“It isn’t finished.” Charlotte turned the key in the lock. “There’s still the real Cerise, and whoever murdered your husband. I don’t think that was Loretta. I think it was you— and Loretta knew it. She protected you because of her own blackmailing of Garrard, even though you killed her son. That’s why you hated each other, and yet neither of you could afford to betray the other!”
“How—I ...” Veronica shook her head slowly, incredulous.
“There’s no purpose in denying it.” Charlotte could not afford pity now. This was Cerise; she might not be a spy after all, but she was a ruthless, passionate woman, and a murderess. “Was it to marry Julian? Did you get tired of Robert and murder him, so you could marry Julian?”
“No!” Veronica was so ashen Charlotte was half afraid she was going to faint. And yet she was Cerise—Cerise with the flair, the panache, the courage.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot believe you.”
“I am not Cerise!” Veronica put her hands over her face and turned away, crumpling in a heap onto the sofa. “Oh God! I suppose I’d better tell you the truth. It isn’t what you think at all!”
Charlotte sat carefully on the edge of a chair, waiting.
“I loved Robert. You’ll never believe how much, not now. But when we were married, I thought I had everything a woman could want. He was—he was so handsome, so charming and sensitive. He seemed to understand me. He was a companion, more than any other man I’d ever known. I—I loved him so much.” She closed her eyes, but the tears seeped through, and she gulped.
In spite of herself Charlotte was filled with pity. She knew what it was to love so much your whole world was filled with it. She, too, had suffered loneliness.
“Go on,” she said softly. “What about Cerise?”
Veronica made an intense effort, her body shaking, her voice husky as if the words cut her.
“Robert grew—cool towards me. I—” She swallowed and her voice sank to a whisper. “He became—uninterested in the—the marriage bed. At first I thought it was me, that I didn’t please him. I did everything I could, but nothing ...” She took a moment to control herself, then struggled on. “It was then I began to think there might be someone else.” She stopped, the pain of memory too strong for her.
Charlotte waited. Instinct made her want to rush forward, put her arms round Veronica and hold her, enfold the pain and ease it, touch her so she was not alone. But she knew she must not, not yet.
At last Veronica mastered herself. “I thought there must be another woman. I found a kerchief in the library. It was a bright cerise color, vivid, vibrant. I knew it wasn’t mine, or Loretta’s. Then a week later I found a ribbon, then a silk rose—all that dreadful color. Robert spent a lot of time away from home; I thought it had to do with his career. I could accept that; we all have to. Women, I mean.”
“You found her?” Charlotte said very quietly.
Veronica drew a deep breath and let it out with a shuddering sigh.
“Yes, I—I saw her, very briefly—right here in my own home. Just the back of her as she left through the front door. She was so—so graceful! I saw her a second time, at a theater I shouldn’t have been at. I only saw her at a distance across the balcony. When I got there she was gone.” She stopped again.
Charlotte believed the story in spite of herself; the wound was too real to be painted. The memory still hurt Veronica with a raw and twisting pain.
“Go on,” Charlotte prompted, this time more gently. “Did you find her?”
“I found one of her stockings.” Veronica’s voice was thick with the agony of reliving it. “In Robert’s bedroom. It was so ... I wept all that night. I thought I should never feel worse in my life.” She gave a little choking sound, half laugh, half sob. “That’s what I thought then! Until the night I knew Cerise was in the house. Something woke me. It was after midnight and I heard a footstep on the landing. I got up and saw her come out of Robert’s bedroom and go downstairs. I followed her. She must have heard me and slipped into the library. I—” She stopped again; her voice died away, thick with tears.
“I went in too. I faced her,” she managed after a time. “She was—beautiful. I swear she was.” She turned and looked up at Charlotte, her face smudged, blurred with misery and defeat. “She was so . . . elegant. I faced her, accused her of having an affair with Robert. She started to laugh. She stood there in the library in the middle of the night and laughed at me as if she would never stop. I was so furious I picked up the bronze horse from the desk and threw it at her. It hit her on the side of the head and she fell. I stood still for a moment, then I went over to her, but she didn’t move. I waited a moment and still she lay there. I felt for her pulse, listened for her breath—nothing! She was dead. Then I looked at her . . . more closely.” Her face was ashen; Charlotte had never seen anyone look so exhausted. Her voice was so low it was barely audible. “I touched her hair—and it came away in my hand. It was a wig. It wasn’t till that moment that I realized who it was. It was Robert himself—dressed as a woman! Robert was Cerise!” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to them. “That was why Loretta blackmailed Garrard. He was in love with Robert, and he knew all the time who he was. That’s why she protected me. She hated me for it, but she couldn’t bear to have the world know her beloved son was a transvestite.
“After I knew he was dead I went upstairs. I think I was too shocked then even to weep; that came later. I went to Loretta and told her, and she came down with me. I didn’t even think of lying then. We stood there in the study, she and I, and stared at Robert lying on the floor in that terrible dress, and the wig beside him. There was rouge on his face, and powder. He was beautiful, that was the most obscene thing about it!” Weeping overtook her, and without thinking this time Charlotte knelt beside her and put her arms round the thin, aching shoulders.
“And you and Loretta changed his clothes, dressed him in his own nightshirt and robe and destroyed the cerise dress and wig, and then broke the library window?” she concluded; she knew this was what must have taken place. “Where are the things that were supposed to be stolen?”
But Veronica was sobbing too deeply to tell her. Three years of fear and pain had broken at last, and she needed to weep till she had no strength left, no emotion.
Charlotte held her and waited. It hardly mattered where those few objects were. Probably in the attics. They had not been sold, that much Pitt had made sure of.
The rest of the house must be busy with private tragedies: Piers with Loretta and the police, poor man; whatever disillusion he had suffered in the years since the first bloom of his marriage, no loneliness of closed doors of the heart could have prepared him for this. Felix would be smarting from the newly opened wound of his love for Harriet. It was quite hopeless; divorce would ruin all of them and no happiness could lie that way; and now Sonia had been forced to see it, understand it, and know that others saw it also. She could no longer hide her pain behind pretended blindness. Or perhaps it had been real—maybe she had known nothing. And Aunt Adeline would grieve for them all.
Julian would be far too busy with his own family’s despair to disturb Charlotte and Veronica now. He would be only too grateful to leave ‘Miss Barnaby’ to comfort his fiancée in what he supposed was no more than shock.
Minutes went by, stretching in the silent room. Charlotte had no idea how long it was until Veronica finally exhausted herself and sat up, her face a travesty of its former loveliness.
Charlotte had only a meager handkerchief to offer.
“I suppose they will hang me,” Veronica said very quietly, her voice quite steady now. “I hope it is quick.”
To her amazement Charlotte answered immediately and without a quiver. “I don’t see why they should. I can’t think of any reason why they need to know about it. You only meant to hurt him; it was a hideous mischance that the blow hit his temple and killed him.”