as if written under great emotional pressure: “The ringer!! Where did it all begin? That was it! What a damnable thing. The same tune played over … is that it? Oh Master, Master, what have you done? In God’s name why?”
Pitt stared at the page. There was such passion in it. It could not possibly be written of bell ringing. No one would care so fiercely about such a thing. And why write about it? Who was the master? It did not seem to be a religious reference.
Did “ringer” mean a double, a look-alike, one person mistaken for another?
But who? There had been no questions of identity in this case. The only people who were not members of the Parmenter family, known to each other for years, were Unity Bellwood and Dominic. And Pitt was perfectly certain about Dominic.
And that left Unity. But how did her identity matter? What difference would it make if she were who she said or not?
Ringer … for whom? Or was it bell ringing after all?
Or Bellwood? Was it a mildly oblique way of referring to Unity Bellwood?
Master! There were Latin phrases here and there in the notes. Master … dominus … “Dominic!”
He did not realize he had spoken aloud until Charlotte looked up, her eyes wide, her brow furrowed with alarm.
“What?”
“I just understood what one of these references meant,” he explained.
“What does he say?” she demanded, her own letter now totally ignored.
“I don’t know yet. I’ve only just begun to decipher it.” It was not very subtle really. The notes were never meant for anyone else’s eyes, certainly not to fool Mallory or Dominic himself, or Unity.
Now the references took on a very different meaning. It made excellent sense … sense that chilled him and sent a coldness running through his mind till it seemed almost like a physical thing in the warm, familiar room. He would tell Charlotte nothing of it yet.
He read on. It was inescapable now. Ramsay believed Dominic to have known Unity in the past. The references to tragedy were easy to see, although not specifically what it had been, only that its nature was personal and inspired a deep guilt in one or both of them. Ramsay concluded that Unity had lost Dominic for some time, perhaps years, and on discovering where he was, had sought the position in Brunswick Gardens solely in order to follow him there. Thinking again of the urgency of her application for the position, when her qualifications were so high, that was not difficult to believe.
There was a very clear mention of blackmail in order to force Dominic to reestablish the old relationship between them, regardless of his wishes, which, since he had run away in the first place, it was safe to presume he did not want.
There were brief, rather jagged notes, Ramsay’s writing becoming less even, far less controlled, as if his hand had shaken and he had gripped the pen too hard. There were occasional scratches and blots. They expressed fear not only in the words but in the black, spiky letters on the page. Ramsay thought Dominic had killed Unity rather than allow her to break up his new life with its public respect and hope of dignity and gentle progress towards acceptance and advancement.
He had not intended anyone else to read this. To judge from the different tones of the ink, even different colors in some places, it had been written over a space of time. There was no reason to doubt it had been written contemporarily with the events themselves. Pitt could not escape the conviction that Ramsay had genuinely thought Dominic guilty of Unity’s death, and it had caused him pain and a deep and terrible sense of his own failure. If he had considered his own death, it would not have been from guilt over Unity but from despair because his life had seemed to him devoid of purpose or success. Everything he had attempted had turned to ashes. Dominic was the last blow, and the worst. There were undeniable accents of the desire to escape, to find an end, becoming stronger. Pitt could not evade them.
He closed the book with the chill inside him consuming.
The room around him was so comfortable it jarred against his inner misery, making him more acutely conscious of the world of difference between the physical and the reality of the mind and the heart. The flames flickered gently in the hearth, sending a wavering light onto Charlotte’s skirt, her arms