Brunswick Gardens Part 29

"Mr. Mallory is in the library, sir," Emsley told him. "Sir, Mr. Corde ..."

Dominic waited, already half turned to face the library door.

"Thank you ..."

Dominic forced a quick smile, then strode across the mosaic, his feet surprisingly loud. He would never get used to the sound of it. He flung the library door open without even bothering to knock. He closed it behind him.

Mallory was on his knees beside the lowest bookshelf. He looked up, irritated at the intrusion, then surprised to see who it was. He arose slowly, his back to the brown velvet curtains and the wet windows, gleaming now as the sun struck them.

"What is it?" There was a thin thread of rancor in his voice. He was the master now. The sooner Dominic realized it the better. Things would not continue as they had been in the past. "Did you want me?" he added.

"Pitt has just been here," Dominic said peremptorily. "This can't go on. I won't permit it."

"Then tell him to go." Mallory's face showed his impatience. "If you can't deal with that, I will." He moved forward as if to do so that moment.

Dominic remained with his back to the door.

"Pitt is police. He'll come here as often as he wants to until the case is solved to his satisfaction ..."

"It is solved." Mallory stopped a couple of yards in front of Dominic. "I can't think of anything further to say. It is a tragedy best left to sink into as much forgetfulness as we can manage. If that is all you have come for, then please allow me to continue studying. That at least serves some purpose."

"It is not solved. Your father did not kill Unity ..."

Mallory's face was tight and bleak. "Yes, he did. For G.o.d's sake, Dominic, this is hard enough for the family without raking it over and trying to find ways to escape the truth. There is no escape! Have the courage and the honor to accept that, and if the word applies to you, the faith."

"I am trying to." Dominic heard the anger in his own voice, and the contempt which was for himself as well as for Mallory, standing looking so sullen and defiant. "One of the truths to acknowledge is that Ramsay thought I killed her."

Mallory's eyes opened very wide. "Is that a confession?" His face was full of doubt and new pain as well. "Aren't you a little late? Father is dead. You cannot bring him back now. It's not much use being honest, or sorry ..."

"No, it's not a confession!" Dominic snapped. "I am pointing out that if Ramsay thought I killed her, then it follows that he could not have, and I didn't. That only leaves you, and you had reason enough."

Mallory was suddenly white. "I didn't!" His body was stiff, shoulders raised high. "I did not kill her!" But there was an unmistakable edge of fear in his voice.

"You had every reason," Dominic insisted. "It was your child! What would it do to your career, your ambitions-"

"The priesthood is not an ambition!" Mallory burst out, anger flus.h.i.+ng up his cheeks. He was standing in front of the large desk, the sunlight making patterns on the oak floor. He looked very young. "It is a calling," he said critically. "A service to G.o.d, a way of life. You may do it to earn yourself money, recognition, even fame, I don't know. But I do it because I know it is the truth."

"Don't be childish," Dominic said angrily, turning away. "We each do it for lots of reasons. It may be pure one day, and arrogant or cowardly or simply stupid another. That is not the point." He stared back at Mallory. "Unity was carrying your child. She was, if not blackmailing you, certainly using pressure to make you do what she wanted, and enjoying the power. Did she threaten to tell your bishop?" He shook his head. "No, don't bother to answer that. It wasn't worth it. Whatever she said, you must have known she could."

Mallory was sweating. "I didn't kill her!" he said yet again. "She wasn't going to ruin me. She just-just liked the power. She thought it was funny. She laughed, because she knew ..." He closed his eyes, realizing what he had said and how much it condemned him. "I didn't kill her!"

"Then why did you lie about seeing her that morning?" Dominic challenged him.

"I didn't! I was in the conservatory...studying! I didn't see her!" Mallory's voice was high and indignant, but the fear was a sharp note behind it all the time, and Dominic could see and feel it in the air. He must be lying. If Ramsay had not killed her, it could only be Mallory. Dominic knew he was innocent at least of that. Guilty of having got her with child before, certainly guilty of every tragedy of Jenny's, guilty of failing to help Ramsay, of letting him die of misery, loneliness and despair...but not of Unity's death.

"If she wasn't in the conservatory, how did she get the stain on her shoe?" he said coldly. He could understand the terror which made Mallory lie even now, when it was hopeless, but he also hated it. It robbed him of the last shred of dignity. It stretched out the pain of this more than it had to be. And he could not forgive him for having allowed Ramsay to be blamed for his guilt. Fear was one thing, even cowardice, but to stand by and watch someone else suffer for your sin was of a different order.

"I don't know!" Mallory was shaking. "It doesn't make any sense. I can't explain it. I only know I didn't leave the conservatory and she didn't come in."

"She must have," Dominic said wearily. "She couldn't have got that on her shoe anywhere else. She trod in it on the conservatory floor as she left."

"Then why didn't I?" There was a sudden surge of hope in Mallory's voice, and he waved his arm as if the movement somehow released him. "Why was there no stain on my shoes?"

"Wasn't there?" Dominic raised his eyebrows. "I don't know that."

"Well, go and look!" Mallory shouted at him, jerking his head towards the door. "Go and look at all my shoes! You won't find any stain on any of them."

"Why not? Did you clean it off? Or did you destroy the shoes?"

"Neither, d.a.m.n you! I never left the conservatory."

Dominic said nothing. Could that conceivably be true? How could it be possible? If it was not Mallory, then it must have been Ramsay after all. Had he been really, truly mad? So mad he had blanked from his mind what he had done, and believed himself innocent?

"Go and look!" Mallory repeated. "Ask Stander, he'll tell you I haven't thrown away any shoes."

"Or cleaned it off?" Dominic could not easily let go. It meant Ramsay must have been guilty after all, and after the reprieve Pitt had given him, it was too difficult to go back and accept his guilt and the madness that had to go with it. There was something very frightening about madness, something unreachable, something there was no way of dealing with.

"I don't know!" Mallory slashed the air, his voice high and loud. Any servants in the hall must be able to hear him. "I never tried! I never saw the stuff! But probably not-not if it was a stain. It would go into the leather. You can't get chemical stains out of things. Ordinary stains are bad enough, according to Stander."

There was nothing to do but go and look. There was certainly no point in remaining there in the library confronting Mallory.

"I will look." He made it a challenge, then turned and went back into the hall and up the stairs. "Stander!" he called brusquely. "Stander!"

The valet was nowhere to be seen, which in the circ.u.mstances was hardly surprising.

Braithwaite appeared. "Can I help you, sir?" She looked tired and frightened. She had been with the family for years, since she was a young woman. Had anyone bothered to think about the servants' emotions, their grief and sense of shock and confusion, their fears for the future?

"I need to look at Mr. Mallory's shoes...with his permission. It is important."

"All his shoes?" She was totally confused.

"Yes. Will you find Stander for me, please? Immediately."

She agreed with some obvious misgiving, and Dominic had to wait nearly ten minutes before Stander came up the stairs looking deeply unhappy. Apparently he had checked with Mallory, because he made no demur but went straight to Mallory's dressing room and opened both wardrobes to show the neat rows of shoes with their trees all in place.

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

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

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

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

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

"No sir, I believe not." Stander looked totally mystified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes sir, pos'tive sure," the boy replied.

"Do you know what time you spilled it?"

"No...not really ..."

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

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

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

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

"Did you sweep the rest?" Dominic persisted.

"Yes sir, I did."

"Did Mr. Mallory leave at all?"

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

"Not an hour?"

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

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

"Yes sir, must 'ave."

"Thank you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had Unity loved him?

Had he loved her?

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

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

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

Had he ever truly loved anyone?

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

How childish he had been.

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

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

Mallory was innocent.

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

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

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

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

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

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