by Anne Perry
Daniel could feel Kitteridge’s mounting desperation, as if it was transferable. “We aren’t getting anywhere,” he said. “And I’m not doing any good in court, except moral support, whatever that’s worth. Miriam might see something we’ve missed. If you’ve got a better place to look, I’ll do that.”
“No,” Kitteridge said, a little more graciously. “See if she can at least tell us what shape it is, this thing we’re looking for. Do we even have all the pieces?”
“I don’t know. You know I don’t! But perhaps we have them upside down? Trying to fit them in the wrong way?”
Kitteridge finally smiled. “At least you’re good entertainment, Pitt. I’ll say that for you. You’re never boring for long! Now please get out of my way, before I change my mind. I’ve still got to work out what I’m going to say that’s any use. Hillyer’s going to guess that we know about Morley Cross, no matter what I say, and that I’m here because of an escalation of the case. And I’m not going to lie openly to the court.”
* * *
—
DANIEL TOOK THE underground train to the station nearest to the fford Croft house and walked the rest of the way. By the time he arrived, he had almost worked out in his mind what he was going to say. All of which, of course, depended upon whether Miriam was at home.
The butler welcomed him without surprise, although Daniel wondered whether, after having worked for the fford Crofts for years, anything would surprise him.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” he said, opening the door. “Miss fford Croft has gone to the post office, but I expect her back within about ten or fifteen minutes. If you would care to wait for her in the morning room, sir, I will inform her when she returns. I expect you have had breakfast. Is it too early for a pot of tea for mid-morning? And perhaps a piece of shortbread? Cook is very skilled at baking, if I may say so.”
Daniel smiled. “I remember,” he said with some enthusiasm.
“Very good, sir.” He bowed and withdrew.
Daniel was enjoying his third piece of shortbread and wondering if he should eat the last piece, or if good manners suggested he should leave it, when he heard footsteps across the parquet of the hall floor that were definitely not the butler’s. Did he recognize Miriam’s step?
The next moment there was a brief knock on the door, then without waiting for an answer, she came in.
He stood immediately.
She glanced at the teapot and the plate full of crumbs and then closed the door behind her and walked across the Turkish carpet. “I see you have been taken care of. I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Is it the Sidney case again?”
All his articulate arguments vanished, as if he had not formulated them. “Yes. It doesn’t make sense. Something new has come to light, and there’s something missing. In fact, quite a lot. I thought if I told you all we have, you might…put a different shape to it.” He was gabbling.
She sat down in the chair opposite the one he had risen from. “Do you mind if I stop you if not everything is clear?”
“No, I…I hope I’m not wasting your time,” he apologized.
For a moment she, too, was awkward. “I…have nothing urgent. I know you are several days into the trial.”
“You’ve been following it?” He was surprised. There was nothing forensically interesting in it. And yet he was pleased.
“There isn’t much to follow,” she replied. She was looking at her hands, not at his face.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “I’m afraid it’s going to end without having ever really begun. It doesn’t make sense. The core of it is missing. I thought you’d help me see what shape it is…” He stopped. He was embarrassing himself. He sounded so young and foolish.
She looked perfectly serious. “What’s missing? And you haven’t told me what it is now!”
He did not reply immediately.
He saw her face shadow.
“When the news reaches London, I mean the last piece of it, they’ll be changing the charge to murder,” he answered.
She stiffened. “What? Who’s dead? When did that happen?”
“A young man called Morley Cross,” he replied. “He worked with Sidney in the same department of the British Embassy in Washington. He was just pulled out of the river there, and they haven’t proved when he died yet. It all hangs on whether it was before Sidney left Washington.”
“How was he killed?”
“Shot in the back of the head. That can’t have been an accident.”
“I see.” It was clear from her face that she understood completely. “The timing would be hard to prove. Water can do a lot of damage. And the longer the body was in it, obviously the harder it is to prove a time. What else? I mean, to make sense of it.”
“A thread that ties it all together,” he said immediately, “so that we can see a plan, a motive strong enough to make whoever is behind this follow it all the way from Washington to here, and drive it through the courts.”
“And what are the real reasons for any of it?” she asked.
He looked at her greenish-blue eyes, searching for a moment, and saw no mockery in them. “It could be anything: love, hate, money, revenge,” he started. “Even ambition if someone felt Sidney was standing in his way for promotion.”
“What about fear?”
“Yes. That, too, I suppose.”
“And wounded pride?”
“That would lead to the motive of revenge.”
Her eyes widened. “Rebecca Thorwood rebuffed Philip Sidney and he broke in and attacked her, stealing the pendant in revenge? Does he seem like a man who would do that? If he is, then he will have done it before. She can’t be the first one who ever turned him down. And is the embezzlement somehow to be connected with this?” She did not say that she did not believe it, but it was plain on her face.
“Doesn’t work, does it?” Daniel said with a grimace.
Miriam relaxed just a little bit. He saw it in a sudden ease in her fingers, where they rested in her lap. “Not even a little bit. I’m assuming you have traced her behavior in the past, and asked if Miss Thorwood ever rebuffed him?”
“Of course,” he agreed.
“Then it is something else. Daniel, do you like him?”
He was about to argue that that was irrelevant. Then he realized she was asking for a reason. Did it affect his judgment? Was he looking for a way out of admitting Sidney was guilty? No! He was looking for a way out of finding that Patrick was guilty of framing a man he believed had committed a particularly intricate and spiteful crime.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But that isn’t my biggest problem.” He told her about his dilemma, and why it mattered so much.
She listened to him without interrupting.
“But even if he is guilty,” he finished, “I want to convict him genuinely, not…”
“I know.” She nodded. “But let us look at it from another direction, at least for a moment. The worst thing for you would be if Sidney really is not guilty, and Patrick helped in constructing a case to find him guilty. If Tobias Thorwood saw Sidney in his house, then at least he is telling the truth, or part of it.”
“All of it!” Daniel said. “That’s all he said!”
“That’s not all he implied,” she corrected him. “Thorwood came because Rebecca screamed. That was what he said. And Sidney was running out of the bedroom onto the landing. Did he go down the stairs? Or into another upstairs room and out of a window? Is that even possible? How high up would that be? For that matter, did Thorwood try to stop him? Did he call the police that night? Immediately? Or perhaps after he made sure that Rebecca was all right? And in his place, I would have asked for the account of how Sidney got in. And how did he get in? Did he break in?”
Daniel realized he had not asked Patrick any of these things. It had not seemed to matter at the time.
Thorwood had seen Sidney in the house. He certainly knew him well enough to recognize him. Rebecca had sworn she had not invited him, or let him in. It probably made no difference, but Miriam was right to ask. “I don’t know, to all of those things,” he said. “But Sidney ran away. He claimed diplomatic immunity and left the country. That’s at the core of it.”
“No, it isn’t.” Miriam shook her head. “It’s one fact that’s unarguable. That’s all. At the core of it is the thing you are looking for. The emotion. The reason for it all. Somebody who cares so deeply they are following through with all this. Why did Sidney break in, if he did? If he didn’t, did anyone? Is Thorwood lying about any part of it? Could he be protecting someone? He has sworn the intruder was Sidney, so he can’t go back on that. But if that is so, then why not let it all blow over? Why on earth follow Sidney to London and keep up the pursuit? I assume you must have asked Sidney if he knew?”
“Yes. And he says he doesn’t.”
“You believe him? Apart from the fact that you like him, do you believe him?”
Daniel thought for only a moment. “Yes, I do. About this anyway.”
“Then if we take that as truth, Thorwood is lying, or mistaken. Who is he covering for, and why? Does Rebecca know the truth?”
“She says not, according to Jemima.”
“What about Tobias Thorwood himself?”
“Why? What has he to gain?” He was puzzled.
“I have no idea. But he seems, from what you say, to be the one who’s keeping the whole case alive.” She hesitated a moment. “What is really troubling you? Is it the Morley Cross murder? Or Patrick’s part in the whole thing?”
How had she read him so easily? Was it all written in his face? It was uncomfortable to be so obvious to anyone. And yet it would be ridiculous to lie, even to evade. “I suppose it is Patrick,” he admitted. “This is the first time I’ve met him, though Jemima has been married to him for four years. But they lived in New York, and then Washington. I was more than fully occupied with exams…I couldn’t go to the wedding.”
She smiled, although there was pain in it. “I understand. You can’t take that time out, three weeks at least with traveling, and to pass law or medicine…”
He remembered that she had sat and passed all the exams with honors to qualify her as a forensic pathologist, but they would not take her seriously, because she was a woman.
“I like Patrick.” He sat back. “But the real thing is, I don’t want Jemima to be hurt. She probably knows him very well, but how well do we ever know anyone? Especially if we are in love with them?”
Immediately after he had said it, he wished he had not. He had taken all protection off the wound. That was what he was really afraid of. And of losing his own compass in all the mixed loyalties. Was there a real core at the heart of this? More than a minor, grubby theft, perhaps? And a young man, whoever he was, attempting a burglary with more violence than necessary?
He said as much to Miriam, suddenly finding the words with ease.
She was silent for several moments after he finished. He knew she would speak when she was ready.
“We haven’t got it yet,” she said at last. “But I think that is the right place to look. When we know what happened in the Thorwoods’ house that night, and why, we will have at least the beginning of the thread, and perhaps an idea why Cross was shot.”
He smiled in the moment of self-understanding. “We need to be in the middle to find that emotion!” he said. “What is it that matters so much? It’s got to be more than anyone’s hurt pride.”
She smiled. It was gentle, completely honest. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
CHAPTER
Eighteen
“WHO, EXACTLY, IS Miriam again?” Jemima asked Daniel.
They were standing once more in the garden in Keppel Street, the August sun beginning to lose its heat in the late afternoon. Sophie was having her nap and Cassie was also upstairs asleep, a smile on her face. She had been difficult to settle, so pleased because she had beaten Daniel at a game with sticks and a sand bucket. He had created the rules as they went along and made absolutely certain he had lost in the end, but only just. It had been an exciting victory, with squeals of delight and lots of laughter.
Now Daniel and Jemima were alone and had time to speak for the first time since he had arrived a couple of hours ago, leaving both Hillyer and Kitteridge to keep stringing out the testimony in court as long as possible. Jemima had told him Charlotte and Patrick were at the trial, but in another hour and a half, at the latest, they would be home. They had to be, Jemima told Daniel; she and Patrick were going to dine with the Thorwoods.
“She is Marcus fford Croft’s daughter,” he answered. He had told her that before, but she was not sure what it meant.
“How do you know her?” She watched his face in the light. There was now emotion in it, more than she would have expected.
“She has done all the studying and taken all the exams to be a doctor, or a forensic pathologist, but no one will grant that she knows what she’s doing, because she is a woman,” he replied.
She heard the edge to his voice. There was anger, as well as pity, that burned in him as if he not only shared it but felt it. Why? Because he did not like her? Or because he respected her, and in any kind of fairness there should have been nothing to pity?
“How do you know her?” Jemima repeated, skirting around the painful place, like a cliff edge that might crumble.
“Marcus suggested we ask her help in a very difficult case. She found the fact on which it all turned. I thought she might help in this.”
“Can she?”
“I don’t know. She framed the questions we need to answer. She’s very logical. I was going to say you would like her, but I’m not sure.”
She started to say, “You do…” but changed her mind. Perhaps it did not matter now. Miriam fford Croft sounded interesting and different. Jemima stayed with the subject of the trial. “What do you need to find? I presume I can help, which is why you came to see me.”
He drew his breath in sharply, as if to speak.
“I’m not being petty,” she said quickly. “Time is too short for you to spend it on a social visit. What is it? It’s Rebecca, isn’t it? You need to push further on the attack, and you want me to do it?”
“Not quite,” he answered, this time with an apologetic smile. “But I think Tobias Thorwood might be the key.”
“You mean Miriam does?”
Daniel colored very slightly. “If I didn’t agree, I wouldn’t have come. Tobias is at the center of it, in a way.”
“You mean his identification of Sidney is,” she corrected him. “Or are you working around saying that he had to protect Rebecca? Why? Do you mean it was an assignation? That Tobias found her in bed with Sidney and threw him out? Framing him for robbery and assault so he can’t blacken her name?” It was a very painful thought, but she couldn’t deny it was possible…based on the facts anyway. Was Rebecca so feeble she would let a man she loved be ruined because her father disapproved of him? Was that what really haunted her—shame and guilt?
Daniel was watching her. “Don’t think of yourself, Jem, think of what people do to protect their children, especially if they think they are vulnerable. Rebecca is not you. You would be horrified, but would she? Maybe she feels overprotected, or that she wants to escape.”
“She screamed!” Jemima pointed out. “Fiercely enough to waken him and bring him running. In the middle of the night. That’s some scream.”
“Sidney said he wasn’t there,” Daniel pointed out. “What if that was the truth, and the rest is lies?”
“Are you saying she tore that necklace off herself? That would be difficult. I’ve lost my patience with a necklace I couldn’t undo before, but I’ve never torn it off. Actually, I tried once, and stopped pretty smartly l
ong before it made a mark like that on me. If someone is lying, isn’t it more likely that it’s Sidney? He has everything to lie for.”
“Except it doesn’t make sense. Just think for a moment. If it isn’t the truth,” he argued, “then what is?”
“Then Rebecca and her father are lying.”
“Didn’t she say she didn’t know who it was in the bedroom?”
“Yes.” Jemima thought for a moment. “But if it wasn’t Sidney, then who was it? And why did Tobias say it was Sidney?”
“And also, how did he get in, whoever it was? Did she leave a key somewhere? Or even let him in herself? Scullery door, or garden door, if they have one?”
“And lie to get Sidney into trouble? Or to keep somebody else out of trouble?” She thought of that with distaste. But she had never been attacked. How much did it change everything inside you? Would she want it to be Sidney rather than some ruffian she did not know? Perhaps in some twisted way, she wanted it to be someone she could blame and keep locked up. Then she would feel safe. He could not ever do it again. But that made no sense, for if it were not Sidney, then whoever it was, he was still free. He could come back again! She would wake in the night at any noise, afraid, see shadows move and be terrified! Feel the hand on her throat, and her heart stop…“I don’t know,” she said. “I can understand. If someone hurt Cassie or Sophie, I would want to think that we had him! But then if it were someone else’s child hurt, and they said Patrick or you had done it, I’d fight them to the death to prove you hadn’t.”
Daniel sat perfectly still for a moment, his face full of conflicting emotions.
“And Thorwood?” he asked. “Why would he lie?”
“What do you want to know about him, apart from whether he really saw Sidney in the house? Or thinks he did? Does Miriam have anything concrete to suggest?”
