Brunswick Gardens by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

adopted quite a few of Unity’s beliefs.” He took a deep breath. “The servants I cannot explain. I can only say that they must be mistaken. I don’t know how.” He was obviously confused by their evidence. He searched for something to explain it away and found nothing. He looked deeply unhappy.
    Pitt could understand torn loyalties, the sense of shock at sudden death. It left most people physically shaken, emotionally raw, and mentally lacking the ability to think with their normal ease or to follow reason.
    “I am not going to arrest him,” he said aloud. “There is insufficient evidence for that. But I must pursue it. There is too much to indicate murder for me to walk away.”
    “Murder!” Dominic was ashen. He stared across at Pitt with eyes almost black. “That’s …” He dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, God … not again!”
    For a moment both of them remembered Sarah, and the other dead women in Cater Street, and the fear and the suspicion, the crumbling of relationships and the pain.
    “I’m sorry,” Pitt said, barely above a whisper. “There is no choice.”
    Dominic did not speak.
    The coals settled in the fire.

2
    A
FTER PITT LEFT
, Dominic Corde was acutely aware of the distress which at least to some extent had been masked during the presence of strangers. Unity’s body had been removed. The police had seen everything they needed to and notes had been taken of the scene. Now the house was unnaturally quiet. The curtains and blinds were closed in decent respect for death, and to signify to all passersby and potential callers that this was now a house of mourning.
    No one had wanted to continue with normal pursuits until the last formalities were completed. It looked callous—or worse, as if they might be afraid of something. Now they stood in the hall, self-conscious and unhappy.
    Clarice was the first to speak.
    “Isn’t it absurd? So much has happened and yet everything looks the same. Before this, I had a dozen things to do. Now every one of them seems rather pointless.”
    “Nothing is the same!” Tryphena said angrily. “Unity has been murdered in our house by a member of our family. Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Of course everything you were going to do is pointless! How could it have meaning?”
    “We don’t really know what happened …” Mallory begantentatively, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I think we should not rush into saying things …”
    Tryphena glared at him, her eyes red-rimmed, the tears standing out in them.
    “If you don’t know, it is because you refuse to look at it. And if you start preaching to me I shall scream. If you come up with your usual platitudes about the mysteries of God and abiding God’s will for us, I swear I’ll throw something at you, and it will be the heaviest and sharpest thing I can find.” She was struggling for breath. “Unity had more courage and honesty than all the rest of you put together. Nobody can ever replace her!” She turned on her heel and ran across the mosaic floor and up the stairs, her heels loud on the wood.
    “You might,” Clarice murmured, presumably referring to Tryphena’s replacing Unity. “I think you’d do it rather well. You’ve got just the same sort of wild ideas and you never listen to anyone else or look where you’re going. In fact, you’d be perfect.”
    “Really, Clarice!” Mallory said impatiently. “That is uncalled for. She is distraught.”
    “She’s always distraught about something,” Clarice muttered. “She lives her life being distraught. She was beside herself when her marriage with Spencer was arranged. Then when she decided he was a bully and a bore, she was even more beside herself. And she still wasn’t satisfied when he died.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Clarice!” Mallory was aghast. “Have you no decency?”
    Clarice ignored him.
    “Aren’t you distressed?” Dominic asked her quietly.
    She looked at him, and the anger