Cardington Crescent (25 page)

Charlotte sat up, and her whisper came out of the cool grayness. “What is it, Emily? Are you ill?”

“No ... no ...” She gulped painfully. “Sybilla is dead! I think she’s been murdered. I just found her ... in her bedroom ... strangled with her own hair!”

Charlotte glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “Emily, it’s twenty past five. Are you sure you didn’t have a nightmare?”

“Yes! Oh, God! They’re going to blame me for this too!” And in spite of all the strength of will she thought she had, she began to weep, crumpling slowly into a little heap on the end of the bed.

Charlotte climbed out and came to her, putting her arms round her and holding her, rocking her like a child. “What happened?” she said quietly, trying to keep her voice calm. “What were you doing in Sybilla’s room at this time in the morning?”

Emily understood Charlotte’s urgency; she dared not indulge in misery and fear. Only thought, rational and disciplined, could help. She tried to iron out the violence in her mind and grasp the elements that mattered.

“I saw her face at dinner the night before last. For a moment, there was such a look of hatred on it as she turned to Eustace. I wanted to know why. What did she know about him, or did she fear he was going to do something? Charlotte, they are convinced I murdered George, and they are going to make sure Thomas has no choice but to arrest me. I have to find out who did—to save myself.”

For a moment Charlotte was silent; then she stood up slowly. “I’d better go and see, and if you’re right I’ll waken Aunt Vespasia. We’ll have to call the police again.” She pulled on a shawl and hugged it round herself. “Poor William,” she said almost under her breath.

When she had gone Emily sat curled up on the end of the bed and waited. She wanted to think, to see the pattern falling clearly, but it was too soon. She was shivering—not with cold, because the air was warm; the chill was inside, just as the darkness was. Whoever had murdered George had now murdered Sybilla, almost certainly because Sybilla knew who he—or she—was.

Was it something to do with Eustace and Tassie? Or Eustace alone? Or was it Jack Radley after all?

The door opened and Charlotte came back, her face tight and pale in the softening dawn light coming through the windows. Her hands were shaking.

“She’s dead,” she said with a gulp. “Stay here and lock the door behind me. I’m going to tell Aunt Vespasia.”

“Wait!” Emily stood up, and lost her balance; her legs were weak as if her knees would not lock. “I’m coming. I’d rather come with you—anyway, you shouldn’t go alone.” She tried again, and this time her body obeyed her, and wordlessly she and Charlotte crept shoulder to shoulder along the landing, feet soundless on the carpet. The jardinière with its splayed ferns seemed like half a tree, casting octopus shadows on the wallpaper.

They knocked at Vespasia’s door and waited. There was no answer. Charlotte knocked again, then turned the handle experimentally. It was not locked. She opened it and they both slipped in, closing it behind them with a tiny click.

“Aunt Vespasia!” Charlotte said distinctly. The room was darker than Emily’s, having heavier curtains, and in the gloom they could see the big bed and Vespasia’s head on the pillow, her pale silver hair in a coil over her shoulder. She looked very frail, very old.

“Aunt Vespasia,” Charlotte said again.

Vespasia opened her eyes.

Charlotte moved forward into the shrouded light from the window.

“Charlotte?” Vespasia sat up a little. “What is it? Is that Emily with you?” A note of alarm sharpened her voice. “What has happened?”

“Emily remembered something she saw, an expression on Sybilla’s face the other night at dinner,” Charlotte began. “She thought if she understood it, it might explain things. She went to ask Sybilla.”

“At dawn?” Now Vespasia was sitting upright. “And did it—explain things? Have you learned something? What did Sybilla say?”

Charlotte shut her eyes and clenched her hands hard. “Nothing. She’s dead. She was strangled with her own hair round the bedpost. I don’t know whether she could have done it herself or not. We’ll have to call Thomas.”

Vespasia was silent for so long Charlotte began to be afraid; then at last she reached up and pulled the bellpull three times. “Pass me my shawl, will you?” she asked. When Charlotte did so, she climbed stiffly out of bed, leaning on Charlotte’s outstretched arm for support. “We had better lock the door. We don’t want anyone else going in. And I suppose we must tell Eustace.” She took a long, deep breath. “And William. I imagine at this time in the morning Thomas will be at home? Good. Then you had better write him a note and send a footman to bring him and his constable.”

There was a sharp rap on the door, startling them, and before anyone answered it it opened and Digby came in looking disheveled and frightened. As soon as she saw Vespasia herself was all right the fear vanished and was replaced by concern. She pushed the straggling hair out of her eyes and prepared to be cross.

“Yes, m’lady?” she said cautiously.

“Tea, please, Digby.” Vespasia replied, struggling to maintain dignity. “I would like a dish of tea. Bring enough here for all of us—you had better have some yourself. And as soon as you have put the kettle on, waken one of the footmen and tell him to get up.”

Digby stared at her, round-eyed, grim-faced.

Vespasia gave her the explanation she was waiting for. “Young Mrs. March is dead. Perhaps you’d better get two footmen—one for the doctor.”

“We can telephone the doctor, m’lady,” Digby answered.

“Oh, yes, I forgot. I am not yet used to who has these contraptions and who has not. I presume Treves has one.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

“Then get one footman to send for Mr. Pitt. I’m sure he hasn’t got a telephone. And bring the tea.”

The next few hours moved like a feverish dream, a mixture of the grotesque and the almost offensively commonplace. How could the breakfast room look precisely the same, the sideboard laden with food, the windows thrown open? Pitt was upstairs with Treves, bending over Sybilla’s corpse locked in her own hair, trying to decide whether she killed herself or someone else had crept in and tied those lethal knots. Charlotte could not keep it from her mind to wonder if that was why Jack Radley had gone in the night before, not by any amorous design—only she had wakened too soon, and raised the alarm. She knew it must have occurred to Vespasia too.

It was late when they sat down, well after ten, and everyone was at the table. Even William, ashen, hands shaking, eyes haggard, apparently preferred the noise and occupation of company to the loneliness of his room next door to Sybilla.

Emily sat rigid, her stomach knotted so hard she could not bear to eat. It would make her ill. She sipped a little hot tea and felt it burn her tongue and slide painfully down her closed throat. The sounds of crockery and talk alternately outraged and frightened her, swirling round her like so much empty rattle. It could have been the sound of carriage wheels over gravel, or geese in a yard.

Charlotte was eating because she knew she would need the strength it would give her, but the carefully coddled eggs and thin sliced toast might as well have been cold porridge in her mouth. The sunlight glittered on silver and glass and the clink of cutlery grew louder as Eustace fought his way through fish and potato, but even he found little joy in it. The linen was so white it reminded her of snowfields, glaring and cold with the dead earth underneath.

This was ridiculous. Fear was paralyzing her, solidifying like ice. She must force herself to listen to them all, to think, to make her brain respond and understand. It was all here, if only she could tear the fog from her mind and recognize it. It ought to be familiar to her now—she had seen enough murder before, the pain and the fear that led to violence. How could she be so close, and still not know it?

She looked round the table at them one by one. Old Mrs. March was tight-lipped and her fist was clenched beside her plate. Perhaps anger against the injustice of fate was the only way she could keep from being overwhelmed by the tragedy which was engulfing the family in which she had invested her whole life.

Vespasia was silent. She had shrunk; she seemed smaller than Charlotte had thought her, her wrists bonier, her skin more papery.

Tassie and Jack Radley were talking about something totally immaterial, and she knew even without listening that they were doing it to help, so that the silence would not creep in and drown them all. It did not matter what was said; anything, the weather would do. Everyone, each imprisoned in a private little island of horror, was trying to grasp back something of last week, only a tiny span of days ago, when the world had been so ordinary, so safe. They would gladly have brought back the anxieties that seemed pressing then, and so infinitely trivial now.

Charlotte had seen Pitt briefly. He had called her into Sybilla’s bedroom. At first she had drawn back, but he had told her the body was laid out quietly, the hair undone, a sheet over the terrible face.

“Please!” he had said fiercely. “I need you to come in!”

Reluctantly, shivering, she had obeyed, and he had almost pushed her through the door, arms round her. “Sit on the bed,” he had ordered. “No—where Sybilla was.”

She had stood rooted to the spot, pulling against him. “Why?” It was unreasonable, grotesque. “Why?”

“I need you to,” he had said again. “Charlotte, please. I have to know if she could have done it herself.”

“Of course she did!” She had not moved, pulling hard against his strength, and they remained frozen like that, locked in a tug-of-war in the middle of the carpet in the sun.

Pitt was getting cross, because he was helpless.

“Of course she could!” Charlotte had been shaking. “She had it round her throat; then round the bedpost. It’s just like tying a scarf behind your neck, or doing up the back of a dress. She used the bedpost to make it tight enough—the carving on it tightened it again when she slipped down a bit. She must have meant to, or she wouldn’t have stayed there. She’d have moved while she still had the strength. I don’t suppose you black out straightaway. Let go of me, Thomas! I’m not going to sit there!”

“Don’t be silly!” He had begun to lose control, because he understood what he was asking of her and he knew of no other way. “Do you want me to have to get one of the maids? I’m not asking Emily!”

She had stared at him in horror; then, seeing the desperation in his eyes, hearing the edge of it mounting in his voice, she had taken a step towards the bed, still refusing to look at the exact spot where she had seen Sybilla.

“Take the other one.” He had yielded, pointing to the bedpost at the opposite side. “Sit there and reach behind your neck, round the post.”

Slowly, stiffly, she had done as he ordered, stretching her arms up behind her head, reaching the post, feeling her fingers round it, pretending to tie something.

“Lower down,” he had commanded.

She bent them a little lower.

“Now pull,” he had said. “Make it tighter.” He had taken her hands and pulled them down and away.

“I can’t!” Her arms had hurt, her muscles strained. “It’s too low down—I can’t pull that low. Thomas, you’re hurting me!”

He had let go. “That’s what I thought,” he had said huskily. “No woman could have pulled at it that low down behind her own neck.” He had knelt on the bed beside her, put his arms round her, and buried his face in her hair, kissing her slowly, holding her tighter and tighter. There had been no need for either of them to say it. They stayed there close in the silent certainty: Sybilla had been murdered.

Charlotte’s mind returned to the present, to the breakfast table and its painful charade of normality. She wanted to be gentle, comforting, but there was no time. She swallowed the last of her tea and looked round at each of them.

“We have our senses, and some intelligence,” she said distinctly. “One of us murdered George, and now Sybilla. I think we had better find out who, before it gets any worse.”

Mrs. March shut her eyes and grasped for Tassie’s arm, her thin fingers like claws, surprisingly brown, spotted with old age. “I think I am going to faint!”

“Put your head between your knees,” Vespasia said wearily.

The old woman’s eyes snapped open. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snarled. “You may choose to sit at the breakfast table with your legs around your ears—it would be like you. But I do not!”

“Not very practical.” Emily looked up for the first time. “I don’t suppose she could.”

Vespasia did not bother to lift her eyes from her plate. “I have some sal volatile, if you want it.”

Eustace ignored her, staring at Charlotte. “Do you think that is wise, Mrs. Pitt?” he said without blinking. “The truth may be of a highly distressing nature, especially for you.”

Charlotte knew precisely what he meant, both as to the nature of the truth he believed and how he intended it should be presented to the police.

“Oh, yes.” Her voice was shaking, and she was furious with herself, but she found she could not prevent it. “I am less afraid of what might be discovered than I am of allowing it to remain hidden where it may strike again—and kill someone else.”

William froze. Vespasia put her hand up to her eyes and leaned forward over the table.

“Bad blood,” Mrs. March said with harsh intensity, gripping her spoon so hard it scattered sugar over the cloth. “It always tells in the end. No matter how fine the face, how pretty the manners, blood counts. George was a fool! An irresponsible, disloyal fool. Careless marriages are the cause of half the misery in the world.”

“Fear,” Charlotte contradicted deliberately. “I would have said it was fear that caused the most misery, fear of pain, fear of looking ridiculous, of being inadequate. And most of all, fear of loneliness—the dread that no one will love you.”

“You speak for yourself, girl!” Mrs. March spat at her, turning, white-faced, her eyes blazing. “The Marches have nothing to be afraid of!”

“Don’t be idiotic, Lavinia.” Vespasia sat up, pushing her fallen hair off her brow. “The only people who don’t know fear are the saints of God, whose vision of heaven is stronger than the flesh, and those simpletons who have not enough imagination to conceive of pain. We at this table are all terrified.”