Food For The Gallows (The Underwood Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

Verity giggled appreciatively, “Poor Cadmus. For a man who does not suffer fools gladly, you are having to spend a great deal of time with the biggest one of all.”

“Quite!” he retorted, and climbed into bed beside her, “This has been planned meticulously, Verity, and infuriatingly, I am being manipulated into just the moves the real culprit had intended.”

“What do you mean?”

“Always I am driven back to the same thing. Instead of being allowed to find out who killed Josie, I keep having to prove that Dunstable did not. It merely clouds the issue, as whoever plotted it knew it would. He or she is gambling on the fact that people always jump to the most obvious solution – in this case that Oliver killed his elderly wife, because he wanted her money, had grown tired of her, or wanted to marry his mistress – any reason would do. But even if there was someone on hand, such as myself, who would question these assumptions, then carefully laid traps along the way continually bring the issue back to proving Dunstable’s innocence and
not
another’s guilt.”

“Then you think Miss Marsh’s pregnancy was known to the real murderer?”

“Oh yes. I imagine the hapless Dunstable has been followed and observed for months, and has played quite happily into the hands of a ruthless killer. This moment has been chosen carefully, because all the pieces were in place. Dunstable has practically hanged himself. I should not be at all surprised to find he had taken the kindly advice of some well wisher who told him where to buy tansy oil and what uses to put it to. The man walks around with his head in the clouds. He married Josie without a moment’s thought as to what his future might be, tied to an old and sick woman, he began his affair in the same casual manner, not thinking how he could cope should she become pregnant, and he did not even have the sense to keep his private life, private.”

“What are we to do about it?”

“I’m going to break out of this cycle, if it is the last thing I do. I’m tired of dancing to another’s tune. Gratten is not helping matters, suspecting Dunstable and forcing me to keep bailing the boy out. I am going to see him tomorrow, then I am going to speak to Mrs. Gedney – and the devil fly away with her husband it he tries to stop me.”

“Cadmus, I worry about your motives.”

He frowned at her, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She almost quailed beneath the aggression in his voice, but bravely continued,

“You seem so very sure Dunstable is innocent, but I wonder if your determination to clear his name stems not from your conviction of his innocence, but the conviction that you, having made known your opinion, cannot possibly admit to being wrong. You fly in the face of all the evidence with no more to back you than your own intuition…” Now her voice did trail away, for the scowl had grown black as night and she knew his was furiously angry with her.

“Thank you for that touching speech of support, dear wife.”

Her voice trembled, but she refused to be cowed, “I will be supportive, Cadmus, when I think you are right, but I cannot quash my own opinions just because they do not tally with yours. If you wanted a compliant wife, you should have chosen one without a mind of her own.”

The frown lifted as swiftly as it had descended, “Damn your principles, Verity. I don’t think I will ever grow accustomed to having someone around me who is prepared to disagree. The position of tutor to a gaggle of boys was much more suited to my overbearing personality Very well, I shall prove to you, too, that though Dunstable is an idiot, he is not a murderer.”

“I’m not saying I think him guilty, I just don’t have your confidence in his innocence.”

“I accept your challenge, my dear. Dunstable shall be left without a stain on his character.”

“He could never be that, Cadmus, after all he has done,” she countered reasonably, “But I shall look forward to his being delivered from the gallows by your hand.”

*

CHAPTER TWELVE

(“Ab Asino Lanam” – Literally “Wool from an ass” – Anyone who attempts the impossible is doomed to failure)

It was quiet and cool in the church and with a feeling of relief and consolation; Gilbert sank to his knees at the altar rail and gave himself up to contemplation and peace. The vicarage was daily filling with more and more people and the vicar was finding it increasingly difficult to get time alone for the renewal of his inner spirit. The church was his last refuge and one where he knew his brother would not follow. Underwood avoided religion assiduously, unless forced.

Gil had intended to pray but he found his mind wandering. The colours which were cast upon the stone floor by the sun-filled stain-glass windows swam before his unfocused gaze. Never, in the past, had he felt that God was not with him when he entered a church, but he experienced nothing but emptiness and abandonment today. The knuckles of his intertwined fingers grew white and he unconsciously clenched his muscles. His face lost its customary calmness, and deep furrows marred his brow as he sank his head into his hands, “Oh God!” he groaned aloud, the words wrenched from him in anguish.

By the time he rose his knees ached with long contact with the cold floor and there was a determined set to his mouth which belied the misery in his eyes. He had struggled with his feelings for over an hour and had left his church decided upon a course of action.

The object of his deliberations was seated upon the stone bench set within the thick walls of the porch and she smiled tremulously when she saw him. There was no answering smile on his lips, but a slight tremble in his hand as he pulled the great oak door closed behind him, “Mrs. Pennington, I did not expect to see you here.”

“Do I intrude upon your time?” she asked softly. He quickly realized he sounded unfriendly and forced himself to be more solicitous, “Oh course not. Would you care to look around the church?”

“Some other time perhaps.”

“Very well. Where is Alistair?”

“Some of the elderly ladies at the Pump-rooms insisted that I leave him in their charge and get a little air. They suggested I looked a little tired and…”

The way she trailed off without finishing the sentence made him glance sharply at her and he saw that she did indeed look in need of a respite from her nursing duties. She was terribly pale and looked even more unhappy than when he had first beheld her.

“Can I offer you some tea? It is only a step to the vicarage.”

“I should like that very much, but do you think you could sit here with me for a moment first? I have something I would like to say to you.”

“Certainly,” his words held no hint of the reluctance he felt. Suddenly he wanted nothing less than to sit beside her, in his church porch, listening to whatever she had to say. He had the uncomfortable notion he was not going to enjoy the conversation.

He sat, but left as wide a gap between them as it was possible to do. She watched him, her eyes widening slightly when she noticed his distance and his discomfiture.

“Rev. Underwood, I must ask, have I offended you in some way?”

His startled glance flew to her face, then dropped immediately away, “Great Heavens! Of course not. What on earth gave you any such idea?”

“I… I noticed you seemed to be avoiding me. When you first made yourself known to Alistair and myself, I thought you wanted to offer the hand of friendship, but since then you have barely spoken to us, and when you do, you seem cold and distant – oh dear! I sound very forward and strange, but I was so alone and I felt instinctively you were a kind man…” she stopped abruptly, and turning her face away from him she tried again to explain, stumbling over her words, “Oh, what a fool I am making of myself. Pray excuse me, I was wrong to do this … I shall leave you alone…” she rose to leave but he reached out and caught her hand, “Please don’t go, Mrs. Pennington. This whole sorry mess is my fault and you do deserve an explanation.”

Her shoulders shook, “I cannot stay here now. Let me compose myself. I can’t bear for you to see me cry.”

Impetuously he stood and grasped her shoulders, twisting her so that she was forced to face him, “I have merited the pain of witnessing your tears, my dear, since I am the cause of them. Can you forgive me?”

She began to sob in the heart-broken, unstoppable way children have and he pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder, until he felt the warmth of her body seeping though his coat and he knew he was lost forever.

Little use now to tell himself a love affair with her was impossible; pointless indeed to hope that the first feelings he had for her would shrivel and die without nourishment. Gil had found the one woman in the world he could love and nothing was ever going to sway him. The brotherly fondness he had for Verity was nothing when compared to the passion which swept through his veins now. Holding his sister-in-law in his arms had filled him with nothing but sympathy for her plight; this holding of Catherine told him what he had been missing all his life.

He waited, his heart and his arms full for the first time in his existence, for her weeping to subside, then he released her and drew her back down onto the seat, retaining his hold on one small hand, “Now it is my turn to risk making a fool of myself,” he told her gently, “You are quite correct in assuming I have been avoiding you. I have. The reason is simple; you are a Catholic.”

“Oh!” She looked into his eyes, a spark of anger in her own, “I had not thought to hear such bigotry from you, sir! Does my religion really bar a friendship between us?”

“Not friendship, no. But I had not known you above five minutes when I realized I could never feel mere friendship for you. Catherine, you are the woman I want to marry – but I cannot!”

She gasped in shock, her eyes searching his face as though for confirmation that he really had spoken these words, “I had not thought anything of the kind – I cannot believe it – you scarcely know me.”

He smiled wryly, aware that he had spoken too soon and too candidly, but not really caring very much, “I know you must think me odd, if not worse! But I have nothing to lose by not being perfectly honest. Those being my feelings, you can hardly blame me for attempting to cut the connection between us. I hoped to spare myself further misery, and scarcely dared hope that you too might suffer some unhappiness at our parting. In short, I thought if I did not see you, I would swiftly forget you, but it was a vain hope.”

“I don’t know what to say to you,” she whispered hoarsely.

“There is nothing to say. Even supposing you came to feel as I do, there can be no future for us together. A vicar of the Church of England can no more have a Catholic wife than can the King.”

She looked down at her hands, lying so small and serene in his. How strange that they should be so still, when inside she was a swirling mass of confused thoughts and emotions. She tried to crystallize at least one of those thoughts into a question,

“Do you want Alistair and I to leave Hanbury?”

“Certainly not! Why should you be inconvenienced merely because the vicar of Hanbury is a romantic fool?”

“Then what? I have no desire to make things difficult for you.”

“You will not. I will forget this conversation ever took place and you must do the same. Let me be of assistance to you and your son for as long as your visit lasts, then let us part as friends. Any consequences must be borne by me.”

Tears welled into her eyes again; “I can’t let you do that…”

“You can and you must. I had no right to burden you with this unasked for confession and the only way I can atone is to help you with Alistair.”

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully, “May I think about it?”

“Of course. Now, will you take tea with me?”

“No… I… Not today. I want to go home.”

He kissed her hand then watched her as she walked away between the gravestones, her footsteps light and swift, barely restraining herself from breaking into a run. It was painful to Gil to imagine she could not wait to be out of his society, and he rose wearily and stepped out into the sunlight, blinking a little after the dark shadowiness of the porch. Only God knew what was going to happen next, but he, at least, had ceased to struggle against his fate.

*

Verity and Underwood were fortunate enough to find Mrs. Gedney at home, and without the company of her husband. That she was not pleased to see them was painfully evident, though she had no choice but to entertain them since the housemaid showed them straight in to her instead of first enquiring if she were at home to visitors.

Her answers to Underwood’s questions gave every appearance of having been meticulously rehearsed, but he persevered hoping to betray her into an indiscretion.

“I understand your husband and your mother were not exactly boon companions?”

“Not many men do have close relationships with their mother-in-law. It is not a connection which engenders affection, is it? And I must say I deeply resent your intrusion into my affairs. My family is no concern of yours,” was the tart reply.

“That would usually be the case – and under normal circumstances nothing would prevail upon me to plumb the murky depths of your relationships…”

“
Murky depths?
How dare you! Leave my house at once. I will not sit here and be insulted.”

Verity intercepted hastily, throwing a warning glance in her spouse’s direction, for he was showing his animosity a little too plainly, “We beg your pardon, Mrs. Gedney. My husband spoke thoughtlessly. You must take his eagerness to solve your mother’s murder as his excuse.”

“Your husband’s rudeness is only part of my complaint, Mrs. Underwood. Why are you wasting everyone’s time, asking pointless questions, annoying and badgering people, when it is obvious to everyone else in Hanbury that my mother’s worthless husband is the culprit?”

“That may very well be the truth,” said Verity, with sweet reason, and completely ignoring Underwood’s sharp intake of breath – the only indication he gave that he was extremely unhappy with the way the conversation was progressing, “But surely you owe it to your mother to be sure. The last thing you must desire is for Dunstable to be taken to court, then released on the strength of a vital piece of evidence which had been carelessly overlooked. Don’t forget, there is only one chance to convict him. If he is found not guilty, he cannot be tried twice for the same crime. You and Mr. Gedney seem to be of the opinion that we are trying to prove your stepfather innocent – nothing could be further from the truth. We are trying to make sure that when he is arrested for your mother’s murder, there will be no possibility of any error being made.”

Underwood wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

Mrs. Gedney visibly relaxed, she even forced a small smile to her lips, “My dear Mrs. Underwood, I wish you had been more clear in your intentions from the beginning. None of this ill-feeling need ever have occurred. Naturally, under those circumstances, my husband and I will endeavour to give you every assistance.”

Having smoothed the path for him, Verity now stepped aside and allowed Underwood to resume his questioning, which he did with rather less vitriol than he had previously displayed, “Could you tell me, Mrs. Gedney, how you knew it was tansy which had killed your mother?”

“I smelled it in the glass she had been drinking from.”

“You are familiar enough with the odour to recognize it?”

Her sallow skin reddened slightly, “Is it a crime to be familiar with such things? Surely we no longer live in an age when a knowledge of herbs proclaims witchcraft?” He wondered why she was being so defensive. The question was innocuous enough.

“Not at all,” he said soothingly, “I merely wondered. Do you possess such knowledge?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair; “I possess some slight expertise. In the first months of my daughter’s life, when her problems became evident, I passed through the ridiculous stage of trying various remedies and treatments, hoping to cure her of her afflictions. I have now only to feel ashamed that I was so foolish. I should have listened to my husband and not wasted time, effort and money on those charlatans and tricksters!”

“Nothing which gives us hope is ever foolish or a waste of time, Mrs. Gedney,” intercepted Verity quietly, knowing that should her baby be born in any way afflicted, she would do exactly the same thing.

“Perhaps not, but as my husband often said, there were better things upon which we could have spent the money.”

Gambling and womanising, presumably, thought Underwood cynically – and a trifle unfairly, for though he had heard many bad reports of Gedney, philandering had not actually been one of them.

As though the thought of him had conjured him from the depths of hell, Gedney chose that precise moment to walk into the room. He had evidently been told of their presence for he spoke with a false heartiness which did nothing to hide his fury, “Well, my dear, I see we have visitors. What nonsense have you been talking?”

She appeared very nervous, twisting her hands and glancing apprehensively towards him, “Mr. and Mrs. Underwood were just explaining about Oliver, Adolphus. It seems we have been misjudging them.”