Brunswick Gardens, Anne Perry

 

The Book 

    Superintendent Pitt is called to investigate the unusual death of Unity Bellwood in the home of her employer, Reverend Ramsay Parmenter. Facts not up for dispute, Unity Bellwood fell to death down the stairs and that she argued with the good Reverend just moments before her body was found.  What only one person in the house knows is if it was murder, or just a horrible accident. 

    Pitt arrives on the scene, much to the relief of the local inspector and takes charge. He rapidly establishes none of the servants could have done it. Nor could Ramsay's wife, Vita, nor their widowed daughter Tryphena Whickham, who thought Unity's passionately held beliefs about a woman's place in the world were wonderful.

    Their other daughter Clarity, is eliminated leaving just the three men of the house, Ramsay, his rebel Mallory, who has forsaken the Church of England, indeed the entire reformation, for the Roman Catholic faith, something that is quite scandalous inside of the family. And the curate, who is about to be assigned his new post, Dominic Corde. (Oh Dominic, how we have missed thee and thy wild runnings with Somerset Carlisle. But pah, that is now in the past with your new vocation.) 

    When Pitt tells Charlotte about Dominic it opens a riff in their marriage. Of course Charlotte goes to see Dominic, with whom she was once obsessively in love. Pitt hates it, and though he tries to dismiss his jealousy, he does not completely succeed. Dominic and Charlotte get along, but he is tortured that he cannot help the family more. He feels he owes Ramsay a great debt of gratitude, after having been rescued by Ramsay when he was at his lowest, when the sins of his dissolute and selfish lifestyle had finally caught up with him. 

    Aunt Vespasia remarks that nobody is as zealous in their faith as a reformed sinner. But Charlotte doesn't think Dominic is a zealot, just a changed man. A belief that is sorely tested when the medical examiner discovers that Unity was about 3 months pregnant. Then Pitt discovers that Unity and Dominic had been lovers before and she had aborted his child. Dominic couldn't forgive her and couldn't stop loving her. He moved on with a wild woman who earnestly believed that she could share Dominic with Unity, but when she became pregnant, Dominic refused to marry her. She committed suicide, and Dominic, racked with guilt, was found a few months later by Ramsay and counseled back onto the straight and narrow. 

    The evidence against Dominic piles up quickly and both Pitt and Charlotte feel they need to look rationally at his actions and judge, once and for all, if he has truly changed. 

My Thoughts

    So this is the book I was remembering when I went on my rant about Dominic not being dead in my review of Silence in Hanover Close, in it I opined that I thought Dominic had been killed off. There is one additional death in this book, but it's not Dominic. And as far as I know, this is where Dominic's story, at least in relation to Charlotte and Thomas, ends. There are nine books between that book and this one, and 11 between Death in the Devil's Acre. And like when Charlotte's mother Caroline magically showed up back in Cater Street, even though Rutland Place was an entire book dedicated to where they had moved after the events of the first novel, there are some (but fewer) timeline inconsistencies. It seems the team around Anne is finally big enough to catch these mental errors and fix them. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

It seems I have gotten a little bit lax about what I am recording about the physical books. I will try to rectify this. This book is a first edition 394 page book, copyright 1998. The book was sent to me from the McHenry Public Library and entered their collection in March of 1998. The binding of this book is in the beginning stages of failure, mostly due to time and the glue wearing out. There are some smudges on the sides of the pages, but overall this book, for a library book this old, is in very good condition. Not bad at all. The cover says this book cost $25.00. 

This Book                                             $25.00

Items Reviewed This Year                  $169.97

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