“It was intended as one.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then George said, “Her husband. Matlock. He was here often in those last years too. He and I were not close, not in the way Margaret and Anne were close, but I respected him. He is a man who sees things clearly and actson what he sees. If there had been anything to notice about my death, he would have noticed it.”
“But there was nothing to notice.”
“No. That is the genius of what Wickham did, is it not? There was nothing to see. A sudden death, a grieving household, a physician’s verdict, and the world moved on. The only witnesses were the dead, and the dead cannot speak to anyone except you.”
The candle on the mantelpiece flickered. The room was cold, but not with the sharp, aggressive cold that signalled George Darcy’s anger. This was quieter, sadder.
“Matlock could help,” Elizabeth said. “If I had evidence. He has the connections, the authority, the discretion.”
“He does. He is also Fitzwilliam’s uncle and Georgiana’s guardian in all but name, and if he believed for one moment that their father had been murdered, he would not rest until the man responsible was destroyed. He would do it quietly, because that is his way, but he would do it thoroughly.”
“That is what I need.”
“Then find him something to act on, Mrs Darcy. Because I can tell you what happened, and Nana can tell you what she saw, but neither of us can lay evidence before Matlock. Only you can do that.”
From somewhere down the corridor came the sound of a door closing, footsteps, Lady Matlock’s voice saying something to her maid that Elizabeth could not quite catch. George Darcy lookedtoward the sound, and his face was naked with longing. She was going about the ordinary business of living in a house where he could no longer do the same.
“She visits Anne’s grave every time she comes to Pemberley,” he said. “In the family graveyard. She goes alone, first thing in the morning, before anyone else is awake. She has done it every visit for sixteen years.”
Elizabeth said nothing. Some things did not require a response.
“I cannot visit it,” George Darcy said. “I am bound to the house. The graveyard is beyond my reach. I have not been to my wife’s grave since the day I was buried beside her, and I do not remember that, because I was already dead.”
He turned back to the window, and the candle guttered, and the cold in the room deepened.
“Find the evidence, Elizabeth. Give Matlock something real. And when this is over, when Wickham has been dealt with and I can finally rest, perhaps Margaret will come to the grave one last time, and I will be there to meet her.”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Lady Matlock will want to walk the grounds, and I intend to walk with her. I intend to listen carefully to everything she says.”
George Darcy nodded once. Then he was gone, not fading the way the gentler ghosts did, but simply absent, as though the force that held him had released its grip for the night.
The parlour was warm again. The candle burned steady. Elizabeth went to bed, where her husband was already sleeping. She lay beside him in the dark, trying not to think about evidence, or the lack of it, or the visit to the churchyard that Lady Matlock would make in the morning.
Chapter Fourteen
LadyMatlockproposedthewalk herself, on the third morning of the visit, and Elizabeth did not have to manufacture a reason or steer the conversation toward it. She simply appeared at breakfast in a walking dress and sensible boots, announced that she intended to see the grounds properly, that Elizabeth would accompany her, that everyone else could amuse themselves for the morning.
“I have been cooped up in a carriage for two days, a drawing room for two more, and I require air, exercise, and intelligentconversation, preferably in that order,” she said. “Elizabeth, you will oblige me.”
It was not a question. Lady Matlock did not ask questions when she already knew the answer.
They set out through the garden door, past the rose garden where Georgiana and Kitty’s restoration work was beginning to show results, the bindweed cleared, the beds edged, the first signs of order emerging from what had been years of neglect. Lady Margaret Darcy was sitting on her bench beneath the old climbing rose, smiling at the newly tended beds with the same serene contentment she always wore; if a ghost could look pleased, Lady Margaret looked pleased. Lady Matlock paused to look.
“This was Anne’s,” she said. “She spent whole mornings here. She said it was the only place at Pemberley where she could hear herself think, which I took to be a comment on her husband rather than the house, though I never said so to her face.” She touched one of the bare rose stems, gently. “Who has been working on it?”
“Georgiana and Kitty. They found a portrait in the gallery that shows how it looked in the last century, and they are trying to restore it.”
“Good.” Lady Matlock withdrew her hand and walked on. “Anne would have liked that. She would have liked your sister too. Kitty has something of Anne’s quality about her, that quiet attention to things other people overlook.”
Elizabeth filed that away. It was not the first time someone had compared Kitty to Lady Anne; Mrs Reynolds and Nana had both made remarks to that effect, and the comparison was becoming more interesting each time.
They walked in silence for several paces, along the path that led toward the south border and the lime walk beyond it. The morning was cold and bright, the kind of late October day where the sky was high, brilliantly blue, the light making everything sharp. Lady Matlock walked briskly, her stride long and sure. The spectral gardener was on the lime walk as they approached, inspecting the trees with an expression of deep personal betrayal, but he withdrew to the hedge as Lady Matlock bore down on the path, and Elizabeth could hardly blame him.
“Now then,” she said, when they were well clear of the house. “I have several things to say to you, and I prefer to say them where we will not be overheard, because some of them concern your husband and I find it easier to speak frankly about family when the family in question is not listening.”
Elizabeth braced herself.
