Certainly to Susannah Chancellor, dead or alive! No-it was a public place, and I am quite certain I was thoroughly observed, and the matter will have been reported to the police. Your diligent friend Pitt will be very aware of it. He has already been to see me. He was polite, of course, but also, underneath the good manners, very suspicious. It would suit a good many people if I were charged with murdering her. It would …” He stopped, seeing the alarm in her face.
He smiled self-mockingly. “Oh come, Nobby. Don’t pretend you don’t know that. The sooner the matter is settled, the greater honor there will be for the police, the press will leave them alone, and no one will need to look too exhaustively into poor Susannah’s life. Although I am sure it was as pure as most people’s; still it is an unpleasant exercise, and bound to offend a few whose lives touched hers, perhaps less than honorably.”
“‘Less than honorably’?” She was surprised, and not sure what he meant.
He smiled ruefully. “Mine to begin with,” he confessed. “The quarrel was innocent enough, not personal, a matter of conviction; but viewed by others who did not know what was said, it might look otherwise. I have no doubt there will be other people who would not care to have every word or gesture examined by the prurient and unkind.” He looked at her with a gentleness touched with humor which set her pulses racing. “Have you not been guilty of foolishness now and then which you would rather remained private? Or a word or an act that was hasty, shabbier than you wished?”
“Yes of course I have.” She did not need to add more; the understanding was complete, without the necessity of words.
They walked a few paces farther and then turned along the path towards the stone wall and the early roses spilling over it. The archway was in dappled sunlight, picking out the flat surfaces of the individual stones, and the tiny plants in the crevices low down where it was moist, ferns and mosses with flowers like pinprick stars. Above them there was a faint rustle in the leaves of the elm trees as a breeze moved, laden with the smell of grass and leaf mold.
She looked at his face and knew he was thinking of the pleasures of being home in England, the timeless grace of old gardens. Africa with its savagery, its gaudy vegetation, so often seared and withered by relentless sun, its teeming wildlife, all seemed unreal in this ancient certainty where the seasons had come and gone with the same nurturing pattern for a hundred generations.
But Susannah’s death would not go away. Law was also a thing more certain here, and Nobby knew Pitt well enough to have no doubt that he would pursue it to the end, no matter what that end might be. He did not bow to coercion, expediency or even emotional pain.
If the truth were unbearably ugly, she did not know if he would make public all the evidence. If the answer proved to be too desperately tragic, if it would ruin others for no good cause, if the motive caught his pity hard enough, he might relent. Although she could not imagine a reason that could ever mitigate the murder of someone like Susannah.
But that argument was pointless. It was not Pitt she was afraid of, or prosecution or justice, it was truth. It would be equally terrible to her if Kreisler were guilty, whether he were charged or not.
But why did she even entertain the thought? It was hideous, terrible! She felt guilty that it even entered her mind, let alone that she let it remain there.
As if reading her thoughts, or seeing the confusion in her face, he stopped just beyond the arch in the small shade garden with its primroses and honesty and arching Solomon’s seal.
“What is it, Nobby?”
She was abashed to find an answer that was neither a lie nor too hurtful to both of them.
“Did you learn anything?” She seized upon something useful to ask.
“About Susannah’s death? Not much. It seems to have happened late in the evening and when she was alone in a hansom cab, no one knows where. She had said she was going to visit the Thornes, but never arrived, as far as we know. Unless, of course, the Thornes are lying.”
“Why should the Thornes wish her harm?”
“It probably goes back to the death of Sir Arthur Desmond-at least that is what Pitt has apparently suggested. It makes little sense to me.”
They were standing so still a small, brown bird flew out of one of the trees and stood on the path barely a yard from them, its bright eyes watching curiously.
“Then why?” she said quietly, the fear still large within her. She knew enough of men who traveled the wild places of the earth to understand that they have to have an inner strength in order to survive, a willingness to attack in the need to defend themselves, the resolve to take life if it threatened their own, a single-mindedness that brooked nothing in its way. Gentler people, more circumspect, more civilized at heart, all too often were crushed by the ferocity of an unforgiving land.
He was watching her closely, almost searchingly. Slowly the happiness and the sense of comfort drained out of him, replaced by pain.
“You are not convinced that I did not do it, are you, Nobby?” he said with a catch in his voice. “You think I could have murdered that lovely woman? Just because …” He stopped, the color washing up his face in guilt.
“No,” she said levelly, the words difficult to speak. “Not just because she differed with you over settlement in Africa, of course not. But then we both know that would be absurd. If you had, it would be because of the shares she has in one of the great banking houses and the influence she might have over Francis Standish, and of course because of her husband’s position. She supported him fully, which meant she was against you.”
He was very pale, his features twisted with hurt.
“For God’s sake, Nobby! How would my murdering her help?”
“It is one supporter less….” She trailed off, looking away from him. “I am not supposing you killed her, only that the police might think so. I am afraid for you.” That was the truth, but not the whole truth. “And you were angry with her.”
“If I killed everyone I was angry with, at one time or another, my whole career would be littered with corpses,” he said quietly, and she knew from the tone in his voice that he had believed only the truth she had spoken; the lies and the omissions he understood for what they were.
The bird was still on the path close to them, its head cocked to one side.
He put his hands on her arms and she felt the warmth of him through the thin sleeves of her dress.
“Nobby, I know that you understand Africa as I do, and that at times men are violent in order to survive in a violent and sudden land, where the dangers are largely unknown and there is no law but that of staying alive, but I have not lost my knowledge of the difference between Africa and England. And morality, the underlying knowledge of good and evil, is the same everywhere. You do not kill people simply because they stand in your way, or believe differently over an issue, no matter how big. I argued with Susannah, but I did not hurt her, or cause her to be hurt. You do me an injustice if you do not believe that … and you cause me deep pain. Surely I do not need to explain that to you? Do we not understand each other without the need for speeches and declarations?”
“Yes.” She answered from the heart, her head ignored, silenced in a deeper, more insistent certainty. “Yes of course we do.” Should she apologize for even having entertained the thought? Did he need her to?
As if he had read it in her eyes, he spoke, smiling a little.
“Good. Now let us leave it. Don’t go back over it. You had to acknowledge what passed through your mind. Don’t let there be dishonesty between us, the need to hide behind deceit and politeness for fear of the truth.”
“No,” she agreed quickly, a ridiculous smile on her face in spite of all that common sense could tell her. “Of course I won’t.”
He leaned forward and kissed her with a gentleness that took her by blissful surprise.
Pitt was sitting at the breakfast table slowly eating toast and marmalade. The toast was crisp and the butter very mildly salted. Altogether it was something to be savored to the last crumb.
And he had been out until nearly midnight the previous evening, so if he were late at Bow Street this morning, it was justifiable. The children had left for school and Gracie was busy upstairs. The daily woman was scrubbing the back steps, and would presently put black lead on the range, after cleaning it out, a job which Gracie was delighted to have got rid of.
Charlotte was making a shopping list.
“Are you going to be late again this evening?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I doubt it,” he replied with his mouth full. “Although we still haven’t found the hansom driver yet….”
