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Graves made a gesture of distaste. ‘She offended so many I lost count. She was highly in fashion sometimes, and wore her clothes well, better than Lady Midhurst, and the parson’s wife, and the doctor’s wife. But that happens in all communities where women have nothing useful to do with their time. Can you imagine killing another man because he has a better tailor, or can tie a cravat more elegantly?’
‘I can imagine it being an outward sign of a much deeper rivalry,’ Daniel replied. ‘Or to show who is the leader of that community: whose word counts the most, not to mention who draws the most admiration from men, maybe one in particular.’
Graves looked at him with grudging agreement. ‘It all seems so desperately trivial, but I suppose it’s not. It depends upon the size of your world, doesn’t it?’
‘Was Mrs Graves’ world so small? Who were her friends? Perhaps I should speak to them; they would know more of how she spent her time. If there was one who was jealous, even if for a futile reason, and there was a man involved? Money? A rivalry over something?’
Graves looked helpless.
Daniel leaned forward. ‘It’s happened! Think, man. Your life depends upon it!’
‘I – I took no interest in local affairs,’ Graves said helplessly. ‘I’m a very busy man. It may not fall within your professional orbit, but I’m a biographer of some note. I write with great detail about men of the highest importance. I am noted for accuracy, even in the smallest details. I – I have no time to involve myself with the affairs of nobodies.’
‘A biographer?’ Daniel ignored the insult and affected an interest he did not feel. ‘Then you must have learned to understand human nature, at its best and worst. You must know what makes a man give in to his weaknesses, or rise to his strengths.’
‘Of course.’ Graves looked as if at last Daniel had said something of worth. ‘It is a high art, but also a most exact one. You have to understand people, to know what to seek that tells you their deepest secrets.’ Some of the tension had gone from his face. It was as if he had moved his position in relation to the light.
‘Good! Then speak as if you were doing a biography about Ebony! Describe her for me: her looks, her mannerisms. Tell me, what did she read, what did she care about? What causes did she fight for, and who did she fight against? Who did she admire? Who did she criticise? Who did she quarrel with, and what about? Somebody killed her. If it wasn’t you, who was it? A biographer might be able to make a good guess!’
Graves was silent for so long that Daniel was about to speak again, and perhaps frighten him into some reaction, when at last he replied.
‘She was a very attractive woman,’ Graves said thoughtfully. ‘She was interesting and alert. If I were writing about her in a story, I would say people were drawn to her because she was so alive. She felt more than most people do. She was never tedious, but she could be extremely irritating. She tried my temper sorely, on occasion. But I never grew bored with her.’
Daniel watched Graves’ face as he spoke. It was not affection he saw, virtually no tenderness, but there was a certain admiration. Ebony had earned his respect, albeit unwillingly given. He did not interrupt.
‘She loved music, colour, sensation, life itself. She loved flowers, open skies, electric storms, the flight of birds, the utter silence of a starlit night. And things made her laugh that I might have found ridiculous.’
So, he had noticed such things. She had been real to him, at least at times.
‘She sounds like a woman who had both friends and enemies,’ Daniel observed.
‘Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t know them.’
Daniel kept his temper with difficulty.
Graves seemed to show some appreciation of his wife, but more like the appreciation of an artist for a subject to paint than of a man for the woman he had married, and who had borne his two children. Daniel wondered what question he could ask that would bring out the humanity in him.
‘Is your daughter like her mother?’
‘Who, Sarah? No, nothing like her at all. Sarah looks like my mother. Fair-haired. Blue-eyes. Arthur is more like Ebony, or he would have been, were he . . . were he well.’
Daniel tried to catch the emotion in Graves’ voice, or his face, or even the tension in his body, but he saw nothing. He could have been speaking of a stranger, not his son.
‘Has he always been ill?’ he asked.
‘No . . . he was perfectly normal until he caught an illness when he was about ten years old. Now he will always be . . . dependent.’ He still hid all feeling. ‘His doctor is hopeful, if he gets constant treatment. But if you are looking to Arthur for any explanation of his mother’s murder, you will not find one. He never leaves his room. Sarah is very good with him. She’s very patient. Dedicated much of her life to him.’ For a moment, there was something in his voice, perhaps admiration, but it disappeared before Daniel could be certain.
‘Rather than his mother?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Ebony looked after him well enough. And we have very efficient household staff. There really was not anything I could do. I have tried.’
‘You’ve only told me what she loo
ked like,’ Daniel said rather sharply. ‘But what was her life like? How did she spend her time, who did she like or dislike? When she went out, where did she go? With whom?’
Graves could shed no light at all on Ebony’s inner self. Daniel could have revealed far more about his mother, her curiosity, her quick temper at injustice, her humour, than Graves said about his wife. Graves seemed to recall no memories of shared experience; no flashes of insight appeared.
Daniel tried to think back on his own moments of closeness to someone, small truths that made him understand the greater ones. They mostly concerned his father. On one occasion Pitt had been helping Daniel with a school project. They were building a sort of machine with wheels and chains and cogs. Pitt kept doing it with one piece backwards. Finally, Daniel thought very hard and realised what was wrong. He did not want to tell his father his mistake, but they were getting nowhere. As tactfully as he could, he explained, giving the reasons why they needed to do it again the new way. It worked. And then he saw the amusement in his father’s face and had realised that he misplaced the piece on purpose in order to make Daniel not only do it, but understand the mechanism.
