Triple Jeopardy

by Anne Perry

  Miriam stopped beside him. He glanced at her. She was wise enough to say nothing. Words were not big enough to encompass what could be said. And to pick out one thing was to exclude all the others.

  They turned back to the road to St. Anne and the ferry and walked in companionable silence, hearing only the calling of birds and the sea murmuring against the shore.

  Daniel wondered if Dr. Mullane, whom they had not seen at church, would come. If he didn’t, was there anything they could do to force him? He really should have obtained a statement, anything on paper that he could show the court. But he did have the photographs in his pocket. That was proof of something. And the postmistress had dated them.

  But his anxiety proved groundless. Mullane was waiting for them, suitcase in hand. The ferry was already in sight, over a mile away, just a dot on the bright water.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-three

  PATRICK WENT OUT early on Saturday morning, and Jemima was certain he was going to the post office again, although he had not said so. He seemed to be sending wires to Washington every day now, sometimes even twice a day. And answers were delivered to him almost as often. She had asked him what it was about, afraid that it was some kind of trouble because he looked anxious, but he would not discuss it.

  She knew that her mother had frequently “meddled” in her father’s cases when he was in the regular police, before he joined Special Branch. At that point, he began dealing with political issues, often involving terrorists, anarchists, people who planned attacks on the public or the government. That was almost always secret work, and he would not involve her. Not that he had ever intentionally involved her in ordinary police cases. But she had a knowledge of, not to mention access to, personal information from high society, which was completely denied to him back then.

  Jemima had no such advantage over Patrick in America. That was his country, his people, and his skill. She was working hard not to be an outsider, and she had found people very kind, very open, not nearly as closed against strangers as she had known English people could be. But she was still an outsider, albeit in New York, a city of outsiders. Washington was different. It was a capital city, a diplomatic city, and outsiders were of a different sort. They lived in Washington temporarily. Most people in the diplomatic service were among the best their country or their culture had to offer. She was permanent. It was now her country as well as Patrick’s, and of course Cassie and Sophie were U.S. citizens, born and belonging, without thought.

  Jemima wanted to help Patrick, but she had no ability to, and at the moment, no time. Cassie and Sophie had to be her world. Jemima had no sister to help her, as her mother had had. And she felt she would be giving up her own identity, her nature that made Patrick love her, if she were to become just like his sisters. Not that there was anything wrong with them, but he loved that she was English, sophisticated, with her own special sense of humor.

  When Patrick came back from the post office, she asked him outright, “Are you wiring the police in Washington? About this case of Daniel’s?”

  He must have seen her anxiety. “Yes. I’ve got to help if I can,” he answered immediately.

  “To make sure Sidney pays for attacking Rebecca?”

  He looked stunned. “Is that what you think? You think I want to make sure he’s convicted?”

  What should she say? That was what he had told her. So much depended on how she answered now. “Didn’t he do it?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I thought he did. In fact, I was certain of it. But now I’m not. It has nothing to do with Daniel. It’s not about winning or losing. Or who comes from where. Did I really seem that prejudiced to you?”

  How could she answer that? Truthfully. The wrong thing would hurt. But a lie would hurt forever. “I don’t think either you or Daniel could see beyond loyalties and what you wanted to believe. I don’t think I could either. But it’s not about nationalities or loyalties to your own now. It’s about murder. If Sidney is found guilty of assaulting Rebecca, it will ruin his career, and he deserves it. But if he is found guilty of killing Morley Cross, he will hang. And if they think he’s guilty of the first, they have every reason to think he killed Morley Cross, to hide it and get away. It’s got to be about truth.”

  They were like two strangers looking across a room at each other, on the edge of an abyss.

  Patrick was the one to reach out. “I know that. I’m wiring to the police at home because I need them to find out when Morley Cross died, and they can’t! It’s too close to call…medically. So, I’m trying to get someone who saw him as close to the time of his death as possible. We only need one person who saw him alive after Sidney left on the boat, and it will clear him beyond question.” His eyes searched hers, as if needing to see an answer, a belief in him.

  She knew that as well as if he had spoken. Perhaps she should have known it all along, but she hadn’t, not for certain. “That would be wonderful,” she said warmly. “It would be beyond doubt then. There would be nothing Hillyer could do. And…and if Sidney didn’t kill Cross, then someone else did! Maybe Cross was the one who embezzled the money? Could he have attacked Rebecca as well?”

  “I asked that,” Patrick said quietly. “He didn’t look anything like Sidney. It would mean that Bernadette Thorwood lied when she said she recognized him.”

  “I’m sorry.” She meant it as an apology. She had wanted it to be the answer, to get rid of the whole mystery. She was looking for a comfortable answer, and she knew better.

  Patrick came over to stand in front of her. “No easy answer, Jem. We both know better than that. And I have a feeling your family does, too. Daniel, I’m pretty sure, and your father…I’d stake my life on it.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “You’ve only known him a short while!” Yet she felt a surge of warmth rising up inside her. Patrick wanted to belong here, too. Not just because they were her family, but because he cared about the same things. It felt simple. He might have to make all sorts of accommodations for their tastes, some of them surface habits or beliefs, but underneath, the foundations were solid. The choice was not “my country, right or wrong,” but what was right, regardless of country.

  She reached out and put her arms around him, holding him tightly, and kissed him.

  Although it was a Saturday, Jemima was pretty sure Kitteridge would be in his chambers at Lincoln’s Inn. He could not afford to take a day off at this critical stage, during such a desperate trial. It would be noon by the time she got there. Would he have gone out for lunch? She could hardly go trailing around the likely public houses looking for him. She got the cook to make up a tasty sandwich to take it to him. She had decided not to tell Patrick in case he disapproved of the idea. She didn’t like going behind his back, but in such a serious situation, it was necessary.

  She arrived just before noon and found the clerk, Impney, who let her in and informed her that Mr. Kitteridge was in the library, but Impney was certain he would be delighted to see her.

  “Would you like me to serve the sandwiches with a pot of tea, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes, please,” she accepted gratefully. “I would love that.” She gave him a dazzling smile.

  Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the library, opposite a clearly uncomfortable and nervous Kitteridge. He had to be hungry, and homemade sandwiches filled with cold roast beef, with pickles and tomatoes on the side, some slices of fruitcake, and Impney’s hot tea made the difference.

  “If you could hold out long enough,” Jemima said earnestly. “It might be a few days, but Patrick’s working as hard as he can. He only needs one person who saw Cross after Sidney left Washington. It would prove beyond any doubt at all, reasonable or not. I don’t know what you can do…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kitteridge replied, with his mouth full. “Hillyer strung it out for ages. I can do the same…I think. Do you kno
w what Daniel went to Alderney for? That is where he went, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. Did he not tell you? He went racing off because he had to get to Miriam fford Croft’s house in time to meet her and catch the boat. He thinks there’s some forensic evidence he could find on the island.” Even as she said it, she knew she was defending Daniel instinctively. Kitteridge deserved better than that. “Apparently, Miriam is very good.”

  Kitteridge smiled suddenly. It was wide, lopsided, and surprisingly attractive, because he was totally unaware of it. “I know! I’ve seen her on the stand. She can make forensics seem interesting and understandable to jurors.” Then he was suddenly very serious again. “I don’t know what they’ll find in Alderney, if anything at all. But he’ll be back by Monday,” he added.

  Jemima heard the edge to his voice. “He has to be,” she replied. Was she making a promise she had no power to keep? “He knows that. But if he’s a little late, please…keep going without him. Anything, any witness you rake up…”

  “I will,” Kitteridge replied, taking the last piece of cake. Then he looked at it, suddenly aware that he had eaten all three slices.

  She laughed at him. “I brought it for you! I’m glad you like it.”

  “But…”

  “There’s more at home, if I want it,” she said easily. “Please…”

  * * *

  —

  JEMIMA SPENT THE afternoon with the family, except for Daniel. They had tea on the lawn, played with Cassie and baby Sophie, talked, laughed, shared memories. Dinner was early, then the children went to bed and were asleep in minutes. Later, Jemima went out into the garden to look for a favorite toy that had been left behind. She heard footsteps on the stone, then lost in the grass. She looked up, expecting to see Patrick. Instead, it was her father.

  “Find it?” he asked.

  “Yes. It was where I expected,” she replied. She stared around the evening garden, the wind whispering gently in the poplars, a last starling circling toward the nest. Suddenly, she was overcome with how much she missed this place. There was no question that she would go home with Patrick. That was where she belonged, probably for the rest of her life. But almost all of her life had been here, all the memories tied to these people, in this house, oddly enough, this garden. Emotion filled her too much to allow her to speak.

  Her father put his arm around her. Did he know what she was feeling?

  She was tired, afraid for the outcome of the trial—for Patrick, for Daniel, and also for Rebecca Thorwood.

  “I like your Patrick,” Pitt said quietly. “And he’s a good policeman.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, her voice almost level.

  “Because I’m a good policeman, too,” he said, and even in the dark she could imagine a smile on his face.

  “I’m glad you think so,” she answered, uncertain why he had mentioned it now.

  “I do. I’ve been thinking of what an excellent addition he would be to Special Branch…one day.”

  She was stunned. It took her a moment to realize what he had said, and what it would mean.

  He did not prompt her.

  “You mean…here?” she said at last.

  “Yes. Perhaps for a while anyway. I haven’t said anything to him. Think about it.”

  “You want Cassie and Sophie here, don’t you?” She was half joking, half needing it to be true.

  “Of course,” he replied. “And you.”

  “I’d be happy with that…if Patrick would be.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-four

  DANIEL AND MIRIAM were accompanied by Dr. Mullane on the long drive back to London. Daniel felt ridiculous for resenting his presence. They needed him. In fact, Daniel hardly had a defense without him. Yet he would so much rather have been alone with Miriam, to talk of anything at all, as the mood took them, related to the case or not. Just to watch the light soften over the rolling countryside, the colors change in the sky and across the land, would have been perfect.

  But of course, that was self-indulgent. Tomorrow morning, either Daniel or Kitteridge would stand up to defend Sidney, with only a dim idea of what had really happened and nothing to prove it. Only a collection of ideas that did not fit into a picture and the specter of Morley Cross’s corpse found in the Potomac. Would Sidney be charged with the murder, too?

  They dropped Dr. Mullane off at a hotel he was familiar with, and Daniel felt free to discuss the case at last. “Five charges,” he said.

  Miriam knew them exactly. The assault, the embezzlement, Morley Cross’s murder, and the two the court did not yet know of: the murder of May Trelawny and the treason that prompted it. That was what it was really about. All of it! One way or another.

  “But why Sidney?” she asked. “Maybe that is where we should begin? Whether you know or not, you want to make the jury think about how it happened and that it has to be connected. You must not look as if you are searching; they must believe that you are just choosing the most dramatic way to show them.”

  She looked sideways at him and he saw her smile. He was warmed by it, but he also wished she would keep her eyes on the road. He was too worried about the trial only hours away to have to be afraid of her driving, too. The road passed through a tunnel of trees, a shadowed pathway of light and darkness, then round a wide curve and into the sunlight again, the fields gold. He realized he actually wasn’t afraid at all. In fact, it was fun.

  “You mean the thread needs to be visible,” he answered finally. “I’m pretty sure what the thread is: it’s Sidney. If he puts all he knows together, it’s enough to tie someone into May’s house, its importance as a deep-water naval base…for the Germans, if they bought the house. They could bring submarines in and hide them there, invisible from anywhere else if they came in deep and only surfaced after dark. May wouldn’t sell, so the only way forward was to kill her. Rebecca inherits and might well be persuaded to sell, especially if her advisers, principally her father, push for it.”

  “Tobias Thorwood’s behind it?” Miriam asked, severe doubt in her voice. “Why? He can’t need the money. German sympathies? We’d have to know that beyond a doubt. You can’t simply assume it.”

  “Blackmail?” He turned over ideas. “We’d have to know that, too.”

  “His wife?” she suggested. “Lots of people have secrets no one would ever guess at, things in their past, very well covered now. Old love affairs, debts paid by someone else. All sorts of things. It might be more useful to think who blackmailed him than why.”

  “Thorwood is part of it,” Daniel insisted. “He testified that he saw Sidney come out of Rebecca’s bedroom.”

  “Because Bernadette told him that she did. Perhaps she is being pressured by someone?”

  “Or has a German lover,” he said with a half smile.

  “Are there any Germans in this at all, that you know of?”

  “No. And the next step is the British Embassy in Washington. That’s where the embezzlement was forged. And where Morley Cross worked. It seems he’s the one who took the pendant to the pawnbroker, which he said he won as a gambling debt with a colleague. And we know Sidney is fond of card games. It ties pretty tightly into Sidney.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But Sidney didn’t kill May, though they’ll say he paid someone. You are going to have to be very careful, Daniel, that in trying to free Sidney from a charge of embezzlement, or even of assaulting Rebecca, you don’t end up getting him hanged for murder.”

  “I know,” he said darkly, as if all the gentle apricot light had drained from the sky. “I do see that!”

  * * *

  —

  DANIEL SPENT A miserable night. He knew he needed to sleep, but every time he even got close to it, new ideas surged into his mind, jerking him awake. He knew the witnesses he needed to call: a few who had already testified, plus Dr. Mullane and Mi
riam. It was the order in which to call them that troubled him. Usually, witnesses were not permitted in the courtroom until after they had testified, in case the other testimony given might affect what they were going to say. It had both advantages and disadvantages. The art was in how to use them! Several of the people he wanted had already been called by the prosecution anyway.

  He must make the order work for him, build the story so there would be no time to create a lie that would defend them. They must trip themselves up, trip each other, weave the web so tightly that it caught the man behind the whole affair…and not Sidney or, even more, not Patrick. Daniel admitted at last…not Patrick.

  It was a story changing shape all the time, but with a constant purpose: the secret use of the deep-water harbor in Alderney.

  He lay awake staring at the ceiling. He must move a step at a time, making sure the jury believed and understood, and for that, he must understand it himself.

  Should he go and see Jemima before it all started? What was there to say? Did it even matter? Yes. He knew with desperate certainty that it mattered that he paid her the courtesy of telling her himself. And Patrick, too.

  Was he going to have to call him as a witness? Possibly. Not if he could help it.

  He turned over and, within half an hour, fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  DANIEL CALLED BY Keppel Street at seven in the morning, partly because he wished to catch his father before he went into his office at Lisson Grove, the headquarters of Special Branch.

  There was no one in the dining room, which surprised him.

  “I think they’re all going to go to the court, Mr. Daniel,” the butler told him. “Would you like some breakfast, sir? It would be very simple to serve you with bacon and eggs within a few minutes.”