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“Yes, ma’am. Of course. Shall I. .”
“No, thank you. I have taken up enough of your time. I can find my own way downstairs again, and no doubt the sergeant at the desk will direct me where to go after that. Good day, Mr. Runcorn.”
He scrambled to open the door for her, only just reaching it before she did. “Good day, ma’am,” he said, jerking the door open and banging it against his feet without making the slightest sign that it had caught the corn in his little toe, except a quick intake of breath and the slow letting out of it again.
Downstairs, Callandra spoke to the desk sergeant, and was conducted to the cells. She had composed in her mind what she was going to say, but nothing could prepare her emotions. She stood on the stone floor in the closed-in space, the smell of iron and dust, the strange mixture of coldness and human sweat clogging her throat. This was a time for courage. It was not the place which frightened her, it was meeting Kristian’s eyes, and what she might see in them. In the night, she had always found that to name the fear made it
more manageable. Was it rejection, her own foolishness exposed and the ensuing embarrassment, that she was afraid of? Or the struggle to keep up the charade that it was all going to be all right-he was not guilty, and even if it took a while, they would prove it. Or was it the acknowledgment at last that perhaps they would not?
Could she cope with that, survive it and go on? She was not sure.
The constable had already spoken to her twice, and she had not responded. He was beginning to fear that she was unwell.
“Of course,” she said briskly, swallowing hard. She did not know what he had said, but that seemed a satisfactory response. He led the way down a narrow, echoing passage, her footsteps sounding as if she were shod with iron. He produced a huge key and let her into a cell where Kristian was standing in the middle. He was wearing a collarless shirt and plain, dark trousers. He looked exhausted, and there was a grayish tinge to his skin, even though he appeared to have shaved very recently.
A flicker of surprise crossed his face, pleasure, and then a guardedness. He had had too many shocks, and he looked at nothing without suspicion. He smiled very slightly. It did not touch his eyes.
She realized with a jolt, as if she had missed a step, that he did not know what to expect from her. Somehow that surprised her, even though it was totally reasonable. After all, she had not known what to expect of herself.
Was the constable going to stand there forever? She turned to him. “You may go now,” she said briskly. “Lock me in, if it pleases you, or your instructions require it. I shall be perfectly safe. You may take my reticule, if you fear I have some weapon in it. I shall be ready to leave again in an hour.”
“Sorry, Miss, you can’t stay that long,” the sergeant replied. “ ’Alf an hour.”
“I am not ’Miss,’ I am Lady Callandra Daviot,” she corrected him firmly. “Then be so good as to return in half an hour-not twenty-five minutes. And don’t waste the little time I have by standing there eavesdropping. I have nothing secret to say, but it is private, and not your concern.”
He looked taken aback, but decided he could not afford to be offended. “Yes, my lady,” he said, locking the door sharply behind him as he retreated.
There was a flash of humor in Kristian’s face, but it died immediately. He struggled to find something to say that was not absurd, and discarded each idea as it came to him.
“Stop it!” she said sharply. “Stop trying to be polite. We have to talk about what matters. Half an hour will go by far too quickly as it is.” She saw relief in his eyes, and then fear, real and deep, gouging into the heart of her. It shocked her more than anything physical could have. But before she could respond to it, it was masked, gone again by an effort of will.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry.
There was nowhere to sit down but the cot, and she was not going to sit side by side with him on that. It was low and awkward.
“Oliver Rathbone is in Italy, so Pendreigh has offered to conduct your defense,” she said abruptly.
He breathed in, surprised, not certain if he had heard correctly, if he should believe it.
“He is certain you are not guilty,” she added.
Bitterness filled his face, and he turned away from her. “Not guilty,” he repeated the words softly. “Not guilty of what? I didn’t put my hands around her neck and break it, certainly. I was with a patient. I may have miscalculated the time, but not the essential facts.” His voice dropped still lower, filled with bitterness. “But am I ’not guilty’ of ignoring her, allowing her to fall further and further into gambling and debt and the kind of desperate boredom that took her to Allardyce’s studio, alone, where she could be killed?”
She wanted to deny it immediately. It was an absurd assumption of responsibility for someone else’s weaknesses, but she could hear in the strain of his voice that it was more real to him than the physical imprisonment of his own circumstances. Perhaps it was easier to consider that kind of guilt than the future and the accusations he would have to answer in court.
He straightened his shoulders, but he still did not turn to face her. His voice shook when he spoke again. “She was so full of life in Vienna. She made every other woman look gray in comparison. She would have stayed there, you know? It was I who was sick to the heart of it and wanted to come to England.”
Callandra said nothing. She sensed in him the need to talk; she was only the audience for something he was saying to himself, perhaps putting into words for the first time.
“She would have gone to Paris, Milan, Rome, anywhere that the struggle was still going on. But I brought her here and turned her into a housewife to spend her time ordering groceries and exchanging gossip about the daily trivia of lives she saw as perfectly safe and ordered, and with nothing on earth to fight for.”
“What absolute rubbish!” She exploded in real anger. “There is everything to fight for, and you know that, even if she did not. There is ignorance and pain to battle, disease, crime, selfishness, domestic and social violence, prejudice, authority, bigotry and injustice of every kind and color. And when you have conquered all of those, you can always try addressing poverty, madness, and perfectly ordinary dirt. Or, if those seem too large and indeterminate, what about common or garden loneliness and fear of death, hungry children with no one to tell them they are good. . and lonely old people neglected by the rest of us-in a hurry and too busy to listen anymore. If she didn’t find that exciting enough, or glorious. . that is not your fault!”
He turned slowly to face her. For a moment, surprise was sharper in his face than anything else. “Honest to the last,” he said. “You really are angry! Thank you at least for not patronizing me with false comfort. But I did ignore her. I knew her, and if I had thought more of her and less of myself I would not have tried to change her. Her gambling was beyond control, and I didn’t do anything about it. I argued with her, of course. I pleaded, I threatened, reasoned. But I didn’t look at the cause, because that would have meant I would have to change as well, and I was not prepared to.”
“It’s too late for that now, Kristian,” she replied. “We have only fifteen minutes left at the most before the constable comes back. Pendreigh will defend you in court. I don’t know whether he expects to be paid for it or not. He may do it simply out of belief, and because he would naturally prefer that you were shown to be not guilty, because it reflects less badly on his daughter if she were killed by someone outside the family. It raises less unfortunate speculation in the minds of others. And if he is in control of the defense, he can exercise some restraint over the exploration of her character by the counsel for the prosecution. At least he can do all that anyone could.”
“I can’t pay him,” Kristian said ruefully. “Surely he is as aware of that as I am?”
