend Parmenter next time I have occasion to question him on the matter, although I imagine he might appreciate it if you wrote them yourself. Good day, sir.” And before Wheatcroft could retaliate, he turned and went back to the door, and the manservant showed him out.

He walked briskly as he left. He was extremely angry, both with Wheatcroft for his graceless behavior and with himself for allowing it to provoke him into retaliation. Except that he had enjoyed it considerably and hoped Wheatcroft was livid.

    He arrived home in Bloomsbury a little before dark, still smoldering. After dinner, when Jemima and Daniel were in bed and he and Charlotte were sitting beside the parlor fire, she asked him the cause of his anger, and he told her about his visits to Glover and then Wheatcroft.

“That’s monstrous!” she exploded, letting her knitting fall. “He says all that about her because she is a woman and he doesn’t like what he imagines are her morals. And then has the colossal hypocrisy to say that she is incapable of detached reasoning but is governed by her emotions. He is the ultimate bigot!”

She warmed to the battle, pushing the needles into the ball of wool to keep them safe. “If Unity Bellwood had to fight against people like that in order to find any position where she could use her abilities, no wonder she was difficult to get on with now and then. So should I be, if I were patronized, insulted and dismissed in such a way, not for what I actually did but simply because I was not a man.”

She drew breath but gave him no chance to interrupt. “What are they afraid of?” she demanded, leaning forward. “It doesn’t make any sense. If she is better than they are, or if she is worse, foolish or incompetent, what difference does it make if she is a man or a woman? Isn’t the result the same? If she is better, they lose their position and she takes it. If she is incompetent, she loses a piece of work, or spoils it, and is dismissed. Wouldn’t
exactly the same be true if she were a man?” She waved her hand. “Well, wouldn’t it?”

He smiled in spite of himself, not because his anger was ameliorated but at her outburst of righteous indignation. It was so characteristic of her. In that much at least she had not changed a whit since he had first met her ten years before. The spontaneity was exactly the same, the courage to sail almost unthinkingly into battle where she saw injustice. Anyone oppressed instantly had her support.

“Yes!” he said sincerely. “I begin to have some sympathy with Unity Bellwood. If she lost her temper now and again or took pleasure in every error Ramsay Parmenter made, and let him know it, I should find it very understandable. Especially if she really was cleverer than he.” He meant it. Standing in Wheatcroft’s study, he had been oppressed by an awareness of the impenetrable barrier which must have blocked Unity Bellwood’s attempts to be taken seriously as a scholar, based not upon any limitations to her intellect but entirely upon other people’s perceptions and fears. It was not surprising she had been consumed with an anger which had prompted her to provoke as much discomfort as she could in those men she found intolerably complacent in their security. And Tryphena’s rage at injustice, her belief that Unity had been silenced for her challenge to vested interest, was equally easy to understand.

He looked up and saw Charlotte watching him, and he knew from her face that the same thoughts were in her mind.

“He could have, couldn’t he,” she said aloud. It was a statement. “She was so suffocated by injustice, she lashed out—the only way she could, with ideas he couldn’t bear, challenging him! And he had not the intellect to argue against her, and they both knew it, so he lost his temper and struck at her physically. Perhaps he did not mean her to fall. It was all over in a few seconds, and he denied it because it seemed almost unreal, a nightmare.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “He could.”

The following day Pitt visited other people who had known Ramsay Parmenter for some time. In mid-afternoon he called upon Miss Alice Cadwaller. She was well into her eighties, but quicker of wit and observation than either of the previous two people he had spoken to, and certainly far more hospitable than Dr. Wheatcroft. She invited him into her small sitting room and offered him tea on an exquisite bone china service hand-painted with blue harebells. There were sandwiches about the size of one of his fingers, and cakes no more than an inch and a half across.

She was propped up in her chair with a shawl around her shoulders. She held her cup delicately in one hand and regarded him rather as an elderly and weather-beaten thrush might have.

“Well, Superintendent,” she said, nodding a little, “what is it you want to hear? I do not care to speak unkindly. I always judge people by what they say of others. One’s unkind comments reveal far more of oneself than one realizes.”

“Indeed, Miss Cadwaller,” he agreed. “But in cases of sudden and violent death, where justice must be served and injustice avoided, it is usually necessary to speak truths one would otherwise prefer to keep to oneself. I would like you to tell me your opinion of Ramsay Parmenter. I believe you have known him for at least twenty years.”

“I have, in a manner of speaking,” she agreed. “Shall we say I have observed him. It is not the same thing.”

“You do not feel you know him?” He took a sip of his tea and a bite of his sandwich, trying to make it last for two.

“He had a public face which he showed to his parishioners,” she explained. “If he had a private one or not I do not know.”

“How do you know this was not his private face as well?” he asked curiously.

She looked at him with patient amusement. “Because he addressed me as if I were a public meeting, even when we were alone; rather as he addressed God … like someone he wished
to impress but not to become too closely acquainted with, in case we should trespass upon his privacy or disturb his plans or his ideas.”

Pitt kept himself from smiling only with great difficulty. He knew precisely what she meant. He had sensed exactly that same distance in Ramsay. But considering their relationship and the circumstances, he had expected it. For Miss Cadwaller it was different.

“I believe he was of the greatest help to Mr. Corde when he was in distress some few years ago,” he observed, wondering how she would respond to the idea.

“That does not surprise me.” She nodded. “Mr. Corde has spoken most highly of him. Indeed, his regard and gratitude are most heartening. He is a young man of deep conviction, and I believe he will be of great service to the Lord.”

“Do you?” Pitt asked politely. He could not imagine Dominic Corde as a minister. Preaching from the pulpit was one thing. It was almost like acting, which he had always thought Dominic would be good at, in a minor way. He had the eyes, the beautiful profile, the charm, the bearing, and an excellent voice. And he knew how to be the center of attention gracefully; it was in not being the center that he exhibited less grace. Ministering quietly to the needs of people was something very different.