Secret Lament (35 page)

“A little contempt hardly seems sufficient motive to do something that might send a man to the gallows.”

He laughed raucously. Yes, very drunk. “It’s because I’m Italian, isn’t it?” he said loudly. The drunk always misjudge how loudly they are speaking. “You
English always despise foreigners.”

“You’re as English as I am,” I said. “And accusing an innocent man – however much you may dislike him – seems rather odd under the circumstances. It might
have got the real murderer off scot-free.”

He said nothing, tried to find his mouth with the brandy glass.

“Don’t you want to find who killed your daughter?” I asked.

He sneered.

“Or even,” I added, “who has taken away your sole source of income and left you and your wife paupers?”

“We’ll manage.”

I shook my head. “Your wife has a year or two left. There are still some genuine music-lovers who know how good she is. But even that won’t last long.” I perched myself on the
arm of a chair. “I know who Julia’s murderer is,” I said softly.

He turned, his gaze uncertain, meeting mine, then flickering away into some corner. “Long gone,” he mumbled into his brandy. “Left the town days ago. Some Italian fellow,
Bedwalters says.”

“Corelli? No, he’s innocent of everything except family feeling.”

He did not seem to understand me; I pressed: “I refer of course to your son, Domenico.”

He snorted in derision.

“All he wanted,” I said, “was a little acknowledgement.”

“He wanted money,” Mazzanti said loudly.

“How much did you pay him for pretending to shoot at you?”

He said nothing; I suspected no money had passed at all. I let a few moments pass but either Mazzanti had nothing to say or he was incapable of saying anything. I wondered if I was going to get
any sense out of him at all. He was a man who would be drunk, or on the verge of it, the rest of his life.

Outside, in the street, I heard a faint noise like footsteps. Damn Hugh and Esther. Could they not keep quiet?

“The real murderer is still in the town,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Devil he is,” he mumbled.

“Do you not want to know what happened?”

A long silence. He drank like a man who has a bottle or six to get through and must do so, as a duty.

“Well?” he said at last.

“Julia was pregnant.”

He said nothing. In the silence I thought I heard a noise upstairs; perhaps we had disturbed Mrs Baker after all. I prayed silently that she did not come down.

“She was desperate for a husband,” I pursued. “Desperate enough to keep at least two men in view. One was Ord.”

Mazzanti snorted in derision. “That fool.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” I agreed. “He was in love with her, but I don’t know how she could imagine that would have lasted when she gave birth to a child that
plainly could not be his. Then there was Ned, but he was a last resort – Julia had become used to a comfortable existence and Ned would never have the money to support her as she would like.
The strange thing is that she never looked twice at the one man who would have married her as soon as he could get a licence. Matthew Proctor.”

Mazzanti laughed scornfully. “The psalm teacher! Devil take it, the man’s a weakling.”

“He was genuinely in love with her – that’s why he was so insistent in keeping watch over her. Too insistent. The night she died he tried to force his attentions on her, she
resisted and he lost all control. He was the one who raped her!”

Mazzanti was slow to react but he lifted his head, turned on his heel and gave me the most astonishing look I had ever seen. It was a look of hope.

That look floored me. Abruptly I saw what he had been drinking away: despair. Not anxiety about the future, certainly not grief at the loss of a daughter, not even bitterness at a life gone
hopelessly out of control. Despair. The absence of even the slightest spark of life. Until now. I had given him hope.

But how?

I felt I was walking through a fog. I was almost at my destination but not quite, yet I didn’t know which way to turn. One step might take me further away, not nearer. I went on more
cautiously.

“There was a struggle. Julia was knocked unconscious. The one mercy in this whole business is that in all probability she was not aware of the attack that killed her.”

He ran his hand across his face. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God.” He sounded as if he meant it.

I started to speak again then heard the faintest of creaks. I had left the front door slightly ajar so that Hugh and Esther could get in if necessary. This sound was closer however; I looked to
the door of the room – it was open a crack. Through the gap I saw a pale blur, a gleam of gold. I called out: “Would you care to come in?”

Ciara Mazzanti was wrapped in a gauzy nightgown with a lace overwrap and a shawl of figured silk. Her golden hair was haloed around her head; the long plait in which she plainly dressed it for
bed, hung over her shoulder almost to her waist. She was, even for her age and weight, a magnificent figure.

The ever-present handkerchief was clutched in her hand. “It’s his fault,” she said, convulsively. “If he had been a better father, none of this would ever have
happened!”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Very dramatic, Signora. If you wish to talk, pray sit down. I’m tired, very tired, and I don’t wish to watch one of Mr Handel’s operas at
this time.”

She turned on me a look of pure hatred. I applauded. “You hated her, didn’t you,” I said. “Both of you?”

They said nothing. Mazzanti smiled into his brandy, his wife looked down at her hands and played with the fringe of her shawl. “To you, Signora,” I said, “she represented youth
and beauty, and the success that was rapidly slipping through your fingers. And you, Signor, hated being reminded that you had never had any talent. You both hated being dependent on her. And there
was no security in it – if she married or was courted by an admirer, you would lose your only source of income.”

“It is time,” Ciara Mazzanti announced, “to concentrate on my career.”

Mazzanti and I both looked at her. He was gripping his brandy and swaying slightly. The brandy gleamed in the candlelight and cast bright glints on the hand that held the glass.
“You?” he said. “What good are you? Who wants a fat old woman?”

“Not you,” she retorted. “You were after fresher bait.”

“Damn you, woman!” he shouted. “If you’d been half the woman you should have been, none of this would ever have happened!”

“That’s enough,” I said sharply. “You took out your hatred on Julia in a way no father ever should.”

“Ask him how old she was!” Ciara Mazzanti said stridently. “Ask him!”

“But she was very like you, wasn’t she?” I said, trying to fix Mazzanti’s wavering gaze. “Devious, sly and manipulative. She hated what you did to her, but she
enjoyed the power it gave her over you and made sure you knew it. And then she found out she was with child.”

“My poor lamb,” Ciara Mazzanti said, stifling a sob with her handkerchief.

I lost my temper. “Don’t give me that hypocrisy! You knew exactly what was going on! And you decided to say nothing. Best to keep quiet, isn’t it? It might go away. And of
course it gave you power too, didn’t it? It meant your husband had to keep negotiating deals like the one you have with the concerts here to make sure that you kept quiet.”

She put up a hand as if to brush my words away. Her hand went to her mouth to cover it. After a moment, she started to sob.

“Be quiet!” I said, furiously. “Playing the fond mother now won’t help!”

She sobbed noisily.

“You’re not a fool,” I said. “You knew she was pregnant.”

Mazzanti put down his brandy very carefully. “I see how it was.” He was pronouncing his words very precisely. “Ciara killed Julia.”

Ciara Mazzanti stopped crying, snatched her handkerchief from her mouth, snarled at him. “You wretch! First you humiliate me by bedding every actress in London – and the younger the
better! Then you bed your own daughter, then you accuse me – me! – of killing her. Wretch, wretch, wretch!”

For one brief moment, I felt sorry for Mazzanti. Fury twisted Ciara Mazzanti’s face into the mask of a vicious, embittered woman. I tried to intervene but Mazzanti was laughing
hysterically, wagging his finger at his wife. “Take her away!

“Be quiet!” I snapped. There was an unpleasant taste in my mouth. These people had been embittered by long years of uncertainty, by the condescending patronage of people like
Jenison, and their state might, who knows, might in future years be mine too.

“Oh really,” I said, in disgust. “Think, man! Does your wife have the strength to strangle a young healthy girl? She wanted Julia to be married! Or at the very least to run off
with someone. I’d wager she was relying on Philip Ord. He had surprisingly easy access to Julia in London – that must have been her doing.”

Ciara Mazzanti reddened.

Mazzanti stared at me, then started to laugh again, throwing back his head. He turned back to the brandy bottle. It was empty – he picked it up, looked at it, tossed it away. It hit the
fire grate and shattered, showering the hem of Ciara Mazzanti’s night gown with tiny shards of glass.

In the silence that followed, the door shifted open a little further and I saw Esther, sedate and respectable in a dark gown and mantle, on the threshold. She raised her eyebrows at me in query.
I nodded. I had asked her to leave her intervention as late as possible but I didn’t think there was any point in having Ciara Mazzanti here any longer. We could deal with her later.

Esther touched Ciara’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said with the firmness of a schoolmistress. “We’ll go to my house. You can be comfortable there.”

Ciara leant gratefully on her, murmuring something in broken terms. She started to turn away then swung back, her gaze darting from me to her husband. She pulled away from Esther, came across to
me, putting a plump hand on my sleeve. “Mr Patterson.” She had to look up at me for she was not particularly tall. “Mr Patterson, thank you.”

“For what?” I said startled.

“For rescuing me. Alas – ” She seemed to consider dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief then thought better of it. “Alas, it is too late for my daughter.”

“Much too late,” I said brutally. “You could have rescued her years ago if you’d had a mind to.”

She continued to look up at me with mute appeal. Then something slipped in her face. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said pleadingly. “I didn’t like what
he was doing, but I had no other choice but to accept it. How could I survive without him?” She turned to Esther. “You know, don’t you? We women all know what it’s like to
be dependent on a man.”

“Better to live without money than without conscience,” Esther said, with all the no-nonsense of a woman who has never had to worry about such sordid things.

Signora Mazzanti gave her a mocking smile. And went off with her, as docile as a doll.

The room was silent after the two women had gone. Mazzanti ground shattered glass underfoot and cast me a sidelong glance. “No point in my trying to put you off any more, is there,
Patterson?”

“No,” I said. “You killed Julia.”

He shrugged. “If Ciara had been a different woman, none of this would have happened.”

His indifference infuriated me. I said, as coolly as I could, “Julia was pregnant and desperately looking for a husband, and she wasn’t above using blackmail to find one. She
couldn’t marry the father of her child, of course, because that was you.”

He pretended to yawn. “I doubt we can be certain of that. My dear Patterson, do you honestly think she gave me no encouragement?”

I balled my fist, digging my nails into my flesh to prevent myself shouting. “But you knew that marriage wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the matter. Once Julia was out of your
hands, she might say anything to anyone. Suppose she married Ord, for instance, and he realised the child was not his – might she not try and fend off his anger by confessing to him what had
really happened? She might even – shall we say, overdramatise – in an attempt to deflect his anger. No, sir, you knew that you could not relinquish her to any other man.”

He contemplated the wall.

“You heard her leave the house,” I said. “You looked out of the window and saw her. You saw her walk off, and Proctor walk after her. So you followed.” I bit back
revulsion. “Did you watch Proctor raping her?”

“I lost them,” he said grandiloquently. “Such a rabbit warren of streets in this town.” He looked only mildly interested. “She was dead when I found her.”

“No,” I said. “Proctor raped her, but he didn’t kill her.
You
did that. You must have been desperate if you were willing to destroy your sole source of
income.”

He betrayed his first sign of unease, running his tongue across dry lips. “Desperate,” he said. “Yes, mad with despair. It was an accident. She died when she hit her head
against the wall.”

“She was strangled,” I said, uncompromisingly. “And if you are trying to convince me that you killed her in an excess of emotion, on the spur of the moment, you may as well
desist now. This was a planned murder – you decided on it the moment you knew she was pregnant.”

I saw his fists clench. The candlelight shone on a ring on his little finger.

“You hatched a plot,” I said. “You hired your son to shoot at you. You told him it was for the sake of publicity, to bring you to the attention of sensation-loving audiences
– but that was not your chief motive, was it?”

He said nothing.

“You wanted to create the impression that your life was in danger. You suggested that it was some aristocrat you had offended by being over-familiar – though innocently so, of course
– with his mistress. Julia’s death might then be construed as part of a campaign against you. That’s what you claimed was happening, wasn’t it? Of course, your son might
give you the lie but he is hardly a credible witness in view of his political activities.”

The silence this time was very long indeed. The old house creaked a little, and outside the owl hooted again. I could hear my own breathing. I waited. Mazzanti had his back to me. I rested my
hand on my coat pocket, feeling the hard edge of the heavy pistol. I had not discounted the possibility that Mazzanti would try to get away by violence and I was prepared to shoot if he attacked
me, though given my incompetence with pistols, I hoped he would not.