saw it! None of us had the slightest idea!” She leaned forward over the table, staring at both of them. “He employed a young woman and had an affair with her. She became with child and he murdered her, whether he meant to or not. Now he attacks his wife, trying to strangle her, and instead is killed himself. And you sit there saying it is all over—in the economy of God!” Her outrage was withering. “It has nothing to do with God! It is human suffering and failure. And with two people dead, and a child never to be born … it is hardly economical!”
“Isadora, please take control of yourself,” the bishop said between his teeth. “I can quite understand your distress, but we must keep calm. Hysteria will help no one.” He was talking too quickly. “I merely meant that the matter has come to a natural conclusion and there is nothing to be served by pressing it any further. And that God will take care of the judgment necessary.”
“That is not what you meant,” she said bitterly. “You meant that now it can all be put away without any effort on our part to conceal a scandal. The real scandal is that we want to. That we knew Ramsay Parmenter all those years and we never noticed his misery.”
The bishop smiled apologetically at Cornwallis. “I am so sorry.” He shook his head very slightly. “My wife is deeply distressed at this turn of events. Please excuse her unguarded outburst.” He turned to Isadora, his lips a thin line. “Perhaps you should go and lie down for a little, my dear. See if you can compose yourself. You will feel better shortly. Have Collard bring you a tisane.”
Isadora was livid. He spoke to her as if she were mentally incompetent.
“I am not ill! I am considering our responsibility in the violent death of one of our clergy, and trying to examine in my heart whether we could and should have done more to help when there was still time.”
“Really—” the bishop started, his face pink.
“We all should have,” Cornwallis cut across him. “We knew someone in that house killed Unity Bellwood. We should have found a way of preventing a second tragedy.”
The bishop glared at him. “Since the poor man was obviously incurably insane, it is not a tragedy that he should have died, and thank the Lord, not by his own hand,” he corrected. “Given the already irreparable circumstances, this is the least appalling outcome we could expect. I believe I have already thanked you for coming to inform me, Mr. Cornwallis. I do not believe there is anything further I can tell you that will assist you in any other matter, and this one is mercifully closed.”
Cornwallis rose to his feet, his expression a mixture of embarrassment and confusion, as if he were struggling to reconcile warring emotions, both of which hurt him.
Isadora knew how he felt. She was filled with the same conflict of anger and shame.
Cornwallis turned to her. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Underhill. Good day, Bishop.” And without extending his hand he swiveled around and went out of the dining room door.
“I think you had better retire for a while until you can compose yourself,” the bishop said to Isadora. “Your behavior in this matter has been something rather less than I had hoped for.”
She looked at him steadily and with a detachment of which she had not expected herself to be capable. Now that the moment had come, there was a calm center of warmth inside her, quite steady.
“I think we are both disappointed, Reginald,” she replied. “You hoped for discretion from me, and I cannot be discreet about this. I hoped for compassion and honesty from you, and a little self-examination as to whether we could and should have done more to understand before this happened. And it seems you have neither the pity nor the humility to be capable of that. Perhaps you had a right to be surprised in me. I gave too little sign of what I felt. I had no right to be surprised in you. You have always been like this. I simply refused to see it.” She walked to the door and opened it. She heard him gasp, and he started to speak as she went into the hall, but she did not listen. She went across the floor and through the baize door into the kitchens, where she knew he would not