of the sort. I have no proof which of them killed Unity, nor any hope of getting any practical evidence of the act itself. All I can do is find out more about each of them and hope it shows something or absolves one of them. What would you have me do … assume Dominic’s innocence?”
She turned away. “No, of course not. I’m not angry that you found this out, just that it pleases you. I want you to be as hurt and as miserable about it as I am.” She stood stiff-backed, staring away from him out of the darkened window.
He felt excluded, because he understood what she meant, and yet the dark, cold little voice inside him still almost wished Dominic to be guilty.
He slept very badly and woke late in the morning. He went downstairs and found Tellman drinking tea in the kitchen, talking to Gracie. He stood up the moment Pitt came in, his face coloring slightly.
“You might as well finish it,” Pitt said curtly. “I have no intention of going out without breakfast. Where is Mrs. Pitt?”
“Upstairs, sir,” Gracie replied, watching him carefully. “Sorting the linen.”
“I see. Thank you.” He sat down at the kitchen table.
Gracie put a bowl of porridge in front of him and started to warm the frying pan for kippers. He wanted to say something to comfort her, to tell her that this unease in the house was only a passing thing. But he could think of nothing. And half an hour later, when he left, he still had not mentioned it, nor had he been upstairs to speak to Charlotte.
He sent Tellman off to learn what he could of Mallory Parmenter’s past, his conversion to the Church of Rome, and his personal habits and relationships.
He began to seek more of Unity Bellwood’s past, and spent a miserable Saturday interrupting the brief leisure time of people who had known her in a more personal way. He found out her previous address from Ramsay Parmenter, and now he called upon the house in Bloomsbury, less than fifteen minutes from his own home. He walked rapidly, striding out and passing neighbors without recognizing them, still consumed in his own anger and unhappiness.
There was an air to the house not unlike the one he had been to in Maida Vale. There were similar works of art on the walls, piles of books in and out of cases, a sense of being intentionally different. He was received ungraciously by a bearded man of about fifty who agreed that, yes, Unity Bellwood had lived there some three or four months ago and had left to go to a position which he knew nothing about.
“How long did she live here?” Pitt asked. He was not going to be put off because he was a nuisance and was disturbing a quiet Saturday morning when people wished to relax and not be bothered with strangers.
“Two years,” the man replied. “She had rooms upstairs. They are relet now to a nice young couple from Leicestershire. She can’t have them back, and I’ve nothing else.” He looked at Pitt belligerently. His regard towards Unity was plain.
Pitt pressed him until he lost his temper, and then went on to speak to all the other residents of the house who were at home, forming a picture of Unity which added little to what he already knew. She was academically outstanding, but her arrogance and her passion had both caused fierce reactions in people. Those who admired her had done so intensely, and felt her death to be both a public and a personal loss. She had represented great courage in the fight against oppression of all kinds, of bigotry, of narrow and unjust laws, and against those limitations of the mind which seek to regiment the emotions and restrict the true liberty of thought and ideas. He heard in her echoes of Morgan’s cry for the nobility of free love.
From those who hated her he heard the notes of envy and fear. They were frightened of her. She disrupted what they knew and understood. She threatened their peace of mind and unsettled thought.
He also detected through their stories, of both those who admired her and those who scorned her, a consistent thread of manipulation, a love of power and the will to use it, even for its own sake.
He pursued it until after dark. His back ached, he was exhausted and hungry, and had found he still knew little he could not have