She knew what he was thinking now-it took only one step in reasoning, an inevitable step. It was Jack or Emily herself. She knew she had not murdered George and Sybilla, but she was growing increasingly afraid he had. Worse than that, she feared he still intended to court her.
He took her hands. He was not rough, but he was far stronger than she, and he did not mean to let go.
“Emily, for heaven’s sake think! There is something in the March family that we don’t know, something dangerous or shameful enough to cause murder, and if we don’t find out what it is, you or I may very well be hanged for it instead!”
Half of her wanted to scream at him to be quiet, but she knew it was true. Giving way to hysterics now would be stupid and destructive-perhaps even fatal. Charlotte had got nowhere, except to discover Tassie’s secret, which as it turned out was irrelevant. Emily would have to save herself. If Jack Radley were innocent, together they might discover something. If he were guilty and she played along with him, perhaps she would trick him into betraying something, however small. It could be survival.
“You are quite right,” she said seriously. “We must think. I shall tell you everything I know, then you will tell me. Between us we may finally deduce the truth.”
He smiled very slightly, not quite believing her.
She made an effort to deny the fear she felt-not only the great and overshadowing knowledge of danger from the law and the enduring judgment of Society, but the inner loneliness and the belying warmth he offered, which it would be so easy to accept. If only the poisonous suspicion in her mind could be crushed. She had to force herself to remember that he was still the most likely murderer. The thought hurt even more than she expected.
“Tassie goes out at night alone, to help deliver babies in the slums,” she said rather abruptly.
If she hoped to startle him she succeeded magnificently. He stared at her while emotions teemed across his face: incredulity, fear, admiration, and lastly, pure delight.
“That’s superb! But how in God’s name do you know?”
“Charlotte followed her.”
He cringed, letting his breath out between his teeth in a little hiss and shutting his eyes.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I expect Thomas was furious.”
“Furious!” his voice rose. “Isn’t that something of an understatement?”
Immediately she was defensive. “Well, if she hadn’t, we’d still be thinking it was Tassie! Charlotte saw her coming upstairs in the middle of the night with bloodstains on her hands and dress! What else should she do? Let it remain a mystery? She knows I didn’t murder anyone-”
“Emily!” He caught her hands.
“-and if we don’t find who it is, I could be arrested and imprisoned-”
“Emily! Stop it!”
“-and tried, and hanged!” she finished harshly. She was shaking in spite of the closeness of him, and the strength of his hands holding hers. “People have been hanged wrongly before.” Memories, stories teemed in her mind. “Charlotte knows that, and so do I!” It was a relief to put it into words, to drag the real terror out of the darkness at the back of her mind and share it with him.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But it is not going to happen to you. Charlotte won’t let it-neither will I. It has to be someone in this house. Vespasia has the courage, if she thought such a thing were necessary. But she would never have killed George, and I don’t think she would have had the physical strength to kill Sybilla-not the way it was done. Sybilla was a young, healthy woman….” He hesitated, remembering.
“I know,” she said without pulling her hands away from him. “And Aunt Vespasia is not young, and not strong anymore.”
He smiled bleakly. “I wish I could think of a reason why old Mrs. March would have done it,” he said with feeling. “She’s twice Vespasia’s weight. She’d have the power.”
Emily looked at their locked hands. “But why would she?” she said hopelessly, anger and frustration welling up inside her. “There’d have to be a reason.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Unless George knew something about her.”
“Like what?”
He shook his head. “Something about the Marches? She’s choked up with family pride. I’m damned if I know why. They’ve plenty of money, but no breeding at all. It comes from trade.” Then he laughed at himself. “Not that I wouldn’t be glad of a little of it! My mother was a de Bohun, traces her family back to the Conquest. But you can’t even buy a good meal with that, let alone run a house.”
A wild series of thoughts clashed and jostled in her mind. Had he killed George hoping to marry her for the Ashworth money? But then, what about Tassie? Any man with sense would have chosen that marriage; it was infinitely safer, and his for the asking-or he must have thought so. He didn’t know about Mungo Hare. Or did he? Was he really so astounded by the news of Tassie’s midnight expeditions as he pretended to be? If Charlotte had followed her, so could he-at least, as far as seeing the young curate and realizing Tassie would never marry anyone else. Or perhaps Tassie had even told him herself? She was honest enough. She might have chosen not to delude him with false hope-not of love, but of money.
Emily shivered. She wanted to look at him-surely she had some ability of judgment left. And yet she also dreaded what she would see, and what she would reveal of herself. But as long as it remained undone it would crowd out all other thought from her mind. It was like vertigo, standing at the edge of a high balcony with the compulsive desire to look down, feeling the void pulling at you.
She looked up quickly and found his eyes worried, serious; she could see no deceit in them at all. It solved nothing. To find ugliness there might have freed her, let her believe the worst of him and kill the hope that-that what?
She refused to put it into words. It was too soon. But the thought stayed at the edge of her mind, something to move towards, beckoning her like a warm room at the end of a winter journey.
“Emily?”
She recalled her attention. They had been talking about the old woman. “She might have done something scandalous in her youth,” she offered. “Or maybe her husband did. Perhaps we should learn more of how the Marches got all their money-it could be something that would put an end to any idea of a peerage. Perhaps George knew of it. After all, it was her-” She swallowed. “Her medicine that was the poison.”
Memory of death came back sharp and cold, physically painful, and the tears stung in her eyes. She found she was clinging to his hand so hard she must be hurting him, but he did not pull away. Instead he put his arm round her and held her, touching her hair with his lips, whispering words that had no meaning, but whose gentleness she felt with an ease that made weeping not an ache but a release from pain, an undoing of the hard, frightened knots inside her.
She realized that she wanted the solution to the crime almost as much for him as for herself. She longed with an intense need to know that he was untouched, unmarked by it.
Charlotte also was happy to be alone, and spent some time in the dressing room which was her bedroom, repeating in her mind all that she had learned since the first news of George’s death right up to Pitt’s departure this morning.
It was half past three when she went downstairs with the small spark of an idea she wanted to disbelieve. It was ugly and sad, and yet it answered all the contradictions.
She was in the withdrawing room, almost at the curtains which half covered the French doors to the conservatory, when she heard the voices.
“How dare you say such a thing in front of everyone!” It was Eustace, loud and angry. His broad back was to the doors and beyond him she could just see the sunlight on William’s flaming hair. “I can forgive you a lot in your bereavement,” Eustace went on. “But that insinuation was appalling. You as good as said I was guilty of murder!”
“You were perfectly happy to see Emily blamed-or Jack,” William pointed out.
“That’s entirely different. They are not part of us.”
“For God’s sake, what has that got to do with it?” William demanded furiously.
“It has everything to do with it!” Eustace was growing angrier, and there was an ugly note in his voice, as if the dark and unrefined mass of inner thoughts were too close to the frail surface of manners that overlaid them. “You betrayed the family in front of strangers! You suggested there was something secret and shameful which you knew and others didn’t. Have you no conception what a meddling and inquisitive busybody that Pitt woman is? The
