Twenty-One Days

by Anne Perry

  Miriam was silent. Could the blood tell her anything that they did not already know? It was possible now to differentiate human blood from animal blood, Daniel knew, but not one person’s from another’s. Perhaps venous blood from arterial? But if so, what would that help? They knew the injury was to the back of her head.

  She looked up at Daniel. ‘The problem is, juries dislike anything they cannot understand, and think we are trying to trick them.’

  ‘Do you mean they see the science as magic?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately.’

  She moved from the blood to the burned carpet. She stared at this silently for what seemed like minutes. ‘There must have been quite a fire here,’ she said at last, rising to her feet. ‘How badly was the body burned? Do you know? Did you see it, or photographs of it, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, they were appalling. She was badly disfigured, from the chest up. Would they help?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said frankly. ‘She didn’t fall into the fire. Coals from it must have been placed onto her deliberately. But why?’ She frowned. ‘And how did it continue to burn? Fire burns upward, not downward. There had to be something to fuel it, or it would have gone out.’

  ‘Something? Like what?’ Daniel was confused.

  Miriam said nothing for several moments, clearly examining the possibilities in her mind. ‘Perhaps something like cotton, or linen,’ she suggested. ‘A towel? But more likely something like fat, or oil, as well. Perhaps whoever it was went to the kitchen . . . or spirits? Yes, a whole body of whisky or brandy, on a towel – that would burn for a while and get quite hot.’

  ‘Is there some way you can know?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘If I could see the body, yes. The photographs might be of help, but I doubt it. Maybe the coroner’s report? But only if they tested for something highly combustible. Otherwise not. The carpet is badly charred, but somebody has swept away the ashes from whatever was left, and the blood is quite plain on the hearthstone.’

  ‘The body is buried,’ he reminded her. ‘Even if you found where she was burned, and what caused it, would it tell you who did it?’

  She looked rueful. ‘Probably not. In fact, almost certainly not. But if it was with alcohol for drinking, say, whisky or brandy, it suggests someone who knew where such things were kept. But why? It was done on purpose, so far as I can see. What does it mean?’

  ‘Hatred?’ He thought aloud. ‘A sort of revenge, even on what was left of her.’

  Miriam bit her lip. ‘That’s a very terrible sort of hatred, to destroy a dead woman’s face.’

  ‘If you met Graves, you might believe it. But you’re right, it’s insane.’

  ‘What was she like?’ Miriam looked directly at him, as if it became suddenly very important to her to understand Ebony. Perhaps she was imagining what it would be like to die in this room at the hands of a man capable of that kind of hatred.

  Daniel was imagining it, and it chilled through to the core of him. ‘Apparently, she was a passionate fighter for women’s freedoms, and other things such as better medicine for women, some form of birth control . . .’

  He found himself blushing ridiculously at mentioning such a thing to Miriam, a woman he barely knew, and yet found himself admiring. Maybe Ebony had been something like her, trying to break ground for greater freedom for other women. His sister, Jemima, would approve of Miriam. She always wanted more than was permitted her, as a girl.

  ‘Let’s look at her clothes.’ Miriam started moving as she spoke. She went over to the first wardrobe door and opened it. ‘They can tell us much about a person,’ she said, touching the long sweep of an afternoon gown in lavender silk. ‘Good quality.’ She started taking them down, out of the cupboard, and laying them on the bed, and then returning for more.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Daniel demanded. He could see no relationship between a woman’s taste in clothing and the cause of her being murdered.

  Miriam gave him a cool look, her eyebrows slightly raised. ‘Clothing tells us a lot about someone. How her appearance matters, what impression she wishes to create, and the kind of events she attended. Fetch the next one for me, please.’ And without turning to see if he would obey, she started holding the clothes up one at a time, and looking at herself in the glass to establish how they would have looked when worn.

  ‘What does that tell you?’ Daniel asked, taking more gowns and laying them on top of the others.

  ‘Her budget,’ Miriam replied. ‘Which was generous. A lot of afternoon dresses here, very few evening, which suggests she did not go out with her husband.’

  ‘I wondered what Ebony had looked like. Apart from being dark, and beautiful.’ He had not even seen a photograph of her and he had tried to imagine her. He saw her as vulnerable, too, a dreamer, someone who wanted far more than she had ever received.

  ‘Most of them have been worn several times.’ Miriam interrupted his train of thought. ‘Like these, for example.’ She held up one in dark grey-coloured wool. ‘It is even a bit thin in places,’ she went on, her interest piqued. ‘I wonder why, because it’s not particularly attractive. Of course, it may have been better when it was on. Some dresses are. In fact, the best of them. The secret lies in the cut, not the fabric.’ She ran it through her fingers, feeling the quality of it. ‘But this seems very ordinary.’ She looked at the seams and stitching. Then she put it flat on the bed and picked another dress, and compared them for size. She looked up at Daniel, puzzled. ‘The dark wool is longer by at least a couple of inches, maybe three. And it’s not of the same quality. And yet it’s well worn. I wonder why that is?’

  Daniel could think of no reasonable answer.

  ‘Is there anything else like that?’ Miriam went on. ‘Shoes? Boots?’

  Daniel turned and looked in the bottom of the wardrobe. He could not tell at a glance, but kneeled down to look more closely. There was one pair that looked more used than the others, and plainer.

  ‘How about these?’ he asked, holding them up.

  Miriam put down the clothes she was considering and came across. She took the boots from him and looked at them closely. Then she took a pair of shoes, which were of good quality leather, with heels. She examined them thoroughly, then stared up at Daniel. ‘You might keep an old dress from when you were heavier,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Though I can’t think why. It’s not attractive, and it would take far too much room to be worth it. And why only one? All the others I can see are roughly the same, a smaller size. But the boots are another thing. Your feet don’t change in size that much, in fact hardly at all, no matter how much weight you might lose. They get thinner, but not shorter.’

  ‘These things are not hers,’ he concluded.

  ‘It would seem not,’ she agreed. ‘But whose are they? And why are they here?’ She looked up from the boots. ‘Did she dress up as someone else? Did she have a secret life her husband knew nothing of? These boots are larger than hers. She could have put thick socks on, and worn them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I think there may be a side to Mrs Graves that we do not yet know. You said you had a friend you enquired of, if she knew anything of Ebony Graves. Although it may have nothing to do with the manner of her death.’

  ‘But do you think if we learn whatever these clothes are about that might lead us to who killed her?’ Daniel was not sure that he wanted to know, but there was no escaping it. ‘I don’t want Russell Graves to hang, if he really is innocent . . .’

  ‘I doubt he’s innocent,’ Miriam said with a dark tone in her voice. ‘And even if you discover where she wore those clothes, or if she wore them at all, it doesn’t prove he was not involved in her death. It just suggests that there is a better reason than a marital quarrel.’ She put the boots down. ‘I suggest you ask Mr Falthorne to lock this door. Not that I imagine there is anyone likely to come in. But we must take precautions. This is becoming more . . . complicated. There is little here for us to work with, but I will take a small piece of this carpet, which must have be
en roughly beneath her head, and see what I can find. I wish we had the body.’

  ‘What do you expect to find?’

  ‘Some tiny traces of alcohol . . . although it may well have burned away, if it was ever there,’ she answered. ‘But something was very hot. It burned a part of the carpet, and even the canvas beneath. And it burned human flesh.’ She looked at him with a wince of pain. ‘There is something terribly ugly here.’

  That evening, before he and Miriam caught the train home, Daniel asked Falthorne to unlock Graves’ study door. He went to the desk, unlocked it and removed the copious notes and manuscript – in fact, all he could find of Graves’ book – and put it in his briefcase. He foresaw that he would need it to hand, convinced as he was that it had some bearing on the case. The question was what exactly that was.

  Chapter Eleven

  The morning after returning from Graves’ house to London, Daniel went again to see Graves in prison. He needed more information about the biography, particularly what Graves’ sources had been.

  There were only seventeen more days before he would hang, if they did not find cause for the appeal.

  Kitteridge had found nothing so far. All the evidence regarding the potential unpopularity of Graves’ proposed book may not have been known to Kitteridge, but it was definitely known to Graves himself.

  Why had Graves not spoken of it before? That question had gnawed at Daniel since he had heard of it. It was Miriam, on the train journey back to London, who had suggested the answer. Graves had been indiscreet in his suggestions of corruption, blackmail, and sins of passion that might stretch to include suspicion of treason. No one knew how far it stretched, what damage it might do, or whose lives it would touch and stain.

  Miriam had reminded Daniel that that was what had finally brought Robespierre down, and brought to an end the high terror in the French Revolution. Spread the fear widely enough, and no one was safe. Someone would silence you. Certainly no one could afford to let you speak. Someone they cared for, even if not they themselves, would be touched by it.

  ‘Graves has been too wide in his threats,’ she said with a bleak smile. ‘Anybody siding with him will make himself a hundred enemies.’

  ‘Graves will get very specific.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘We had better find something before then. Perhaps he will at last realise his danger?’

  ‘Then I shall tell him!’ Daniel promised.

  He did not want to see Graves, but it was unavoidable. It was his duty, at the very least, to advise him regarding the facts of the case. There was no realistic chance that Kitteridge would discover cause for appeal, as Kitteridge had reminded him, although he was still looking. Graves’ last chance was to present a viable other suspect, along with any possible evidence of their guilt. It might be enough to get a stay of execution.

  This he told Graves when he saw him.

  ‘They got me tried and convicted, what the hell is likely to make them keep me alive now?’ Graves demanded furiously. Today he looked haggard. His hair was unkempt, and was in need of washing and cutting. His skin was pallid, sagging a little around the jawline, and unsurprisingly he was not allowed a blade to shave himself.

  Daniel kept his own temper with difficulty. ‘I’ll ask the questions. I’ve been to your house, interviewed your servants and looked in your desk. I’ve seen the notes for your book, too. It’s time for you to tell me what your information is, and where you got it! If anyone is involved with as much treason, blackmail and murder as you say, they’ll want to kill this book before it’s born.’

  ‘You expect me to tell you my sources, so you can destroy them?’ Graves snapped back. ‘I will go to my grave with my secrets.’ He glanced at Daniel. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are, Pitt! Clever, aren’t they, giving me Thomas Pitt’s son to keep me from telling the truth? You may think you’ve succeeded, but you haven’t.’ Suddenly there was life in his face, in his eyes.

  ‘Won’t do you any good if you’re dead,’ Daniel said. ‘I want to find a believable suspect of who could have killed your wife and framed you. Since that is what happened, according to you.’

  ‘Of course it is, you fool! Why would I kill her? She bored me with her endless causes, but she was doing no one any harm. If I had killed her, you wouldn’t have found her body there, in the bedroom, and at a time when I couldn’t prove myself elsewhere. Do you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel said honestly. ‘But I think you’ve got a hell of a temper, and you are certainly not above losing it with someone. You could have hit her, harder than you meant to, and found she was dead.’

  ‘They said she was burned,’ Graves retorted immediately. ‘Why in hell would I do that?’

  ‘Why would anybody?’ Daniel asked.

  The scorn in Graves’ face was quite open. ‘To make it more horrific, of course. And to prove it wasn’t an accident. Don’t pretend to be a fool! You must have thought of that. God! Why did they give me such a novice?’ He sat back in his chair, straining for a moment against his manacles, his shoulders bunched with the effort.

  ‘Because Kitteridge is busy, still looking for a loophole in the law,’ Daniel replied, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. ‘You’re lucky we’re trying at all! The world thinks you’re guilty.’ The moment he said that, he wished he had not. It was part of his job to keep Graves still hoping, still fighting. Was it cruel, when there was so little chance? Would it be kinder to help him come to terms with death? That was a priest’s job, but Daniel did not envy him that.

  He couldn’t take the words back now, and apologising was useless.

  ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘It doesn’t make any sense for you to have disfigured her face, except hatred. Since indisputably someone did, what reasons do you think they had? It must have taken some time. They risked being found, so they must have wanted to very much.’

  ‘To make everyone hate me,’ Graves answered. ‘So I’d look like a monster! Did you really need to ask that? God – you are a fool! Listen, you idiot, those behind my wife’s murder need to destroy me in order to make all my work seem like delusion, invented, instead of uncovering the corruption behind the face of power. Don’t you understand that?’ He looked at Daniel with a most profound contempt.

  Said that like, it looked believable, even likely.

  But it all depended on the charges that Graves’ book detailed being true.

  Slowly, Daniel was being forced to accept the possibility that Graves thought it was true, however detached he was from reality.

  ‘All right,’ he said cautiously. ‘Who else knew about this book?’

  Graves did not answer.

  ‘They had to know,’ Daniel pointed out. ‘Otherwise why take the risk of framing you for your wife’s murder? Actually, why not simply kill you? Then frame her, if they had to?’

  ‘Because I’m prepared,’ Graves replied. ‘Pretty obvious, really. I’d be a lot harder to kill.’

  Daniel raised his eyebrows. ‘With all the skills they have? I don’t think they’d hesitate to kill you. Maybe with a blow to the head, or perhaps with a knife, or a gun. This seems like a long way around it.’

  ‘It wouldn’t stop my book being published,’ Graves answered.

  ‘And will this?’

  ‘No. I took precautions.’ Graves smiled slowly, a sour, malicious smile.

  ‘So, you don’t care whether you get hanged or not, as long as the book comes out?’ Daniel concluded.

  Graves slammed his manacled fists on the table. The jolt of the steel against his wrists must have hurt appallingly. He would have bruises there in the morning.

  ‘Of course, I care! But I can’t let them win. When they’ve got my death on their consciences as well, it will only add to their infamy.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to see it averted before then,’ Daniel lied. ‘It’s my job to save you, and to expose the truth, if I can, but I can’t do it without you. Somebody killed your wife. And it wasn�
�t Narraway, because he’s dead himself, and so is Lady Vespasia. Then who killed Mrs Graves?’

  ‘You should ask your father!’ Graves spat the words.

  Daniel felt as if he had been struck. Nausea overwhelmed him. His mind raced. He had expected this, but it still hit him with a shock, like a bad fall, as if he was sprawling on the ground, bleeding, skin torn and bloody.

  ‘Do you imagine he will tell me?’ he asked. ‘With no proof at all, just the desperate word of a man facing the gallows for the brutal murder of his wife? Really, you can do better than that! You’ll have to.’

  Graves stared at him with hatred. The look on his face was that of a cornered animal, frightened and dangerous, nothing left to lose except his life.

  ‘Giving up?’ he said with contempt in his voice. ‘You’re not! You’re backing out because you’re afraid of what you’ll find. You look into all that past stuff, you’ll find that Narraway kept a file of all the things he learned in his job: all the debts, the sins, the mistakes of everyone he could one day blackmail. And since they’d given in, he’d got them for ever. Your father inherited that file and, believe me, when he gets tightly enough trapped, he uses it. Just a little bit at first. A small favour to solve a bad case. Then a little bit bigger one the next time, and bigger again.’ He smiled very slightly, an ugly, knowing gesture. ‘He can’t afford to fail! Not coming after the great Victor Narraway. And your father hasn’t got a Vespasia, who learned everybody’s secrets in the aristocracy, not only here, but in Europe, too.’ Graves’ face shone with malice. ‘No wonder she was never out of money! She earned a fortune in favours, one way or another. Mistress to half the crowned heads of Europe – and their enemies, no doubt. Blackmail for life, that!’