When she had gone Emily sat curled up on the end of the bed and waited. She wanted to think, to see the pattern falling clearly, but it was too soon. She was shivering-not with cold, because the air was warm; the chill was inside, just as the darkness was. Whoever had murdered George had now murdered Sybilla, almost certainly because Sybilla knew who he-or she-was.
Was it something to do with Eustace and Tassie? Or Eustace alone? Or was it Jack Radley after all?
The door opened and Charlotte came back, her face tight and pale in the softening dawn light coming through the windows. Her hands were shaking.
“She’s dead,” she said with a gulp. “Stay here and lock the door behind me. I’m going to tell Aunt Vespasia.”
“Wait!” Emily stood up, and lost her balance; her legs were weak as if her knees would not lock. “I’m coming. I’d rather come with you-anyway, you shouldn’t go alone.” She tried again, and this time her body obeyed her, and wordlessly she and Charlotte crept shoulder to shoulder along the landing, feet soundless on the carpet. The jardiniere with its splayed ferns seemed like half a tree, casting octopus shadows on the wallpaper.
They knocked at Vespasia’s door and waited. There was no answer. Charlotte knocked again, then turned the handle experimentally. It was not locked. She opened it and they both slipped in, closing it behind them with a tiny click.
“Aunt Vespasia!” Charlotte said distinctly. The room was darker than Emily’s, having heavier curtains, and in the gloom they could see the big bed and Vespasia’s head on the pillow, her pale silver hair in a coil over her shoulder. She looked very frail, very old.
“Aunt Vespasia,” Charlotte said again.
Vespasia opened her eyes.
Charlotte moved forward into the shrouded light from the window.
“Charlotte?” Vespasia sat up a little. “What is it? Is that Emily with you?” A note of alarm sharpened her voice. “What has happened?”
“Emily remembered something she saw, an expression on Sybilla’s face the other night at dinner,” Charlotte began. “She thought if she understood it, it might explain things. She went to ask Sybilla.”
“At dawn?” Now Vespasia was sitting upright. “And did it-explain things? Have you learned something? What did Sybilla say?”
Charlotte shut her eyes and clenched her hands hard. “Nothing. She’s dead. She was strangled with her own hair round the bedpost. I don’t know whether she could have done it herself or not. We’ll have to call Thomas.”
Vespasia was silent for so long Charlotte began to be afraid; then at last she reached up and pulled the bellpull three times. “Pass me my shawl, will you?” she asked. When Charlotte did so, she climbed stiffly out of bed, leaning on Charlotte’s outstretched arm for support. “We had better lock the door. We don’t want anyone else going in. And I suppose we must tell Eustace.” She took a long, deep breath. “And William. I imagine at this time in the morning Thomas will be at home? Good. Then you had better write him a note and send a footman to bring him and his constable.”
There was a sharp rap on the door, startling them, and before anyone answered it it opened and Digby came in looking disheveled and frightened. As soon as she saw Vespasia herself was all right the fear vanished and was replaced by concern. She pushed the straggling hair out of her eyes and prepared to be cross.
“Yes, m’lady?” she said cautiously.
“Tea, please, Digby.” Vespasia replied, struggling to maintain dignity. “I would like a dish of tea. Bring enough here for all of us-you had better have some yourself. And as soon as you have put the kettle on, waken one of the footmen and tell him to get up.”
Digby stared at her, round-eyed, grim-faced.
Vespasia gave her the explanation she was waiting for. “Young Mrs. March is dead. Perhaps you’d better get two footmen-one for the doctor.”
“We can telephone the doctor, m’lady,” Digby answered.
“Oh, yes, I forgot. I am not yet used to who has these contraptions and who has not. I presume Treves has one.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
“Then get one footman to send for Mr. Pitt. I’m sure he hasn’t got a telephone. And bring the tea.”
The next few hours moved like a feverish dream, a mixture of the grotesque and the almost offensively commonplace. How could the breakfast room look precisely the same, the sideboard laden with food, the windows thrown open? Pitt was upstairs with Treves, bending over Sybilla’s corpse locked in her own hair, trying to decide whether she killed herself or someone else had crept in and tied those lethal knots. Charlotte could not keep it from her mind to wonder if that was why Jack Radley had gone in the night before, not by any amorous design-only she had wakened too soon, and raised the alarm. She knew it must have occurred to Vespasia too.
It was late when they sat down, well after ten, and everyone was at the table. Even William, ashen, hands shaking, eyes haggard, apparently preferred the noise and occupation of company to the loneliness of his room next door to Sybilla.
Emily sat rigid, her stomach knotted so hard she could not bear to eat. It would make her ill. She sipped a little hot tea and felt it burn her tongue and slide painfully down her closed throat. The sounds of crockery and talk alternately outraged and frightened her, swirling round her like so much empty rattle. It could have been the sound of carriage wheels over gravel, or geese in a yard.
Charlotte was eating because she knew she would need the strength it would give her, but the carefully coddled eggs and thin sliced toast might as well have been cold porridge in her mouth. The sunlight glittered on silver and glass and the clink of cutlery grew louder as Eustace fought his way through fish and potato, but even he found little joy in it. The linen was so white it reminded her of snowfields, glaring and cold with the dead earth underneath.
This was ridiculous. Fear was paralyzing her, solidifying like ice. She must force herself to listen to them all, to think, to make her brain respond and understand. It was all here, if only she could tear the fog from her mind and recognize it. It ought to be familiar to her now-she had seen enough murder before, the pain and the fear that led to violence. How could she be so close, and still not know it?
She looked round the table at them one by one. Old Mrs. March was tight-lipped and her fist was clenched beside her plate. Perhaps anger against the injustice of fate was the only way she could keep from being overwhelmed by the tragedy which was engulfing the family in which she had invested her whole life.
Vespasia was silent. She had shrunk; she seemed smaller than Charlotte had thought her, her wrists bonier, her skin more papery.
Tassie and Jack Radley were talking about something totally immaterial, and she knew even without listening that they were doing it to help, so that the silence would not creep in and drown them all. It did not matter what was said; anything, the weather would do. Everyone, each imprisoned in a private little island of horror, was trying to grasp back something of last week, only a tiny span of days ago, when the world had been so ordinary, so safe. They would gladly have brought back the anxieties that seemed pressing then, and so infinitely trivial now.
Charlotte had seen Pitt briefly. He had called her into Sybilla’s bedroom. At first she had drawn back, but he had told her the body was laid out quietly, the hair undone, a sheet over the terrible face.
“Please!” he had said fiercely. “I need you to come in!”
Reluctantly, shivering, she had obeyed, and he had almost pushed her through the door, arms round her. “Sit on the bed,” he had ordered. “No-where Sybilla was.”
She had stood rooted to the spot, pulling against him. “Why?” It was unreasonable, grotesque. “Why?”
“I need you to,” he had said again. “Charlotte, please. I have to know if she could have done it herself.”
“Of course she did!” She had not moved, pulling hard against his strength, and they remained frozen like that, locked in a tug-of-war in the middle of the carpet in the sun.
Pitt was getting cross, because he was helpless.
“Of course she could!” Charlotte had been shaking. “She had it round her throat; then round the bedpost. It’s just like tying a scarf behind your neck, or doing up the back of a dress. She used the bedpost to make it tight enough-the carving on it tightened it again when she slipped down a bit. She must have meant to, or she wouldn’t have stayed there. She’d have moved while she still had the strength. I don’t suppose you black out straightaway. Let go of me, Thomas! I’m not going to sit there!”
