Brunswick Gardens

9

PITT WAS SITTING by the fire in the parlor with his feet on the fender when the telephone rang. It was so unusual an occurrence that he never left Gracie to answer.
Charlotte looked up from her sewing with surprise, meeting his eyes questioningly.
He shrugged and stood up. The instrument was in the hall, and he had to go out into the comparative chill, but he found himself shivering even before his feet were on the linoleum. He picked up the speaker.
“Hello? Thomas Pitt here.”
He barely recognized the voice on the other end. “Thomas? Is that you?”
“Yes. Who is it? Dominic?”
“Yes.” There was a gasp and a breath of relief. “Thomas … I’m in Ramsay Parmenter’s study. Thank God for the telephone here. He’s dead.”
The first thought that came to Pitt’s mind was suicide. Ramsay had felt the inevitable truth closing around him and he had taken the way out he felt most honorable. Perhaps he imagined it would save the church embarrassment. The bishop would be pleased. At that thought Pitt found himself suddenly almost speechless with rage.
“Dominic!”
“Yes? Thomas … you’d better come—immediately. I …”
“Are you all right?” There was no point in asking. There was nothing he could do to help the shock and the distress he heard through Dominic’s voice. He had misjudged him. Dominic had not been to blame—probably not for anything. Charlotte would be happy.
“Yes—yes, I am.” Dominic sounded wretched. “But, Thomas … it was an—an accident. I suppose you could say …” His voice trailed off.
Pitt’s first thought was to refuse to say anything of the sort. He would not lie to protect the bishop’s interest. He cared for duty to truth, to the law, to Unity Bellwood. But there was no good to Unity served by exposing her tragedy, or Ramsay Parmenter’s.
“Thomas …?” Dominic’s voice was urgent, uncertain.
“Yes,” Pitt replied. “I don’t know yet. How did he do it?”
“Do it?” For a moment Dominic sounded confused. “Oh … he—Thomas, he didn’t kill himself! He attacked Vita—Mrs. Parmenter. He had some sort of … I don’t know … brainstorm. He lost control of himself and tried to strangle her. She defended herself with a paper knife which was on the desk—it happened in his study—and in the struggle it slipped … and stabbed him. I’m afraid it was fatal.”
“What?” Pitt was astounded. “You mean—Dominic, I can’t cover that up!”
“I’m not asking you to!” Dominic was amazed. “Just come here before we have to call in the local constable … please!”
“Yes—of course. I’ll come right away. Hold on.” Without realizing what he had said, he put the earpiece back on its hook, missing it the first time because his hands were shaking. He walked back into the parlor.
“What is it?” Charlotte said immediately. “What’s happened?” Her voice rose sharply with fear, and she was already getting to her feet.
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s all right. It’s Parmenter. It was Dominic on the telephone. Parmenter tried to kill his wife, and in the struggle he was killed himself. I have to go there. Will you call the station to send for Tellman to meet me at Brunswick Gardens?”
Charlotte stared at him. “Mrs. Parmenter killed him in a struggle when he was trying to kill her?” Her voice rose to a squeak. “That’s ridiculous! She’s tiny! Well—she’s small. She couldn’t possibly kill him.”
“With a knife,” he explained.
“I don’t care what with. She couldn’t have taken a knife from him if he were trying to kill her with it.”
“He wasn’t. He was trying to strangle her. He must have utterly lost his sanity, poor man. Thank God he didn’t succeed.” He stopped, facing her for a long moment’s silence. “At least this proves Dominic had no guilt in it.”
She smiled at him very slightly. “Yes, there is that,” she agreed. “Now, you had better go, and I’ll get the message to Tellman.”
He hesitated, as if to add something else, but there really was nothing more to say. He turned on his heel and went to the hall, putting his boots on and collecting his coat from its hook, and went out.
When he reached Brunswick Gardens there was already a carriage outside at the curb. The coachman was huddled up under his coat as if he had been there for some time, and lights streamed from the windows of the house below the half-lowered blinds, as if no one had bothered to draw the front curtains.
Pitt alighted, paid the cabby and told him not to wait. Emsley greeted him at the door, his hair wild from where he had run his hands through it, his face so pale it looked gray around the eyes.
“Come in, sir,” he said hoarsely. “The mistress is upstairs lying down, and Mr. Mallory is with her—and the doctor, of course. Miss Tryphena is—is gone to her room, I think. Poor Miss Clarice is trying to take care of everything, and Mr. Corde is upstairs in the study. He told me to send you up, if you’d be so good, sir. I don’t know what everything is coming to … Just a few days ago everything was as usual, and now suddenly— this.” The man looked close to weeping as he thought of the ruin of all he found familiar and precious, the daily life that created his world and was his purpose.
Pitt put his hand on Emsley’s arm and gripped it. “Thank you. Perhaps it would be best if you were to close the door and all the downstairs curtains, then see if you can help Miss Clarice keep the servants calm. They are bound to be deeply distressed, but the house must still be run. People will need to eat, fires be kept going, the place cleaned and tidied. The more people can be busy, the less they will have time to be upset.”
“Oh … yes.” Emsley nodded. “Yes sir. Of course, you are quite right. We don’t want people losing control of themselves, getting hysterical. Helps nobody. I’ll see to it, sir.” And he went off looking purposeful.
Pitt climbed the now-familiar black staircase and went along the landing corridor to Ramsay Parmenter’s study. He opened the door and saw Dominic sitting behind the desk, white-faced, his dark hair, flecked with tiny threads of gray, falling forward over his brow. He looked ill.
“Thank God you’re here.” He stood up shakily, turning sideways, compelled to stare beyond the desk and down, where Pitt could not see.
Pitt closed the door behind him and walked around the chair. Ramsay Parmenter was crumpled on the floor where he had fallen, a huge pool of blood soaked deep into the carpet near his neck, which was gashed with a fearful wound. It must have been a very violent struggle. His shirt was torn at the front, and there were two buttons ripped off his jacket, as if someone had tried desperately to pull him by his clothes. His eyes were closed, but there was no peace in his face, only a sense of amazement, as if at the very last moment he had realized what he was doing and the horror of it had overwhelmed him.
“I—I closed his eyes,” Dominic said apologetically. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t bear to leave him lying staring like that. They were open. Does it matter?”
“I don’t think so. Did the doctor see him? Emsley said the doctor was here.”
“No … not yet. He’s with Vita … Mrs. Parmenter.”
“How is she?”
“I don’t know. She seemed to be all right; I mean, she wasn’t injured, at least not seriously. I’m sorry, I am not being very lucid.” He looked at Pitt desperately. “I feel as if I failed about as thoroughly as I could.” His face puckered. “Why couldn’t I help him before it got to this? What happened? Why didn’t I see it was so—so … that he was drowning? I should have been able to give him enough faith to hold on, to let someone understand. We shouldn’t any of us, least of all me, who professes to be a pastor of souls, we shouldn’t let anyone be this utterly alone!” He shook his head a little. “What’s the matter with us? How can we live in the same house, sit at the same table, for God’s sake, and let one of us die of loneliness?”
“ ‘That is usually where it happens,” Pitt said realistically. “It is in being hemmed in by others who see only the outside of you, the image of you they have painted from their own minds, that you suffocate. Shepherds and woodsmen don’t die of loneliness; it’s people in cities. It is the invisible walls that we can’t see that prevent us touching. Don’t blame yourself.” He looked at Dominic closely. “Sit down. Perhaps you had better take a good stiff brandy. It won’t help anyone if you are taken ill.”
Dominic retreated to the chair beyond the desk and sat down heavily. “Can you keep the details out of the newspapers? I suppose I shall have to tell the bishop.”
“No, you won’t. We’ll let Commissioner Cornwallis do that.” Pitt was still standing over Ramsay’s body. “What was the quarrel about, do you know?”
“No. I can’t remember whether she said.”
“Did anybody hear it?”
“No. No, the first thing we knew was when Mrs. Parmenter came into the withdrawing room. Or more exactly”—he screwed up his face with the effort to clear his mind and speak coherently—“I was in the conservatory with Mallory. We were talking. I heard—we heard … a scream. We both got up and went back to the withdrawing room. It was Tryphena who had screamed, but she had fainted by then … at seeing the blood, I suppose.”
“I was thinking of the servants.”
“Oh. I don’t know. It was close to the time the servants have dinner. I expect they were in their hall. I didn’t think to ask.”
“Probably just as well. I’ll come to it fresh.” Pitt turned and looked at the door. There was a key in the lock. “If you would prefer to go to your own room, or see if you can help downstairs, I’ll secure it here.”
“Oh.” Dominic hesitated, staring down at Ramsay on the floor. “I feel … can’t we move him now you’ve seen him?”
“Not until the doctor has.”
“Well, cover him up, at least,” Dominic protested. “What can the doctor tell you? It’s pretty obvious what happened, isn’t it?” He was taking his jacket off as he spoke.
Pitt put out his hand to restrain him. “When the doctor’s seen him. Then you can take him to his own room and lay him out properly. Not yet. Come out and leave him. You’ve done everything you can. It’s time to care for the living.”
Dominic replied, “Yes, of course. Clarice must be feeling terrible … so grieved, so hurt.”
“And Tryphena as well, I imagine.” Pitt opened the door for Dominic.
Dominic turned in the doorway. “Tryphena didn’t love him the way Clarice did.”
Before Pitt could answer that, Tellman came up to the top of the stairs and across the landing. He looked tired and unshaven. He had already had a long and miserable day.
Pitt indicated the study door. “In there,” he said tersely. “I’ll send the doctor in a moment. Apparently it was an accident. When you’ve finished in here, and the doctor’s been, secure it and return the key.”
Tellman’s face betrayed deep skepticism, but he said nothing. He glanced at Dominic, muttered something—possibly an attempt at sympathy—and disappeared into the study.
Dominic told Pitt which was Vita’s room, then went downstairs. Pitt knocked. The door was opened after a moment or two by the same doctor he had seen at Unity’s death. The doctor’s face was pale and bleak, his eyes reflecting profound distress.
“Terrible business,” he said quietly. “I had no idea it was so serious. I honestly thought he was simply a little … overwrought, depressed by the way public perception of religion had changed since Darwin’s theories on evolution became known to the general reader … I daresay by word of mouth, in garbled fashion, to just about everyone.” His voice betrayed his own view of it. “I had no idea it had disturbed the balance of his mind. I feel very guilty. I noticed nothing. He always seemed perfectly natural to me, simply … unhappy.” He sighed. “It is not unusual, in my experience, for men in the church to have their periods of doubt and confusion. It is a heavy calling. One may put on a brave face to the world and preach a sermon every Sunday; it does not mean you cannot be lost in a desert of this sort yourself … for a period.” His face was full of sadness. “I’m really very sorry.”
“No one saw it coming,” Pitt assured him, sharing the blame. “Where is Mrs. Parmenter? Is she injured?”
The doctor met his eyes steadily.
“A few bruises. I daresay they will be painful for a while, and disfiguring, but nothing that will last. Her left shoulder is rather wrenched, but it will mend with time.” He still looked surprised and confused. “Thank heaven she is a supple woman, in good health, and of considerable courage. She must have fought hard for her life.” His lips tightened. “As for her emotional state, that is another matter. I cannot answer for that. She has extraordinary courage, but I have left a sedative for her, which she refused to take until she had spoken with you, knowing that you would have to question her about the tragedy. But do please be as brief as you can. Exercise whatever pity and discretion your duty allows.”
“I will,” Pitt promised. “Now, I would appreciate it if you would look at the body of the Reverend Parmenter and tell me all you can of his death. My sergeant is in the study. He’ll let you in and lock up after you.”
“I doubt I can offer you any assistance, but of course I’ll look. There will have to be an inquest, I presume?”
“Yes, of course there will, but please do it anyway.” Pitt stood back to allow the doctor to pass, then went in and closed the door.
It was a large room, beautifully furnished, feminine and less exotic than the more public areas of the house. Nevertheless there were marks of Vita’s individual and daring taste, splashes of oriental color: peacock blue, lacquer red.
Vita Parmenter was sitting on her bed, propped up by pillows. The first thing Pitt was aware of was the blood. It soaked the front of her gown and splashed scarlet on the pale skin of her throat. It made the more obvious her ashen, almost gray face, with feverish eyes. Her maid, Braithwaite, was standing a few feet away, a glass in her hand. She looked exhausted.
“I am sorry to have to intrude upon you, Mrs. Parmenter,” Pitt began. “If there were any alternative I would not.”
“I understand,” she said very quietly. “You are only doing your duty. Anyway, I think it is probably easier to speak of it now than to start again tomorrow morning. There is something about telling someone—outside the family—which relieves one of some of the burden. Does that sound … selfish?” She looked at him earnestly.
“No.” He sat down on the dressing chair without waiting for her to invite him. “It makes excellent sense. Please tell me what happened as exactly as you can remember.”
“Where shall I begin?”
“Wherever you wish.”
She considered for several moments, then drew a deep breath. “I am not sure what time it was.” She cleared her throat with difficulty. “I had just changed for dinner. Braithwaite had left me and gone downstairs. It was the hour the servants eat. They dine before us, but I expect you know that? Yes, of course you do.” She blinked. “I’m sorry. I am rambling. I am finding it very difficult to think properly.” Her hands were opening and closing on the bedclothes. “I decided to go and see how Ramsay was, see if perhaps I could talk to him. He had been very … alone. He seldom came out of his room. I thought perhaps I could persuade him to take dinner with us, at least.” Her eyes searched Pitt’s face. “If you ask me why, I am not sure now. It seemed quite natural then, quite a good idea.” She started to cough, and Braithwaite handed her the glass again. “Thank you,” she murmured, taking a sip from it.
Pitt waited.
She cleared her throat again and resumed with a tiny smile of thanks. “I knocked on the study door, and when he answered I went in. He was sitting at his desk with a lot of papers spread out. I enquired how his work was proceeding. It seemed a harmless sort of thing to say … and quite natural.” She looked at him, her eyes pleading for acceptance.
“Quite natural,” he agreed.
“I—I walked over to the desk and picked up one of the papers.” Her voice had dropped and become very hoarse. “It was a love letter, Superintendent. Very … passionate and very … very graphic. I have never read anything like it in my life. I didn’t know people … women … used such language, or even thought in such terms.” She gave a high, nervous little laugh. She was clearly embarrassed. “I confess, I was shocked. I suppose it showed in my face. It must have.”
“It was a letter from a woman to a man?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. The … content of it made that quite plain. As I said, Mr. Pitt, it was very … explicit.”
“I see.”
She looked down, then up again quickly, staring at him. “It was in Unity Bellwood’s hand. I know it well enough. There is much of her writing in the house. It was what she was employed for.”
“I see,” he said again. “Go on.”
“Then I saw other letters, in my husband’s hand. They were love letters also, but much more … restrained. More spiritual, if you like … much …” She gave a jerky, painful little laugh. “Much more in his style … roundabout, meaning the same sort of thing but never really coming to the point. Ramsay always preferred to be … metaphorical, to conceal the physical and emotional behind something paraphrased as spiritual. But stripped of its euphemisms, it was much the same.”
Pitt should not have been surprised. Ramsay’s death should have prepared him for something like this. A suppressed passion, a need long smothered and denied, when it does break out, is wild, beyond control, perhaps inevitably destructive not only of the pattern of safe and productive life but of previous morality and convention, even of the curbs of taste. And yet he was surprised. He had seen nothing in Ramsay but a middle-aged churchman crowded by spiritual doubt, old before his time because he saw nothing ahead but a desert of the soul. How wrong he had been.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She smiled at him. “Thank you. You are very kind, Superintendent; far kinder than your duty necessitates.” She shivered a little, drawing her shoulders in, hunching herself amid the piled pillows. “Ramsay must have seen my expression. I did not conceal my feelings … my amazement … and my … my revulsion. Perhaps if I had …” She lowered her eyes and for a moment seemed unable to continue.
Braithwaite stood beside her helplessly, raising and lowering the glass in her hands, not knowing what to do. Her face vividly reflected her anguish.
Vita regained her control with an effort. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t remember what I said to him. Perhaps it was not tactful, or prudent. We had a fearful quarrel. He seemed to lose all … sanity! His whole bearing altered until he was like a madman.” Her hands gripped at the embroidered linen of the sheet. “He threw himself at me, saying I had no right to violate his privacy by looking at his personal letters.” Her voice dropped even lower. “He called me all sorts of … frightful things: a thief, a philistine, an intruder. He said I had spoiled his life, dried up his passion and his inspiration, that I was a … a leech, a drain on his spirit, unworthy of him.” She stopped abruptly. It was a moment or two before she could continue. “He was almost incoherent with rage. He seemed to have lost all control of himself. He threw himself at me, with his hands out, and caught me by the neck.” She put her fingers up towards her throat but did not touch it. It was red where his hands had been and was already beginning to darken into bruising.
“Go on,” Pitt said gently.
She lowered her hands slowly, watching his face. “I couldn’t argue with him, I couldn’t speak. I tried to fight him off, but of course he was far stronger than I.” She was breathing very hard, gulping. He could see her breast rise and fall. “We struggled back and forth. I don’t remember exactly now. His grip was getting tighter all the time. I could hardly breathe. I was afraid he meant to kill me. I … I saw the paper knife on the desk. I reached for it and struck at him. I meant to stab his arm, so the pain of it would make him let go of me and I could escape.” She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I couldn’t cry out. I couldn’t make a sound!” She stopped again.
“Of course,” Pitt agreed.
“I … I struck at his arm, at his shoulder, where I wouldn’t miss. If I struck lower down I was afraid I would only catch sleeve.” She took a very deep breath and let it out silently. “I drove it with all my strength, before I fainted from lack of air. He must have moved.” She looked paper white. “I caught his neck.” Her voice was so low it was barely a whisper, as if the strangling hands were still choking her. “It was terrible. It was the worst moment of my life. He fell back … staring at me as if he couldn’t believe it. For an instant he was himself again, the old Ramsay, sane and wise and full of tenderness. There was … blood … everywhere.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what I did then. I was so filled with horror … I—I think I went to kneel where he fell. I don’t know. It was all a blur of horror, of grief.… Time stood still.” She swallowed, her throat tightening. It must have hurt. “Then I went downstairs to get help.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Parmenter,” he acknowledged gravely. While she had been speaking he had been watching her face, her hands, and looking discreetly at the deep bloodstains on her dress. Everything he saw was consistent with her account of what had happened and with what he had seen in the study. There was no cause to doubt the tragedy as she had told it to him. “I am sure you would now like to bathe and change your clothes, and perhaps take the sedative the doctor left for you. I shall not need to disturb you further tonight.”
“Yes. Yes, I should.” She gave a little shiver and pulled the sheet higher up over her, but she did not say anything else.
Pitt left her and went back to the study. He must speak to the doctor, to both her daughters, and either he or Tellman should speak to the servants. Somebody might have heard something. Not that it would help if they had; it was simply a matter of being thorough.
    It was nearly midnight when he arrived at Cornwallis’s rooms and the manservant let him in. The man had already retired and had been awakened by the doorbell. He had a dressing robe on over hastily donned trousers, and his hair stood on end at the back where his comb had not reached it.
“Yes sir?” he said a little stiffly.
Pitt apologized. “I imagine Mr. Cornwallis has gone to bed, but I am afraid I need to see him urgently. I’m sorry.”
“Yes sir, he has. May I deliver a message, sir?”
“You may,” Pitt agreed. “Tell him Superintendent Pitt is downstairs and needs to give him news which will not wait until morning.”
The man winced, but he did not argue. As he passed the telephone instrument hanging on the wall, he glanced meaningfully at it but forbore from recommending its use. He left Pitt in the sitting room, a comfortable, highly masculine place filled with padded leather chairs, books, mementos such as a giant conch shell from the Indies, its curved heart glowing with color, a polished brass miniature cannon, a wooden cleat from a ship’s rigging, two or three pieces of ambergris and a porcelain dish full of musket balls. There were several paintings of the sea. The books were of a wide variety, novels and poetry as well as biography, science and history. Pitt smiled when he saw Jane Austen’s Emma, Eliot’s Silas Marner and the three books of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Cornwallis came in less than ten minutes later fully dressed and carrying two glasses of brandy and soda.
“What is it?” he asked, pushing the door closed behind him and passing Pitt one of the glasses. “Something terrible, to judge by your face and to bring you here at this time of night.”
“I am afraid Parmenter lost his head completely and attacked his wife. She fought him off, but she killed him in the struggle.”
Cornwallis looked astounded.
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed. “It sounds absurd, but he tried to strangle her, and when she could feel herself suffocating, she grasped the paper knife from the desk and attempted to stab his arm. She said he moved, in order to keep the grip on her throat, and she drove with all her strength at his shoulder and caught his neck.” He sipped the brandy and soda.
Cornwallis looked wretched, his face creased with unhappiness, his body stiff as if braced against a blow. He stood still for several moments. Pitt wondered if he was thinking of the bishop and his reaction, and how he would now be able to have the whole matter kept private and dealt with exactly as he had wanted.
“Damn!” Cornwallis said at last. “I had no idea he was so … his sanity was so fragile. Had you?”
“No,” Pitt confessed. “Neither did his doctor. He had been called for Mrs. Parmenter, and I asked him. He looked at the body, too, of course, but there was nothing he could do, and nothing of any help to say.”
“Sit down!” Cornwallis waved at the chairs and Pitt accepted gratefully. He had had no idea he was so tired.
“I suppose there is no doubt that is what happened?” Cornwallis went on, looking at Pitt curiously. “It wasn’t a suicide the wife was trying to disguise?”
“Suicide?” Pitt was puzzled. “No.”
“Well, she might,” Cornwallis argued. “After all, we haven’t proved he killed the Bellwood woman, not beyond doubt. But suicide is a crime in the eyes of the church.”
“Well, trying to murder your wife isn’t well regarded, either,” Pitt pointed out.
Cornwallis’s face was tight in spite of the flash of humor in his eyes. “But he didn’t succeed in that. He may have intended the crime, but you cannot punish him for it … not when he is dead anyway.”
“You cannot punish a person for suicide, either,” Pitt said dryly.
“Yes, you can,” Cornwallis contradicted. “You can bury them in unhallowed ground. And the family suffers.”
“Well, this was not suicide.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. The knife must have been in her hand, not his.”
“Left side of the throat or right?” Cornwallis asked.
“Left … her right hand. They were facing each other, the way she described it.”
“So it could have been in his hand?”
“I don’t think so, not at that angle.”
Cornwallis pursed his lips. He pushed his fists deep into his pockets and stared at Pitt unhappily. “Are you satisfied that he killed Unity Bellwood?”
Pitt was about to answer, then realized that if he were honest, he was still troubled by an incompleteness to it. “I can’t think of any better answer, but I feel there is something important I’ve missed,” he admitted. “I suppose we’ll never know. Perhaps the letters will explain.”
“What letters?” Cornwallis demanded.
“That’s what provoked this quarrel, a collection of love letters between Unity and Parmenter, very graphic on Unity’s part, according to Mrs. Parmenter. When he realized she had seen them he completely lost control of himself.”
“Love letters?” Cornwallis was confused. “Why would they write letters to each other? They were in the same house. They worked together every day. Are you saying they knew each other before he employed her?”
It did seem in need of explanation. It should have occurred to him before, but he was too surprised at the nature of the letters to have considered it.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask Mrs. Parmenter if the letters were dated … or for that matter why they were all together. One would expect her to have his, and he to have hers.”
“So he was the father of her child,” Cornwallis concluded, his voice dropping with a low, harsh note of disappointment. Perhaps in a young man he would have found it easier to understand and forgive, though age was no protection against the passion, the need, the vulnerability or the confusion of falling in love, or of the storms of physical hunger, even if when they subside they leave a wreckage of injury and shame. Was Cornwallis so detached from life ashore, with both men and women, that he did not know that?
“It would seem so,” Pitt conceded. “We shall never know beyond question, since they are both dead now.”
“What a mess,” Cornwallis said more quietly. His face was pinched with sadness, as if he could suddenly see all the futility of it spread out plainly in front of him. “It was all so … unnecessary. What was it for? A few hours’ indulgence of … what?” He shrugged. “Not love. They despised each other. They agreed on nothing. And look what it has cost!” He glanced up, searching Pitt’s face. “What happens to a man that he so loses his balance as to throw away a lifetime’s work and trust … for something he must know is going to last only a few weeks and in the end be worth nothing? Why? Was he mad, in some way a doctor would recognize? Or was the whole of his life until then alie?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly. “I don’t understand it any more than you do. It doesn’t seem like the man I saw and spoke to. It is as if there were some division in his mind, as if he were two men inside.”
“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.
    Pitt returned to Brunswick Gardens to clear up the last details of Ramsay Parmenter’s death. He did not expect to achieve anything, it was merely necessary.
He was let in by Emsley, looking red-eyed and exhausted.
“There is no need to trouble Mrs. Parmenter,” Pitt said as he crossed the hall. “I don’t think I have any further questions to ask.”
“No sir,” Emsley said dutifully. He seemed to hesitate. If so dignified and unhappy a figure could be said to do so, he dithered.
“What is it?” Pitt asked gently.
“It is not my place to ask, sir,” Emsley said miserably, “but is it necessary to allow those in the newspapers to know all this, sir? I mean, I … I mean, could you just say Mr. Parmenter died in an accident? He was …” He took a shaky breath and attempted to control himself. “He was such a quiet gentleman, Mr. Pitt, never a rough word to anyone all the time I knew him. And I’ve served in this house above twenty years. Kindest man, he was, sir. Always had time … and patience. The worst you could say of him was that he was a bit remote … like absentminded. Forgot things. But that’s hardly a sin. Most of us can be forgetful. Terrible worried, he was, lately.” Emsley swallowed and sniffed. “All that stuff about Darwin and monkeys and all that. Got him down terribly.” His face puckered. “I tried to tell him it was all nonsense, but it’s not my place to say things like that … not to the likes of the Master, him being a proper churchman.”
“I don’t think it matters who says it, if it is true,” Pitt answered. “And I will certainly not volunteer any unnecessary information to anyone. I cannot imagine that Mrs. Parmenter will. How is she this morning?”
“I haven’t seen her myself, sir, but Braithwaite says she’s very upset, naturally, and feeling the shock of it now. But she’s very brave. Did you need to see anybody, sir? I can tell Mr. Mallory you’re here, or Mr. Corde.”
“You could tell Mrs. Parmenter I’m here, as a courtesy,” Pitt answered. “But I don’t need to speak to anyone, thank you. I need to go back to the study.”
“Yes sir. It’s locked up. I suppose you have the key?”
“Yes, I have, thank you.”
“Right sir. Will you be wanting anything? A cup of tea, perhaps?”
“In an hour or so, thank you,” Pitt accepted, then excused himself and went up the black staircase, along the passage and unlocked the study door.
The room was exactly as he had left it. There were still dark bloodstains on the floor beside the desk. The paper knife was in the farther corner, where it had fallen. There had never been any question of its not being the weapon, or of anyone else’s having touched it. It was evidence, but there was nothing to dispute.
He stood staring at it, trying to picture in his mind what had happened. Physically it was easy, but what had happened between Ramsay and Vita in the years leading up to it? Or more correctly, what had happened to him? How had his doubts so distorted his thinking, his feeling, that he had moved from being a loving husband dedicated to the care of other people’s souls to being a man whose own weaknesses so overwhelmed him he made love to a woman he despised, under his own roof, and when she blackmailed him with her pregnancy, killed her—and then tried to kill his wife?
Perhaps the answer was simply madness—as clear and as incomprehensible as that.
He went to the desk and started to look through the papers lying in piles. If Ramsay and Vita had quarreled over love letters, they must have been where she could easily see them. He had been in the room when she went in, so she had not searched for them; her eye had caught them by chance. And she would have had no opportunity to move them since then.
There was a paper on St. Paul. Half folded was the draft of a sermon on the Epistle of St. James titled “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally, and up-braideth not!” Under that were two short letters from missions abroad, one in Africa, one in China. He put them in a pile again and looked at the surface of the desk. There was a red leather-bound copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. A Stoic philosopher, albeit an emperor of Rome, was odd reading for a cleric of the Church of England, but not perhaps for what he had first believed Ramsay to be. Its dry, brave, rather comfortless wisdom would be exactly what would echo his own philosophy. It would be a companion voice. He looked beside it and saw half a dozen papers written in two quite different sets of handwriting. He picked up the first.
It was a neat, exact hand with open Greek E’s. Ramsay’s writing. Pitt knew that from other papers on the desk. He began to read it.
You who are dearest to me, how can I express to you the sense of loneliness I feel when we are separated? The distance between us is immeasurable, and yet thoughts may fly across it and I can reach you in heart and mind in as short a space as it takes for one to find some solitary corner where I can summon you to my heart’s eye.

Then time vanishes and once more we can walk and talk as of old. I can share with you my dreams, the explorations of all truth and meaning which is surely our greatest treasure. I am no longer a wanderer among strangers, but am at home in you. We breathe the same air, our understanding is but two halves of the same whole …

He continued down to the end of the page and turned it over. It was all in the same vein, about loneliness and separation, about unity of thought and heart, symbolized by unity of person.
The second was in the same hand, and while dealing with a different subject, it was of the same nature. Again loneliness was a continuous thread running through it, the desire to be together again, to remove all difficulties and barriers that kept them apart. The underlying emotion was obviously deeply felt, but it was couched in metaphor, a trifle pedantic, drawing back from the ultimate of verbal commitment. Pitt could hear Ramsay Parmenter’s careful, slightly dry voice all the way through it.
The third was in a different hand, rapid, exuberant, full of confidence. Here the meaning was undisguised. It began instantly and passionately.
My own beloved, my hunger for you is inexpressible. When we are apart I drown in a void of loneliness, engulfed in the night. Infinity yawns between us. And yet I have but to think of you and neither heaven nor hell could bar my way. The void disappears and you are with me. I touch you, hold you again. We are one heart and one flesh. I drown in you. All pain is forgotten as a dream.

The sweetness of times past returns with all its echoes of passion and hopes and terrors shared. We climb together the starry heights of truth and leap beyond into the unknown deeps of faith, life’s greatest gift, eternity’s crowning glory. All my grief is in the past, slipping from me like shadows before the rising sun. We melt into one another in eternal ecstasy …

There were three more in the same dashing hand. Little wonder Vita Parmenter had been amazed and had challenged her husband to explain them. What could he possibly say?
Pitt set them down again in the place where they had been. He felt confused, overtaken by his own sense of not being equal to the task given him. He had failed to understand Ramsay while he was alive, and thus to prevent his death. And he could not dismiss the fact that Ramsay could have succeeded in hurting Vita. Then Pitt would have been responsible for that, too. Now he understood even less. He had read the love letters, and anyone could see how they would precipitate a quarrel. It was inevitable the moment Vita saw them … or for that matter if anyone else in the family had, or even Dominic. But why had Ramsay left them out on the desk where they must be seen? Why did he have both his and hers? Presumably he must have retrieved them from her belongings after her death. With any sense at all he would have destroyed them.
Did he still love her, or was he so obsessed with her, that he could not, in spite of the risk they represented? Had he abandoned hope of escape for the result of his act? Was he only waiting for the inevitable?
And yet looking at the unbridled passion in the letters, Pitt could see neither Ramsay nor Unity in them. The wording was characteristic of what he had seen of him and heard of her. But the emotion was not. He still could not imagine them in love with each other at all, let alone so wildly.
Which showed the depth to which he had failed in this case.
He sighed and started to look through the drawers of the desk. There were the usual personal accounts and trivial letters regarding Ramsay’s profession. He read them all as a matter of duty. They were even drier than he had expected, the same pedantic phrases repeated in each one. Perhaps they were meant sincerely, but there was a stiffness about them which made it difficult to believe.
In the next drawer down there were more letters. They were from various people, colleagues, parishioners, friends. He glanced at them. Most of them were several years old, apparently kept because they were of emotional value. Among them he found one from Dominic. It was an invasion of privacy to read it, yet he found he had done so even while the thought was in his mind.
Dear Ramsay,

I know I have said so many times to you when we have spoken, still I wished to put on paper, my gratitude to you for your unending patience with me. I must have tried you sorely at times. I remember in guilt and embarrassment how long you argued with me, and I repeated the same selfish objections over and over. Yet you never lost your kindness towards me nor allowed me to think you valued your time more than you valued me.

Perhaps more than anything you said was your example of what it is to minister to those in need. If I could so follow in your footsteps that one day anyone might feel the joy I do, because of something I have done for them, then my whole life will have a completeness and a happiness I can now only aspire to.

The best thanks I can offer, and which I know would be of the most value to you, will be to try to be as you are.

My gratitude will not fade.

Your devoted friend, Dominic Corde
Pitt refolded it with an overwhelming sadness. For a moment he was at one with Dominic in a way he had never imagined possible. He could understand his hurt now, the lost opportunity that could not be retrieved. The reproach would never leave.
And the letter must have been precious to Ramsay, because he had kept it among the few other tokens of friendship over the years. Some had dates as far back as his university days.
There were none from Vita. Perhaps they had not written to each other, or if they had, then he had kept them somewhere else, possibly in his bedroom. It hardly mattered.
He looked at the drawer below. There were only more letters to do with his profession. Several of them concerned the book he was currently working on. Pitt leafed through them rapidly. They were all brief and exceedingly dry. Then he came upon one in Unity’s hand. He recognized it instantly. It was dated from the end of 1890, just over three months before. It was her application for the position she had occupied.
Dear Reverend Parmenter,

I have read your earlier work with the greatest interest, and a deep regard for your scholarship and your lucid and enlightening explanations of matters hitherto not clearly understood by me, and I must say in honesty, by those more learned than I, to whom I had addressed my questions.

I hear you are to write another work which will require research and translation of early classical letters and papers. I am a scholar in Aramaic and Greek and have a working knowledge of Hebrew. I enclose copies of my qualifications in these subjects, and references from past employment, with names and addresses of those who would confirm my abilities to you.

I would humbly, but with as much urgency as may be judged not too immodest, request that you consider me for the position of assistant to you in this most important undertaking. I believe I have the necessary scholastic skills, and you will not anywhere find a person who has a greater belief in the work, or admiration for you as the only man capable of doing it justice.

I write with the greatest hope, and remain yours faithfully,

Unity Bellwood
He folded that also and put it in with the love letters. It was one thing more which confused him. She had written as a stranger, and yet that was only six or eight weeks before she had become pregnant, at the outside. It was a short time for such passion to explode.
There was one more thing. Ramsay had kept a notebook, a brown leather-bound volume about an inch thick. Glancing through it, Pitt saw that it did not seem to be a diary so much as a journal of occasional thoughts. He looked at one page, then another, and found it too difficult to understand. Some of it seemed to be in Latin, some in almost a shorthand of Ramsay’s own devising. He would take it with him and study it and the letter later, when he had time.
There was nothing more to be done here. He should speak to Vita, and perhaps Dominic, and then check finally with Tellman and attend to the formalities. The cases of Unity Bellwood and Ramsay Parmenter were closed—not satisfactorily, but still closed, for all that.