Mr. Charles Darwin.” A look of deep distaste flickered across her eyes and mouth. “Are you familiar with it? Of course you are. At least you have to be aware of what he propounds on the origins of mankind. There was never a more dangerous and daring idea put forward by anyone since … I don’t know what!” She was concentrating fiercely, turning her body on the chaise longue until she faced him more fully, regardless of the discomfort it must have caused her. “If we are all descended from apes and the Bible is not true at all and there is no God, then why on earth should we go to church or keep any of the Commandments?”
“Because the Commandments are based upon virtue and the best social and moral order we know,” he replied. “Whether they originate with God or with the long-fought-for and refined ideas of men. Whether the Bible is right, or Mr. Darwin is right, I don’t know. There may even be some way in which they may both be. If not, I hope profoundly that it is the Bible. Mr. Darwin leaves us with little more than the belief in progress and human morality steadily ascending.”
“Don’t you believe it will?” she said seriously. “Unity believed it very strongly. She thought we were progressing all the time. Our ideas are getting nobler and freer with every generation. We are becoming more just, more tolerant and altogether more enlightened.”
“Certainly our inventions are improving every decade,” he agreed, measuring his words. “And our scientific knowledge increases almost every year. But I am not at all sure that our kindness does, or our courage, or our sense of responsibility towards each other, and they are far truer marks of civilization.”
She looked at him with surprise and confusion in the shadows of her eyes.
“Unity believed we are far more enlightened than we used to be. We have thrown off the oppression of the past, the ignorance and the superstition. I heard her say so a number of times. And also that we are far more responsible for the care of the poor, less selfish and unjust than ever before.”
A flash of memory came to him from the schoolroom thirty years ago. “One of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt used to boast that in his reign no one was hungry or homeless.”
“Oh … I don’t think Unity knew that,” she said with surprise—and what could have been a flash of satisfaction.
Perhaps she was at last approaching the truths which mattered.
“How did your husband feel about her views, Mrs. Parmenter?”
Her face tightened again. She looked down, away from him. “He found them abhorrent. I cannot deny they quarreled rather often. If I do not tell you, then others will. It was impossible for the rest of us to be unaware of it.”
He could imagine it very easily: the expression of opinions around the meal table, the stiff silences, the innuendo, the laying down of law, and then the contradictions. There was little as fundamental to people as their beliefs in the order of things— not the metaphysics, but their own place in the universe, their value and purpose.
“And they quarreled this morning?” he prompted.
“Yes.” She looked at him with sadness and apprehension. “I don’t know what about precisely. My maid could probably tell you. She heard them as well, and so did my husband’s valet. I only heard the raised voices.” She looked as if she were about to add something, then changed her mind or could not find the words for it.
“Could the quarrel have become violent?” he said gravely.
“I suppose so.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Although I find it difficult to believe. My husband is not—” She stopped.
“Could Miss Bellwood have left the study in a temper and then lost her balance, perhaps stumbled and fallen backwards, by accident?” he suggested.
She remained silent.
“Is that possible, Mrs. Parmenter?”
She raised her eyes to meet his. She bit her lip. “If I say yes, Superintendent, my maid will only contradict me. Please don’t press me to speak any further of my husband. It is terribly … distressing. I don’t know what to think or feel. I seem to be in a whirlpool of confusion … and darkness … an awful darkness.”
“I’m sorry.” He felt compelled to apologize, and it was sincere. His pity for her was immense, as was his admiration for her composure and her dedication to truth, even at such personal cost. “Of course, I shall