scarlet.
“You can’t speak to me like that!” he protested. “You’re a curate. You’ve got to be nice to me. It’s your job! It’s what you’re paid for!”
“No, it’s not,” Dominic contradicted. “I’m paid to tell you the truth, and that is not what you want to hear.”
“I’m not frightened,” Landells said sharply. “How dare you say that I am. I’ll report you to Reverend Parmenter. We’ll soon see what he has to say. He comes and prays for me, talks to me with respect, tells me about the resurrection, makes me feel better. He doesn’t sit there and criticize.”
“You said he doesn’t believe it, and neither do you,” Dominic pointed out.
“Well, I don’t, but that’s not the point! He tries.”
“I do believe it. I believe we will all be resurrected, you and Bessie,” Dominic answered. “From what I hear of her, she was a lovely woman, generous and wise, honest, happy and funny. She laughed a lot …” He saw the tears in Landells’s eyes and ignored them. “She would have missed you, had you died first, but she would not have sat around getting angrier and angrier and blaming God. Just suppose there is a resurrection … Your body will be renewed to its prime, but your spirit will be just the same. Are you ready to meet Bessie like this … never mind meeting God?”
Landells stared at him. The fire settled in the grate. It needed stoking again, but there was too little coal in the bucket. “You believe that?” the old man said slowly.
“Yes, I do.” Dominic spoke without doubt. He did not know why; it was a certainty inside him. He believed what he had read about Easter Sunday and Mary Magdalene in the garden. He believed the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaeus who had walked with the risen Christ and discovered it only at the last moment, when he had broken bread with them.
“What about Mr. Darwin and his monkeys?” Landells demanded, the expression in his eyes flickering between hope and despair, momentary victory and lasting defeat. Part of him wanted to win the argument; a larger, more honest part was desperate to lose.
“I don’t understand it,” Dominic confessed. “But he isn’t right if he says God did not create the earth and all that is on it, or that we are not special to Him but simply accidental forms of life. Look at the wonder and the beauty of the universe, Mr. Landells, and tell me it is chance and there is no meaning to it.”
“There’s no meaning to my life now.” Landells’s face crumpled. He was winning, and he did not want to.
“Since Bessie has gone?” Dominic asked. “Was there before? Was she no more than an accident, a monkey’s descendant gone gloriously right?”
“Mr. Darwin …” Landells began, then subsided in his chair, smiling at last. “All right, Mr. Corde. I’ll believe you. I don’t understand, mind, but I’ll believe. You tell me why the Reverend Parmenter didn’t say that, eh? He’s senior to you … a lot senior. You’re only just a beginner, you are.”
Dominic knew the answer to that, but he was not going to tell Landells. Ramsay’s faith was rooted in reason, and his reason had deserted him in the face of an argument more skilled than his own, growing out of a field of science he did not understand.
“I’m still right,” Dominic said firmly, rising to his feet. “Go and read your Bible, Mr. Landells … and smile while you’re doing it.”
“Yes, Mr. Corde. Will you pass it to me, please? I’m too stiff to get up out of this chair.” There was a flash of humor in the old man’s eyes, a parting shot of victory.
Dominic visited Mr. and Mrs. Norland, had luncheon late, and spent the rest of the afternoon with Mr. Rendlesham. He returned to Brunswick Gardens in time for an early dinner, which was quite the most appalling meal he could remember. Everyone was present and extremely nervous. The day’s silence from the police had told upon their fears, and tempers were frayed even before the first course was cleared away and the second served. Conversation went in fits and starts, often two people speaking at once and then falling silent, no one continuing.
Vita alone tried to keep some semblance of normality. She sat at the foot of the table looking pale and frightened, but her hair was immaculately dressed as always, her gown soft gray trimmed with black, as was