‘He has.’ The auctioneer ruminated for a moment, and then said, ‘Ifyou’dshot him, I might have had some more questions. And on reflection, I’d still probably have let it go, since I expect we’ll all be a sight happier round here without the likes of him, except for them he owed money to. I’m glad to say I’m not one of those unfortunate souls; I am no greenhorn, Major, as you well know. But in any case, since it was the old lady put a period to his existence, there can be no suspicion of it being deliberate, so it all ties up remarkable neat. They’ll take away the body later this morning – a very quiet funeral, I daresay, with very few to mourn his passing. And all that’s left for me to do today is to go and tell his brother and sister the shocking news. I don’t anticipate any tears and tearing of hair there either, unless they come from that impudent baggage Fanny Smith. She’s the only one that might just miss him, because I think she had a foolish fancy to be Lady Pallant. And here we are at Four Winds, and I shall set you down. A good morning to you, Major, my compliments to your lady mother, and I expect I shall be seeing you at the inquest, if not before.’
Alistair stepped carefully down from the gig and raised a hand in farewell. It had been a long, long night and it wasn’t quite over yet. Now he’d have to go inside and tell his parent all that had happened. He sighed and squared his shoulders.
47
The next couple of days passed uneasily at Albery Hall, which could scarcely be wondered at. Bea knew that Vivienne must have received the news of her brother’s shocking death, presumably from Mr Marjoram or one of the constables, early on the morning after it happened; what she did not know was how she might be feeling about it. His Lordship had been a terrible bully in the domestic sphere and outside it, and life with him had been an ordeal, she knew, but he was still Miss Pallant’s brother, and it was the only world she’d ever known. And what would Vivienne do, where and how would she and her surviving brother live, now that he was gone? It seemed to be generally accepted that their affairs were in the greatest possible disorder, and Bea could not even conjecture what fresh trouble might come of this sudden disaster. She could not feel guilty – none of this was her fault, nor anyone’s fault but the dead man’s – but she was shaken, and could not be comfortable, she found, day or night. Nor did she wish to discuss her peculiar situation with her sisters, even though she knew they felt for her.
She could not visit Pallant Manor just now – that was sufficiently obvious – but she should at least write, she thought. A dozen times a day, she sat down in front of a blank piece of paper, but each time, the ink dried on her pen.DearMissPallant… If there was a form of words that could readily be used to send condolences to a woman one had been deeply intimate with, but could not fully trust, and whose cruelly abusive brother had been shot down and killed, by one’s own elderly chaperon, while trying to burgle one’s own bedchamber in the middle of the night, she did not know it. Possibly such a thing had never occurred before, or not since medieval times, when all sorts of strange things happened in the best-regulated families, if the poems and histories were to be believed.
But then she thought, with her own experience of bereavement after the loss of her father a few years ago, that it was selfish to be deterred by such difficulties, and selfish too to dwell on her own sense of awkwardness above all other matters; the important thing was surely to let the distressed person know that someone in the world was thinking of them. She could hardly suppose that Vivienne would be deluged with offers of sympathy; hers might even be the only one she received, and however complicated their relationship had been, Bea at least owed her that. She wrote resolutely and quickly, without stopping to think too much beyond the ever-present knowledge that no letter could ever be considered completely private, and so she must not be dangerously indiscreet, for Vivienne’s sake as well as her own.
Dear Miss Pallant,
I have been thinking of you constantly since the dreadful events of a couple of nights ago, and hoping that you are in good health, if such a thing is even possible. These are odd circumstances in which to offer condolences, from this family to yours, but still, I wanted to offer them, and hope you will accept them in the spirit in which they are sent. I am truly sorry for you, that you have lost your brother, and in such a shocking and sudden manner. This must be a very difficult time for you; I do not suppose that anyone can imagine just how difficult.
I will not insult you with commonplaces, none of which seem appropriate to the extraordinarily difficult occasion. I can only hope that my writing does not offend you, or add to your distress. That was not my intention, as I hope you know. If my letter causes you fresh pain, I am very sorry for that too, but not writing, leaving you perhaps to think that I do not care at all for you and your sad situation, seemed worse.
I find that there is no more to say but that I am thinking of you still.
My best regards,
Beatrice Constantine
She sat back and looked at what she had written, frowning. It was a strange letter, she thought, or would be thought so by anyone who perused it not knowing the most peculiar circumstances in which Lord Pallant had died. But, trying to step outside herself and imagine it being read by Mr Marjoram, say, or by the coroner or some other official person, she thought it would do. The writer was plainly embarrassed, as well she might be, and yet anxious to reach out in sympathy to someone who was, after all, as far as the authorities knew, completely innocent of her brother’s crimes. Another victim, in fact. Vivienne was not quite that, or not just that, but nobody outside Albery House was aware of that fact. If there was deeper emotion than mere condolence to be read between the lines, Beatrice hoped that only Vivienne would see it there, and perhaps take a little comfort from it.
She sealed the letter and asked Mrs Pritty to arrange for it to be sent; the housekeeper raised her eyebrows a little at the sight of the direction, but then nodded and said she would. ‘It’s a kind thought, Miss Beatrice,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t imagine anyone is thinking of that young lady just now, and yet her situation is quite pitiable, even if we can’t suppose her quite grief-stricken as a sister would be in a regular family. I’ll have Jem take it across directly. I hope the Manor isn’t besieged by creditors quite yet. Heaven knows what they’ll do now.’
Bea thanked her and went out to wander aimlessly in the garden and the copse beyond it, having been cooped up in the house for what felt like long, weary days. She was a person somewhat prone to unpleasant self-reflection, and she could not deny the fact that it was in many ways convenient for her to be unable to express herself with perfect openness when writing to Vivienne. The plain fact was, if she were free to say anything in the world, to write words that would sear the page with their passion and honesty, she still didn’t know what she would say, because she didn’t know exactly what she felt, or rather, her emotions changed and shifted like the tides.
Sometimes, anger and hurt overwhelmed her when she thought how Vivienne had set out to entrap her – not even at her brother’s command, because Lord Pallant would never have known that such a stratagem might be possible if Vivienne had not of her own free will told him so. But sometimes, she thought herself unfair and unkind, because Vivienne was an abused and bullied woman, while she was not and never had been, and so could never really understand.
Sometimes, she tormented herself with visions of a possible happy future for them, now that Miss Pallant was free of her oppressor. And sometimes, she wondered if she was plain crazy to indulge in such idle and unrealistic dreams, because she should know that Vivienne could never really be trusted, and even if she could, one day, how would Cecilia and Bianca feel if their sister insisted upon entangling her life with such a person? What would their mother say, or Miss Macintyre, or anybody else in the family? They’d consider her reckless and criminally foolish, to invest her happiness in this woman above all others.
And probably Vivienne herself would spurn such a suggestion anyway, coming from someone who had stood over her brother’s body as it cooled and been nothing but glad he was dead, except for the embarrassment it caused her own family. Probably Miss Pallant would never want to set eyes on anyone named Constantine again as long as she lived, and who could blame her?
It made Bea’s head ache and her stomach churn, and no matter how long she picked away at it all, she could come to no proper and definitive conclusion. Perhaps this was because there was no conclusion to be found. Maybe other lucky people always knew how they felt on important subjects, and never had any trouble working out exactly what to do; on this occasion, she found, she did not.
48
The inquest was a few days later, and Miss Macintyre, Cecilia, and the Major were all summoned by official letter to attend. Bianca had slept through the whole affair, and Beatrice had only arrived in the room after the shot was fired, so their presence was not requested, but naturally, they came to support their sister and companion.
The whole party received a great deal of sympathetic attention from the people who had crowded into the large upstairs room in the Crown and Castle that was apparently always used for the purpose of inquests. Miss Macintyre in particular, who had managed to find nasty crocheted mittens, a drab pelisse and rather squashed bonnet that somehow made her look most advanced in decrepitude, had her hand squeezed by a great many sympathetic strangers. There was talk among local ladies of taking up a collection on her behalf, Mrs Pritty had told them. What more could one ask of a diligent chaperon, in all honesty, than that she should shoot down a wicked man who crept into a house at night and menaced the property, virtue, and possibly even the lives of her charges? It was not normal practice for duennas to go about armed; maybe it should be, the ladies agreed.
The coroner was a local lawyer with whom the Constantines were not acquainted, but it was plain from the outset that he had been well briefed by Mr Marjoram. He was most sympathetic in his questioning of the few witnesses, even if he did show a perceptible tendency to defer to the Major and place more emphasis on what he said he’d seen than what Cecilia and Miss Macintyre had seen, even when it was exactly the same. When he went so far as to thank Major Bartrum for his prompt action in ensuring the safety of his neighbours, Alistair replied bluntly that no thanks were necessary, as he’d done precisely nothing to help, and matters would have turned out exactly the same if he hadn’t been there at all. The legal gentleman looked rather nonplussed and murmured a nonsensical remark about offering reassurance and protection to the distressed ladies after the dreadful events they’d endured; the Major merely smiled a touch sardonically in response. It was no doubt useful that everyone should consider the Constantines, and even Miss Macintyre (who had coolly shot a man straight through the eye in a room illuminated only by a flickering candle and a little faint moonlight), as weak and helpless creatures. It was ridiculous, Cecilia thought, given the strength of the evidence to the contrary, but in the circumstances, it was undoubtedly extremely helpful.
The inquest was a very brief proceeding. The jury of local farmers, tradesmen and innkeepers needed no steering from the coroner to bring in a verdict of accidental death on Lord Pallant, rather than manslaughter. There would be no further legal repercussions for Miss Macintyre, the heroine of the hour, and it was hoped that the Hall’s remoteness would protect its inhabitants from those annoying people who liked to come and gaze witlessly at scenes of murder and mayhem, and even sometimes take away souvenirs. At present, the village constable was stationed at the foot of the steps to the beach to prevent this, one of the constables from Debenbridge was standing guard at the gate, and two sturdy young relations of Mrs Pritty were working in the garden on a temporary basis, within call if anyone should attempt access.
This prohibition on unexpected visitors, naturally, did not extend to Major Bartrum and his mother, Rory having gone back to Cambridge already; Mr and Mrs Drinkwater; and Mrs Leontina Constantine, who arrived in Suffolk in a post-chaise two days after she received Bea’s letter with the startling news. She hadn’t written back to say that she was coming – there had scarcely been time – but her daughters could not be surprised to see her. She had previously resolved to let her three youngest children have a little space in which to accustom themselves to their new life – but that had been before a strange man had been shot down in one of their bedchambers in the middle of the night, and by their former governess to boot. Only the most neglectful of parents would not hasten to her daughters’ side in such extraordinary circumstances, and whatever Leontina was, she was not that.
A little while after her arrival, she was sitting down to tea and honey cake in the parlour, having already been shown her room so that she could put off her bonnet and pelisse and tidy herself after her long journey. ‘Very well,’ she said, regarding them all in turn with those disconcertingly sharp, dark eyes. ‘I had always thought Allegra the most troublesome of my daughters, but even she never presented me with a dead man in the house and some cock-and-bull story to explain it. Now tell me what really happened.’
49
Cecilia had cause to be grateful for the fact, which she had not previously realised with her conscious mind, that Miss Macintyre had never throughout the years she had spent living in their household shown herself to be in the least intimidated by Mrs Constantine, unlike so many other people. And she was not intimidated now, but calmer than one would have believed possible. Perhaps the precious Rembrandt currently hanging in her bedchamber, where she could see it the moment she woke, was giving her confidence too.
Euphemia took charge of the necessary explanations, as one lady of a certain age to another, and while it was clear that Leontina was somewhat suspicious of the Major’s presence near the Hall on the night of Lord Pallant’s death, that suspicion did not appear to resolve itself into anything more definite. Mama merely grunted sceptically at the end of the tale, and expressed a desire to meet this gentleman and thank him for his solicitude towards her daughters.
It could have been much worse. Imagine being an only child, the focus of unrelenting parental scrutiny. There was safety in numbers, Cecilia thought, as often before. And though it was selfish to be so relieved, at least nobody had found a dead baron inherbedchamber. As far as anyone knew, she was entirely blameless, as were they all.
