Ashworth Hall (41 page)

She smiled a curious, half-amused smile. “I was never beautiful. I was too dark. They used to call me names when I was a child: gypsy, dago, and worse. And make fun of my nose. But as I got older I had a kind of grace, I was different, and it interested some people … especially men. I learned how to be charming, how to awaken interest and to sustain it. I …” She kept her eyes studiously away from Charlotte’s. “I learned how to flatter a man and make him happy.” She did not specify in what way she meant.

Charlotte believed she understood.

“And Ainsley Greville was among them?”

Justine jerked her head up, her eyes bright and angry.

“He was the only one! But when you are desperate, and it is your way of surviving, you can’t pick and choose. You take who has the money, and doesn’t knock you around or carry disease, at least that you can see. Do you think I liked it?” She was defiant, as if Charlotte were judging her.

“You poor soul,” Charlotte said, slightly sarcastically.

Rage blazed in Justine’s eyes for an instant as they sat staring at each other. It never crossed Charlotte’s mind that she was in any danger. She had in all practical senses forgotten that Justine had only a few days ago attempted to murder a man. She had failed only because he was already dead. She had thought until ten minutes before that she had succeeded.

Charlotte looked at the gorgeous embroidered lace on Justine’s nightgown. It was immeasurably prettier than her own, and more expensive.

“I like your nightgown,” she remarked dryly.

Justine blushed.

Again they sat in silence for several moments.

Justine looked up. “All right … I did it to survive, to begin with. Then I learned to like the luxuries I could afford. Once you’ve been poor, really hungry and cold, you never feel safe enough. You always know it can happen again tomorrow. I was always thinking I’d give it up, do something respectable. It just … never seemed the right time.”

“So why murder Ainsley Greville? Did you hate him so much? Why?”

“No, I didn’t hate that much!” Justine said angrily, contempt hot in her black eyes. “Yes, I hated him, because he despised me just as he despised all women,” she said viciously. “Except when he couldn’t be bothered with us at all. Yes, there was a way in which he was typical of all the men who use women and loathe them at the same time. But I killed him because he would have told Piers what I am—what I was ….”

“Does that matter?” Charlotte did not ask as a challenge this time, simply a question.

Justine closed her eyes. “Yes … it mattered more than anything else in the world. I love him … not just to get out of being a—a whore!” She made herself say the word, and her face showed that it was like stabbing herself. “I love him because he is kind and funny and generous. He has hopes and fears I can understand, dreams I can share, and the courage to seek them. And he loves me … most of all, he loves me.” Her voice was strained so tight it cracked with her effort to keep control. “Can you imagine what it will do to him if he hears? Can you see the scene … Ainsley laughing at him, telling him his precious betrothed was his father’s whore? And he would have enjoyed that. He could be very cruel.”

Her hands were knotted on the edge of the sheet. “He resented anyone’s happiness, especially if he knew them well, because they had something he didn’t. He couldn’t find happiness in any woman because he didn’t know how to love. He didn’t permit the gentleness in himself, so he couldn’t see it in others. He only saw his own reflection, unsatisfied, seeking the weakness to exploit, using his power to hurt, before anyone hurt him.”

“You did hate him, didn’t you?” Charlotte said, feeling not only the emotion behind Justine’s words but the knowledge and the reason.

Justine met her eyes. “Yes, I did, not only for what he did to me, but to everyone. And I suppose for a moment to me he was all men like him. What are you going to do now?”

Charlotte made her decision as she was speaking the words.

“You didn’t kill him, but that was only chance, your good fortune, if you like. You meant to.”

“I know that. What are you going to do?” Justine repeated.

“I don’t know what kind of a crime it is to attack a man who’s already dead. It’s bound to be some sort.”

“If … if Mr. Pitt is going to arrest me …” Justine took a shuddering breath. She did not weep. Perhaps that would come later, when she was alone and it was all over, and there was nothing left ahead but the regret. She regained her control and started again. “If Mr. Pitt is going to arrest me, may I please go and tell Piers myself why? I think I would rather … at least …”

Again there was silence. The gas hissed gently in the bracket. There was no other sound in the house.

“I’m not sure if I can!” It was a cry of despair. Her body was rigid. She really was very slight, almost thin. She looked tight and tense, every muscle in her was knotted. One would have thought physical pain racked through her.

“Yes, you can,” Charlotte assured her. “It may be dreadful, but whatever it is, if you don’t, you will ever afterwards wish you had. Even if you have nothing else left, have courage.”

Justine laughed abruptly, a bitter sound close to hysteria.

“You say that so easily. But it isn’t you facing the only man you’ve ever loved, perhaps the only person, apart from my mother, and she’s dead now, and telling him you are a whore, and a murderess at heart—but not in fact only because some mad Irishman got there first.”

“Do you prefer the alternative?” Charlotte said gently. “That is that someone else tells him. I will, if you want, but only if you make me believe you can’t.”

Justine sat still, staring back at her.

“What do you want?” Charlotte repeated. “Time? It isn’t going to alter what must be done, but I’ll wait here if you like.”

“It isn’t going to change, is it?” Justine said after a moment or two. “I am not going to wake up and find you were only a nightmare?”

Charlotte smiled. “Perhaps I’ll wake up, and it will be Kezia or one of the maids who hit him.” She shrugged. “Or perhaps the Red King will wake up and we’ll all disappear.”

“What?”

“Alice Through the Looking Glass,”
Charlotte explained. “Everybody in it was supposed to be part of the Red King’s dream.”

“Then can’t you waken him?”

“No.”

“Then I had better go and tell Piers,” Justine replied.

Charlotte smiled very slightly without saying anything.

Justine climbed out of the bed, hesitated, as if debating whether to dress or not, then put on her robe. She went to the dressing table and picked up the brush. She stood with it in her hand, looking at her reflection in the glass. She was tired, pale with shock and strain; her hair was twisted and had come out of the braid she had placed it in on going to bed.

“I wouldn’t,” Charlotte said, before she realized it was not her place, now of all times, to try to influence such a decision.

Justine put the brush down and looked back at her. “You’re right. It is hardly the time for vanity, or anything that looks like forethought.” She bit her lip. Her hands were not quite steady. “Will you come with me?”

Charlotte was surprised. “Are you sure that’s what you want? This is about the most private thing you will ever do.”

“No, I’m not sure. If I could think of any other way, I’d take it. But someone else there will help to keep it rational and … and honest. It is not a time for trying to use the emotions. It will stop either of us from saying things we might later wish we had said differently, or not at all.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Please, let us go before I lose my courage.”

Charlotte did not argue any further but stood up and followed Justine out into the passage and the short distance to Piers’s room. Justine stopped, drew in her breath and knocked.

The door opened and Piers looked out. He had obviously only just got into bed and had not yet fallen asleep, which, considering what the evening had already held for him, was not surprising. He saw Justine first.

“Is something wrong?” he said in immediate alarm. “Are you ill?” His face in the dim light from the landing was full of concern.

“Yes,” Justine answered with irony. “I must speak with you. I’m sorry it is so late. But tomorrow there will be other things … perhaps.”

“I’ll get dressed.” He was about to retreat when he saw Charlotte. “Mrs. Pitt!”

“I think it would be as well if we came in,” Charlotte said decisively. “We can sit in the dressing room—”

“It’s quite small … there are not three chairs ….”

“In the circumstances it hardly matters,” she murmured, leading the way through the door and inside. “We do not wish to awaken anyone else by speaking outside in the corridor,” she went on. “Or by walking around more than we have to.”

“Why?” He was trying not to look alarmed now. He was very pale and tired. There were heavy shadows like bruises around his eyes, his hair falling forward over his brow at the front and standing up in spikes at the crown. “What has happened, Mrs. Pitt? No one else is … dead … are they?”

“No,” she assured him quickly. Although, considering what Justine was about to tell him, he might prefer someone were. “Please sit down. I can stand.”

Now thoroughly fearful, he obeyed, turning from Charlotte to Justine.

Justine sat on the other chair and Charlotte stood in the shadows by the wall. There was a single lamp burning. Piers must have lit it before he answered the door.

Justine glanced at Charlotte once, then she began.

“Piers, we don’t know who killed your father by breaking his neck. I imagine it was one of the Irishmen, but I don’t know which.” Her voice was very nearly steady. Her effort of will must have been immense. “But it was I who hit him over the head with the jar of bath salts and pushed him under the water—” She stopped abruptly, waiting.

There was utter silence but for the faint hiss of the gas.

Twice Piers opened his mouth as if to speak, then realized he did not know what to say. It was left to Justine to continue. Her voice was harsh with pain. Charlotte knew from the tightness of her back, the rigidity of her shoulders, that she had kept some kind of hope until this moment, and now she had at last let it go. She was speaking from despair.

“I meant to kill him,” she went on flatly. “I didn’t actually, only because he was already dead. I had been his mistress … for money … and he was going to tell you.” She smiled with a bitter mockery at herself. “I thought I couldn’t bear that. I still love you, and I wanted you to love me more than I wanted anything else in the world. It would have been much easier to bear than this … having to tell you myself, and not only tell you what I was but what I have done as well. I’m sorry … I’m sorry I did this to you. You will never be able to understand how sorry ….”

He stared at her as if he had not seen her before.

She looked back in silence, without evasion, almost without blinking.

Charlotte was locked immobile. She would have felt intrusive if she had thought either of them had the slightest awareness of her.

“Why?” he said at last, his face almost bruised with shock and incomprehension at what he had heard. “Why did you live that … that kind of … life?”

This time Justine did not use the word
whore.
If she were tempted to make excuses, she resisted it. Charlotte would never know if it was her presence there which accomplished that.

“At first it was to survive,” Justine answered, her voice low, expressionless, as though the feeling in it were too great to be allowed through. “My father was killed at sea, and my mother and I had nothing. She was ostracized because she had married a foreigner. Her family would do nothing for us. Later I got used to the things it could buy me, the safety, the warmth, and in time the beauty, the freedom from worrying every day where the next week’s food and rent would come from.”

She took a deep breath and went on. “I knew it wouldn’t last. Women get old, then no one wants them. You can’t earn much past thirty, even less past thirty-five. I wanted to save so I could buy a business of some sort. I kept meaning to get out, but it was too easy to stay in. Until I met you at the theater. I came to love you, and I realized what I had paid for my safety. I stopped from that day on.” She did not make any protestations that it was the truth.

Again he sat silent, only shivering a little, as from physical shock.

Minutes passed by—five, ten, a quarter of an hour. Neither of them moved or made a sound.

Charlotte was getting stiff and, in spite of her gown, thoroughly chilled. But she must not interrupt. Justine had not looked at her. She would, if she wanted her to take any part.

At last Piers drew in a breath and let it out in a long sigh. “I …” He shook his head a little. “I can’t …” He looked wretched, shattered, confused, hurting too much to know how to express it. “I can’t think what to say …” he confessed. “I … I’m sorry. I need a little time … to think ….”

“Of course,” Justine said quickly in a curiously flat tone. It was an acknowledgment of defeat, of a kind of little death inside. She rose to her feet and at last looked at Charlotte. “Good night,” she said to Piers with a formality which was at once absurd and yet understandable. What else was there to say? She turned and went to the door, leaving him also standing helpless, watching her go.

Charlotte followed her and closed the door behind them both. They went back along the passage to Justine’s room. Charlotte was not sure if Justine might want to be alone, but she was afraid to leave her, knowing the despair she must now feel. Without asking, she went into the room after her.

Justine was walking in a nightmare, as if unaware even where she was anymore. She walked into the corner of the bed, bruising herself against the wood and barely registering the pain. She sat down suddenly, but she was too numb to weep.

Charlotte closed the door and went over to her. There was nothing to say which would mean anything. It would be ridiculous and painful to talk about hope or even to imagine plans. There was nothing which could have been done differently or better as far as Piers was concerned, and anyway it was all past. She did not know whether Justine would find touch comforting or intrusive, but it was her instinct to reach out. She sat beside her on the bed and very gently put her arms around her.