‘Well, I must be going along,’ Oswald said. ‘I’m due in court this afternoon.’ He bent and kissed Celia’s cheek. ‘Don’t let Roderick Jeavons rile you, my dear. If he weren’t such a good doctor, and if he hadn’t tended our family for so long, I’d be tempted to find another physician.’
‘No, no! Don’t do that,’ Celia begged him quickly. ‘He doesn’t disturb me.’
Her half-brother patted her shoulder. ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘The Godsloves have never been dependent upon other people. We know how to look after our own.’ He smiled fleetingly in my wife’s direction at the same time glancing warningly at me. Adela had obviously been accepted as one of the family, however remote the connection, and it was implied that I should do well to remember that fact or I might find myself asked to leave.
I gave a brief inclination of my head and watched Oswald march briskly out of the door. Then I turned to Adela.
‘Shall we go and unpack,’ I asked, ‘as Clemency suggested?’
Adela’s bedchamber was a large and very chilly room at one side of the house and reached by what seemed to me to be innumerable corridors and small flights of stairs, going both up and down.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ she laughed when I complained that I should never be able to find my way around such a rambling, topsy-turvy building. ‘It’s a very old house and I fancy bits have been added on as its former occupants decided to expand. That little room opening off this one — ’ she nodded towards a door in one corner — ‘is where the boys sleep. Elizabeth can share it with them.’
I agreed abstractedly. I was not much interested in the domestic arrangements except to notice with satisfaction that the adjacent room had a bolt on our side of the door, which could, and would, be employed in the interests of privacy. I lounged on the great four-poster bed, with its faded hangings depicting the story of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus, and watched while my wife unpacked the linen sack I had brought with me, shaking out the clothes with exclamations of horror at the way they had been crammed in altogether, without being properly folded.
‘I’ll never get the creases out of this,’ she said, holding up one of Elizabeth’s gowns. She dived further down. ‘Mmm. I see you’ve brought your good new clothes with you.’ She looked suspicious. ‘Was there any particular reason?’
I shook my head impatiently. ‘I just took everything. Never mind that.’ I raised myself on my elbows. ‘Adela, what is there between Celia and the doctor? I’d swear there’s something. She seems to me to be most uneasy in his presence.’
‘Oh, there’s no great secret, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ my wife replied, clucking disparagingly over the state of Elizabeth’s shifts. ‘Clemency told me that some ten years ago, after the death of his first wife, Roderick Jeavons wanted to marry Celia. She must have been in her middle twenties then and very pretty. He’s a great deal older, but I imagine he was always a handsome man. He still is.’ There was a gleam in Adela’s eyes that I didn’t much care for, but I let it pass. ‘Celia,’ she went on, ‘seems to have been equally attracted to him and, without consulting the rest of the family, agreed to wed him.’
‘And when the others found out?’
Adela sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Well, you can imagine! You’ve seen for yourself how they are. Clemency, of course, said no more than that Celia had later changed her mind having realized she had made a mistake. But I don’t suppose for a single moment that that is the real story. My guess would be that she was overwhelmed by the others’ tears and reproaches. Told she was breaking up the family. How would they manage without her? And so on. Maybe there were even threats — or implied threats — that she would be cast off completely; that they would never see or speak to her again.’
‘But surely,’ I protested, ‘a woman in love wouldn’t be swayed by that. A normal woman of twenty-odd must want a home of her own and children.’
‘Not necessarily,’ my wife answered abruptly, getting off the bed and turning the linen sack inside out to make sure that nothing had been overlooked. ‘Some women might prefer their freedom.’ She hurried on before I had time to digest this cryptic utterance. ‘As I said just now, you must have noticed for yourself, even in this short time, how matters stand in this family. They mean everything to one another. There’s something unnatural about it. If I were less charitable, I’d say that Celia, and indeed Clemency, are more than a little in love with Oswald. And from what I have gathered from Arbella, Charity was worse than either of them. Oswald’s likes, dislikes, preferences were — still are for that matter — the hub on which the whole house turned. Turns.’
I lowered myself back against the pillows, my arms folded behind my head, wondering what I had let myself in for. The Arbour seemed to be a seething cauldron of suppressed emotions, largely incestuous. Arbella Rokeswood was plainly in love with Oswald, who was probably secretly in love with his half-sister, although that, I guessed, was something he would never admit, even to himself. And what of Clemency, Sybilla, and Charity who had died? There was more, surely, than sibling affection between them. I sighed. I felt I ought to insist on taking Adela and the children home at once, away from this unwholesome atmosphere. But, in spite of myself, my interest had been aroused, as well as an instinct that the Godsloves might be right in thinking that they could have an enemy bent on their extinction. Besides which, there was Reynold Makepeace to avenge.
Reynold. How had such a plain, straightforward, ordinary man fitted into this rarefied atmosphere? And why had he never mentioned to me that he had lived near Bristol, near enough for him, surely, to have known the city reasonably well? I must see and talk to his brother, the apothecary. Also, I must seek out the priest, Father Berowne, and make enquiries at the Bishop’s Gate. Someone there could have seen or heard something suspicious relating to the attempt on Sybilla’s life. Moreover, there were two potential avengers in the family’s midst; the housekeeper, whose plan might be to remove Oswald’s siblings one by one until he alone remained, bereft of all those he held dear and ready to throw himself into the comfort of Arbella’s embrace. Or there was the physician with a similar scheme, hoping that once Celia was alone, and free of the influence of the rest, she would be glad to marry him. Or, yet again, Roderick Jeavons could simply be out for vengeance on the lot of them, Celia included.
Adela paused in her task of carefully placing my clothes in a cedar wood chest which stood against one wall.
‘You’re looking broody,’ she said. But when I told her my thoughts, she was aghast. ‘You can’t possibly suspect Arbella or the doctor,’ she protested.
‘Why not? They both have sound reasons for murder.’
‘Because. . Because you just can’t,’ she said, woman’s logic taking over from common sense. ‘They’re nice people.’
‘And have nice people never been known to commit a crime?’ I asked in exasperation. ‘Some very good people have killed in their time, and no doubt will do so again.’ (For some reason or other I suddenly found myself thinking of Duke Richard, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out why.)
‘I won’t listen to such talk,’ my wife said firmly, closing the chest with a bang. ‘The killer, as Clemency says, is far more likely to be someone who has a grudge against Oswald. Surely that makes more sense, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No,’ I answered bluntly, meeting her outraged glance steadily. ‘In my experience, felons, once they’ve been caught and sentenced, don’t waste their energies on thoughts of revenge. Most have enough to do just surviving in prison. Furthermore, a lot of them have an innate sense of justice that acknowledges the fact that they have done wrong and are being punished.’
Adela came and sat on the edge of the bed for a second time. ‘And what of those who don’t believe they have done wrong — or those who really are innocent — and are being unjustly treated?’