by Anne Perry
Dorothea, who had left London Society under something of a shadow, and who Vespasia recalled as hating her dark, almost swarthy looks, suddenly seemed to feel much better about herself. She looked Vespasia up and down, noting her fair skin and the high carriage of her head.
“How generous of you,” she replied with a tentative smile. “You are right, of course. I am enjoying it here very much.” Vespasia knew she was lying. But in Toledo no one knew of her past misjudgments. “Surely at this time of the year you are here for the climate?” Her sharp eyes tried to assess Vespasia’s fortunes and what kind of disaster could have driven her from the heart of the London Season to a relatively small place like Toledo. The gleam of interest in them could be taken for concern, but it had the brilliant sheen of curiosity.
Vespasia had foreseen exactly that and was prepared.
“I have a goddaughter who has fallen in love, most unsuitably, as it turns out,” she replied with a slight, graceful gesture of her shoulders as if to shrug it off.
“Oh dear,” Dorothea said quickly, moving a step closer. “How unfortunate.”
“Indeed.” Vespasia restrained herself from moving back. “Her mother is naturally beside herself that the matter should be ended without…scandal. She has already made her feelings known, with the worst possible results.”
“Oh dear,” Dorothea murmured again, moistening her lower lip. “Young people can be so headstrong. But when we think we are in love…” She let the conclusion hang in the air, waiting for Vespasia to furnish more details.
“Exactly,” Vespasia nearly choked on the words. She had forgotten how shallow Dorothea could be. Since her own disgrace, she seemed to relish that of others. “I see you understand. I thought I might prevail. She will at least listen to me, if I can speak to her alone. She knows that I will have her interests at heart.” She wondered how much more to embellish the lie. Watching Dorothea’s face, she decided to put another confidential touch to the story. “I have been in love a few times myself, and afterward wished I had listened to advice.”
Dorothea’s black eyebrows rose. “Haven’t we all,” she said softly. “Not always with fortunate results.” That was possibly a bleak reference to her own exile in Spain. “Can I be of any assistance? I know a number of people.”
“Perhaps,” Vespasia agreed. “It may be somewhat…urgent.”
Dorothea was elated, her eyes gleaming.
“Have you heard of a woman called Sofia Delacruz?”
Dorothea gasped. “But of course! She is very well known. For heaven’s sake, you don’t mean that your goddaughter has become caught up in that absurd cult? Is she in love with one of them? Then you must do all you can.”
“You know something of her?” Vespasia asked innocently, her brows arched above her wonderful silver-gray eyes.
“Personally? Of course not. But I have heard. She is quite beyond eccentric. I am embarrassed to say that she is originally English, though. But of course she married a Spaniard, so she is no longer really one of us.”
Vespasia repressed a shudder of distaste for Dorothea’s snobbishness.
“What is she like? Do you think it would be worth appealing to her?” she asked.
Dorothea spread her hands. “Not in the slightest. She listens to no one. She is a religious fanatic. She’ll tell you all kinds of preposterous things about who she thinks you are. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never met her.” She waved her thin hands dramatically. “I can’t stand all the earnest abstract passion. Such poor taste, don’t you think? Nothing worse than a crushing bore. What on earth can you do with them?”
“Pass them on as rapidly as possible,” Vespasia said instantly. “Unfortunately we cannot all agree as to who they are. Is this woman really such a bore?”
“I have no idea,” Dorothea admitted. “I suppose if you truly are serious, you could go and ask the people in her organization.”
“Will they not be more than a little biased?”
“You could always try the opposition,” Dorothea suggested. From the flatness in her voice it was clear she was losing interest.
“Opposition?” Vespasia asked.
Dorothea gave an elaborate shrug of her shoulders. It was a gesture that fell short of elegant. “Well, my dear, she is hardly universally admired, is she? Her past is rather worse than questionable…don’t you think? Or do you not know about it?”
Vespasia presumed she was speaking of Nazario’s first wife, the tragic Luisa, but just in case she was not, she affected ignorance. Even if she were right, another more colorful and less charitable version of the story might be useful, tasteless as it would be.
“I see you don’t!” Dorothea said with relish. “Very beautiful in a weird, melodramatic sort of way, if you like that kind of thing. Apparently Nazario Delacruz did…like it, I mean. Doesn’t look like an Englishwoman in the least! All black eyes and Spanish pride. Walks as if she is on wheels.”
“The…wife?” Vespasia had very nearly slipped and named her.
“No, of course not! Sofia! Luisa was a gentle creature, a little spoiled, perhaps. And boring, for all I know. But so are half the women in London…at least half.”
Vespasia was beginning to feel as if she were paying dearly for these scraps of information, if they were even that.
“Indeed,” she said shamelessly. “Unfortunately the interesting ones tend to leave. One cannot help wondering if that is cause and effect.”
Dorothea turned that remark over in her mind suspiciously, then decided it was a rather delicious compliment.
“From a good family, of course,” she continued. “I was always surprised Luisa’s people didn’t take some kind of revenge, on both Nazario and Sofia. Perhaps it will happen yet. I think I would want justice! Wouldn’t you?” It was a direct question.
Vespasia decided to pursue it. “Yes, I think I might, if I had the courage,” she agreed. “But I also could be content to bide my time, until I could do it really well, and not be caught at it.”
“Don’t you think the courts, or whoever it is, would understand?” Dorothea asked. “Or the police, at least?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would depend upon what private grievances they had, I suppose. Even so, I think I would prefer not to have to explain myself, or my family’s tragedies, in order to avoid being punished for the vengeance…whatever it was.”
Dorothea gave a little shiver of delight. “I’m so glad you came to Toledo. Life is going to be so much more interesting now that you are here.”
“What is the name of this family?” Vespasia inquired.
Dorothea’s eyes widened. “For heaven’s sake, you are not going to call on them, are you? That would be…daring!” She meant brazen and inappropriate, and she would be delighted if Vespasia did such an indiscreet thing.
“Not at all,” Vespasia denied. “But you did remark upon how surprising it is that they have not taken any vengeance on Nazario or Sofia. I wonder if there is a reason for that.” She saw Dorothea’s look of intense and sudden interest. “It does seem…unusual, don’t you think?”
“Now that you mention it, yes! Yes, I do. I wonder why that should be. It’s been years. I couldn’t wait so long. I shall make some discreet inquiries and let you know.”
“Their name?” Vespasia prompted her.
“Oh, I shall let you know,” Dorothea replied airily. “Didn’t I say?”
Vespasia refused to take the bait. Perhaps she had deserved this. She would despise herself as much as she despised Dorothea were the stakes any less high. Now she forced herself to smile. “I should be interested to know more about Sofia herself. But I don’t imagine you could help with that.”
“I…” Dorothea colored faintly. “I have a slight acquaintance with a nun in one of the convents on the outskirts of the old city. She might be able to help. If you wish, I can have my carriage take you there.”
“Thank you, Dorothea,” Vespasia accepted. She lied without hesitation. “You were a
lways generous.”
Dorothea looked startled, suspecting sarcasm, but she did not argue.
—
THE FOLLOWING MORNING AT a little after eight o’clock, Dorothea’s carriage pulled up outside the high walls of the convent. The building was probably a hundred years old, beautiful in its simplicity.
Vespasia alighted and walked to the entrance, where she gave the gatekeeper her name, and requested to see Sister Maria Madalena. She also gave Sofia’s name, and said that the need was very urgent.
Five minutes later she was conducted through a huge barred oak door into the silence of stone colonnades, motes of dust whirling in the slanted morning sunlight. The floors were worn uneven from centuries’ passage of feet, the center of each step on the flight of stairs hollowed out.
She was shown to a quiet room filled with patterned sunlight coming in through the wrought-iron grille on the window. She sat in one of the two chairs in meditation until the door opened and Sister Maria Madalena came in.
She was a small woman with a gentle face and a very slight limp. She looked to be about Vespasia’s own age. There was in her eyes a great peace, not untouched by humor.
“Lady Vespasia Narraway.” She smiled, bowing very slightly, in a curiously graceful gesture. “I believe you are inquiring about Sofia Delacruz. I can tell you only what I know.”
“Thank you, that is all I ask.” Vespasia accepted. “Do you know her well?”
“Oh, yes,” Sister Maria Madalena answered with certainty. “She came to visit us. She liked it here, the apartness from the world, you know? We often sat and talked together. We agreed about all the little things, the daily things.” She smiled. “Just not on who we are, where we came from or where we are going to, or even why. Just the step by step of it.” She smiled, and it illuminated her face. “It is the step by step that counts, don’t you think?”
Vespasia made a sudden decision to be honest with this quiet nun who judged so wisely. “I am afraid something extremely unpleasant has happened to Señora Delacruz, and I hope that by learning more about her, we may forestall it becoming a complete tragedy. I cannot tell you much more, except what is publicly known in London. She has been kidnapped, and two of her followers violently and very terribly killed.”
Sister Maria Madalena’s face showed pain, but not horror, and no incredulity at all. Vespasia wondered for an instant if she had not understood, even though Vespasia’s Spanish was good.
“Oh dear,” Sister Maria said quietly. “There is such terrible tragedy in the world, and such wickedness. But blazing a path isn’t easy, wherever it leads.” The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Perhaps it would be wiser of me not to admit that, but an error of doctrine is a small thing compared to the love of one person for others. She does not lack courage, which will possibly be her undoing.”
“Was she much resented for her beliefs?” Vespasia asked.
Sister Maria smiled. “Here, in Toledo? You do not know our history. And why should you, when you have so much of your own? But in the past we were famed for our tolerance, before the days of fear and the judgment that only one way was right. That was before the driving out of most of those whose ideas were different from our own, and the persecution of the few who remained. Then art and science flourished. Differences were no threat; they were the path to greater learning. Fear is a terrible thing, Lady Vespasia, a disease that leaps like fire from one mind to another, and burns away so much of the best in us. We stop listening and strike out too easily, before we think.
“Your question? In Toledo, the old quarters, no, we found her ideas strange and interesting. She made me reevaluate some of my own faith’s teachings. I saw certain things in a different light, and at least one of them seemed the more precious for it. She made me realize that we love certainty, and often imagine we see it where in fact we do not.”
“Your face says that you are not afraid,” Vespasia said quietly.
“I am not. I am certain of the things that matter. Kindness and honor are always good. Do not build God in your own image, with your doubts and fears, your need to judge and condemn, your need for safety, and to be right whatever the cost to others, and ultimately to yourself. Let your soul be still, and know that God is never capricious, never cruel and never wrong. It is our understanding that stumbles. Even the cleverest of us are yet children, and the wisest of us know that.”
“Was Sofia one of the wisest?” Vespasia asked.
“Good heavens, no! One of the bravest, certainly. And one of the gentlest, in her own way. She was forever seeking to help the truly penitent to find their way back to the light. That is a godly thing to do.”
“You are not surprised that she should have been abducted?”
Sister Maria considered for a moment before replying, then she measured her words carefully. “Sofia worked with a great many people. I heard that she turned no one away, although a good many went of their own accord. Some of her teachings were hard, others were very gentle. She never denied food and shelter if she had it to give.” She bit her lip and hesitated, then reached some inner decision. “One man came to her, shortly after there was a very brutal murder committed. A man had been found with his throat cut, and his body mutilated. I do not know what the fugitive man said to Sofia. She did not tell me and of course I did not ask. But he sought shelter with her. He was very afraid, mortally so. She was deeply disturbed by it, and confided in me that she was afraid for his life, and for his soul.”
“She told you this?” Vespasia said with surprise.
“She would not have, had she not needed my help. She said he had confessed a deep sin to her, but that it was not violent, although the harm it would do was terrible. She asked me to find him shelter where he could not be reached by outside forces seeking to kill him. She gave me her word that he had not confessed to this murder, but admitted that his fear was in connection with it.”
“And you believed her?” Vespasia asked, sudden new ideas whirling in her mind. Was this fugitive the key to Sofia’s kidnapping? Did “outside forces” mean Sofia’s abduction was political after all?
“I did. I still do. I never found Sofia in a lie of any sort, even to herself. She is the most blisteringly honest person I know, and I choose my words with care and intent. Of course I do not know if the man deceived her.”
“But you sheltered him?” Vespasia said, trying to keep her voice level. “Is he still with you?”
“No. I did. It was just for a few days, and then Sofia found her own way to protect him. I did not ask what it was, nor did she offer to tell me. I think she obtained money to look after him elsewhere, but that is only my guess.”
“Thank you,” Vespasia acknowledged her help. “It seems very possible that her rescue of this man may have been the cause of her present trouble. Is there nothing more that you can tell me about him? For example, how long before her departure to England did this happen?”
“Less than a month,” Maria Madalena replied, her expression suddenly grave. “That is why I felt compelled to break her confidence and tell you. Please…do what you can to help her. Her beliefs are blasphemous to my Church, or they seem so, but she is a good woman, and to me that is all that matters. She is a child of God as much as anyone.”
“I will,” Vespasia promised. She rose to her feet and grasped Maria Madalena’s hand for a moment. “I will,” she repeated.
CHAPTER
10
PITT STOOD IN INSPECTOR Latham’s small, untidy office. The desk was littered with piles of reports, and two enamel mugs half full of tea. On the ashtray rested a pipe. The wooden bowl of it was stained dark with use, but it gave off a warm, rather pleasant odor.
“I’ve already told you…sir,” Latham said tartly, his patience wearing thin. “Police surgeon says they died early in the evening before we found them. As near as he can be sure, within minutes of each other. It was fine and warm that day. Windows open, flies around. Unpleasant, but it helps fix the time. Probably no later th
an dusk. Twilight’s long this time o’ the year. Clear night, an’ all. Light enough you wouldn’t be afraid of answering the door, dark enough neighbors was inside an’ probably having their dinners. If anyone did see, they’d think it was likely someone come to dinner. Two hansoms were noticed, but the witnesses can’t say if it was the same one twice.”
“How far apart?” Pitt asked.
“For heaven’s sake, sir, people don’t look at their clocks unless they’re expecting someone who’s late. Could’ve been a few minutes, or an hour. The neighbors are just beginning to get themselves together again. If you go clomping up and down asking any more questions, like those damn fellows of Mr. Teague’s, you’ll just upset decent people, and get a whole lot of stupid stories from those who don’t know their backsides from their elbows, but want everyone to listen to them anyway. I don’t know what you called him in for! We can do our job, if it can be done at all. There are some people you never catch. We had half of England trying to catch the Ripper, but we never did.”
He took a deep breath and controlled his anger with an effort. “Why don’t you just go and chase them dynamiters, or whatever it is you do, and leave us to sort this one? If we get even a whisper there’s anybody political here, we’ll call you. And can you get Teague out of the way, please? I’m all for heroes, but in their own place, not ours.”
“I didn’t invite him in, Inspector,” Pitt said wearily. “And Sofia Delacruz is a political figure, and she’s still missing.”
“Thought she was some kind of preacher?” Latham shook his head. “Don’t have no truck with it, myself. Go to church on Sundays and mind my own business. Who’d want to argue with the parson? What for?”
“Some people would argue with God,” Pitt said with a sigh. “I suppose there’s no more material evidence?”
“Nothing you haven’t heard. Sharp knife used. Aren’t many in the kitchen, but no way to know if it was one of them that was used, and the killer took it away, or if he brought his own.”