me the opportunity to tell you if I had some appalling burden on my conscience—if, in fact, I did push Unity down the stairs, either intentionally or accidentally. It can’t have been easy for you to approach me on the subject, and I am aware of the courage it must have taken.” He looked straight back at Dominic. “Perhaps it is a relief to speak about it …”
Dominic felt panic rise up inside him. He was not equal to this. What if Ramsay confessed? Was Dominic bound by any oath of confidence, or even an unspoken understanding? What should he do? Persuade Ramsay to confess to Pitt? Why? Help him towards a repentance before God? Did Ramsay even understand what he had done? Surely that was the most important thing? Dominic looked at him and saw no harrowing guilt. Fear, certainly, and some guilt, some awareness of the enormity of the situation. But not the guilt of murder.
“Yes …” Dominic swallowed and nearly choked. He clasped his hands together in his lap, below the height of the desk, where Ramsay could not see them.
Ramsay smiled more widely. “Your face is transparent, Dominic. I am not going to lay a burden of guilt upon you. The worst I can confess to is that I am not sorry she is dead … not nearly as sorry as I know I should be. She was another human being, young and full of energy and intelligence. I mustn’t suppose that, in spite of her behavior to the contrary at times, she was not just as capable of tenderness and hope, love and pain as the rest of us.”
He bit his lip, his eyes full of confusion.
“My brain tells me that it is tragic that her life should have been cut off. My emotions tell me I am greatly relieved not to have to hear her arrogant certainty in the superiority of mankind over all else, most especially of Mr. Darwin. Passionately … intensely …” His fingers locked around his pen so violently he bent the quill. “I do not wish to be a random organism descended from apes!” His voice thickened, close to tears. “I wish to be the creation of God, a God who has created everything around me and cares for it, who will redeem me for my weaknesses, forgive my errors and my sins, and who will somehow sort out the tangles of our human lives and make a kind of sense of them in the end.” He dropped to a whisper. “And I can no longer believe it, except for moments when I am alone, at night, and the past seems to come back to me, and I can forget all the books and the arguments and feel as I once used to.”
Rain pattered against the window, and the moment after sunlight picked out the bright drops.
“She is not the cause of doubt in the world,” Ramsay went on. “Of course she is not. I had heard the arguments before she ever came to Brunswick Gardens. We all had. We had discussed them. I have reassured many a confused and unhappy parishioner, as no doubt you have, and will continue to.” He swallowed, pulling his mouth into a line of pain. “But she focused it all. She was so monumentally certain!” He was looking beyond Dominic now, towards the bookcase with the glass fronts shining in the sudden sun. “It is no one thing she said, rather the day-by-day air of being so terribly sure of herself. She never let slip a chance to mock. Her logic was relentless.”
He stopped for a moment. Dominic tried to think of something to say, then realized he should not interrupt now.
“She could demolish mine in any argument we had. Her memory was perfect,” Ramsay said with a shrug. “There were times when she made me feel ridiculous. I admit, Dominic, I hated her then. But I did not push her, that I swear.” He looked at Dominic steadily, pleading to be believed, and yet not willing to embarrass him by asking openly. And perhaps he was afraid to hear the answer.
Dominic was embarrassed. He wanted to believe him, yet how could it be true? Four people had heard Unity cry out “No, no, Reverend!” Had it not been a protest but a cry for help? Then it could only be Mallory who had pushed her.
Why? She had not touched his faith. His beliefs fed on opposition. To him it was only another confirmation