“She was ill for a while, yes sir.” He did not enquire why Pitt asked.
“Do you know what she suffered from?”
There was a slight flush of pink in Wheeler’s cheeks.
“No sir. It was not my place to ask, and she did not say. That kind of thing is personal.”
“Was she changed in any way when she recovered?” Pitt pressed.
Wheeler’s face smoothed out until it was bland, almost defiant, but the long-trained courtesy did not vanish, only became remote, a thing of habit.
“Was she?” Pitt asked again.
Wheeler looked straight at him. His eyes were gray—and completely guarded.
“She took a long time to recover herself, sir, yes. I think she must have been ill indeed. Sometimes it can take a person that way.” He took a breath and made a decision to go on. “When you have to work to support yourself, it can be very frightening to be seriously ill, sir. There’s no one’ll look after a girl like Doll if she can’t work, and we all know that. You try not to think of it, but sometimes circumstances makes you.”
“I know,” Pitt said quietly, meaning it. “I think you forget, Mr. Wheeler, I am a policeman, not one of the gentry here. I have no private income. I have to earn my way just as you do.”
Wheeler flushed very slightly. “Yes sir. I did forget that,” he apologized without retreating an inch. “I don’t know why you’re asking about Doll, but she’s an honest and decent girl, sir. She’d tell you the truth about anything, or keep silent, but she wouldn’t lie.”
“Yes, she would,” Pitt said gently. “To protect Mrs. Greville’s feelings, and when the harm can’t be undone.”
Wheeler stared at him. Pitt saw in his face he was never going to admit he knew. It might be for Eudora’s sake, but Pitt thought it was for Doll’s. There was a color in Wheeler’s cheeks which was emotion, not mere loyalty. Pitt did not need to press it any further. He had seen all he wanted to, and Wheeler knew he had.
“Thank you,” he said with a little nod, and opened the pantry door.
He went up the servants’ staircase, then through the baize door upstairs. He did not want to chance meeting anyone on the main staircase who would ask him where he was going. This was something he had to do, though he dreaded it. But like Gracie, the knowledge left him no alternative.
He knocked on Eudora’s door. She had left the dining room even before he had, so he knew she would be there. He hoped she would be alone. Doyle would be with the other men, probably still drinking port, and if Piers were not there also, he would probably be with Justine.
He heard her answer, and went in.
She was sitting in the large chair near the fire again. Her dark gown spilled around her in a dense shadow against the delicate pastels of the room with its flowers and curtains and linens.
Her face tightened when she saw him, and he felt a knot of guilt inside himself. He closed the door.
“What is it, Mr. Pitt?” she asked, the tremor still in her voice. “Have you learned something?”
He walked over and sat down opposite her. He would like to have been able to talk about anything else. She was frightened, perhaps for Doyle. Surely it could not be for Piers? Why did she imagine Doyle might have killed her husband? How violent was his Irish nationalism? On the surface he seemed the most rational of the four of them, certainly more amenable to reason and compromise than Fergal Moynihan or Lorcan McGinley.
“Mrs. Greville,” he began a little awkwardly, “when someone dies, one can discover many things about him one did not know before, sometimes things which are very painful and at odds with what one saw of him, and loved.”
“I know,” she said quickly, putting out her hand as if to stop him. “You do not need to tell me. I appreciate your gentleness, but I already realize that my husband had affairs with women which I knew nothing about. I would prefer not to know now. I daresay in time I will hear all sorts of things, but just at the moment I fee) too … confused ….” She looked at him earnestly. She seemed to care very much what he thought. “I expect you find that weak of me, but I simply don’t know exactly who it is I have lost. Some of what I have learned has horrified me.” She bit her lip, staring up at him. “And what horrifies me almost as much is that I didn’t know. Why didn’t I? Did I deliberately close my eyes, or was it really hidden from me? Who was the man I thought I loved? Who am I, that he chose me, and that I did not see it all those years?” She blinked, as if to close out something, only to find it was within her. “Did he ever love me, or was that false too? And if he did, when did it die? Why did it?” She searched Pitt’s eyes. “Was it my fault? Was it something I did … or didn’t do? Did I fail him?”
He drew in breath to deny it, but she waved her hands. “No, don’t answer that. Above all, don’t tell me kind lies, Mr. Pitt. I have to come to the truth one day, but let me do it slowly … please. I can answer my own question. Of course, I failed him. I did not know him. I should have done. I loved him … not passionately, perhaps, but I loved him. I can’t suddenly stop that feeling, no matter what I learn about him. It is the habit, the pattern of thought and feeling, of more than half my lifetime. I shared so much with him … at least I did with him whether he did with me or not. In a few days everything I thought I knew has been thrown into chaos.” She smiled bleakly. “Please, Mr. Pitt, don’t tell me anything more yet. I don’t know how to change so quickly.”
She looked very vulnerable. She was a woman over forty, yet the softness of youth was still in her face, the curve of her cheek, the unbroken line of her chin and throat, the full lips. She was probably Pitt’s own age. She could have given birth to Piers before she was twenty.
He must remember why he was there: to uncover the truth. He could not afford to protect everyone who needed or deserved it. No matter what his own feelings, he had no right to choose whom to guard and whom not to, nor could he foresee what the results might be of such an act.
“Mrs. Greville, you already know that your husband had liaisons with certain women which were of a physical nature and had nothing to do with any kind of affection.” How could he phrase this to cause as little distress as possible? She was the kind of woman in front of whom even the more violent realities of the daily news should not be discussed, far less the coarseness of private appetite, even if it were of a stranger and not her husband. He felt guilty for forcing her to know something so repugnant. He was about to shatter her memories, her world, to even smaller pieces, so what was left was beyond salvaging.
