Bethlehem Road (38 page)

The next letter was much shorter. Pitt opened it without even being aware of his frozen limbs or the cramp that was stealing through his legs.

Dearest Lizzie,

At first it was terribly difficult to keep my word. I grew so dreadfully hungry! Every book I picked up seemed to speak of food. I had such a headache, and I became cold so easily.

Now it is easier. It has been a whole week, and I feel tired and very faint, but the hunger has passed. I am still terribly cold, and Elsie piles the blankets and quilts on top of me as if I were a child. But I will not give in.

Pray for me!

Keep faith,

Naomi

The last letter was merely two lines, scribbled across the page, the writing faint and very hard to read.

Dearest Lizzie,

I fear if he relents it will be too late now. I am losing all my strength and cannot last much longer.

Naomi

Pitt sat in the cold box room oblivious of the rafters above him, the chill, the whole silent household below. Elsie was right; in her wild, mad brain she had held onto a core of truth all these years. Naomi Royce had died of starvation, rather than forswear the faith she believed. There had been no scarlet fever, only a religious order society would not have tolerated, a new belief that would have scandalized an M.P.’s constituency and caused him to be held up to ridicule.

So he had shut her in her room until she came to her senses.

Only he had misjudged the passion of her belief, and the strength of her heart. She had starved to death rather than deny her God. And what a scandal that would have been—an unconventional religious sect would be a small scandal compared with that! He would have lost his seat and his reputation. Locked in her room and starved to death: oppression, madness, suicide.

So he had called on his brother Jasper to pronounce that the death had been from scarlet fever. And then what had happened? The faithful Elsie had spoken the truth. They could not let that abroad—such whispers would mean ruin. Better bundle her off to Bedlam, where she would be silenced forever. Get Jasper to write up the forms, and the matter could be settled that night: melancholia over the death of her beloved mistress. Who would know any different? Who would miss her? Her stories would be taken as the ravings of a madwoman.

Pitt folded up the letters and put the envelopes in his inside pocket. When he stood up his legs were so cramped the pain made him gasp. He nearly fell down the steep ladder to the upstairs landing.

In the hallway the maid was waiting for him, face weary and a little frightened. The police always frightened her—and it was certainly not respectable to have them in the house.

“Did you get what you need, sir?”

“Yes, thank you. Will you tell Mr. Forrester I shall take the letters, and give him my thanks.”

“Yes sir—thank you, sir.” And she let him out into the late afternoon sun with a gasp of relief.

Micah Drummond stared at Pitt, his face white.

“There’s nothing we can do! There was no crime—all right! God knows, this was sin—but who do we charge? And with what? Garnet Royce did what he thought best for his wife; he misjudged. She starved herself to death; she misjudged also. Then he did what he could to protect her reputation.”

“His own reputation!”

“His own as well, but if we charged every man in London who did that we’d have half Society in jail.”

“And half the middle classes aspiring to gentility as well,” Pitt said chokingly. “But dear heaven, their wives weren’t locked up to starve themselves to death so they shouldn’t go to an inappropriate church! And how can any man take it upon himself to decide another person is insane and shut them in Bedlam for the rest of their lives? Just shut them away in a living tomb!”

“We’ve got to keep lunatics somewhere, Pitt.”

Pitt slammed his fist on the desk, rattling the inkstand, unaware of the pain that shot through his hand; the outrage inside him was all he could feel.

“She wasn’t a lunatic! Not before she was sent there! Dear God, what woman wouldn’t lose her mind shut away in Bedlam for seventeen years? Have you ever been there? Can you even imagine it? Think what he has done to that woman. How can we let it happen? No wonder she tried to murder him—if she’d cut his throat it would have been an easy death compared with the slow torture he put her to.”

“I know!” Drummond’s voice cracked under the strain of his emotion. “I know that, Pitt! But Naomi Royce is dead, Elsie Draper is dead, and there is nothing we can charge anyone with. Garnet Royce only exercised the same rights and responsibilities any man does over his wife. A man and his wife are one in law: he votes for her, is financially and legally responsible for her, and he has always determined what her religion should be, and her social status as well. He didn’t murder her.”

Pitt sank down into his chair.

“And all we could charge Jasper with would be falsifying a death certificate for Naomi Royce. We couldn’t prove it after seventeen years, but even if we could, no jury would convict.”

“And committing Elsie Draper?”

Drummond looked at him with deep pain. “Pitt, you and I believe she was sane when she was committed, but it’s only our belief against the word of a respected doctor. And God knows, she was certainly mad when she died!”

“And Naomi Royce’s word!” He put his hand on the letters spread out on the desk between them. “We’ve got these!”

“The opinion of a woman who had embraced a strange religious sect and starved herself to death rather than obey her husband and come back to the orthodox faith? Who’s going to convict a dog on the basis of that?”

“No one,” Pitt said wearily. “No one.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. May I keep these?”

“If you want—but you know you can’t do anything with them. You can’t accuse Royce.”

“I know.” Pitt picked up the letters, carefully folding them and putting them back in their envelopes and into the inside pocket of his coat. “I know, but I want to keep them. I don’t want to forget.”

Drummond smiled bitterly. “You won’t. Neither shall I. Poor woman ... poor woman!”

Charlotte looked up, eyes wide with horror. The tears ran down her cheeks unheeded and her hands holding the letters were shaking.

“Oh Thomas! It’s too dreadful to have a name! How they must have suffered—first Naomi, and then poor Elsie. How that poor creature must have felt! To watch her mistress the slowly, growing weaker every day, and yet refusing to betray her truth, and Elsie helpless to do anything. Then when it had gone too far and she could not eat, even if she would, to watch her sink into unconsciousness and death. And when Elsie would not let them hush it all up and report it as scarlet fever, they told her she was mad, and bundled her away to spend the rest of her life behind the walls of a lunatic asylum.” She seized his handkerchief from his pocket and blew her nose fiercely. “Thomas, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing. There is nothing we can do,” he replied somberly.

“But that’s preposterous!”

“There’s been no crime committed.” And he related what Drummond had said to him.

She stood stunned, too appalled to speak, knowing what he said was true, and that argument was pointless. And staring up at him, she was as aware of his pity and anger as she was of her own.

“Very well,” she said at last. “I can see that. I am sure you would prosecute him if there were any grounds—of course you would. But there is no purpose in taking to law something which could never be acted upon. I think, if you don’t mind, I shall show the letters to Great-aunt Vespasia tomorrow. I am sure she would like to know what the truth of the matter was. May I take them to her?” She half held them out to him, but it was only a gesture; she had not considered that he might refuse.

“If you wish.” He was reluctant, and yet why should she not tell Vespasia? Perhaps they could comfort each other. She might want to talk about it further, and he was too exhausted by his own emotions to want to relive it. “Yes, of course.”

“You must be tired.” She put the letters in her apron pocket, regarding him gravely. “Why don’t you sit down by the fire, and I shall make supper. Would you like a fresh kipper? I have two from the fishmonger today. And hot bread.”

By late the following afternoon Charlotte knew precisely what she was going to do, and how she would accomplish it. No one would help her, at least not knowingly, but Great-aunt Vespasia would do all that was necessary, if she was asked the right way. Pitt had spent most of the day in the garden, but at five o’clock the weather had changed suddenly, a chill wind had sprung up from the east covering the sky with leaden clouds, and by nightfall there would be a freezing fog. He had come inside, then gone to sleep in front of the fire.

Charlotte did not disturb him. She left a leek and potato pie in the oven and a note on the kitchen table telling him she had gone to visit Aunt Vespasia. Since it was extremely cold and a fog was drifting in off the river, she took the rather expensive step of hiring a cab to take her all the way to Vespasia’s house where she was received with pleasure and some surprise.

“Is anything wrong, my dear?” Vespasia asked, and looked at Charlotte more closely. “What is it? What has happened?”

Charlotte took the letters from her reticule and passed them over, explaining how Pitt had discovered them.

Vespasia opened them, adjusted her pince-nez on her nose, and read them slowly and without comment. Finally she put the last one down and sighed very quietly.

“How very terrible. Two lives wasted, and in such confusion and pain, over such terrible domination of one person by another. How unreasonably far we still have to go before we learn to treat each other with dignity. Thank you for showing them to me, Charlotte—although when I lie awake at night I shall wish you had not. I must speak to Somerset next time about the laws of lunacy; I am getting old to take up new causes about which I know nothing, but it will haunt me. What could be worse than madness, except to spend years as the only sane person in a fortress of the mad?”

“Don’t! ... I’m sorry. I should not have shown them to you.”

“No, my dear. It was very natural.” Vespasia put her hand over Charlotte’s. “We wish to share our pain. And better you should have come to me than to poor Thomas. He has seen more than enough lately, and his helplessness must hurt him.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed; she knew it did. But it was nearly six o’clock and time to put the next part of her plan into progress. “I mean to visit Sir Garnet Royce, perhaps to deliver the letters to him.” She saw Vespasia’s body grow rigid. “After all, they are his, in a sense.”

“Rubbish!” Vespasia snapped. “My dear Charlotte, you may be able to lie successfully to other people, although I doubt it, but please do not try it with me. You do not for a moment imagine they are Sir Garnet’s property. They were written by his wife to a Miss Forrester, and if they cannot be delivered to her, then they are the property of Her Majesty’s Postal Service. Nor would you give a fig if they were Sir Garnet’s! What do you mean to do?”

There was no more purpose in lying; it had failed. “I mean to oblige him to know the truth, and to know that I know it,” Charlotte replied. It was not all her plan, but it was part of it.

“Dangerous,” Vespasia answered.

“Not if I take your carriage, with your coachman to drive me. Sir Garnet may be as angry as he likes, but he is not going to harm me. He would not dare. And I shall take only two letters, and leave the rest with you.” She waited, watching Vespasia’s face. Charlotte saw the doubt in it, as Vespasia argued back and forth with herself. “He deserves to know!” she said urgently. “The law cannot face him with it, but I can. And for Naomi’s sake, and Elsie Draper’s, I am going to. I shall arrive in a proper carriage, with a footman, and the servants will let me in. He cannot harm me! Please, Vespasia. All I want is the use of your carriage for an hour or two.” She considered adding, “Otherwise I shall have to go by hansom,” but it sounded too much like pressure, and Vespasia would not care for that.

“Very well. But I shall send Forbes as well, to ride on the box. That is my condition.”

“Thank you, Aunt Vespasia. I shall leave at about seven, if that is acceptable to you. That way I shall be most likely to find him at home, since the House of Commons is not debating anything of importance today, so I have been told.”

“Then you had better have supper.” Vespasia’s silver eyebrows rose. “I presume you have left something for poor Thomas to eat?”

“Yes of course I have. And a note to tell him I am visiting you and will be home at about half past eight or nine o’clock.”

“Indeed,” Vespasia said dryly. “Then I suppose we had better request the kitchen to send us something. Would you care for some jugged hare?”

An hour later Charlotte was sitting huddled up inside Vespasia’s carriage while the horses drew it slowly through the fog-blinded streets from Belgravia, past the Palace of Westminster, across the bridge, and along the far side of the south bank towards Bethlehem Road. It was bitterly cold, and the dead air hung motionless, moisture freezing as it touched the icy stones. Half of her was dreading arrival, and yet she was so cold and the decision so firm in her mind that delay was of no value, there was nothing else to turn over or consider, nothing that would change her resolve. Garnet Royce was not going to be permitted to close his mind to Naomi, or Elsie Draper, and convince himself he had acted justly.

The carriage stopped, and she heard the footman’s steps as he descended and a moment later the carriage door opened. She took his hand and alighted. The fog was so thick she could barely see the streetlamps on either side of her, and the houses on the far side of the street, no more than a slight darkening of the gray, curling vapors, a mark on the imagination.

“Thank you. I am sorry to ask you to wait here, but I hope I shall not be long.”

“That’s all right, ma’am,” Forbes replied from the gloom just beyond. “Her ladyship said we were to wait for you right outside the door, and we shall.”