Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [102]
Helen said nothing for several minutes. There was no sound but the steady rhythm of their footsteps on the pavement, a bird singing in a high tree, green against the blue sky, and upon the main road the clop of horses’ hooves and the hiss of carriage wheels.
At last Helen put her hand very gently on Zenobia’s arm. “Thank you,” she said with difficulty. “I think I have been doing the same thing. Perhaps you knew? But somehow I shall find the courage to cease now. I have already done enough damage. I have cast blame on the women fighting to be represented in Parliament, because I was desperate to direct the police away from my household, when in truth I have no idea that they have any guilt in my father’s death. It was a shabby thing to do. I pray no one has been injured by it—except myself, for my poverty of spirit.
“It is a very hard truth to face, but—but I believe the time is past—” She stopped, unable to go on, and indeed words were unnecessary. Zenobia knew what she meant. She simply placed her hand over Helen’s, and they continued to walk up the bright, sunlit street amid the hedges in silence.
10
CHARLOTTE RETURNED HOME with a sense of failure. The visit to Parthenope Sheridan had produced nothing new. She was exactly what she seemed to be: a woman deep in the shock of bereavement and suffering the kind of guilt it is very common to feel when suddenly a member of the family is lost to one and there has been no time to speak of love, to repair old wounds, to apologize for misunderstandings and trivial angers and grudges over things now dwarfed by death.
There was no way for her even to guess if the emotion had been anything more, anything deeper. If there were jealousies, greeds, other lovers, Charlotte had caught no whisper of it, seen no clue she might follow, nor even had she formed questions to ask in her own mind.
The single step forward they had taken that day was that Zenobia was convinced that Helen Carfax was not a suspect, either directly or indirectly. James Carfax remained, although Zenobia did not believe he had the courage to have done it himself, nor the skill or power to have procured the service from someone else. Both Charlotte and Vespasia were inclined to agree with her.
Charlotte had told them of her own impressions of Florence Ivory, of the pity she had felt, the helplessness to counter Florence’s anger, and of the terrible wound of injustice which remained inside the woman, poisoning everything that might otherwise have been love. Charlotte concluded reluctantly that she could not dismiss the idea that Florence might indeed be guilty, and they must prepare their minds for that possibility. She had found nothing to help their cause.
Different ideas came to her mind, ugly and terrible, of subtle plans, hatred cold and careful enough to design not only the death of someone known and close to them, but the corruption of another’s soul, the leading to murder and all its long trail of nightmare and guilt. Was it conceivable that all the motives were separate and personal—and the link between them was deliberate conspiracy, each to fulfill the other’s need? It was a monstrous thought, but they had been monstrous acts, and there seemed no other connection except their membership in Parliament, which they shared with six hundred other men, and that they walked home across Westminster Bridge.
Was Florence Ivory really deranged enough to kill, and to go on killing even after Etheridge was dead? Was her regard for life, even her own, so very little? Charlotte searched her heart, and did not know.
She organized Gracie in the kitchen, and Mrs. Phelps, the woman who came in twice a week to do the heavy work, and busied herself with linen and ironing. As she pushed the heavy flatiron back and forth over