Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“I pulled him up for his disgusting remarks, of course, and he laughed at me. He’d always laughed at me, even as a youth, but this was not a laughing matter. I got down from the gig, trying to show him the seriousness of what he was threatening. He told me—” Ellis broke off, closing his eyes.
“He told you what?” Grey asked steadily.
“I cannot say in front of your wife.”
“My wife won’t be offended.”
“She will,” Ellis burst out, opening his eyes to glare at Grey. “I am offended! How do you think Harvey will feel? But if you will have it, he told me not to worry, that he’d leave some for me.”
“Nasty little tick,” Harris observed, and Harvey made a moaning noise deep in his throat. There was nothing Ellis could do, except nod and keep going.
“Everyone knew what Percy was—except his doting parents—but no one had ever done anything. I’m sorry, Harvey, but that is the truth. He had been out of control for years. And he knew how to hurt.”
“Bullies make a point of that, of knowing their victims’ weaknesses,” Mrs. Grey said. “Percy knew Mrs. Jenkins’s weakness was her son and the respectability she needed for his sake. He knew yours too, didn’t he?”
Ellis nodded again. It was almost a relief to say it out loud. Almost. “He knew I loved her, made fun of me for it, laughed at the very idea of my taming a woman like her, as he put it. I didn’t want to tame her. I wanted to cherish her, marry her, make her and the boy happy and at home…”
“Did you ever tell her that?” Mrs. Grey asked.
Ellis shook his head tiredly. “What was the point? Percy was right about one thing. She never looked at me in that way. Her very ease with me showed me that much. She knew I would never overstep, and I never did. I never would.”
“But you killed Percy for her?” Harris asked, almost casually. “How did that happen?”
“I blocked his way up to Dare Hall. I refused to let him pass, and it had rained earlier, making the ground marshy and muddy on either side of the track. He laughed at first and tried to brush me aside. I stood firm and, God forgive me, I was glad to see him get annoyed. He never liked to be thwarted.”
“Go on,” Harris said.
“I kept moving with him, blocking his path to right and left until I thought he was furious enough to hit me.
But I truly meant to stand my ground, whatever he did.
I had to, you see. He was saying such terrible things, taunting me, but exciting himself in a way that was obscene, listing all the disgusting things he was going to do to her.
Spittle was flying out of his mouth. His face was red and he looked positively mad, like a very large child having a tantrum.
Then, just when I thought he would hit me, he grabbed the pistol from his pocket and pointed it at me…
“If he had just shut his mouth, I would probably have seen the danger then and let him go. I could have summoned the help of the servants and neighboring folk to protect her. I know that now. But he said…he said…” His breath caught.
Even now, he could not repeat it. “It was as if something snapped inside me. I have heard people say they see red when they are angry. I never understood it before. I am not really a-a worldly man. But I saw it that day, a bright, angry scarlet. I didn’t even think about it.
I charged him and snatched the gun from him.
“I took him by complete surprise. He gawped at me with his mouth open. And I thought I had won. I had saved the day with a courage I didn’t know I possessed.”
A hoarse, bitter laugh escaped him. “I saved her. But I didn’t save him. Or me.”
“What happened?” Harris asked.
“He started talking again, saying I could no more shoot him than a rabbit, that he would just toddle up to the hall and—well, more of what he would do to Mrs. Jenkins. I was almost inured by then, so all might have well if he had not…”
“What?” Mrs. Grey prompted him.
“Laughed at me,” Ellis whispered. “Again. Even now, when I held his own gun, trained on him, he spouted obscenity and laughed at me, perfectly sure of my inability to stop him doing exactly as he pleased.”
“What did you do?” Harris asked.
“I stopped him,” Ellis said. “I shot him through the heart—more by luck than skill, for I didn’t even know if the pistol was loaded—but he fell back against the gig, quite dead.
I hauled him the rest of the way inside and drove him down through the wood to the canal.
No one was about, so I just dragged him out of the gig, put some stones in his pockets to weigh him down, and pushed him into the water.
Then I drove home. I wasn’t proud of it.
But I wasn’t sorry. I’m still not. Except for the Harveys’ grief. I regret that.”
Harvey was holding his head in his hands. Ellis was glad not to see his face.
He frowned into the silence. “And I think…I regret not confessing immediately. I shoved him in the canal while still under the influence of that red rage. But afterward, when it faded, I should have confessed. Instead, I talked myself into believing I was such a good man that I had done God’s work and deserved the second chance to look after the people I had wronged.
I never realized before the power of man’s self-deception. ”
He stood up and gazed at Harvey’s bent head. “I shall plead guilty. There need be no trial.” He swung on Grey. “One thing…how did you come to suspect me?”
“We thought it was someone protecting Mrs. Jenkins,” he said calmly.
“But it wasn’t Everett or Owens, and we hadn’t considered you.
Once we did, everything fell into place.
Your gig made the wheel tracks in the wood.
You hadn’t been in Channing as you said.
And we found Percy’s pistol locked in your desk drawer. ”
Ellis nodded. “I’m sorry it took so long that you were shot. I didn’t foresee that either.” He turned and gave Constance a bow that was probably incongruous. “Goodbye, Mrs. Grey.”
She inclined her head slightly, a courtesy he appreciated. He might have fallen short as a human being, and most definitely as a clergyman, but in that one action, she gave him the faintest hope. Which made it easier to bear that Harvey would not look at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said hollowly on his way out of the door, but he had no way of knowing if Harvey even heard.
*
“I cannot tell her this,” Harvey whispered. “Please, don’t repeat Thomas’s words to my wife.”
It was interesting, Constance thought, that he didn’t call them accusations. He knew in his heart that they were true. “I think you might find she already guesses the truth. It is part of her unhappiness.”
Harvey shook his head in clear anguish. “Why was I so blind? If I had only allowed myself to look, perhaps I could have changed his behavior years ago, when he was young enough… Thomas was right about our capacity for self-deception. But no one complained of him.”
Perhaps not, but the signs were there. The massive debts that were never donations to charity, the betrothal to Lady Phoebe Styles that never happened.
The tragedy—one of the tragedies—was, Constance thought, recalling that unfinished letter to her in Percy’s desk, that she might have been the one person who could have changed his behavior.
Maybe…
“Did we rear a monster?” Harvey asked.
Solomon placed a hand on his shoulder. “No. He was a flawed man, but we all are. You can still mourn him. He didn’t deserve to die.”
An indulgent world, a conspiracy of shame and silence… Until those things changed, there would always be Percys, and the even greater tragedies that grew out of them. I hate this case.
And yet she felt duty bound to stay.
Over Harvey’s bowed head, she met Solomon’s searching gaze. Was he thinking how to raise their own son or daughter? The seemingly impossible balance between discipline and freedom of expression…
Harvey straightened abruptly. “I must return to our guests. I have duties.”
He walked out of the room, upright and determined.
Constance didn’t even realize her hand was on her abdomen until Solomon gently removed it and placed it on his arm.
As one, they followed Harvey out, but instead of returning to the drawing room and the funeral guests, Solomon urged her toward the stairs.
She gave in without a fight. The Harveys had older and better friends to be with right now.
And they were learning to lean on each other again.
In the coming months and years, they would need that.
Entering their room, Solomon went straight to the bed and pulled their trunk from beneath it. He opened it, then went to the wardrobe and began pulling out clothes.
“What are you doing?” Constance asked.
“Packing. Feel free to help.”
“You want to leave now?” she said incredulously. “With a head wound? I will not allow you to be rattled all the way to London at such a time! I was thinking we might travel by canal.”
“Smooth,” Solomon allowed. “But it would take days. And Juliet is getting married tomorrow.”
Constance stared at him, conflicting desires and duties falling over each other in her mind until what stood out was a childish, almost desperate desire to be with her mother. She walked up to Solomon and wrapped her arms around him. When he bent toward her, she rested her forehead against his.
“I do love you, Solomon Grey.”
“As I love you, Constance Silver.”
“Grey. Constance Grey.”
*
David arrived at Dare Hall in the midst of a sudden downpour. He took off his dripping hat and looked hopefully at the maid, who seemed more inclined to laugh at him than to forbid him entry.
“Is she at home?” he asked ruefully.
“I’ll inquire,” the maid said, leaving him kicking his squelching heels in the hall.
He didn’t blame her. Not only was a single male visitor hazardous to Adelaide’s reputation, but one so wet he would spoil her furniture…
“Mrs. Jenkins will see you,” the maid said, openly grinning now.
At the end of the hall, he could see another maid and a child who might have been the boot boy, peering around the baize door and grinning.