the upper sash, the bell rope, the telephone machine discreetly in the corner, all seemed so anchored in sanity. Even the potted palm was an ordinary one, a little overgrown, perhaps, but just like those common enough in thousands of houses. The screen and the floor he barely noticed, he had seen them so often.
He walked slowly up the stairs, one hand on the black wooden banister.
It was like Cater Street all over again. He found himself thinking of people and wondering if they could be feeling something utterly different from what they said, from the facade they presented. Even as his feet climbed from step to step, suspicions took shape in his imagination. Mallory’s behavior towards Unity did seem inconsistent. He remembered small cruelties she had displayed towards him. He should have hated her for it, or at least despised her. And yet it seemed he had gone out of his path to do her favors. Was that his way of battling against his own emotions, of trying to be the person he believed he should?
Vita must have loathed her at times, too. She could not have failed to see how Unity undermined the confidence and the happiness of both her husband and her son.
But Vita and Tryphena were the two members of the family who could not possibly have pushed her. They were both downstairs at the time. Lizzie swore to that. Not that Tryphena would have harmed Unity in any way. She was the only person in the house who truly grieved for her.
It was Tryphena whom Dominic now intended to speak with. No one else seemed to offer her any understanding. They were fairly naturally consumed in their own fears.
Unity had quarreled with Clarice several times, but it was over ideas, nothing violent or touching on the personal emotions or needs that mattered. It had all been on the surface of the intellect … at least that was how it had appeared. Perhaps that too was an illusion?
He knocked on Tryphena’s door.
“Who is it?” she asked sharply.
“Dominic,” he replied.
There was a moment’s silence, then the door opened. She looked disheveled, her fair hair falling out of its pins. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she made little effort to conceal the fact that she had been weeping.
“If you’ve come to try to persuade me to alter my view of Father, or to try to defend him, you are on a fool’s errand.” She lifted her chin a little higher. “My friend is dead, a person I admired more than anyone else I’ve ever known. She was a bright light of honesty and courage in a society that is black with hypocrisy and oppression, and I am not going to allow her to be snuffed out and no one raise a voice to protest.” She glared at him as if he were already guilty.
“I came to see how you were,” he said quietly.
“Oh.” She tried to smile. “I’m sorry.” She pulled open the door to the small sitting room she shared with Clarice. “Just don’t preach at me.” She led the way in and invited him to sit down. “I really couldn’t stomach a sermon now. I know you mean well, but it would be insupportable.”
“I should not like to be so insensitive,” he said honestly, but with the shadow of a smile in return. He knew something of her dislike for what she regarded as the tedium and the condescension of the church. He had never met Spencer Whickham—Tryphena’s marriage and widowhood predated his acquaintance with the family—but he had heard about him from Clarice and seen the pain he had caused reflected in Tryphena now in a dozen different ways. Without having the slightest idea of it, the man had apparently been a natural bully. It was hardly surprising Tryphena had such a fierce admiration for Unity, who had both the will and the weapons to fight back where she saw masculine domination and what she saw as injustice.
“Can I say anything to help you?” he asked gently. “Even that there was much in Unity that I admired?”
She stared at him, her brows puckered, mastering her tears with difficulty. “Was there?”
“Certainly.”
“I feel so alone!” There was anger and pain behind her words. “Everyone else is horrified, of course, and frightened, but it is for themselves.” She jerked her hands angrily. They were small-boned and delicate, like her mother’s. This gesture was full of contempt. “They are all terrified there is going to be a scandal because