something similar to another woman?”
Quixwood’s face reflected an inner conflict so profound, so intense, he could barely keep still. His hands in his lap were more tightly twisted than Maris’s. In that moment Narraway knew beyond any doubt that Quixwood was certain that Alban Hythe was guilty, and he was here to do what he could to help the man’s wife face that fact. It was a startling generosity. But … well, what did he know that Narraway and Maris did not?
Quixwood was still searching for words, his eyes on Maris’s face, troubled and almost tender. “I don’t think it is likely,” he said at last. “It is far better that you do not know the details, but I assure you, it was not a random maniac who did this deed. It was very personal. Please, think no more of it. You must concern yourself with your own well-being. If there is anything I can do to help, I will.” He gave a very slight smile, wry and self-deprecating. “It would be a favor to me. It would give me someone to think of other than myself.”
A warmth of gratitude filled her face, and also a very genuine admiration. Narraway was sure that Quixwood had seen it, and it must indeed have given him some small comfort.
The following day Narraway called early at the club where Quixwood was still living. He had to wait until the man rose and came into the dining room for breakfast, then joined him without asking permission, because he had no intention of accepting a refusal.
Quixwood looked startled, but he made no objection. He regarded the older man with some curiosity.
Narraway smiled as he finished requesting poached kippers and brown toast from the steward. As soon as the servant left, he answered Quixwood’s unspoken question.
“I hear several different accounts of Catherine,” he said, watching Quixwood’s eyes. “I assume that you loved her, and also that you knew her better than anyone else. Nothing need come out in court that puts that in doubt, and still less in the newspapers, but I think it is time we discussed her without the glittering veil of compassion that usually shrouds the dead.”
Quixwood sighed, but there was no resistance in him. He leaned back a little and his dark eyes met Narraway’s. “Do you not think it was Alban Hythe who killed her?” he said anxiously. “It will bring terrible grief to poor Maris if it is, of course. She still believes in him.”
Narraway did not answer the question directly.
“If they were lovers, Catherine and Hythe, why on earth would he suddenly turn on her like that?” he said instead. It was a reasonable question.
“Does it matter now?” Quixwood wrinkled his brow.
“If we are going to convict the man and hang him, it has to make sense,” Narraway said bluntly.
Quixwood winced. “Yes, of course, you are right,” he conceded. He began to speak in a very low voice. His eyes were downcast, as if he was ashamed of being forced into making such admissions.
“Catherine was a very emotional woman, and she was beautiful. You never saw her alive, or you’d understand. She hated going to the sort of functions where you and I might meet. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t press her. It wasn’t only out of kindness to her, but also because she was so charming, so very alive, that she attracted attention she was not able to understand for what it was, or deal with.”
Narraway was puzzled, but he did not interrupt.
“She loved attention,” Quixwood continued, a warmth lighting his face, probably for the first time since the night of Catherine’s death. “She responded to it like a flower to the sun. But she also was easily bored. When someone did not live up to her expectations, or have the imaginative enthusiasm she did, she would drop their acquaintance. It could cause, at the very least, a degree of embarrassment.”
At last he looked up and met Narraway’s eyes. “I loved her, but I also learned not to take her sudden passions too seriously. She lived a good deal of her life in a world of her own creation: mercurial, entertaining, but quite unreal.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I fear young Alban Hythe would have had no idea how changeable she was, how … fickle.”
He made a slight gesture of dismissal. “She would mean no cruelty, but she had no concept of how deeply an idealistic, rather naïve young man might fall in love with her, and-when she rejected him-feel utterly betrayed.”
He blinked and looked away. “If they were lovers, or he thought she had implied they would be, and then without warning she felt he had not lived up to what she expected of him, he surely would have felt utterly cheated. He might have damaged irreparably his relationship with a wife who was devoted to him in favor of a woman who seemed incapable of loyalty to anyone-who had built a castle in the air out of his dreams and then destroyed it in front of him. Do you see?”
Narraway did. It was a persuasive image. And yet he did not quite believe it.
“But what about taking the laudanum to end her life?” Narraway asked, his voice sounding harsher than he had meant it to.
“Perhaps she realized what she had done,” Quixwood said with a small, helpless gesture of his hands, barely a movement at all. “She was passionate, but she was not strong. If she had been, she would have lived in the real world …” He left the rest and all its implications unsaid.
“Thank you,” Narraway responded quickly, as the steward arrived with his poached kippers, and bacon, eggs, sausage, and deviled kidneys for Quixwood. They both turned, with little joy, to their food and harmless, matter-of-fact subjects of conversation as the dining room filled up.
After leaving the club, Narraway decided that he still did not know enough about Catherine Quixwood. The woman her husband had described was very different from the one Alban Hythe had seen and believed he knew and had liked so deeply. Moreover, both were different again from the one Narraway had seen in death.
Who would have known all of her, fitted the disparate pieces into a whole, however complex? No one wished to speak ill of the dead, and most particularly of someone who had died so horribly.
Would there be any point in asking Knox for his help? Probably not. He had arrested Alban Hythe, which meant that he had formed a picture of Catherine he could now not afford to alter.
Narraway circled back to the idea that perhaps the person who knows a woman best is her lady’s maid. But he had already spoken to Flaxley, more than once. Did she have anything left to tell him? He decided it was worth one more try.
Narraway stepped into the street and hailed a cab, giving Quixwood’s address.
Then the obvious way around Flaxley’s reluctance came to him like sudden daylight. If anyone could persuade a loyal servant to discuss the details of her mistress’s character, it would be Vespasia.
He leaned forward and knocked on the front of the cab, asking the driver to take him instead to Vespasia’s house.
“Really, Victor,” she said with slight surprise when he told her what he wished her to do. “And what shall I give the poor woman as a reason why I consider her mistress’s character to be any of my concern?”
They were sitting in her morning room, all cool colors and stark white frames to the windows. There was a bowl of early blooming white roses on the low table, and the sunlight through the glass was hot and bright. In spite of his reason for calling, Narraway found himself relaxing. It was extraordinarily comfortable here.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He found himself telling her not only what Alban Hythe had said of Catherine, and what Quixwood himself had said, but also his own impressions and the depth of feeling it aroused in him.
She watched him gravely the whole time, without interrupting.
“I see,” she said when she was certain he had no more to add. “It is not possible for both opinions to be entirely true, and perhaps neither of them? It would be a curious thing to see yourself as others do. I imagine it would seldom be comfortable.” She smiled very slightly. “I am very glad that I shall not be present at my own funeral, even to hear the eulogies that, I’m sure, will make me sound quite unreal.”
He was caught with a sudden icy coldness. He had never imagined Vespasia dying. The thought was so painful, it shocked him.
“My dear, don’t look so tragic,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I quite see the necessity of someone speaking to Flaxley, and your argument that it should be I who does so is perfectly sensible. I shall make the arrangements.”
“Thank you,” he said a little awkwardly, afraid she might suddenly understand what it was that had really shaken him so much.
