A Monstrous Regiment of Women (37 page)

BOOK: A Monstrous Regiment of Women

7.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

“I’m very glad, Ronnie. I only hope you don’t reciprocate my example of rudeness and stage a secret elopement.”

“Not a chance, with our families. There probably won’t be a ball, because of Iris, but that’s just as well. Miles is almost as clumsy on his feet as I am.”

They married in a cloud of white roses. She had him for three years and one child before losing him to a sniper’s bullet in Ireland in 1924.

The other conversation took place a few months later. The first of the court cases set off by the charred body of Claude Franklin/Calvin Franich/Claude de Finetti eventually wrangled its way to a close, leaving two members of the Inner Circle, Susanna Briggs and Francesca Rowley, serving time in prison for their parts in his smuggling operations. Other cases were pending, capital cases against the men taken in the London warehouse and in the house where I had been held in Essex, but in none of them was Margery Childe charged. There was no evidence that she knew of her husband’s smuggling or of his murderous plots involving inheritances; after the conversation Holmes and I had heard, even Lestrade had to agree that she had been blind, but not criminal. She was not charged, not by the authorities. However, she brought against herself a verdict of guilty, and as penance stripped herself of everything. The monies she had inherited were returned to the families of the murdered women, the remains of the Temple turned over to those of her Circle who were still faithful, and Margery took herself, with all her considerable charms and abilities, to the west coast of Africa, where she did great good and was much loved until her death in a cholera epidemic in 1935.

I went to see her the night before she left, in the run-down boarding house where she was staying in Portsmouth. She wore a tweed skirt and a woollen cardigan, and her drab, uncharacteristic clothing seemed the most substantial thing about her. She poured me tea from a flowery chipped pot, as we sat in the landlady’s dusty drawing room, rain slapping drearily against the windows.

“I thought I was doing God’s will,” she said in a voice as light and lifeless as the ashes of a fire. “I thought I knew God’s will. I thought, even, that there were times when He talked with me. Pride, the most deadly sin. And you, who seemed filled with pride, who I thought believed more in some interesting psychological condition than in the divine person of God, it turns out you were right, and I was wrong. I don’t understand, at all.”

She sounded merely puzzled, not resentful or even hurt.

My heart went out to her, for truly, her only fault had been her pride. “Margery, there’s a story rabbi Akiva tells, about a king who had two daughters. One was sweet-tempered and lovely to look at, and whenever she came to her father with a request, the king took his time before granting it, so he might enjoy her great beauty and her musical voice and her sparkling wit. Her unfortunate sister, on the other hand, was a harridan, coarse of face and tongue, and no sooner would she appear before the king than he would shout at his ministers and servants, ‘Give her whatever she wants and let her leave!’ ”

It took her a moment for her to understand, but then she laughed. For the last time I heard Margery’s stirring, oddly deep laughter, and I was glad that it could end this way.

“You go tomorrow?” I asked her.

“To the boat, yes. We sail during the night.”

“I have instructed my solicitors to place two hundred pounds each month into the mission accounts. If you need more, write to them, or to me.”

“That is too much, Mary.”

“I’m not giving it to you. I dare say Africa can absorb any amount of gold one can throw into it.”

After a moment she dipped her head, a familiar gesture of regal acceptance. We drank our tea, and I could not resist the urge to ask her a final time.

“Margery, tell me. The healing. Did I see it?”

“Of course you did, Mary.”

“Why wouldn’t you admit it?”

“I did. I told you that God can touch us. Grace is sometimes given, even to those of us who do not deserve it.”

I left a short time later. In the doorway, Margery went up on her toes and kissed my cheek. I never saw her again.

And yes, Holmes and I married too, and although it may not have been a union of conventional bliss, it was never dull.