Ashworth Hall Read online

  “What is it, my dear? You seem very deeply troubled. It can only be some person for whom you care very much. From the tone in which you told me of his death, I assume it is not the unfortunate Mr. McGinley, and I cannot imagine that it is Mr. Greville. He is not a very pleasant man. He has great charm, considerable intelligence, and certainly diplomatic skill, but a basically self-serving nature.”

  “He did have,” Charlotte agreed with the shadow of a smile.

  “Don’t tell me he has had a sudden conversion to the light,” Vespasia said incredulously. “That I must see ….”

  Charlotte laughed in spite of herself, but it ended abruptly.

  “No. Thomas was there in order to protect him from threats of assassination, and I am afraid he did not succeed.” She took a deep breath. “He was murdered ….”

  “Oh.” Vespasia sat very still. “I see. I am sorry. And I assume you do not yet know who is responsible?”

  “No … not yet, though it will be one of the Irishmen who are staying there this weekend ….”

  “But that is not what you have come to see me about.” Vespasia put her head a little to one side. “I am tolerably well-acquainted with Irish politics, but not with the identity of individual assassins.”

  “No … of course not.” Charlotte wanted to smile at the idea, but the reality was too painful. She remembered that morning vividly, the physical shock of the explosion, and then the realization a moment later of what it was. She had not been close to such powerful violence before. There was something quite new and terrible about an actual room being blown apart.

  “I think you had better leave the beginning and come to the middle.” Vespasia slid her hand over Charlotte’s. “It is obviously very serious. Ainsley Greville has been murdered, and now this Mr. McGinley, and so far you do not know who has killed them, except that it is someone still at Ashworth Hall. You have experienced crimes before, and Thomas has solved some exceedingly difficult murders. Why does this trouble you so much you have left Ashworth and come here?”

  Charlotte looked down at her hands, and Vespasia’s older, thinner, blue-veined hand over them.

  “Because Eudora Greville is so vulnerable,” she said quietly. “In the space of a few days she has lost everything, not only her husband—and therefore her safety, her position, and whatever he earned, if that matters—but what really hurts is that she has lost what she believed he was.” She looked at Vespasia. “She has been forced to learn that he was a philanderer, and uglier than that, a man who used people without any regard for their feelings, or even for what happened to them as a result.”

  “That is very unpleasant,” Vespasia agreed. “But, my dear, do you suppose she really had no suspicion? Is she completely naive?” She shook her head a little. “I doubt it. What hurts is that the rest of the world will know it too, or at least that part of the world with which she is familiar. It will become impossible for her to deny it to herself any longer, which is something we all tend to do when the truth is too painful.”

  “No, there is more than that.” Charlotte looked up and met Vespasia’s eyes. In hard, angry words full of pain she told her about Doll.

  Vespasia’s face was bleak. She was an old woman and she had seen much that was hideous, but even so, this twisted deep in her, in her memory of holding her own children, in the miracle and the fragility and the infinite value of life.

  “Then he was a man with much evil in him,” she said when Charlotte had finished. “That will be very difficult indeed for his wife to learn to live with.”

  “And his son,” Charlotte added.

  “Very difficult indeed,” Vespasia agreed. “I feel more deeply for the son. Why is it Eudora who bothers you more?”

  “She doesn’t.” Charlotte smiled at her own vulnerability. “But she does Thomas. She’s the perfect maiden in distress for him to rescue.”

  The seconds ticked past on the clock on the mantel, its black filigree hands jerking forward with each one. The maid brought the tea and poured it, hot and fragrant, then withdrew and left them alone.

  “I see,” Vespasia said at last. “And you want to be a maiden in distress too?”

  Charlotte was prompted to laugh and cry at the same time. She was closer to tears than she had realized.

  “No!” She shook her head. “I don’t need rescuing. And I’m no good at pretending.”

  “Would you like to be?” Vespasia passed Charlotte her tea.

  “No, of course I wouldn’t!” Charlotte took the cup. “No … I’m sorry. I mean … I mean, I don’t want games, pretending. If it isn’t real, it’s no good.”

  Vespasia smiled. “Then what are you asking?”

  There was no purpose in putting it off any longer, refusing to put words to her fear did not make it any less real.

  “Perhaps Thomas needs me to be more like Eudora? Maybe he needs someone to rescue?” She searched Vespasia’s face for denial, hoping to find it.

  “I think he does,” Vespasia said gently. “You ask a great deal of him in your marriage, Charlotte. You ask him to strive very high. If he is to be all that you need of him, if he is to live up to what you could have had in your own social class, then he cannot ever be less than the very best he is able. There can be no easy choices for him, no allowing himself to relax, or commit to second best. Perhaps sometimes you forget that.” Her hand tightened over Charlotte’s. “You may at times remember only the sacrifices you have made, the gown you don’t have, the servants, the parties you don’t attend, the savings and economies you have to make. But you don’t have an impossible yardstick to measure yourself against.”

  “Neither does Thomas,” Charlotte said, aghast at the thought. “I don’t ever ask for—”

  “Of course you don’t,” Vespasia agreed. “But you are at Ashworth Hall, your sister’s house … or to be more correct, one of her houses. I imagine poor Jack does not always find that comfortable either.”

  The coals settled in the fire and burned up more brightly.

  “But I can’t help it,” Charlotte protested. “We are there because Thomas was called to go, not for me. It is his position that took us there.”

  “Not because Emily is your sister?”

  “Well … yes, of course that made him the obvious person … but even so …”

  “I know you did not choose it.” Vespasia smiled very slightly and shook her head. “All I am saying is that if Thomas finds it agreeable that Eudora Doyle—I mean, Greville—should lean upon him and find comfort in his strength, it is not surprising, or discreditable, in either of them. And if it hurts you, or you are troubled by it, then you have the choice of pretending to be in distress yourself and masking your strength in weakness so that he will turn his attention to you instead.” She lowered her voice a little. “Is that what you wish?”

  Charlotte was appalled. “No, it would be despicable! I should hate myself. I should never be able to meet his eyes.”

  “Then that is one question answered,” Vespasia agreed.

  “But what if … what if that is what he … wants?” Charlotte said desperately. “What if I lose part of him because I don’t … don’t need … that ….”

  “Charlotte, my dear, nobody is everything to someone else, nor should they seek to be,” Vespasia said gently. “Moderate your demands at times, disguise some of your less-fortunate attributes, learn to keep your own counsel in certain matters, sometimes give more generous praise than is merited, but be true to the core of yourself. Silence does not hurt, at times, nor patience, but lies always do. Would you wish him to pretend for you?”

  Charlotte closed her eyes. “I should hate it. It would be the end of everything real. How could I ever believe him again?”

  “Then you have answered your own question, haven’t you?” Vespasia sat back a little. “Allow him to rescue others. That is part of his nature, perhaps the very best part. Don’t resent it. And don’t underestimate his strength to love you as you are.” The fire collapsed still furth
er, and she ignored it. “Believe me, from time to time you will find in yourself enough weaknesses to satisfy him.” Her eyes flickered with amusement. “Do your best. Never be less than you are in the hope of earning someone else’s love. If he catches you in it he will hate you for what you have judged of him, and far worse than that, you will hate yourself. That is the most destructive of all things.”

  Charlotte stared at her.

  Vespasia reached for the bell to ask the maid to come to stoke the fire.

  “Now we shall have luncheon,” she said, rising to her feet with the use of her silver-topped ebony cane, declining Charlotte’s arm. “I have poached salmon and a few vegetables, and then apple tart. I hope that will satisfy. And you can tell me about this wretched Irish business, and I shall tell you about the absurd divorce of Mrs. O’Shea. We can laugh about it together, and perhaps weep a little.”

  “Is it sad?” Charlotte asked, walking beside her to the smaller, wood-floored breakfast room, where Vespasia more often ate when she was alone. It had a row of floral-curtained windows looking onto a paved comer of the garden. On two sides were glass-fronted cases of porcelain, crystal ornaments, vases and plates. A cherrywood gateleg table was set for two.

  “Yes it is,” Vespasia answered when the butler had helped her to her seat and she had unfolded her linen napkin.

  Charlotte was surprised. She had not thought Vespasia would grieve over such a thing. But then perhaps she did not know Vespasia as well as she had presumed. More than seventy years of her life had passed before Charlotte had even met her. It was an impertinence to imagine she could guess at most of it.

  The butler served them a light consommé and withdrew.

  Vespasia saw Charlotte’s face and laughed.

  “Sad for Ireland, my dear,” she corrected. “The whole thing is so patently ridiculous!” She began her soup. “Parnell is a humorless devil at the best of times. He takes himself so terribly seriously. It is a Protestant failing. It is certainly not an Irish one. Love or hate them, you cannot accuse the Irish at large of a lack of wit. And yet Parnell has behaved like someone in a badly written farce. Even now he still does not believe that his audience will laugh at him and, of course, cease to take him seriously.”

  Charlotte began her soup also. It was delicious.

  “Will they?” she asked, thinking of Carson O’Day, his ambitions, and what his family would expect of him, his father, and the elder brother whose place he had to fill.

  “My dear, would you?” Vespasia’s fine brows arched even higher. “Apparently when Captain and Mrs. O’Shea took a house in Brighton, within two or three days a Mr. Charles Stewart appeared, wearing a cloth cap over his eyes.” She kept her face straight with difficulty. “He called quite often, but almost always when Captain O’Shea was out. He always came up via the beach way and took Mrs. O’Shea out driving, never in daylight, always after dark.”

  “In a cloth cap,” Charlotte said incredulously, forgetting her soup. “You said he had no sense of humor. Mrs. O’Shea cannot have had either!” Her voice rose in disbelief. “How could you possibly make love with a man who crept up to your door at night when your husband was out—disguised in a cloth cap, using a false name that would fool nobody? I should be hysterical with laughter.”

  “That isn’t all,” Vespasia went on, her eyes light. “Five years ago—this affair has persisted for some very considerable time—he went to an auctioneer in Deptford who was acting as agent for a landlord in Kent.” She held up her hands as she spoke. “Parnell went calling himself Mr. Fox. He was told the house in question belonged to a Mr. Preston. Parnell then said he was Clement Preston. The agent replied that he had thought he said he was a Mr. Fox. Parnell then said he was staying with a Mr. Fox, but his own name was Preston, and he would take the house for twelve months, but refused to give any references”—her eyebrows rose—“on the grounds that a man who owned horses should not be required to do so.”

  “Horses?” Charlotte nearly choked on her soup. “What have horses to do with it?” she demanded. “You can sell horses, or they can fall ill, or be injured, or even die.”

  “Nothing whatever. The music halls are going to have a wonderful time with it,” Vespasia said with a smile. “Along with the cloth cap and the business of the fire escape. It is all so unbelievably grubby and incompetent.” Her face became serious again. “But it is sad for Ireland. Parnell may not have realized it yet, and his immediate supporters may give him a vote of confidence, out of loyalty and not to be seen to desert him, but the people at large will never follow him now.” She sighed and permitted the butler, who had returned, to remove the last of her soup and to serve the salmon and vegetables.

  When he was gone she looked at Charlotte again, her eyes grave.

  “Since Ainsley Greville is dead, I presume the political issues for which he worked are now sacrificed, which will have been the reason for his murder.”

  “No, Jack has taken his place, at least temporarily,” Charlotte replied. “It was almost certainly to kill Jack that the dynamite was placed in the study this morning. Poor Emily is terrified, but Jack has no honorable choice but to continue in Greville’s place and do the best he can.”

  “How very dreadful,” Vespasia said with considerable alarm. “You must all be most distressed. I wish there were some way in which I could help, but the Irish Problem is centuries old, and bedeviled by ignorance, myth and hatred on all sides. The tragedies it has caused are legion.”

  “I know.” Charlotte looked down at her plate, thinking of the tale Gracie had told her. “We have Padraig Doyle and Carson O’Day with us.”

  Vespasia shook her head and a flicker of anger crossed her face.

  “That miserable business,” she said grimly. “That was one of the worst, typifying everything that is wrong with the whole sordid, treacherous affair.”

  “But we betrayed them,” Charlotte pointed out. “Some soldier called Chinnery raped Neassa Doyle and then fled to England.” She did not try to keep the rage and disgust out of her voice. “And Drystan O’Day was his friend! No wonder the Irish don’t trust us. When I hear something like that, I’m ashamed to be English.”

  Vespasia leaned back in her chair, her face weary, her salmon forgotten.

  “Don’t be, Charlotte. We have certainly done some dreadful things in our history, things that sicken the heart and darken the soul, but this was not one of them.”

  Charlotte waited. If Vespasia did not know the truth of the matter, perhaps she did not need to. She was an old lady. It would serve no purpose to harrow her with it.

  “You have no need to be gentle with me,” Vespasia said with the ghost of a smile. “I have seen more to haunt one’s dreams than you have, my dear. Neassa Doyle was not raped. She was followed by her own brothers, and it was they who cut off her hair because they thought she was a whore, and with a Protestant man at that ….”

  Charlotte was appalled. It was so horrible, so utterly unlike the story she had heard and accepted, instinctively she drew breath to deny it.

  “It was they who killed her and left her for Drystan O’Day to find,” Vespasia went on. “In their eyes she had betrayed them, their family in front of its peers, and their faith before God. She deserved not only death but shame as well.”

  “For falling in love?” Charlotte was confused, full of anger, darkness and quarreling emotions in this calmly elegant room with the sunlight slanting across the polished floor, the flowered curtains at the windows with their Georgian panes and the honeysuckle tangled beyond, and the white linen on the table, the silver and the trail of dark leaves in the cut glass vase.

  “For being prepared to elope with a Protestant,” Vespasia answered. “She had let down her tribe, if you like. Love is no excuse when honor is at stake.”

  “Whose honor?” Charlotte demanded. “Hasn’t she the right to choose for herself whom she will marry, and if she is prepared to pay the price of leaving her own people to do it? I know there is a cost,
we all know that, but if you love someone enough, you pay it. Perhaps she didn’t believe their faith? Did they ever think of that?”

  Vespasia smiled, but her eyes were tired, pale silver.

  “Of course not, Charlotte. You know better than to ask. If you belong to a clan, you pay the price of that too. The freedom not to be answerable to your family, your tribe, is a very great loneliness.

  “You were more fortunate than most women. I think sometimes you don’t fully appreciate that. You chose to marry outside your class, and your family’s choice for you, but they did not blame you for it or cut you off. Your social ostracism was a natural result of your marriage, not the act of your family. They remained close to you, never criticizing your choice or seeking to change your mind.” Her expression was sad and tired, her eyes far away. “Neassa had the courage to make her choice too, but her family did not understand. To them, to her brothers, it was a shame they would not live with.”

  “But what about Alexander Chinnery?” Charlotte had forgotten him for a moment. “What did he do? How did you know it was not he who killed her, as they said?”

  “Because by June eighth, Alexander Chinnery was already dead,” Vespasia said softly. “He was drowned in Liverpool Harbour trying to save a boy who had caught his leg in a rope and been pulled into the water.”

  “Then why did both the Catholics and the Protestants believe it was he who killed Neassa Doyle?” Charlotte pressed. “And why did they think she was raped if she wasn’t?”

  “Why do stories grow around anything?” Vespasia picked up her fork and began to eat again, slowly. “Because someone leaps to a conclusion … a conclusion that suits the emotions they feel and wish to arouse in the others. After a while everyone believes it, and then even if the truth is known, it is too late to tell it. Everyone has too much invested in the myth, and the truth would destroy what they have built and make liars of them.”

  “They aren’t lying, they really believe it.” Charlotte picked up her wineglass, full of clean, cold water. “I suppose it was thirty years ago, and there’s no one about now who was involved, at least not in present-day politics. And they aren’t going to tell people they lied then.”