such things are not afraid. They know most of us will do nothing about it. We would rather suffer in silence and even lie to protect them, before living the horror all over again in front of everyone else. Except Catherine is dead, and can do nothing for herself now.” She saw him flinch.
“You are right.” He shook his head fractionally. “I have looked at least to a deeper side of her life. She seems to have been intelligent, sensitive, full of imagination and interested in every kind of beauty, discovery or invention that one can explore. And lonely. She had nothing to do that mattered—” He stopped abruptly, a shadow of self-knowledge in his face. Then he went on quickly. “There’s a young man called Alban Hythe whom Mrs. Quixwood seems to have met much more frequently than would be accidental.”
“An affair?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It seems a strong possibility.”
“How very sad.” For several moments Vespasia said nothing, picturing in her mind the arrival of a lover, the expected excitement, the emotion, the vulnerability, and then the sudden shock of violence. Had there even been a quarrel? What could possibly have happened that made emotions change from love to uncontrollable fury in such a way?
Narraway waited, watching her. She could not read his expression.
“Do you think it was this man?” she asked him.
“Reason says it is likely,” he replied. “Instinct says not. But that may be only what I want to think. I also want to think she didn’t mean to take her own life, that she just … misjudged the dose. But the police surgeon said it was many times the appropriate amount.”
“She might have meant to, Victor,” Vespasia said gently. “I have no idea how I would feel were such a thing to happen to me. I don’t think it is something I have power to imagine. People can do desperate things when they are frightened.
“It isn’t so very difficult to understand,” she continued, quickly, urgently, leaning forward over the elegant table. “If somehow rape is the victim’s own fault—she said or did something, wore indiscreet clothes, behaved in a certain way—then if we do not do whatever it is they did, it will never happen to us. It’s not compassionate, it’s not realistic, but it is understandable.”
Anger burned in Narraway’s eyes. “I don’t disagree with you. But that sounds monstrous to me, callous and brutal. It is almost like consenting that rape is okay, by omission of defense. I find it is contemptible, the final betrayal.”
“Admitting it can happen to a decent and completely innocent woman is to accept it could happen to anyone,” she pointed out. “That is the unbearable truth. It tears away the last defense. And, of course, some even hate the woman, the victim, for creating what seems like an uncontrollable passion in someone. They don’t understand that it is a crime of hatred, or of power, not of passion.” She had a sudden afterthought. “Or perhaps they do, and it is wakening that animal inside the man which they hate her for. Because they want to pretend such an animal does not exist anymore.”
“Are we so fragile?” he said unhappily.
“Some of us, yes.” She thought for a moment. “And, of course, they might also be afraid for the men who love them—the rage in them, the need for revenge, even if only to prove themselves in control,” she added. “It might lead them not to comfort the victim, hold her in their arms and assure her that she is still the same, still loved, but instead to go out and beat, or even kill, the man who has taken from her so much. And in their blindness of pain they might not even choose the right man.”
“I begin to see why Angeles Castelbranco did not denounce Forsbrook, if you are right and she was raped,” he said very quietly. “And why Catherine Quixwood, in the despair of that moment, chose to take her own life rather than go through the ordeal of what would inevitably follow.”
“What are the chances of a successful prosecution anyway?” Vespasia searched his face now, looking for an answer. “Even if Knox finds the right man, will the verdict be worth the price it will cost?”
“I don’t know,” Narraway admitted. “But what happens to the law itself if we don’t try?”
“What does Quixwood want?” she asked instead of answering.
Narraway spoke slowly. “At the moment he wants to know the truth, but he may well find that