“How do you know?”

“I heard her cry out, ‘No, no, Reverend!’ My mother was in the doorway. She’d actually have seen him except for the edge of the screen. As it was she saw a man leaving the landing and going back along the corridor. Why would any innocent person leave instead of going instantly to try to help her?” Her eyes were bright, challenging him to argue.

“You said it was someone she trusted,” he reminded her. “Who might she have expected to attack her, Mrs. Whickham?”

“The Establishment, the vested interests in masculine power and the restrictions of freedom of thought and emotion and imagination,” she replied defiantly.

“I see…”

“No, you don’t!” she contradicted him. “You have absolutely no idea!”

He put his hands in his pockets. “No, perhaps you are right. If I were fighting for those things, and were a woman rather than a man, I would expect a high official in the church to be the very bastion of entrenched privilege and the keeping of ideas exactly as they are. It is where I would expect my opposition, even my enemies.”

The color rushed up her face. She started to speak and then stopped.

“Whom did she consider her enemies?” he pressed.

She regained her composure with an effort, her shoulders rigid, her hands stiff. The argument concentrated her mind, and it was easier than grief. “Not anyone in this house,” she responded. “One does not expect such violence behind the face of friendship, not if you are utterly honest yourself and you approach everyone thoroughly openly and without fear or deceit.”

“You had a very high opinion of Miss Bellwood,” he observed. “Would you mind telling me something more about her, so that I can try to understand what must have happened?”

She softened a little, her face reflecting an obvious vulnerability and even a dawning awareness of being alone in a new and terrible sense. “She believed in progress towards more freedom for everyone,” she said proudly. “All kinds of people, but especially those who have been oppressed for centuries, forced into roles they did not want and denied the opportunity to learn and to grow, to use the talents they possessed and could have refined into great art.”