Page 107 of Corpse in the Canal

“I kept moving with him, blocking his path to right and left until I thought he was furious enough to hit me. But I truly meant to stand my ground, whatever he did. I had to, you see. He was saying such terrible things, taunting me, but exciting himself in a way that was obscene, listing all the disgusting things he was going to do to her. Spittle was flying out of his mouth. His face was red and he looked positively mad, like a very large child having a tantrum. Then, just when I thought he would hit me, he grabbed the pistol from his pocket and pointed it at me…

“If he had just shut his mouth, I would probably have seen the danger then and let him go. I could have summoned the help of the servants and neighboring folk to protect her. I know that now. But he said…he said…” His breath caught. Even now, he could not repeat it. “It was as if something snapped inside me. I have heard people say they see red when they are angry. I never understood it before. I am not really a-a worldly man. But I saw it that day, a bright, angry scarlet. I didn’t even think about it. I charged him and snatched the gun from him.

“I took him by complete surprise. He gawped at me with his mouth open. And I thought I had won. I had saved the day with a courage I didn’t know I possessed.”

A hoarse, bitter laugh escaped him. “I saved her. But I didn’t save him. Or me.”

“What happened?” Harris asked.

“He started talking again, saying I could no more shoot him than a rabbit, that he would just toddle up to the hall and—well, more of what he would do to Mrs. Jenkins. I was almost inured by then, so all might have well if he had not…”

“What?” Mrs. Grey prompted him.

“Laughed at me,” Ellis whispered. “Again. Even now, when I held his own gun, trained on him, he spouted obscenity and laughed at me, perfectly sure of my inability to stop him doing exactly as he pleased.”

“What did you do?” Harris asked.

“I stopped him,” Ellis said. “I shot him through the heart—more by luck than skill, for I didn’t even know if the pistol was loaded—but he fell back against the gig, quite dead. I hauled him the rest of the way inside and drove him down through the wood to the canal. No one was about, so I just dragged him out of the gig, put some stones in his pockets to weigh him down, and pushed him into the water. Then I drove home. I wasn’t proud of it. But I wasn’t sorry. I’m still not. Except for the Harveys’ grief. I regret that.”

Harvey was holding his head in his hands. Ellis was glad not to see his face.

He frowned into the silence. “And I think…I regret not confessing immediately. I shoved him in the canal while still under the influence of that red rage. But afterward, when it faded, I should have confessed. Instead, I talked myself into believing I was such a good man that I had done God’s work and deserved the second chance to look after the people I had wronged. I never realized before the power of man’s self-deception.”

He stood up and gazed at Harvey’s bent head. “I shall plead guilty. There need be no trial.” He swung on Grey. “One thing…how did you come to suspect me?”

“We thought it was someone protecting Mrs. Jenkins,” he said calmly. “But it wasn’t Everett or Owens, and we hadn’t considered you. Once we did, everything fell into place. Your gig made the wheel tracks in the wood. You hadn’t been in Channing as you said. And we found Percy’s pistol locked in your desk drawer.”

Ellis nodded. “I’m sorry it took so long that you were shot. I didn’t foresee that either.” He turned and gave Constance a bow that was probably incongruous. “Goodbye, Mrs. Grey.”

She inclined her head slightly, a courtesy he appreciated. He might have fallen short as a human being, and most definitely as a clergyman, but in that one action, she gave him the faintest hope. Which made it easier to bear that Harvey would not look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said hollowly on his way out of the door, but he had no way of knowing if Harvey even heard.

*

“I cannot tell her this,” Harvey whispered. “Please, don’t repeat Thomas’s words to my wife.”

It was interesting, Constance thought, that he didn’t call them accusations. He knew in his heart that they were true. “I think you might find she already guesses the truth. It is part of her unhappiness.”

Harvey shook his head in clear anguish. “Why was I so blind? If I had only allowed myself to look, perhaps I could have changed his behavior years ago, when he was young enough… Thomas was right about our capacity for self-deception. But no one complained of him.”

Perhaps not, but the signs were there. The massive debts that were never donations to charity, the betrothal to Lady Phoebe Styles that never happened. The tragedy—one of the tragedies—was, Constance thought, recalling that unfinished letter to her in Percy’s desk, that she might have been the one person who could have changed his behavior.

Maybe…

“Did we rear a monster?” Harvey asked.

Solomon placed a hand on his shoulder. “No. He was a flawed man, but we all are. You can still mourn him. He didn’t deserve to die.”

An indulgent world, a conspiracy of shame and silence… Until those things changed, there would always be Percys, and the even greater tragedies that grew out of them. I hate this case.

And yet she felt duty bound to stay.

Over Harvey’s bowed head, she met Solomon’s searching gaze. Was he thinking how to raise their own son or daughter? The seemingly impossible balance between discipline and freedom of expression…

Harvey straightened abruptly. “I must return to our guests. I have duties.”

He walked out of the room, upright and determined.