Читать книгу Glittering Images - Susan Howatch - Страница 26

It was after eleven when I regained the sanctuary of my room, and having stripped off my clothes I smoked a cigarette as I tried to work out what had happened. Some strange bond seemed to have been forged between me and my host but it seemed to be my duty to ignore it. It was not my business either to like or to loathe Jardine; my task was merely to estimate how vulnerable he was to scandal.

However I found I now had a stronger desire than before not to connive with Lang in any secret plan to oust Jardine from the Bench of Bishops. Jardine was clearly innocent. A man of such integrity would be incapable of living a secret life as an apostate steeped in adultery, and I was also sure he was far too shrewd to engage in any middle-aged folly which fell short of an adulterous liaison. It seemed obvious that he exercised his flirtatious streak harmlessly with his lovely ladies and had long treated Miss Christie as part of the palace furniture.

This conclusion was reassuring enough, but I still had to answer the question of what went on in Miss Christie’s mind while Jardine behaved like the good man he undoubtedly was. I reminded myself that Jardine could still be vulnerable to scandal if Miss Christie decided to play the neurotic spinster by transforming herself into a furnace of frustrated passion, and although she hardly gave the impression of being a neurotic spinster I felt there was something odd about her extreme self-containment.

I decided I had a moral duty to investigate Miss Christie further and an absolute moral duty to discover how likely she was to transform herself into a furnace of passion.

No Jesuit could have achieved a more satisfying casuistry. With a smile I stubbed out my cigarette, retired to bed and began to plot my espionage for the morrow.