inscriptions long since softened into blurred edges till one had to peer to distinguish them. Far towards the yew hedges and the long grass there were white ones, like new teeth. Here and there a bunch of flowers, laid by someone who still cared.
Charlotte took Emily’s arm and walked close to her. She could feel her shaking and she seemed thinner, smaller than she had thought. She could not forget for a moment that she was the elder sister. This was oddly like Sarah’s funeral4-only the two of them left-but Emily was far less vulnerable then. Then there had been boundless optimism under the sorrow, a sureness of herself that lay like a wide certainty underneath the surface grief and fear and was strong enough to outlast it.
This was different. Emily had not only lost George, the first man she had loved and committed herself to, but she had lost the confidence in her own judgment. Even her courage was a barer thing; not instinctive, but fought for-a broken-nailed, desperate clinging.
Charlotte’s fingers tightened and Emily reached for her hand. Mr. Beamish, the vicar, was waiting at the door, a thin, fixed smile on his face. His cheeks were red and his white hair fluffed, as if he had run his hands through it nervously. Now, as he recognized Emily, he stepped forward, extended his arm, and then hesitated and dropped it again. He murmured something indistinguishable that fell away in a downward cadence. To Charlotte it sounded like a bad psalm. Behind him his maiden sister shook her head fractionally and gave a little sniff. She touched her handkerchief delicately to her cheek.
They were embarrassed. Rumor, supposition, had reached them. They did not know whether to treat Emily as a bereaved aristocrat to whom it was their social and religious duty to extend every pity, or a murderess, a scarlet woman, a creature they should shun, as a good Christian example, and before they themselves were contaminated by her double sin.
Charlotte returned their stare without smiling. Part of her knew a moment’s empathy for their predicament, but a much larger part despised them; she was aware it showed in her expression. Her feelings always did.
Inside the church Mrs. Stevenson, somber and gentle, was holding Edward by the hand. His face was pale and looked so like Emily’s it was painful. He let go of Mrs. Stevenson’s hand and came to her, awkwardly at first, conscious of a new gravity; then as she put her arms round him he relaxed and sniffed fiercely, before straightening up again and walking beside her.
Mungo Hare was standing in the aisle beside the March family pew at the front. He was a large man with a fair, open face and blunt features. He held his head up and his eyes looked at Emily squarely.
“Are you all right, Lady Ashworth?” he said quietly. “I’ve put a glass of water on the ledge there, if you need it. It’ll not be a long service.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hare,” Emily said absently. “That is most thoughtful of you.” She slid into the pew with Edward, leaving Charlotte to follow her, then Aunt Vespasia and Eustace. She could hear Mrs. March clattering irritably in the pew behind and banging the hymnbook. She resented not being at the front, and she intended to make her displeasure known.
Tassie sat beside her, head down, hands folded in her lap. It was incredible to think of her as she had been last night; calm, blood-smeared, tiptoeing along the landing. The curate passed beside her and spoke to the old lady.
“Good morning, Mistress March. If I can be of any service to you, or offer you any comfort-”
“I doubt it, young man,” she said tersely, “except to keep my granddaughter sufficiently occupied in good works that she doesn’t run off and marry unsuitably, and end up getting murdered for her money!”
“That would be rather pointless,” Tassie murmured. “You wouldn’t leave me any if I did that.”
“If anyone murdered you it would be for your tongue!” the old lady snapped at her. “Kindly remember you are in church, and don’t be flippant.”
“Good morning, Miss March.” The curate bowed his head.
“Good morning, Mr. Hare,” Tassie said demurely. “Thank you for your concern. I expect Grandmama would be grateful if you called upon her.”
“I’d rather have Mr. Beamish,” the old lady interrupted. “He’s a good deal nearer to death than you are. He understands bereavement, loss, seeing one’s own blood caught up in unholy passions, to fall victim to its rages, and pay its price.”
The curate gasped, and turned it into a sneeze.
“Indeed?” Vespasia said from the row in front, without turning her head. “If that is so then you know a great deal about Beamish that I do not.”
Tassie was making a curious little gurgling noise into her handkerchief, and the curate moved on to speak to William and Sybilla. Charlotte dared not twist around to observe.
The service was somber and intoned in the curious singsong voice of formalized grief. At moments, though, there was something vaguely comforting about it, perhaps no more than an expression of darker emotions that had been suppressed till now. This was an acknowledgment of what was unspeakable in the house; here was death and its physical corruption given name, instead of closed into the mind and forbidden the tongue, but always waiting just beyond, behind the spoken word. Even the organ notes shivered through the ear and held an eternal quality, so that one could hear them long into the next note. They seemed to come from the whole fabric of the church and the away into it again. The stonework and the jewel windows and the pipes were all one with the sound.
Emily stood straight and silent, and under her veil it was impossible to see her face. Charlotte could only guess her feelings. Between them Edward was stiff and upright, but he pressed very close to Emily and his free hand was clenched hard.
The last organ notes faded into the high arches of stone, and they turned slowly to face the worst. Six men in black, all expression wiped from their faces, lifted the coffin and walked in step, carrying it sedately out into the hard sunlight. Two by two the congregation followed, led by Emily and Edward.
The grave was a neat-edged hole in the damp earth. The Ashworths had never cared for a family crypt or mausoleum, preferring to spend their money on the living, but of course there would be a marble headstone, perhaps carved and gilded in time. Now all that seemed irrelevant, even vulgar.
Beamish, still pink-faced, his thick white hair ruffled by the wind till it looked like a pie frill round his head, was beginning to recite the familiar words. He was happy with these because they gave him no option, no room to have to invent his own, but still he avoided Emily. He glanced once at Aunt Vespasia and tried to smile, but she looked so drained and frail it died on his lips. He continued waveringly, his mind fogged with dawning suspicion.
Charlotte looked round at the faces. One of them here had killed George. Had it been a moment of passion, perhaps now turned to terror or remorse? Or did whoever it was feel justified, perhaps released from some danger? Or was the murderer grasping at a reward?
The most obvious suspect was Jack Radley. Could he have imagined Emily would … what? Marry him? Surely that was the only answer. If he were capable of thinking she would accept him at all, then merely to be her lover would hardly merit killing George. If Emily were a widow she would almost certainly be a rich one, and at thirty, with a young child, a very vulnerable one.
Charlotte had also worn a light veil, partly for decorum, but more to give her the opportunity to watch people without their being aware of it. Now she looked across the grass and the turned earth with its open hole at Jack Radley on the far side. He was standing with his hands folded, very sober, his face suitably grave. But his suit was fashionably cut, his tie elegant, and she imagined she could see the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek as he lowered his gaze. Had he the monumental vanity to think he could kill George and then take his place? Had envy given way to temptation, and then a slow-forming plan, and had at last opportunity turned it into act?
She saw nothing on his face; he could have been a choirboy standing there. But then, if he were guilty of such a plan he was without conscience, and she should not expect to find any reflection of guilt in his face.
Eustace’s features were composed in pious rectitude and showed nothing but his sense of the occasion and his own part in it. Whatever else was in him, there was no guilt, and absolutely no fear. If he had committed murder it was without remorse. What could possibly, even to his mind, justify that?
That left the last, and the other most obvious, suspects: William and Sybilla. They stood side by side, and yet in only the barest and most literal sense were they together. William looked straight ahead of him over the grave, past Eustace and the figure of Beamish to the yew trees, perpetual guardians of death, skirting the burial yard from the living city, sheltering darkness in their needle leaves and dense, heavy wood. Nothing grew under them, and their fruit was poison.
