‘And what are they if not skivvies, doing the most menial tasks whilst exposed to sights no well-brought-up young lady should experience. It’s a disgrace. She’s a disgrace. I can’t hold my head up any longer in polite society and you talk about grandsons? I have no grandsons! Our two eldest sons are as dead to me and Patience too, and if you had any self-respect, you would feel the same. But no. Not only do you persist in ingratiating yourself with them, but you humiliate me by acknowledging that girl after the misery she has caused.’
‘There is no reasoning with you,’ Jeremiah said wearily. He was tired. He was always tired these days, and at this moment he wanted nothing so much as his bed. He made to step up on to the landing again but still Mary held her ground, and short of manhandling her out of the way there was nothing he could do.
‘She has beguiled you, hasn’t she? Like she beguiled our boys and turned them against me. That sort of woman is born knowing how to make men dance to her tune, and I have no doubt how she has been keeping herself since leaving this house.’
Jeremiah’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the light coming in the window from the white shining world outside the house enabled him to see his wife’s face with some clarity. He took in the twitching lips, the globule of spittle in one corner of her mouth and thought, She’s deranged, she’s become unhinged. And it was in response to this thought that his voice took on something of a placatory note when he said, ‘Of course she hasn’t beguiled me, Mary. She’s a pleasant young woman, that’s all – and one who’s recently suffered the loss of her husband, I might add.’
He would have gone on but for his wife’s ‘Huh!’ of a laugh. ‘And you believed that? You think she was married? And the others, I suppose they fell for that too?’ She bent forward slightly, her eyes gimlet-hard. ‘If ever there was a case of history repeating itself, this is it. A husband! Don’t you see? She’s obviously in trouble and has come creeping back with her tail between her legs and her stomach full.’
It was rare Mary spoke so explicitly; bodily matters were never mentioned. Knowing he should leave it – turn away and return to his study or bodily move her out of the way, Jeremiah did neither of those things. Sophy’s face as they had talked about Esther was still fresh in his mind, the softness in her eyes as she had kissed him goodnight and the note in her voice when she had whispered, ‘Thank you.’
He straightened, easing his neck in its stiff clerical collar. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but she was most certainly married. Furthermore, she has made a very successful life for herself in London and has a beautiful home, according to Patience who has visited. Sophy is a respectable woman, Mary, and—’
‘You.’ His mention of the despised name was the last straw. Mary wasn’t a big woman but the suddenness of her attack as she thrust out her hands and caught Jeremiah on his shoulders took him by surprise. It was purely a reflex action that caused him to grab at his wife as he lost his balance. The stairs were narrow and steep, and the stair-runner in the centre of each step did nothing to cushion the impact as the two bodies bounced and rolled, plummeting to the landing below. Mary was dead before she reached the polished floorboards, her neck broken. Jeremiah survived the fall but not the massive heart-attack which followed within moments. By the time Mrs Hogarth and Molly reached the scene there was nothing they could do. Jeremiah and his wife lay in a tangle of limbs, closer in death than they had ever been in life.
‘Sophy mustn’t know.’
‘What?’ John stared at his sister, taken aback. He had been informed of his parents’ demise by a solemn-faced constable who had knocked on the door as the family were rising. After sending the policeman on to Matthew’s house a few doors away, he had made the journey to Barnes View on the other side of town himself.
‘She’s leaving this morning and I don’t want her to know. For it to happen while she’s here – oh, I don’t know. I feel she might think it’s somehow something to do with her, and she’s had enough to deal with over the last months.’
John looked at William. They were sitting in William’s study and Sophy was in the nursery, making the most of her last hour with Peter. William nodded. ‘I agree with Patience.’ He didn’t voice what he was thinking out of respect for John and Patience – Mary had been their mother, after all – but as far-fetched as it seemed, he felt as though his mother-in-law was continuing her vendetta against Sophy beyond the grave. And regardless of what the police constable had said, he didn’t think this tragedy was a straightforward accident either. He didn’t know what had gone on at the vicarage last night, they’d never know, and maybe that was something to thank God for, but Mary Hutton had been capable of anything.
John was staring at them in bewilderment. ‘She’ll have to know sometime.’