Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [92]
Vespasia did not reply; perhaps she was thinking of the same people, or at least one of them, for whom she too had cared.
“And there is young Barclay Hamilton,” Charlotte said. “Although there seems to be a profound emotion troubling him regarding his father’s second marriage, I don’t know what should lead him to murder.”
“Nor I,” Vespasia conceded quietly, a weariness in her that she overcame with difficulty. “What of Etheridge? There is a great deal of money.”
“James Carfax,” Charlotte replied. “Either he himself, or his wife, in order to keep him from going to other women, or even leaving her altogether.”
“How tragic,” Vespasia sighed. “Poor creature. What a terrible price to pay for something that is in the end merely an illusion, and one that will not remain for long. She will have destroyed herself to no purpose.”
“Or if indeed he has had other relationships,” Charlotte said, thinking aloud, “some other love, or infatuation, perhaps ...” she trailed off.
“Quite possibly he had had affairs with other women,” Vespasia agreed dourly. “But even in the unlikely event they had husbands who were offended by it, to cut the throats of three members of Parliament and hang them on Westminster Bridge seems oblique, and excessive to a degree!”
Charlotte was suitably crushed. It was absurd. Had it been Etheridge alone it might have made sense. “It doesn’t seem to be a crime of passion,” she said aloud. “Indeed it does not appear to make any kind of sense!”
“Then there is only one conclusion,” Vespasia said grimly. “There is either a passion or a reason of which we are not aware. Certainly if it is a passion, it was not momentary, but rather extremely sustained, and therefore I would suppose it is one of great depth.”
“Someone has been done a wrong so terrible it corrodes their souls like a white-hot acid,” Charlotte offered.
Vespasia stared at her. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Charlotte not to be melodramatic; then she glimpsed for an instant the horror of what such a thing might be, and remained silent.
Charlotte pursued her own line. “Or there is a motive we have not seen, perhaps because we do not know the facts, or the people, or because it is too ugly to us, and we have refused to see it. All we know of what those three men had in common was a fierce disapproval of the movement to extend the franchise to women.”
“Hamilton’s disapproval was not fierce,” Vespasia corrected automatically, but there was no lightness in her voice; it need not be said between them that Hamilton’s death may have been a mistake, due to the assumption, in the dim light on the bridge, that he was Etheridge. “It could be others trying to blacken the reputation of the women fighting for suffrage,” Vespasia went on, “knowing they would be blamed.”
“Oblique, and excessive to a degree,” Charlotte repeated Vespasia’s own words, then instantly regretted the impertinence. “I’m sorry!”
Vespasia’s face softened for a moment in recognition of the emotion. “You are quite right,” she conceded. “If somewhat cruel in your manner of observation.” She stood up and went to the window, gazing out at the sunlight in the garden, slanting pale and brilliant on the tree trunks and the first red shoots of the rose leaves. “We had best pursue what we can. Since we fear Florence Ivory may indeed be guilty, it would be profitable for you to form a further opinion of her character. You might call upon her again, if you will.”
Charlotte looked at Vespasia