It was dim in the corridor, the gaslamps on very low, only sufficient to guide anyone who might wish to get up for any personal reason. She knocked on Justine’s door once, sharply, then without waiting for a reply, went in.
It was in darkness and complete silence.
“Justine,” she said in a soft voice, but well above a whisper.
There was a faint sound of movement, then a crinkle of bedclothes.
“Who is it?” Justine’s voice was tight, afraid.
“It’s Charlotte. Please turn up the light. I can’t see where it is.”
“Charlotte?” There was a moment’s silence, then more movement and the light came on.
Charlotte could see Justine sitting up in bed, but wide awake, her ink-black hair over her shoulders and a look of anxiety and puzzlement in her face.
“Has something happened?” she said quietly. “Something more?”
Charlotte came over and sat on the end of the bed. She must learn the truth from Justine, but she could think of no subterfuge with which to trick her in any way, nor did she want to trick her.
“Not really,” she said, making herself comfortable. “But we know more than we did at dinnertime, although we knew quite a lot then.”
Justine’s face reflected no emotion except relief that no further disaster had happened.
“Do you? Do you know who killed Mr. McGinley yet?”
“No.” Charlotte smiled in sad irony. “But we know who did not kill Mr. Greville ….”
“We already know who did not,” Justine said, still keeping a suitably good temper in the circumstances. “Mr. O’Day and Mr. McGinley, and the valet Hennessey, if you had considered him. I hope you would know it was not Mrs. Greville, or Piers, but I suppose you cannot take that for granted. Is that what you have come to say … that it was not Mrs. Greville?” She put her hand on the covers as if to get out.
Charlotte leaned forward and stopped her.
“I don’t know whether it was Mrs. Greville or not.” She met Justine’s dark eyes levelly. “But I should think it unlikely, although she might very well know who did. It was someone very skilled, very professional at killing.” She watched Justine closely, her eyes, her movement. “It was done with one very accurate blow.”
Justine sat absolutely motionless, but she could not keep the start of shock from her eyes. The instant after came a shadow of fear as she wondered how much Charlotte knew, what she had seen in her face. Then it was gone again.
“Was it?” she asked, her voice very nearly steady. Any huskiness in it could easily be attributed to the unpleasantness of the subject and the fact that she had been awoken from the first deep sleep of the night.
“Yes. His neck was broken.”
This time the surprise was accompanied by bewilderment, and for all her iron will and practiced composure she could not hide it. She masked it the instant she saw the recognition in Charlotte’s eyes. She shuddered in revulsion.
“How horrible!”
“It is cold-blooded,” Charlotte agreed. She clenched her hands in her lap where Justine could not see them. “Less understandable than the person who came in after that, with a maid’s cap on and a maid’s dress over her own, and walked behind him with ajar of bath salts in her hand and hit him over the back of the head, then, believing him senseless from the blow, pushed him under the water and held him there.”
Justine was white. She grasped the sheets as if they kept her afloat from drowning.
“Did … somebody … do that?”
“Yes.” Charlotte kept all doubt out of her voice.
“How …” Justine swallowed in spite of her effort at control. “How do you … know that?”
“She was seen. At least her shoes were seen.” Charlotte smiled very slightly, not a smile of triumph or blame. “Blue fabric slippers, stitched on the sides, with blue heels. Not a maid’s shoes. You wore them today at luncheon, with your muslin dress.”
This time Justine made no pretense. She would not lose her dignity so far as to continue to fight when the battle was over.
“Why?” Charlotte asked. “You must have had a very powerful reason.”
Justine looked drained, as if the life had ceased inside her. In a few words Charlotte had ended everything she had longed for and worked for, and almost had within her grasp. There seemed nothing she could say which would alter or redeem even a portion of the loss. There was no anger in her, only resignation in the face of absolute disaster.
Charlotte waited.
Justine began in a low, quiet voice, not looking at Charlotte, but down at the embroidered edge of the linen sheet under her fingers.
“My mother was a maidservant who married a Spanish sailor. He died when I was very young. He was lost at sea. She was left with no money and a small child to bring up. Because she had married a foreigner, against her family’s wishes, they would have nothing to do with her. She took in laundry and mending, but it barely kept us alive. She didn’t marry again.”
She smiled a curious, half-amused smile. “I was never beautiful. I was too dark. They used to call me names when I was a child: gypsy, dago, and worse. And make fun of my nose. But as I got older I had a kind of grace, I was different, and it interested some people … especially men. I learned how to be charming, how to awaken interest and to sustain it. I …” She kept her eyes studiously away from Charlotte’s. “I learned how to flatter a man and make him happy.” She did not specify in what way she meant.
Charlotte believed she understood.
“And Ainsley Greville was among them?”
Justine jerked her head up, her eyes bright and angry.
“He was the only one! But when you are desperate, and it is your way of surviving, you can’t pick and choose. You take who has the money, and doesn’t knock you around or carry disease, at least that you can see. Do you think I liked it?” She was defiant, as if Charlotte were judging her.
“You poor soul,” Charlotte said, slightly sarcastically.
Rage blazed in Justine’s eyes for an instant as they sat staring at each other. It never crossed Charlotte’s mind that she was in any danger. She had in all practical senses forgotten that Justine had only a few days ago attempted to murder a man. She had failed only because he was already dead. She had thought until ten minutes before that she had succeeded.
Charlotte looked at the gorgeous embroidered lace on Justine’s nightgown. It was immeasurably prettier than her own, and more expensive.
“I like your nightgown,” she remarked dryly.
Justine blushed.
Again they sat in silence for several moments.
Justine looked up. “All right … I did it to survive, to begin with. Then I learned to like the luxuries I could afford. Once you’ve been poor, really hungry and cold, you never feel safe enough. You always know it can happen again tomorrow. I was always thinking I’d give it up, do something respectable. It just … never seemed the right time.”
“So why murder Ainsley Greville? Did you hate him so much? Why?”
“No, I didn’t hate that much!” Justine said angrily, contempt hot in her black eyes. “Yes, I hated him, because he despised me just as he despised all women,” she said viciously. “Except when he couldn’t be bothered with us at all. Yes, there was a way in which he was typical of all the men who use women and loathe them at the same time. But I killed him because he would have told Piers what I am—what I was ….”
“Does that matter?” Charlotte did not ask as a challenge this time, simply a question.
Justine closed her eyes. “Yes … it mattered more than anything else in the world. I love him … not just to get out of being a—a whore!” She made herself say the word, and her face showed that it was like stabbing herself. “I love him because he is kind and funny and generous. He has hopes and fears I can understand, dreams I can share, and the courage to seek them. And he loves me … most of all, he loves me.” Her voice was strained so tight it cracked with her effort to keep control. “Can you imagine what it will do to him if he hears? Can you see the scene … Ainsley laughing at him, telling him his precious betrothed was his father’s whore? And he would have enjoyed that. He could be very cruel.”