If they find you guilty they’ll hang you!”
He thought Hythe was going to pass out. The last vestige of color drained out of his face and for a moment his eyes lost focus.
Narraway jerked forward and grasped hold of his wrists and forced him upright.
“Fight!” he said between his teeth. “Fight them! Damn it, give me something to use! If you weren’t lovers, then what the hell were you doing meeting a married woman in half the galleries around London? You have no room and no time to protect anyone else!”
Hythe sat up against the hard back of the chair, breathing in and out slowly, trying to steady himself. Finally he lifted his eyes.
“We met by arrangement,” he said huskily.
Narraway bit back the angry answer that was on the edge of his tongue.
“So why were you meeting with such elaborate care as to make it appear by chance?”
“I promised her …” Hythe began, then tears of grief filled his eyes.
“She’s dead!” Narraway said brutally. “And precisely three weeks after they find you guilty, you will be too!”
The silence in the room was thick, as if the air had turned solid, too heavy to breathe.
Had Narraway gone too far? Had he frightened Hythe into a mental collapse? His mind raced for something to do, anything to rescue the situation. He had been irretrievably stupid, lost his touch completely. No wonder they had retired him!
“Hythe …” he started, his voice choking.
The other man opened his eyes. “She wanted something from me,” he began, then released a heavy sigh. “Advice.”
Narraway felt the sweat break out on his body and relief flood through him.
“What kind of advice? Financial?”
“Yes. She … she was concerned for her future,” Hythe said miserably. He was breaking his own professional code of honor by speaking of it, and it was obvious how profoundly difficult that was for him.
Still, Narraway sensed an evasion. There was something incomplete. Hythe might feel guilty about breaking a confidence, but there was nothing immoral in a woman being afraid her husband was rash with money, even a husband usually skilled in such affairs.
“Go on,” he prompted.
“Her husband was involved in investments,” Hythe said quietly. “She was afraid that something he was doing would end up being disastrous, but he wouldn’t listen to her. She wanted to have her own information and not depend on what he told her. It was … detailed. It took me a long time to find it and I gave it to her piece by piece, as I could. Each time it fell into place she would ask for something further. She believed that some investments currently worth a fortune might become useless, and others gain enormously.”
He was still lying, at least in part. Narraway knew it, and he could not understand why. Did Hythe still not understand his own danger?
“Was she trying to save her husband’s finances?” Narraway asked. “Did she have money of her own, or expectations?”
Hythe stared at him. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me why she needed the information, but I think it was more than that. I had the increasingly powerful feeling that she was afraid of something calamitous happening. I asked her, and she refused to say.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t press her.”
“How many times altogether did you meet?”
“A dozen maybe.” He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “I liked her, but I never touched her in a familiar way, and I certainly didn’t rape her! Why on earth would I? We were friends, and both her husband and my wife were perfectly aware of it!”
“You are sure that Quixwood was aware of it?” Narraway pressed.
“Of course! He and I even talked about an exhibition at the National Geographical Society, photographs of Patagonia. He told me how beautiful Catherine found it: great sweeping wilderness country; all pale, wind- bleached colors, light and shadow. Superb.”
“Did she speak to anyone else about the financial issues?”
Hythe thought for several moments, then met Narraway’s eyes.
“I don’t think so. From what she said to me, I gathered I was the only person she trusted.”
“She came to you for financial information, but you said she was warm, amusing, a lovely woman.”
“She was!”
“And Quixwood was cold, without a true understanding of her?” Narraway insisted.
“Yes.”
“So she was lonely, maybe desperately lonely?”
Hythe swallowed painfully. “Yes.” His voice was husky with emotion, guilt, and perhaps pity. “But I did not take advantage of that. I had no wish to. I liked her, liked … cared … but I did not love her.” He added no oaths, no pleas, and his words were the more powerful for it.
“It’s not enough. You have to think harder!” Narraway leaned forward again, a note of desperation in his voice. He heard it and forced himself to speak more levelly. “Whoever it was that raped her, she let him in.” He swallowed hard. “She wasn’t afraid to be alone with him. What do you conclude from that?”
“That she knew him,” Hythe said miserably. He shook his head a little. “It doesn’t sound like Catherine at all, not as I knew her.”
“Then as you knew her, how do you explain it?” Narraway demanded. “What do you believe happened?”
“Do you think I haven’t tried to work it out?” Hythe said desperately. “If she let the servants go then she
“More or less,” Narraway agreed.
“So the person at the door had to be someone unexpected,” Hythe argued.
“But then why did she let him in?” Narraway persisted. “Why would the woman you knew have done that?”
“It must have been someone she knew and had no fear of,” Hythe answered. “Maybe he claimed to be hurt, or in some kind of trouble. She wouldn’t hesitate to try and help.” He stopped abruptly. He made no display of grief, but it was so deeply marked on his face that it was unmistakable.
Narraway suddenly was completely certain that Hythe had not raped Catherine or beaten her. Someone else had, but Hythe was going to face trial. The letter and the gift would damn him. And there was no one else to suspect. He felt a jolt of fear.
Who was going to defend Hythe in court, at the very least raise a reasonable doubt? That would not clear his name, but guilt would hang him, and finding the right person after that would matter little. Hythe would be dead, and Maris a widow and alone.
“Do you have a lawyer, a really first-class advocate?” Narraway asked.
Hythe looked as if he had been struck. “Not yet. I–I don’t know of anyone …” He trailed off, lost.
“I will find you someone,” Narraway promised rashly.
“I can’t pay … very much,” Hythe began.
“I will persuade him to represent you for free,” Narraway replied, intending if necessary to pay for the barrister himself. Already he had the man in mind, and he would speak to him this afternoon.
He remained only a little longer, going over details of facts again so they were clear in his mind. Then he excused himself and went straight from the prison to the chambers of Peter Symington in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a short distance away. If any man would take on the case of defending Alban Hythe with a chance of winning, it was he.
Narraway insisted on seeing Symington immediately, using the suggestion of more influence than he
