I’m sorry.”
“Yes sir, he has. May I deliver a message, sir?”
“You may,” Pitt agreed. “Tell him Superintendent Pitt is downstairs and needs to give him news which will not wait until morning.”
The man winced, but he did not argue. As he passed the telephone instrument hanging on the wall, he glanced meaningfully at it but forbore from recommending its use. He left Pitt in the sitting room, a comfortable, highly masculine place filled with padded leather chairs, books, mementos such as a giant conch shell from the Indies, its curved heart glowing with color, a polished brass miniature cannon, a wooden cleat from a ship’s rigging, two or three pieces of ambergris and a porcelain dish full of musket balls. There were several paintings of the sea. The books were of a wide variety, novels and poetry as well as biography, science and history. Pitt smiled when he saw Jane Austen’s Emma, Eliot’s Silas Marner and the three books of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Cornwallis came in less than ten minutes later fully dressed and carrying two glasses of brandy and soda.
“What is it?” he asked, pushing the door closed behind him and passing Pitt one of the glasses. “Something terrible, to judge by your face and to bring you here at this time of night.”
“I am afraid Parmenter lost his head completely and attacked his wife. She fought him off, but she killed him in the struggle.”
Cornwallis looked astounded.
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed. “It sounds absurd, but he tried to strangle her, and when she could feel herself suffocating, she grasped the paper knife from the desk and attempted to stab his arm. She said he moved, in order to keep the grip on her throat, and she drove with all her strength at his shoulder and caught his neck.” He sipped the brandy and soda.
Cornwallis looked wretched, his face creased with unhappiness, his body stiff as if braced against a blow. He stood still for several moments. Pitt wondered if he was thinking of the bishop and his reaction, and how he would now be able to have the whole matter kept private and dealt with exactly as he had wanted.
“Damn!” Cornwallis said at last. “I had no idea he was so … his sanity was so fragile. Had you?”
“No,” Pitt confessed. “Neither did his doctor. He had been called for Mrs. Parmenter, and I asked him. He looked at the body, too, of course, but there was nothing he could do, and nothing of any help to say.”
“Sit down!” Cornwallis waved at the chairs and Pitt accepted gratefully. He had had no idea he was so tired.
“I suppose there is no doubt that is what happened?” Cornwallis went on, looking at Pitt curiously. “It wasn’t a suicide the wife was trying to disguise?”
“Suicide?” Pitt was puzzled. “No.”
“Well, she might,” Cornwallis argued. “After all, we haven’t proved he killed the Bellwood woman, not beyond doubt. But suicide is a crime in the eyes of the church.”
“Well, trying to murder your wife isn’t well regarded, either,” Pitt pointed out.
Cornwallis’s face was tight in spite of the flash of humor in his eyes. “But he didn’t succeed in that. He may have intended the crime, but you cannot punish him for it … not when he is dead anyway.”
“You cannot punish a person for suicide, either,” Pitt said dryly.
“Yes, you can,” Cornwallis contradicted. “You can bury them in unhallowed ground. And the family suffers.”
“Well, this was not suicide.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. The knife must have been in her hand, not his.”
“Left side of the throat or right?” Cornwallis asked.
“Left … her right hand. They were facing each other, the way she described it.”
“So it could have been in his hand?”
“I don’t think so, not at that angle.”
Cornwallis pursed his lips. He pushed his fists deep into his pockets and stared at Pitt unhappily. “Are you satisfied that he killed Unity Bellwood?”
Pitt was about to answer, then realized that if he were honest, he was still troubled by an incompleteness to it. “I can’t think of any better answer, but I feel there is something important I’ve missed,” he admitted. “I suppose we’ll never know. Perhaps the letters will explain.”
“What letters?” Cornwallis demanded.
“That’s what provoked this quarrel, a collection of love letters between Unity and Parmenter, very graphic on Unity’s part, according to Mrs. Parmenter. When he realized she had seen them he completely lost control of himself.”
“Love letters?” Cornwallis was confused. “Why would they write letters to each other? They were in the