CHAPTER VI.
A PURE WOMAN AND HER CONSCIENCE
The morning brought another telegram - this time a terse message from Melchester Court-House, urgently requesting my attendance upon the prisoner.
"Can she be ill?" Holmes wondered.
"I pray not. Let us hope it means that she has thought over her situation."
I set off for Melchester immediately. Holmes decided that his time would be better spent briefing Mrs. Brooks about his plans for Angel Clare's visit and the séance.
Tess looked as if she had hardly slept since I had last seen her, and yet her mind seemed clearer, more coherent.
"I've withdrawn my confession," she said.
I was astonished. "Good God! Have you told your solicitor?'
She nodded.
"Why, Tess? What made you change your mind?"
She lowered her gaze. "After you'd gone, doctor, I thought about what you'd said. I thought about it hard. You were right. My mind was clouded by the shock of it all..." She looked up and tried to laugh: "You know, it's an old fault of mine - to blame myself for things that weren't all my doing - like the accident with our horse! And other people let me... The people I trust most..."
"Your husband? Has been to visit you?" I asked.
"Yes. He wasn't hopeful. He was so cool, so resigned about it - about my life - pitying, as if from some high place above me!" Her voice was tinged with bitter anger. "I don't believe he's truly changed, doctor - not deep down... Why do we never see clearly what we have until it's gone for ever?"
"You mean Alec d'Urberville?"
She put her head in her hands. "He was no saint - but then, neither am I. And he even used to joke that he was 'a bad fellow' - but..." - and here she laughed ruefully - "he wasn't an Angel, either!"
"This isn't just another reason to feel guilty, is it?"
"No - this is me awake at last!" Her expression told me that she was in earnest. I let her tell her story, unravelling the twists of love and hate:
"When I needed him, he was there, near at hand - not in Brazil, 'finding himself'. Even at the start, he'd offered to help if there was a baby - only I was too proud to tell him, saying I'd never truly loved him... And what use was my pride? Our son died. 'Twas only this year I told him we'd even had a son: he wished he'd known... When he tried religion to get me out of his mind, I took it apart - all the arguments Angel had taught me, all the reasoning I scarce understood myself... But which of us most lacked reason? I always looked for the worst in Alec and the best in Angel. Even when Angel left me, and tried to make a fool of me with Izz - thank God she'd more sense than to agree- I still worshipped him - as if he were the 'perfect man'!"
"There's no such creature."
She nodded: "Oh, I know that too well! But through wanting too much, you can lose what you've got. It can slip through your fingers, like blood..." She twisted her wedding-ring. "He was so kind, so generous... But he must've known I'd only gone back for Mother and the children - to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. I thought I could keep what I did from what I felt, just play the whore. Yet he treated me like a wife. I suppose he hoped I'd realise..." Her voice trailed off. "Now it's too late."
"It's not too late for you to see justice done, Tess."
"I hope you're right. If you and Mr. Holmes can't help me, no-one can," she said.
"Then tell me what really happened at The Herons."
"It was the shock of seeing Angel again - he looked as if he were dying, all thin and yellow. After he'd gone, I started crying, and quarrelled with Alec. He was still in bed... I got dressed and said I was leaving, because Angel needed me - I kept seeing his eyes burning into me, as if they were telling me what I should do. As I told you before, cruel things were said... Alec said that I'd be mad to run after a man who'd treated me so badly - that I was making a fool of myself. I told him he'd no right - that he wasn't my husband. He said that he loved me, that he'd been more of a husband to me than Angel ever would or could be. But I laughed and walked out."
"So he was still alive when you left The Herons?"
She nodded. "Yes, he was. I can almost picture him.." The look of tenderness stealing over her porcelain-pale face turned to sorrow. "But I wanted to hurt him, to make him pay... It was still quite early - upset and angry as I was, I didn't want to raise the whole house, so I went out quietly, down the back stairs. I needed time to think, to get the sea air - to sort things out alone."
"So no-one saw you leave? Not even Mrs. Brooks?"
She shrugged. "I thought one of the maids might've been about - the broom-cupboard door was ajar, and I heard something... But no - nothing certain."
"But you were wearing your hat? Did you have your parasol?"
"I - I can't recall. I had them later, I know that. I was in a hurry - I don't think I even thought of it. Perhaps I just got ready without thinking...
"I don't know how long I was walking... I went through the Gardens. I was bitterly angry. I kept thinking on the way they'd both treated me. I turned and started towards the station. I needed time alone, to decide for myself - Isn't that what the fable says all women desire most? I wanted to go back to Mother. There were times when both boys had wronged me. I wanted to be able to choose freely - maybe to choose neither of them... But as I walked, it began to become clearer..."
"So you did make a choice?"
She half-smiled. "I thought, What right had Angel to think he still owned me, after all he'd done - and hadn't done? To walk back into my life like that, as if nothing had happened? What did I owe him? Alec had beguiled me at first, but he tried to make amends for it. He'd cared for me... Angel was my husband on a piece of paper, nothing more... But just as I was on the point of turning back, who should I see ahead of me, leaving the station and walking out of town, but Angel - And I began to run after him, like a moth to a candle, like the fool Alec said I was."
"Like a drug-taker reaching for the syringe," I said, thinking of Holmes.
"I don't know about that - but that's how it was. Eventually I caught up with him. He helped me fix my hat - I suppose it had blown off while I was running... I told him what had happened, and he began looking at me in a strange way again, like when we'd spoken at The Herons - as if he could see into my soul. It was a waking dream - or nightmare. I thought he said: 'He's dead, and you killed him.' Perhaps I imagined it, but somehow I just knew Alec was dead. I remembered quarrelling, and I thought, I must've killed him - or has he killed himself because I've gone? Had my words struck him to the heart?... I remembered there had been a knife on the breakfast tray, and it seemed I could have done it. I saw myself doing it, in the way that you do when your spirit goes out of your body. I believed that was what had happened... Then Angel repeated something I'd heard him say a long time ago, on our honeymoon - that while that man breathed we could never live together; that it would be different if he were dead."
"But you are sure you did not do it?"
She fixed me with her most direct gaze. "It's oftentimes I've laid my head on his breast, and I would not place a knife there! Why, the worst I've ever done was hit him with my work-glove, and that's a long way from killing!"
"I believe you." It was not simply her charm at work; there was a sincerity in her speech which could not be doubted, unlike the dazed air which had clung to her in our previous interview.
"That doesn't make it any easier," she said, and paused. "He died thinking I despised him. And I don't think I did."
"One can learn to live with regret, Tess; it's not the same as guilt at killing someone."
"I tried, I tried to keep my heart out of what my body did... I tried not to let myself love him... But I couldn't... I would I were back in my saucy love's arms..." She was dry-eyed, but it was obvious that she was struggling to control her emotions. "I don't make a good whore, however much I lied to myself - or to him."
"Your evidence is the key to this case. I would advise you say little to anyone else as yet. But Mr. Holmes will find it most useful."
"The police won't believe me, anyway. They think I'm no better than I should be."
"You're better than many. In fact, you're a very brave woman."
"No I'm not. This is all that's left for me to do, to put things right. You see, those five nights at Bramshurst Court, on the run, I - I fear I may have betrayed him. With my husband. I can't remember clearly - just that I needed comforting - as I had before, in the Chase... I said I was a murderer, and Angel said that excited him - the idea that I'd killed a man for him... He frightened me."
"I've read of such cases." I did not add that they were to be found in medical Latin in Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis.
"I thought of how he'd laid me like a corpse in the stone coffin on our honeymoon... I don't know now whether he was truly sleep-walking then... Oh, Dr. Watson, I want to be clean again! Is it possible?"
I squeezed her hand upon the table. "You are doing all the right things, my dear. In a day or two we'll have this all sorted out and you'll be free."
"I don't know rightly whose wife I truly was, but maybe I can be a good widow. I've faced the worst in this place, and one thing I'm sure of is that I'll be no-one's victim again."
"I'm sure of that, too."
When I returned to our apartments at The Herons, I found Holmes leaning forward in the leather armchair, listening intently as Mrs. Brooks, pince-nez glinting, read aloud from a gilt-edged volume of Tennyson. Her accent imparted to the Laureate's words the cadences of her beloved ballads:
"...The wind is blowing in turret and tree.
I wrapt his body in the sheet,
And laid him at his mother's feet.
O the Earl was fair to see!"
"Excellent!" I said. "Worthy of Ellen Terry!"
"Wheesht, doctor! There's naucht like a guid poem tae stir the bluid!"
"- Or to chill it," added Holmes. "Watson, Mrs. Brooks has identified the poem to which 'Liza-Lu alluded at our first meeting."
"And?"
"I was right! Our séance tomorrow may be more productive than anticipated! Mrs. Brooks, can you cope with the scenario as I've devised it?"
"I think so, Mr. Holmes!"
"Now, Watson, how fares our fair captive?"
I described what had happened in Melchester. Holmes sprang up and clapped his hands together in excitement. "It fits!" he cried. "It fits!" as I described Tess's revised account of her husband's behaviour when she had met up with him after leaving The Herons. "By God, Watson! This is a diabolical business! Conspiracy, candomblé and Krafft-Ebing! There's a veritable reek of sulphur about that Angel fellow! As you said yesterday, Mrs. Brooks, shades of Jamie Harris!"
"But Mr. Clare has an alibi!" I protested.
Holmes laughed: "And the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman! Let us see how his alibi holds up tomorrow!"
To be continued.
