Bethlehem Road (28 page)

Florence repeated the question with a harsh, derisory impatience in her voice.

“Yes. What has that to do with suffrage, for heaven’s sake?”

“Do you know that in law you cannot give anyone a gift, anyone at all, from the day you become betrothed—not married,
betrothed—
without your fiancé’s permission?”

“No, I—”

“And that until four years ago even your clothes and effects belonged to your husband? And if you inherited money, jewelry from your mother, anything, it belonged to him also? If you worked at anything and earned money, that also was his, and he could require it be paid directly to him, so you could not even touch it. Did you think you could make a will, so you could leave your belongings to your daughter, or your sister, or a friend, or reward a servant? So you can—so long as your husband approves! And if at any time he disapproves or changes his mind, or others change it for him, then you cannot! Even after you are dead! Did you know that? Or did you imagine that your dresses, your shoes, your handkerchiefs, your hairpins were your own? They are not! Nothing is yours. Certainly not your body!” Her mouth curled in memory of an old pain, one so deep no balm had ever reached it. “You cannot refuse your husband, regardless of his treatment of you, or how many others he may have lain with, in love or in lust. You cannot even leave his roof unless he gives you his permission! If you do, he can have the law bring you back and prosecute anyone who gives you shelter—even if it is your own mother!

“And if he does allow you to leave, your property remains his, as does anything you might earn, and he has no obligation to give you, or your children, should he permit you to take them, a single penny to keep you from starvation or freezing.

“No—don’t interrupt me!” Florence Ivory shouted when Charlotte opened her mouth to speak. “Damn your complacency! Did you imagine you had any say in what should happen to your children? Even your baby still at the breast? Well you don’t! They are his, and he may do with them as he pleases—educate them or not, teach them anything he cares to, or nothing, discipline them and care for their health or welfare as he likes. When he makes a will he has the right to dispose of what property used to be yours before you married him however he pleases. He can leave your jewelry to his mistress, if he likes. Did you know that, Miss Ellison? Do you think Parliament would make laws like that if it were answerable to women voters as well as men? Do you?”

Again Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, but she was overwhelmed by the flood of injustices, and over and above that the scalding outrage that burned through Florence’s thin body. Charlotte sank onto the arm of her chair. Florence was not merely cataloguing the inequities of the law, she was crying out from her own pain. It was nakedly apparent, even if Charlotte had not known from Pitt how she had lost first her home, and her son, then her beloved daughter. She had never considered divorce or separation because it had not occurred in her family or any of her friends. Of course she had known for years that it was commonly believed that men had natural appetites which must be satisfied, and decent women did not; therefore it was to be expected that a man might commit adultery, and a wife’s only course was to conduct herself so she was never forced into a position where she was seen to know of it. It was not grounds for divorce for a wife, and anyway, a divorced woman ceased to exist in society, and a working woman would be on the streets dependent on whatever skills she had to earn her keep—and her skills would be minimal, and domestic. No one took a divorced woman into service.

“That, Miss Ellison, is a fraction of the reason why I want women to have a right to vote!” Florence was staring at her, pale now, exhausted by her own emotions and all the relieved pain, the struggles that had been lost one by one. There was hatred in her powerful enough to drown out all lesser qualms of doubt or pity, or thoughts of self-preservation. Whether she had killed three men on Westminster Bridge, Charlotte did not know, but sitting on the arm of the chintz-covered chair in this sunlit room with the odor of hyacinths, she felt again the sickening conviction that Florence Ivory was capable of it.

The three women were motionless. Florence gripped the back of her chair, her knuckles white, the cloth of her dress strained at the shoulders till the stitching thread showed at the seams. Outside in the garden a bird hopped from a low lilac branch onto the windowsill.

Africa Dowell moved from the comer by the door where she had been listening. She made a move as if to touch Florence, then something in the rigid figure warned her away, and she turned to Charlotte, knowledge and fear in her eyes, and defiance.

“Florence is speaking for a great many people, more than you might imagine. Mrs. Sheridan had recently joined a group fighting for women’s suffrage, and there are others up and down the country. Famous people have urged it. John Stuart Mill wrote a paper years ago—” She stopped, painfully aware that nothing she said would erase from their minds the skin-crawling knowledge of a passion that could have driven Florence Ivory to kill, and may have.

Charlotte looked at the carpet, framing her words carefully.

“You say many women feel the same,” she began.

“Yes, many,” Africa agreed faintly, her voice without conviction.

Charlotte met her eyes. “Why not all women? Why should any woman be against it, or even indifferent?”

Florence’s answer was harsh and instant. “Because it is easier! We are brought up from the cradle to be ignorant, charming, obedient, and to depend completely on someone else to provide for us! We tell men we are fragile of body and of mind and must be protected from anything indecent or contentious, we must be looked after, we cannot be blamed for anything because we are not responsible! And they do look after us. They do as much for us as a mother does for a child that cannot walk: she carries it! And until she puts it down, it never will walk! Well I don’t want to be carried all my life!” She struck her hand so violently against her chest Charlotte felt sure it must have bruised the flesh. “I want to decide which way I will go, not be carried whether I choose to or not where someone else wishes. But many women have been told for so long they cannot walk that now they believe it, and they haven’t the courage to try. Others are too lazy; it is easier to be carried.”

It was only a partial truth. Charlotte knew so many more reasons: there was love, gratitude, guilt, the need to be loved with tenderness and without contention or rivalry, the deep pleasure of earning the respect and nurturing the best in a man, and perhaps the strongest reason of all—the need to give love, to cherish the young and the weak, to support a man, who seemed in the world’s eyes to be the stronger, and yet whom one learned so quickly was easily as vulnerable as oneself, often more so. The world expected so much of him, and allowed him no weakness, no tears, no failure. A host of memories came to her of Pitt, of George, of Dominic, even of her father, seen now with the wisdom of hindsight, and of other men whom the astringent wash of an investigation had stripped layer by layer of all pretense. Their hidden selves had been as frail, as full of terrors and weaknesses, self-doubt and petty vanities and deceptions as any woman’s. Only their outer garb was different, and their outer power.

But there was no purpose in telling this to Florence Ivory. Her wounds were too deep, and her cause was just. Charlotte imagined her emotions, thought for an instant how she would have felt had her own children been lost to her and knew reason would be misplaced.

But only reason could help now. She changed the subject entirely, looking at Florence with a calm she did not feel. “Where were you when Mr. Sheridan was murdered?” she asked.

Florence was startled. Then she smiled without humor, her remarkable face as quick to change as reflections in a pool of water.

“I was here, alone,” she said quietly. “Africa had gone to spend a little time with a friend who is confined with her first child and feeling unwell. But why in heaven’s name should I kill Mr. Sheridan? He has done me no harm—no more at least than any other man who denies us the right to be people, not merely appendages to men. Do you know you can’t even make a contract in law? And if you are robbed it is your husband who is offended against, not you, even if it is your purse that is taken?” She laughed harshly. “Nor can you be sued! Or be responsible for your own debts. Unfortunately, if you commit a murder, that is your fault—your husband will not be hanged in your place! But I did not kill Mr. Sheridan, or Mr. Etheridge, or Sir Lockwood Hamilton, for that matter. Though I doubt you will prove it, Miss Ellison. Your good intentions are a waste of time.”

“Possibly.” Charlotte stood up, staring rather coldly. “But it is mine to waste, if I so choose.”

“I doubt it,” Florence answered without moving. “If you pursue the matter I daresay you will find that it is your father’s, or your husband’s if you have one.” She turned her back and bent to pick up the raffia basket from where it had fallen, as though Charlotte had already left.

Africa showed her to the door, white-faced, searching for words and discarding each before it touched her lips. Every line of her body, every stiff, awkward movement betrayed her fear. She loved Florence, she pitied her desperately, she burned for her injuries and injustices, and she was mortally afraid that the torment of the loss of her child had driven her to creep out at night with a razor in her hand, and kill—and kill—and kill.

The same thought was in Charlotte’s mind, the same chill voice inside her, and she could not pretend. She looked at the girl with her ashen Pre-Raphaelite face, strong and young and so frightened, full of resolve to fight a losing battle, and she grasped her cold hands and held them tightly for a moment. There was nothing useful or honest to say.

Then she turned away and walked briskly down the street towards the place where the public omnibus might be caught for the long ride back.

Zenobia Gunne faced the prospect of calling upon Lady Mary Carfax a second time with the same resolve of fortitude she had summoned to sail up the Congo River in an open canoe, only this was a task which promised less reward. There would be no brazen sunsets, no mangrove roots rising out of the dawn-lit water, no screaming birds the color of jewels flung haphazard against the sky. Only Mary Carfax’s thirty-year-long remembrance of contempt and a hundred old grudges.

With deep misgivings, a churning in the pit of her stomach, and a sense of her own inadequacy, she had her carriage brought round and obeyed Vespasia’s instructions. She had nothing in common with Mary Carfax but old memories.

She was also afraid that Florence Ivory might well be guilty, and that Africa’s overactive sense of pity might have driven her, if not actually to help Florence, then at least to shield her now the deed was done.

And then a grimmer, uglier thought forced itself upon her. Was it done? Or would it continue? Sheridan had been killed after any injustice by Etheridge was more than avenged. Did Africa know it was Florence, or did her sympathy permit her to be blind?

Zenobia should have befriended her, visited her more often, not allowed her to become so close to so compelling a woman in such distress, one so passionate about her injustices, so likely to lose her emotional balance and her sanity. Africa was her youngest brother’s child; she should have taken her duties more seriously after her parents’ death. She had followed her own interests across the world, selfishly.

But it was too late now to offer time and friendship; the only thing that could help would be to prove Florence innocent, and as Charlotte Pitt had said—what a curious woman Charlotte was, so divided between two worlds, and yet apparently at home in both—as she had pointed out, that could only be accomplished by proving that someone else was guilty.

She leaned forward and rapped on the front wall of the carriage. “Please hurry!” she shouted urgently. “You are going too slowly! What are you waiting for?”

She presented her card to Lady Mary’s maid and watched the ramrod back of the girl as she took it away to show her mistress. Zenobia did not intend to lie as to her purpose in coming; it was not in her nature to tell petty lies, she had no art for it, and she could not think of a lie grand enough to serve the purpose.

The girl returned and showed her into the withdrawing room, where a large fire burned in spite of the clement weather. Mary Carfax sat upright in a gold-ornamented French chair. She concealed her surprise because her curiosity overrode it, and since that was an ill-bred emotion she did not own, she did her best to conceal that also.

“How agreeable to see you again—so soon,” she said in a voice that veered from one tone to another as she tried to decide which attitude to adopt. “I feared that—” but she changed her mind again, that was too inferior. “I supposed it would be a dull afternoon,” she said instead. “How are you? Please do sit down and be comfortable. The weather is most pleasant, don’t you think?”

Zenobia had barely noticed it, but the conversation must be conducted with civility, whatever it cost.

“Delightful,” she agreed, taking the seat farthest from the fire. “There are numerous blossoms out, and the air is quite mild. I passed several people walking in the park, and there was a German band playing in the rotunda.”

“One looks forward to the summer.” Lady Mary was bursting with inquisitiveness as to why Zenobia, who patently disliked her, should have called at all, let alone twice in the space of a fortnight. “Shall you be attending Ascot, or Henley? I find the races tire me, but one should be seen, don’t you agree?”

Zenobia swallowed her retort and forced an amiable expression to her face. “I am sure your friends will be disappointed if you do not go, but I fear I may not find it suitable. There is a member of my family touched at present by a tragedy, and if matters get worse, I shall not feel in the slightest like enjoying such social events.”

Lady Mary shifted minutely in her seat and her fingers closed over the ornate curlicues on the ends of the chair arms. “Indeed? I am sorry.” She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Can I offer any assistance?”