Harriet drew her breath in a gasp of anguish so sharp it was audible to all of them.
Felix swung round. “Harriet—that’s all! I swear, I never betrayed anything!”
Garrard looked as if he had been struck. Veronica gaped at Felix, her mouth open, her eyes like sockets in her head.
“Felix, you—and Cerise?” Loretta started to laugh, at first a gurgle in her throat, then it rose higher till it was out of control, on the brink of hysteria. “You—and Cerise! Do you hear that, Garrard? Do you?”
Garrard shot to his feet, upsetting wine and water over the cloth.
“No!” he cried desperately. “It’s not true! For God’s sake, stop. Stop!”
Felix looked at him, appalled. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring past his wife to Harriet. “I’m sorry, Harriet. God knows I tried!”
“What?” Julian demanded. “What the hell are you all talking about? Felix! Did you have an affair with this woman—this Cerise?”
Felix tried to laugh and it died in his throat. “No! No I didn’t—of_course I didn’t.” There was such bitter humor in his voice that he could only be speaking the truth. “No. I was trying to protect Garrard, for Harriet’s sake. Isn’t that obvious? Sonia—I’m sorry.”
No one bothered to ask why. The answer was only too obvious in Harriet’s face, and indeed in his own. That domestic tragedy was laid bare; there was no mystery left to uncover.
“Father?” Julian turned to Garrard. Now realization was coming to him, and a dawning of pain. “If you did have an affair with this woman, what does it matter? Unless . . . you killed her.”
“No!” The cry came from Garrard like the howl of a mortally wounded animal. “I loved”—his voice dropped —“Cerise.” He glanced at Loretta with a hatred stripped of all its veneer of irony, weariness, disillusion. “God— damn—you!” The words were choked from him. There were no tears on his face, he was past weeping, but his pain pulsated through the brilliant lights and the glittering reflections.
There was thick silence. For a long, hot moment no one understood. Then at last Julian grasped the sword. “You betrayed the department,” he said very slowly. “You told Cerise about the Anglo-German partition of Africa. That’s what Felix was covering up for you! Because of Harriet!”
Garrard sat down very slowly, suddenly stiff. “No.” His voice had lost its fire of hate, everything had gone out of him. “Felix didn’t know I took the papers, only that I loved Cerise. But the secrets had nothing to do with Cerise.” He looked up again at Loretta, and all the passion of hate flooded back. “I took them for her!” he cried, his voice shaking. “She blackmailed me into it!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Piers said quietly. “For pity’s sake, man, don’t make it worse than it has to be. What on earth would Loretta want with secrets like that? Anyway, as I understand it, the negotiations are going very well. Aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Julian’s brow furrowed. “Yes they are. No one has used your wretched information!”
“Well then.” Piers sat back, his eyes touched with sadness. Perhaps his dreams of Loretta had died a long time ago. “Your charge doesn’t make sense.”
Charlotte remembered Loretta’s face in the conservatory doorway and knew that in her was the consuming passion of desire and rejection that governed this tragic, violent story. “Yes it does,” she said aloud. “The information wasn’t taken to be used in negotiations—”
“Ha!” Julian exploded derisively. He had seen hope and he clung to it.
“Something much more powerful.” Charlotte cut across him. “Once you have paid blackmail, you have to go on paying; you have put yourself in your blackmailer’s power. That was what she wanted—power. To exercise whenever she wanted, power to destroy whomever she chose. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. York? He loved Cerise, not you. He didn’t love you, didn’t want you. You revolted him—and you never forgave him for that.” She met Loretta’s eyes and saw that she had drawn the ultimate pain, and a hate so terrible that Loretta would have murdered Charlotte if she could. In an instant, as their glances locked, they both knew it.
“Did you think that wretched woman in Seven Dials was Cerise?” Charlotte continued pitilessly. “Is that why you broke her neck? You wasted your effort. She wasn’t Cerise, she was just some poor maid who’d lost her character and fallen on hard times!”
“You murdered her!” Garrard accused Loretta, his voice high and harsh. “You thought it was Cerise so you broke her neck!”
“Be quiet!” Loretta was cornered, trapped, and she knew it. Her soul had been stripped naked in front of all the people round the table; her rejection had been exposed for them all to see and taste. And Garrard was lost forever, even the power to hurt him was gone. She did not know how to fight anymore.
Garrard had burned under her threat all these years, dreading the meetings with her, always afraid one day she would betray his weakness, ruin his reputation and strip him of his position, his career. Now it was gone anyway, and he took his revenge.
“You murdered her,” he repeated steadily. “You dressed that poor damn woman in that dress so you could blame that wretched policeman! How did you find the woman? Who was she? Some maid you’d dismissed, and still knew where to find?”
Loretta stared at him dumbly. It was the truth and it was painted on her face too clearly to be worth denying.
“And Dulcie?” he went on. “You pushed her out of the window. Why? What did she know—or see?”
“Don’t you know?” She started to laugh hysterically. “Oh dear, Garrard—don’t you know?” Tears streamed down her face, her voice getting wilder and higher every moment.
Jack stood up and moved towards her. “Asherson!” he said sharply.
In a daze Felix rose and came to help. Between them they half lifted her from her chair and took her from the room.
Vespasia stood also, stiffly, her face pale. “I am going to telephone the police. Superintendent Ballarat, I
