Brunswick Gardens (41 page)

“But you are satisfied it was he who pushed Unity, whether he meant to kill her or not? I mean, this proves it, doesn’t it?”

Pitt looked at him. He was not certain from Cornwallis’s face whether he was asking for reassurance, so he could forget the matter, or if he was asking an open question to which the answer could possibly be in the negative. He knew how it galled Cornwallis to concede to the bishop, and therefore also to Smithers, but he would not have allowed that to affect his decision.

“You don’t answer,” Cornwallis prompted.

“Because I suppose I am not sure,” Pitt replied. “It doesn’t feel right, because I don’t understand it. But I assume it must be.”

Cornwallis hunched his shoulders. “Thank you for coming
to tell me. I’ll go and report to the bishop in the morning … first thing!”

    As a young man, Reginald Underhill had risen early and pursued his duty with a diligence appropriate to his considerable ambition. Now that his place was assured he felt he could lie in bed a great deal longer, be brought tea and possibly the newspapers. Therefore he was not pleased when his valet came to him at eight o’clock with the news that Mr. Cornwallis was downstairs to see him.

“What, now?” he said irritably.

“Yes sir, I am afraid so.” The valet also knew how inconvenient it was. The bishop was not washed, shaved, or dressed, and he hated hurrying. The only thing worse was to be caught looking disheveled and ill prepared. It robbed one of any dignity whatsoever. It was difficult to keep people in their place when dressed in one’s nightshirt and with gray stubble all over one’s cheeks and chin.

“What does he want, for heaven’s sake?” the bishop asked sharply. “Can’t he come back at a more suitable time?”

“Shall I ask him to, my lord?”

The bishop slid down a little further in the warm bed. “Yes. Do that. Did he say what he wanted?”

“Yes sir, it was to do with the Reverend Parmenter. I believe there has been a very dramatic development in the case. He felt you should know immediately.” The shadow of a smile crossed the man’s face. “Before he took any action you might feel ill advised.”

The bishop gritted his teeth and suppressed a word he would not care to have his valet hear him use. He threw the covers back and climbed out of bed in an extremely bad temper, added to by the fact that he was now also afraid.

Isadora had risen early. The hours before Reginald was up were frequently her favorites of the day. Sunrise was coming sooner with every passing week as the year strengthened. This
particular morning was bright, and the sharp light fell in dazzling bars across the dining room floor. She enjoyed breakfasting alone. It was extraordinarily peaceful.

When the maid told her that Mr. Cornwallis was in the hall she was amazed, but in spite of herself, and the knowledge that if he had called at this hour it could not be for any happy reason, she felt a quickening of excitement.

“Do ask him if he will join me,” she said hastily, with less dignity than she had intended. “I mean, ask him if he would care for a cup of tea.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the maid acknowledged obediently, and a few moments later Cornwallis came in. Isadora saw the unhappiness in his face immediately. It was not the simple grief of a tragedy but the complex distress of indecision and embarrassment.

“Good morning, Mr. Cornwallis. I am afraid the Bishop is not yet down,” she said unnecessarily. “Please join me for breakfast, if you should care to? Would you like tea?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Underhill. Thank you,” he accepted, sitting opposite her, avoiding the chair at the head of the table.

She poured for him from the large silver pot, and offered milk and sugar.

“Would you like some toast as well? There is honey, marmalade or apricot preserve.”

Again he accepted, taking the toast from the rack self-consciously and spreading it with butter. He chose the apricot preserve.

“I am sorry to intrude so early in the morning,” he apologized after a moment. “I really think perhaps I should have waited. I did not wish the Bishop to hear in some other way. It would have been unfortunate.” He looked up at her quickly. He had clear, hazel eyes, extremely direct. She could imagine all sorts of expressions in them, but never evasion or deceit. But that was not something she should be thinking. After this wretched business with poor Parmenter was over, she would probably not see him again. Suddenly she felt terribly isolated,
as if the sun had gone in, although in fact it was still shining across the table. Now the light was hard, lonely, revealing an emptiness.

She looked down at her plate. She no longer had any desire to finish the toast which a moment ago had seemed delicious.

“I assume that something of importance has happened,” she said, and was ashamed that her voice sounded so hoarse.

“I am afraid so,” he answered. “I—I am sorry to intrude upon you in this way, and before you have even begun your day. It was clumsy of me …”

He was embarrassed. She could hear it in his words and almost feel it for him. She forced herself to look up and smile.

“Not at all. If there is news you have to tell, this is as good an hour as any. At least there is time to think about it and to make whatever decisions are necessary. Can you tell me what has happened?”

The tension slipped away from him, in spite of the fact that he was about to discuss whatever it was that had brought him here. He sipped his tea and met her eyes steadily. Gently he told her what had happened.

She was horrified. “Oh dear! Is he badly hurt?”

“I am afraid he is dead.” He watched her anxiously. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should not have told you until the Bishop came.” Now he looked thoroughly distressed. He half rose to his feet, as if he feared she might faint and need physical assistance. “I’m so sorry …”

“Oh, please sit down, Mr. Cornwallis,” she said hastily, although in truth she did feel a trifle shaky. It was so preposterous. “I assure you I am quite all right. Really!”

“Are you?” His face was creased with worry, his eyes bright. He remained standing awkwardly.

“Of course I am. Perhaps you do not realize how many times a bishop’s wife is called upon to face situations of bereavement? It is a far larger part of my life than I could wish, but if
you cannot turn to your church in times of extremity and grief, then where is there left?”

He sat down again.

“I had not thought of that. I still should have been more considerate.”

“Poor Ramsay,” she said slowly. “I thought I knew him, but I cannot have known him at all. There must have been a storm of darkness gathering inside him that none of us had the slightest knowledge of. How bitterly alone he must have been, carrying that burden.”

He was looking at her with a gentleness that was almost luminous. She saw it in his face, and the warmth blossomed up inside her until without thinking she was smiling at him.

The dining room door opened and the bishop came in, closing it with a bang.

“You had better excuse us, Isadora,” he said abruptly, glancing at her plate and almost-empty teacup. He took his place at the head of the table. “Mr. Cornwallis has some news, I gather.”

“I already know it,” she said without moving. “Would you like tea, Reginald?”

“I should like breakfast!” he said waspishly. “But first I suppose I had better hear whatever it is that has brought Mr. Cornwallis here at this hour of the day.”

Cornwallis’s face was bleak, the skin across his smooth cheekbones tight. “Ramsay Parmenter tried to strangle his wife yesterday evening, and in defending herself, she killed him,” he said brutally.

“Good God!” The bishop was aghast. He stared at Cornwallis as if he had struck him physically. “How …” He drew in his breath in a gulp. “How …,” he repeated, then stopped. “Oh dear.”

Isadora looked at him, trying to read his expression, to see in it the reflection of the sadness and sense of failure that she felt. He looked bland, as if he were thinking rather than feeling. She
was aware of a gulf between them she had no idea how to cross, and far worse than that, she was not nearly sure enough that she even wished to.

“Oh dear,” the bishop repeated, turning his body a little further towards Cornwallis. “What a tragic ending to this whole unfortunate business. Thank you for coming so swiftly to inform me. It was most considerate of you. Most civil. I shall not forget it.” He smiled slightly, his earlier irritation forgotten in relief.

And it was relief. She could read it in him, not in his eyes or his mouth, he was too careful for that, but in the set of his shoulders and the way his hands moved across the tablecloth, no longer tense but loose-fingered. She was overcome by a wave of revulsion and then anger. She glanced at Cornwallis. His mouth was tight, and he sat upright, as if facing some threat from which he must guard himself. With a flash of insight she thought she knew what he was feeling: the same confusion as she was, a rage and a disgust he did not want, which embarrassed him but which he could not escape.

“Have some more tea,” the bishop offered, holding up the pot after he had helped himself.

“No, thank you,” Cornwallis declined without giving it a moment’s thought.

A servant came in silently and placed a hot dish of bacon, eggs, potatoes and sausage in front of the bishop. He nodded acceptance and she left.

“It was obviously as we feared,” the bishop went on, taking up his knife and fork. “Poor Parmenter. He was suffering from a steadily increasing insanity. Very tragic. Thanks be to God he did not succeed in killing his wife, poor woman.” He looked up suddenly, his fork balanced with sausage and potato. “I assume she is not seriously injured?” He had only just thought of it.

“I believe not,” Cornwallis replied tersely.

“I shall visit her in due course.” The bishop put the food into his mouth.

“She must be shattered,” Isadora said, turning to Cornwallis. “One can hardly imagine anything worse. I wonder if she had any idea he was so … ill.”

“It hardly matters now, my dear,” the bishop said with his mouth full. “It is all over and we need not harrow our minds with questions we cannot answer.” He swallowed. “We are in a position to protect her from further grief and distress at the intrusion of others into her bereavement and its causes. There will be no more police investigation. The tragedy has explained itself. There is no justice to be sought … it is already accomplished in the perfect economy of the Almighty.”

Cornwallis winced.

“The Almighty!” Isadora exploded, disregarding Cornwallis’s widened eyes and the bishop’s hiss of indrawn breath. “God didn’t do this! Ramsay Parmenter must have been sinking into despair and madness for months, probably years, and none of us saw it! None of us had the slightest idea!” She leaned forward over the table, staring at both of them. “He employed a young woman and had an affair with her. She became with child and he murdered her, whether he meant to or not. Now he attacks his wife, trying to strangle her, and instead is killed himself. And you sit there saying it is all over—in the economy of God!” Her outrage was withering. “It has nothing to do with God! It is human suffering and failure. And with two people dead, and a child never to be born … it is hardly economical!”

“Isadora, please take control of yourself,” the bishop said between his teeth. “I can quite understand your distress, but we must keep calm. Hysteria will help no one.” He was talking too quickly. “I merely meant that the matter has come to a natural conclusion and there is nothing to be served by pressing it any further. And that God will take care of the judgment necessary.”

“That is not what you meant,” she said bitterly. “You meant that now it can all be put away without any effort on our part to conceal a scandal. The real scandal is that we want to. That we
knew Ramsay Parmenter all those years and we never noticed his misery.”

The bishop smiled apologetically at Cornwallis. “I am so sorry.” He shook his head very slightly. “My wife is deeply distressed at this turn of events. Please excuse her unguarded outburst.” He turned to Isadora, his lips a thin line. “Perhaps you should go and lie down for a little, my dear. See if you can compose yourself. You will feel better shortly. Have Collard bring you a tisane.”

Isadora was livid. He spoke to her as if she were mentally incompetent.

“I am not ill! I am considering our responsibility in the violent death of one of our clergy, and trying to examine in my heart whether we could and should have done more to help when there was still time.”

“Really—” the bishop started, his face pink.

“We all should have,” Cornwallis cut across him. “We knew someone in that house killed Unity Bellwood. We should have found a way of preventing a second tragedy.”

The bishop glared at him. “Since the poor man was obviously incurably insane, it is not a tragedy that he should have died, and thank the Lord, not by his own hand,” he corrected. “Given the already irreparable circumstances, this is the least appalling outcome we could expect. I believe I have already thanked you for coming to inform me, Mr. Cornwallis. I do not believe there is anything further I can tell you that will assist you in any other matter, and this one is mercifully closed.”

Cornwallis rose to his feet, his expression a mixture of embarrassment and confusion, as if he were struggling to reconcile warring emotions, both of which hurt him.

Isadora knew how he felt. She was filled with the same conflict of anger and shame.

Cornwallis turned to her. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Underhill. Good day, Bishop.” And without extending his hand he swiveled around and went out of the dining room door.

“I think you had better retire for a while until you can compose yourself,” the bishop said to Isadora. “Your behavior in this matter has been something rather less than I had hoped for.”

She looked at him steadily and with a detachment of which she had not expected herself to be capable. Now that the moment had come, there was a calm center of warmth inside her, quite steady.

“I think we are both disappointed, Reginald,” she replied. “You hoped for discretion from me, and I cannot be discreet about this. I hoped for compassion and honesty from you, and a little self-examination as to whether we could and should have done more to understand before this happened. And it seems you have neither the pity nor the humility to be capable of that. Perhaps you had a right to be surprised in me. I gave too little sign of what I felt. I had no right to be surprised in you. You have always been like this. I simply refused to see it.” She walked to the door and opened it. She heard him gasp, and he started to speak as she went into the hall, but she did not listen. She went across the floor and through the baize door into the kitchens, where she knew he would not follow.