Ashworth Hall

by Anne Perry

  Kezia looked faintly surprised, as if she had not yet even thought of that. And yet she must have been aware of the divorce presently being heard in London where Captain William O’Shea was citing Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist party as corespondent. Perhaps she had refused to realize what O’Shea’s victory would mean.

  “It doesn’t look like it to me,” Charlotte continued. “When people fall in love, madly, obsessively, they frequently do not stop to weigh the cost if they are found out. If all that he stands to lose has not held him back, will your displeasure?”

  “No,” Kezia said with a harsh laugh, as if the idea were funny in a twisting, hurting fashion. “No, of course not! I’m not doing it because of anything I expect him to feel or to do. I’m just so … so furious with him I can’t help myself. It’s not even the denial of his beliefs, the throwing away of his career, or the betrayal of the people who believe in him. It’s the sheer damnable hypocrisy that I can never forgive!”

  “Can’t you?” Charlotte asked with a slight lift of question. “When people you love fall far below what is even honorable, much less what one knows they could be, it hurts appallingly.” Swift memories returned of past pain of her own, discoveries she would much rather not have made, and then of the learning to accept afterwards, the slow forgetting of the worst of it, the gentleness that followed for her own sake, to keep the parts that were precious and good. “One is angry because one feels it didn’t have to be. But perhaps it did. Perhaps he has to work his way through his weakness in order to conquer it. Eventually he may be less quick to condemn others. He—”

  Kezia let out a bark of disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake be quiet. You have no idea what you are saying!” She moved around and raised her knees, almost protectively. “You are talking pompous rubbish. I could forgive him easily enough if he were merely weak. God knows, we all are.”

  Her face, with all its soft, generous lines, was twisted hard with pain and the memory of pain. “But when I fell in love with a Catholic man, loved him with all my heart and soul, just after Papa died, Fergal wouldn’t even listen to me. He forbade me from seeing him. He wouldn’t even let me tell him myself.” Her voice was so harsh with remembered pain the words were indistinct. “He told him! He told Cathal I would never be permitted to marry him. It would be blasphemy against my faith. He told me that, too!

  “I was too young to marry without permission. He was my legal guardian, and I couldn’t have run away without forfeiting the Church’s blessing. I listened to Fergal and obeyed him. I let Cathal go.” Her eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks, not in fury this time, but remembered sweetness and the reminding of its loss. “He’s dead now. I can’t ever find him again.”

  Charlotte said nothing.

  Kezia looked at her. “So you see, I can’t forgive Fergal for going and lying with a Catholic woman, and somebody else’s wife to add to it. When I put flowers on Cathal’s grave, how can I explain that to him?”

  “I’m not sure I could forgive that either,” Charlotte confessed, not moving from where she sat. “I’m sorry I was so quick to presume.”

  Kezia shrugged, and searched for a handkerchief.

  Charlotte handed her one from the bedside cabinet.

  Kezia blew her nose fiercely.

  “But what I said is still true,” Charlotte added apologetically. “He is your only brother, isn’t he? Do you really want to cut the bonds that hold you to each other? Won’t that hurt you as much as it does him? He’s done a terrible thing. He’ll suffer for it, sooner or later, won’t he?”

  “Divine justice?” Kezia raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure that I believe in it.” She tightened her lips, more in self-knowledge than bitterness. “Anyway, I don’t think that I’m prepared to wait for that.”

  “No, quite ordinary human guilt,” Charlotte corrected. “And that doesn’t usually take that long to come, even if it is not recognized as such immediately.’’

  Kezia thought in silence.

  “Do you really want to create a gulf between you that you cannot cross?” Charlotte asked. “Not for him, for yourself?”

  Again it was a long time before Kezia replied.

  “No …” She said at last, reluctantly. She smiled very slightly. “I suppose you are not quite as pompous as I thought. I apologize for that.”

  Charlotte smiled back. “Good. Pomposity is such a bore, and so masculine, don’t you think?”

  This time Kezia did actually laugh.

  The rest of the evening was strained. Kezia did not return, which was probably as well, but even so, Lorcan’s presence was sufficient to keep the disaster in everyone’s minds. The subject of the Parnell-O’Shea divorce was studiously ignored, which meant a great deal of political speculation had also to be avoided. The conversation degenerated into platitudes, and everyone was glad to retire early.

  Charlotte sat on the dressing stool in the sanctuary of her bedroom.

  “This is ghastly,” she said, running a silk scarf over her hair to keep it smooth and make it shine. “With this atmosphere one hardly needs to worry about Fenian dynamiters or assassins from outside.”

  Pitt was already sitting in bed.

  “What did Kezia Moynihan say? Is she going to make scenes all weekend?”

  “She has a certain amount of justice on her side.” She repeated what Kezia had told her.

  “Perhaps I should be protecting him,” Pitt said dryly. “From Kezia and from Lorcan McGinley, who has even more justice on his side; from Iona, if they quarrel or he breaks it off or she wants to and he won’t … or from Carson O’Day, for his jeopardizing the Protestant cause.”

  “Or Emily,” Charlotte added, “for making a bad party into a complete nightmare.” She put the scarf down and turned out the gas lamp above the dressing table, leaving no light in the room except the glow from the last embers of the fire. She climbed into bed beside him and snuggled down.

  For a second morning in a row they were woken by a shrill, tearing screaming.

  Pitt swore and stirred, burying his head in the pillow.

  The scream came again, high and terrified.

  Reluctantly Pitt got out of bed and stumbled across the floor, grasping for his robe. He opened the door and went out onto the landing. Twenty feet away the handsome maid, Doll, was standing in the open doorway of the Grevilles’ bathroom, her face ashen, her hands to her throat as if she could barely breathe.

  Pitt strode over, put both hands on her shoulders to move her aside, and looked in.

  Ainsley Greville lay in the bath, naked, his chest, shoulders and face under the water. There could be no question whatever that he was dead.

  4

  PITT SWUNG AROUND, barring the way with his body. “Take her and look after her,” he said to Charlotte, who was now on the landing. It was obvious he was referring to Doll, who still stood swaying a little, gasping for breath. He met Charlotte’s eyes. “Greville is dead.”

  She hesitated only a moment, her face tightening, then she walked forward and took the unresisting Doll and, putting her arm around her, guided her away.

  There were now several other people gathered, newly awoken, anxious, but still with yesterday’s embarrassment high in their minds.

  “What is it now?” Padraig Doyle moved past Piers, who was standing, startled and disheveled, next to the banister. A step behind him, Eudora looked worried but not frightened.

  Fergal Moynihan was coming out of his room, opposite Pitt’s, blinking, his hair poking in spikes as if he were newly awakened. He left the door wide open, and Iona was plainly not present.

  “What is it?” Padraig repeated, looking from Pitt to Charlotte and back again.

  “I am afraid there has been an accident,” Pitt said quietly. There was no point in supposing it was anything else yet. “There is nothing to be done to help at the moment.”

  “You mean … it is fatal?” Padraig looked only momentarily startled. He was not a man to p
anic or lose control of his composure. “Ainsley?”

  “I am afraid so.” As he spoke, Pitt was reaching for the bathroom door to close it.

  “I see.” Padraig turned to Eudora, a great gentleness in him. He put his arm around her shoulders, and the very tenderness of it alarmed her.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “Padraig?” She pulled away, turning to face him.

  “Ainsley,” he answered, looking at her very directly. “There’s nothing you can do. Come away. I’ll take you back to your room and sit with you.”

  “Ainsley?” For a moment it was as if she had not understood.

  “Yes. He’s dead, sweetheart. You must be strong.”

  Carson O’Day was coming along the passage from behind them, Iona from the other direction, wearing a beautiful midnight-blue robe. It billowed out behind her with her movement, like clouds of night.

  Fergal looked startled, perhaps by Padraig’s choice of words.

  “Mr. Doyle …” Pitt began.

  Padraig misunderstood him. “She’s my sister,” he explained.

  “I was going to ask you to help Mrs. Greville to her room”—Pitt shook his head a little—“and ask Mrs. Radley’s maid to go to her. I don’t think her own maid is in any state to help. And would you ask someone, Tellman, to come up here, please?” He looked around. Emily had arrived, her face harassed as she envisioned some new social breach. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had risen early again.

  Emily looked at Pitt, and knew that this time it was no simple love affair. She took a deep breath and deliberately steadied herself.

  “I’m sorry, but Ainsley Greville is dead,” Pitt said to everyone. “There is nothing that can be done to help him. It would be best if you all returned to your rooms and dressed as usual. We cannot be certain yet exactly what happened or what steps we should take next. Have someone find Mr. Radley and inform him.”

  Padraig had already gone with Eudora.

  “I’ll do that,” O’Day offered. He looked pale but in command of himself. “It’s a tragedy that it should happen now. He was a brilliant man. Our best hope for conciliation.” With a sigh he swiveled and went downstairs, tying his robe around his waist, his slippers soundless on the wooden stairs.

  Piers came forward. “Can I help?” he offered, his voice husky but almost steady. His eyes were very wide and he shook a little, as if he had not yet fully understood. “I’ve almost completed my medical studies. It would be a lot quicker and more discreet than sending for someone from the village.” He gave a little cough. “Then I would like to go and be with my mother. Padraig’s marvelous, but I think I should … and Justine. She will feel dreadful when she hears. Perhaps I should be the one to tell her—”

  “Later,” Pitt cut across him. “Now we need a doctor to look at your father.”

  Piers was jolted. “Yes,” he agreed, his face tightening. “Yes, of course.”

  Pitt pushed the door open and stepped back for Piers to follow him in. On the landing, people were moving away. Tellman should be there soon.

  As soon as Piers was in, Pitt closed the door and watched as the young man walked over to the bath, which was full almost to the brim, and to the naked corpse of his father. He stood close behind him, in case the sight should cause him to feel faint. The strongest will is not always proof against sheer physical shock. However many bodies he had seen in the course of his studies, there would be no other like this.

  Piers did sway for a moment or two, but he leaned forward and put his outstretched hands on the bath to steady himself. Slowly he knelt down and touched the dead face, then the arms and hands.

  Pitt watched. He had never got used to it either, even when it seemed peaceful like this. He had known Ainsley Greville when he was alive, only hours before. He had been a man of unusual vigor and intelligence, a man of powerful personality. This shell lying half below the bathwater was so familiarly him, and yet not him at all. In a sense it was already no one. The will and intellect were somewhere else.

  Pitt looked down at Piers’s hands. They were strong and slender. They could become a surgeon’s hands. They moved quite professionally, instinctively now, testing movement, temperature, exploring for injury without disturbing the body. How much effort did it cost him to be so composed? Whether he had loved him deeply or not, whether they had been close, the man was still his father, a unique relationship.

  Pitt stared at the scene to mark in his memory every line, every aspect and detail of what he saw. There was no discoloration in the water.

  Where the devil was Tellman?

  “He’s been dead since last night,” Piers said, rising to his feet. “I suppose that’s really rather obvious. The bathwater is cold. I assume it must have been hot when he got into it. It will have delayed the onset of rigor, but I don’t suppose that is of any importance.” He straightened up and took a step backward. His face was very white and he seemed to be finding it difficult to catch his breath. “It is easy enough to see what must have happened. There is a very bad blow at the back of his head. I can feel the depression in the skull. He must have slipped when he was climbing in the bath, or maybe trying to get out.” His eyes deliberately avoided the bath. “Soap perhaps. I don’t see a tablet, but there is some dissolved in the water. Maybe you don’t need much? He struck his head and lost consciousness. People do drown in baths. It happens too often.”

  “Thank you.” Pitt watched him closely. That calm might hide emotion almost beyond bearing, might give way to shock at any moment.

  “You’ll have to get someone else for the certificate, of course,” Piers hurried on. “They wouldn’t accept it from me, even if I were not his … his son.” He swallowed. “I’m … I’m not qualified yet.”

  “I understand.” Pitt was about to add more when there was a sharp rap on the door. He opened it and Tellman came in, looked hastily at Piers, then at the body in the bath. He turned back to Pitt.

  “May I go to Justine?” Piers asked, frowning slightly at Tellman. He did not understand the intrusion of a manservant.

  “Certainly,” Pitt answered. “And your mother, of course. Do I understand that Mr. Doyle is her brother?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I imagine he will help you in the arrangements that will need to be made, but I would be obliged if you could let me know before you contact anyone outside Ashworth Hall.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father was a government minister in a sensitive position, especially this weekend. The Home Office should be informed officially before anyone else.”

  “Oh … yes, of course. I didn’t think ….” If he wondered why Pitt should consider such a thing, he did not say so. Probably his emotions were far too occupied for such trivialities.

  As soon as he had gone Tellman bent forward and looked more closely at the body.

  “Natural or accident?” he asked, although there was skepticism in his voice. “Odd, isn’t it, after all our fears and precautions.”

  Pitt took the towel off the rail and spread it over the middle of the body in some sort of modesty.

  “It looks as if he slipped and knocked himself unconscious on the back of the bath,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What, then, drowned?” Tellman regarded the body with puckered brow. “I suppose so. Seems odd, first when he was threatened.” He walked over to the small window and examined it. It was about two feet square, the opening half that. They were twenty feet above the ground.

  Pitt shook his head.

  Tellman abandoned the idea. He returned to the bath.

  “Any harm if we move him?” he asked.

  “We’re going to have to,” Pitt conceded. “And long before we fetch any doctor from the village. I’ll have to call Cornwallis, but I want to know as much as I can before I do.”

  Tellman snorted. “So we don’t have to play games anymore?”

  Pitt looked at him with an ironic smile. “Let’s be discreet a little longer. Hold him up and I’ll have
a closer look at the wound at the back of his head.”

  “Suspicious?” Tellman glanced at him quickly.

  “Careful,” Pitt replied. “Hold him up. Take his arms and pull him forward a bit, if you can. He’s very stiff still. I just want to see the wound.”

  Tellman obliged, somewhat awkwardly, getting his cuffs wet to his considerable annoyance.

  Pitt looked closely, then felt the wet hair very gently with the tips of his fingers. As Piers had said, the indentation of the crushed bone was easy to find, a long ridge at the very base of the skull, rounded, quite wide.

  “Right?” Tellman asked.

  Pitt felt it again. It was straight, absolutely regular, about the width of the rim of the back of the bath.

  “What’s the matter?” Tellman said impatiently. “He’s very awkward to hold! He’s as stiff as a poker, and slipping. There must be soap in this water!”

  “There often is in baths,” Pitt agreed. “But that suggests Piers was right, and he was about to get out when he slipped rather than getting in.”

  “What does it matter?” Tellman was getting wetter, and the water was cold.

  “It probably doesn’t,” Pitt conceded. “Just makes it more likely, that’s all. The soap, I mean. Slippery.”

  “Should wash at a basin, like anyone else!” Tellman snapped. “Can’t drown yourself in a basin.”

  “It’s not the right shape,” Pitt said very quietly.

  Tellman was about to make a tart reply, then looked more closely at Pitt’s face. “What isn’t?”

  “This wound. The back edge of the bath curves around. Look at it! The wound is straight.”

  Tellman stared at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t think he hit himself on the rim of the bath.”

  “What then?”

  Pitt turned and looked around the room slowly. It was quite large, about ten feet by fourteen feet. The bath was in the center, opposite the door. There were two separate rails for towels, a washstand with basin and beside it a large, blue-and-white china ewer. Another smaller table held a vase with flowers and two or three ornaments. A screen against drafts was folded and stood near the door. Apparently Greville had not felt the need for it. There was a large mirror on the wall. On the opposite side of the room was a marble-topped table with brushes and jars of bath salts and oils.