Midnight at Marble Arch

chapter



12



NARRAWAY HATED PRISONS, BUT it had quite often been necessary in the past for him to visit people awaiting trial, and sometimes even afterward when they were convicted. However, seeing Alban Hythe was more personal, and therefore painful in a quite different way.

Hythe looked ill. He was clearly exhausted and he seemed undecided as to whether he should even try to appear calm. He greeted Narraway courteously, but with fear jumping in his eyes.

Narraway tried to dismiss the overwhelming pity from his mind. He needed clarity of thought if he was to be of any help. They sat opposite each other across a scarred wooden table. Narraway had to use considerable influence to gain access and be left alone with Hythe, while the barrel-chested jailer remaining outside the door.

“I haven’t seen that brooch, and I never received love letters from Catherine!” Hythe said urgently. His voice shook a little. “We were friends. That’s all! Never more than that. Maris is the only woman I’ve loved.”

“Did they show you the letter?” Narraway asked him.

“Yes, but I swear it’s the first time I ever saw it!” Hythe was barely in control. His hands twitched and there was a wild desperation in his eyes.

“Do you believe she wrote it?” Narraway pressed. “They say it is undoubtedly her handwriting, but is it also the kind of language she would’ve used?”

“I’ve no idea! The letter is all about love, and we didn’t speak of love. We only—” He stopped abruptly.

“What?” Narraway asked. “What did you talk about? This is not the time to be modest or circumspect. You’re fighting for your life.”

“I know!” Hythe shivered uncontrollably.

Narraway leaned forward. “Then tell me, what did you talk about? If it wasn’t you who did this, then who else could it have been?”

“Don’t you think I’ve racked my brain to remember anything she said that could help me?” Hythe was close to panic.

Narraway realized he had made a tactical error in frightening Hythe by bringing up the stakes so soon. He moderated his voice. “Have you any idea how often you met? Once a week? Twice a week? Her diaries suggest at least that.”

Hythe looked down at the scarred tabletop. His voice when he spoke was quiet. “The first time we met by chance, at a dinner party. I forget where. It was a business matter, and rather tedious. Then a little while later I was at an art gallery, filling time before meeting a client for luncheon. I saw Catherine and recognized her. It seemed quite natural that we should speak.”

“What did you discuss?” Narraway asked.

Hythe smiled for the first time, as if a pleasant memory had given him a few moments’ respite from reality. “Pre-Raphaelite paintings,” he answered. “She wondered what the models were thinking about, sitting still for so long while the artist drew them in such fanciful surroundings. We thought about where they had actually been—some studio or just an ordinary room—and if they even knew the legends and dreams into which they were painted.

“Catherine was very funny. She could make one laugh so easily. Her imagination was … quite unlike that of anyone else I have ever known. She always had the right words to make one see the absurdity of things, but she was never mocking. She liked eccentricity and wasn’t afraid of anything.” His expression became sad. “Except loneliness.”

“And Quixwood never noticed that, clearly,” Narraway observed.

“A clever man, but with a pedestrian soul,” Hythe answered without hesitation. “Her soul had wings, and she hated being made to spend her time with her feet in the dust.” He bent his head suddenly. “I’m sorry; my judgment is unwarranted and cruel. She was just so alive; I hate whoever did this to her. They have spoiled something that was lovely and destroyed a friend I cared about. She was … she was good.” He seemed to want to add more. It was in that moment that Narraway knew Hythe was lying, in essence if not in word.

“Just a friend?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes!” Hythe jerked his head up. “Just a friend. We talked; we looked at pictures painted from great imaginations, at pages from books written on papyrus from the very first poets and dreamers in the world. We saw carvings of grace made by artists who died before Christ was born. She escaped from her loneliness, and I from my world of facts and figures, interest on loans, duty on imported treasures, and prices of land.”

His voice trembled.

“Haven’t you ever had friends, Lord Narraway? People you like enormously, who enrich your world, and without whom you would be poorer in a dozen ways—but you are not in love with them?”

Narraway instantly thought of Vespasia.

“Yes, I have,” he said honestly, feeling the warmth himself, for a moment.

“Then you can understand.” Hythe looked relieved. The ghost of a smile returned to his pale face.

Narraway felt a sudden stab of surprise, a question in his mind. What exactly did he feel for Vespasia? She was older than he by several years. He had been elevated to the House of Lords because of his skills, and possibly as a sop to his pride for being dismissed from his position as head of Special Branch. She had been born into the aristocracy. They had become friends by circumstance. He had begun a little in awe of her, and he was quite aware that she had never been in awe of him—nor perhaps of anyone else either.

But she could be hurt. He had realized that only recently. Her feelings were far deeper than he had imagined, and she was not invulnerable. Was she also, occasionally, as lonely as Catherine Quixwood had been?

He forced it out of his thoughts. He was concerned with Alban Hythe, and whether the younger man was guilty or not, and what it was he still lied about, even though the shadow of the noose hung over him.

“Did you ever write to her?” Narraway asked a little abruptly.

“No,” Hythe said urgently. “We met by chance, or …”

“Or what?” Narraway demanded. “For God’s sake, man, they’ve charged you with rape, and the victim died. 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 wasn’t expecting anyone. Letting them all retire for the night like that makes it obvious; Catherine was never careless in that way. It would be … unnecessarily dangerous. What if a footman had come down to check a door, or the butler came to ensure she didn’t need anything? Isn’t that what actually happened?”

“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 possessed to override the clerk’s protests.

He found Symington standing in the middle of the well-carpeted floor, a leather-bound book in his hand. He had clearly been interrupted against his instructions. He was a handsome man in his early forties. Most remarkable about him were his thick, fair hair, curling beyond the barber’s control, and the dazzling charm of his smile.

“My lord?” he said quietly, reproof in his voice.

Narraway did not apologize. “A matter of urgency, it can’t wait,” he explained as the clerk closed the door behind him.

“You’ve been charged with something?” Symington said curiously.

Narraway was in no mood for levity. “Inspector Knox has charged a man with the rape of Catherine Quixwood, and therefore morally, in the minds of the jury, with her murder. I would like you to defend him. I believe he’s innocent.”

Symington blinked. “You’d like me to defend him? Does he mean something to you, to the government, to Special Branch? Or is it just because you think he’s innocent?” There was amusement in his voice, and curiosity. “I presume he told you he is?” He put the book down on his desk, closed, as if it no longer interested him. “Why me? Or am I the only one you think fool enough to take it?”

In spite of himself Narraway smiled. “Actually, the last,” he admitted. “But you are also the only one who would stick to it long enough to have a chance of winning. I really believe he’s innocent, and that there is something large and very ugly behind the whole case—maybe more than one thing. Certainly someone raped and beat the woman so badly she died as a result. She was a funny, brave, and beautiful woman. She deserves justice—but even more important, whoever did it needs to be taken off the streets and put where he can never hurt anyone else.”

Symington raised his eyebrows. “Like a grave?”

“That would do nicely,” Narraway agreed. “Will you take the case? I would like Hythe to believe it is without charge, because he doesn’t have the means to meet it. I’ll pay you myself, but he must never know.”

Symington’s utterly charming smile beamed again. “I’m not a fool, my lord. The case sounds like a challenge. I think I can clear my desk sufficiently to give it my very best attention. And I’ll weigh the matter of my bill, and send you what I feel appropriate. I give you my word that Hythe will believe I do it for the love of justice.”

“Thank you,” Narraway said sincerely. “Thank you very much.”

He hesitated, wondering if he were risking the frail thread of trust he had just established with Symington—and yet it was the only hint he had that there might be someone else besides Hythe to blame. But he also believed that at least in some sense Hythe was lying, or at the very best willfully concealing something.

Symington was waiting for him to speak.

“Hythe admitted meeting Catherine Quixwood as often as her diaries suggested, but he said she arranged it. He said she wanted him to give her financial advice.”

“And you believed that?” Symington said with a twisted smile. “Quixwood’s a financier himself, and an extremely good one.”

“I know,” Narraway admitted. “Hythe said she was afraid Quixwood was into something dubious, and over his head. She wanted to know more about it. If she was afraid for her future, if he had been reckless, then that would be believable.”

“Ah. But do you? Believe it?” Symington asked. “If he has any proof of it, why didn’t he tell Knox?”

“I don’t know,” Narraway admitted. “He’s lying about something. I just don’t know what.”

“But you’re sure he didn’t rape her?” Symington looked puzzled and not angry.

“Yes,” Narraway answered, unable to explain himself.

“Then I’ll take the case, try to win the trial,” Symington promised.

“Thank you,” Narraway said.


THAT EVENING NARRAWAY WENT out rather later than was customary to call on a woman alone, particularly one with whom he had only the slightest acquaintance. He stood in the small parlor of Alban Hythe’s house and told Maris what he had achieved.

Maris was so pale that her dark dress, more suitable for autumn than summer, drained the last trace of the vitality from her face. However, she kept her composure and stood straight-backed, head high, in front of him. What effort it must be costing her he could only guess.

“And this Mr. Symington will defend my husband, in spite of the evidence?” she asked. “Why? He can’t know that Alban is innocent. He’s never even met him. And we can’t pay the sort of money such a man as you describe would ask.” She struggled to keep control of her voice and very nearly failed.

“Then I did not describe him very well,” Narraway apologized. “Symington cares far more about the case than the money.”

She studied Narraway’s face for several moments, searching his eyes to judge whether he was lying to her, or at the least prevaricating. Finally she must have come to the conclusion that he was not. But her words were interrupted by a maid at the door telling her that Mr. Rawdon Quixwood had called and wished to speak with her.

Narraway was startled but, turning to look at the maid, saw that her face was completely expressionless. Clearly she was not surprised.

Maris looked pleased.

“Thank you. Please ask him to come in,” she instructed.

The maid withdrew obediently and Maris turned to Narraway.

“He has been so kind. Even with all his own grief, he has found time to call on me and assure me of his help.” She lowered her eyes. “I fear sometimes he believes Alban guilty, but his gentleness toward me has been without exception.” She gave a small, very rueful smile. “Perhaps he feels we are companions in misfortune, and I have not the heart to tell him it is not so, because it does seem that Catherine was more familiar with someone than she should have been. I would so much rather think that was not true, of course, but I have no argument that stands up to reason.”

She had not time to add any more before Rawdon Quixwood came in. The hollowness of his face had eased a little, perhaps because at last someone had been arrested for the crime, even though the loss must still feel just as bitter.

“Maris, my dear—” he began, stopping abruptly when he realized Narraway was also in the room. He checked himself quickly. “Lord Narraway! How agreeable to see you. I wonder if we are here on the same errand. I’m afraid I can offer little comfort. Perhaps you have better news?”

Narraway met Quixwood’s eyes and found he could read nothing of what the man was thinking. The idea occurred to him that the effort of hiding his own pain might be the only way Quixwood could turn his mind from his grief.

Still, Narraway found himself reluctant to trust him, or to risk wounding him still more deeply with the possibility that they had not actually caught his wife’s attacker.

“I am still searching,” he replied quietly. “Without much profit so far, for all the information I can find. I hear contradicting stories of Mrs. Quixwood.”

Quixwood gave a very slight shrug, a graceful gesture. “I daresay they are exercising the customary charity toward the dead who cannot defend themselves. I appreciate it. Women who are … assaulted … are often blamed almost as much as the men who assault them. The euphemisms and occasional silences are a kindness.”

“But not helpful,” Narraway pointed out. “We need the truth if we are to obtain justice, for any of the people concerned.”

Maris gestured for both men to be seated. As soon as they were, Quixwood spoke.

“Justice.” He seemed to be turning the word over in his mind. “I began wanting justice for Catherine as a starving man wants food. Now I am less certain that it is really what I wish. Silence might be more compassionate. After all, she can no longer speak for herself.”

Maris looked down at her hands folded in her lap, white-knuckled.

“Rawdon, you have been the essence of kindness to me,” she said gently. “In spite of the fact that it is my husband the police have arrested for the terrible wrong done to your wife. But Alban is not guilty, and he needs justice also. Apart from that, do you not wish the real monster to be caught, before he goes on and does something similar to another woman?”

Quixwood’s face reflected an inner conflict so profound, so intense, he could barely keep still. His hands in his lap were more tightly twisted than Maris’s. In that moment Narraway knew beyond any doubt that Quixwood was certain that Alban Hythe was guilty, and he was here to do what he could to help the man’s wife face that fact. It was a startling generosity. But … well, what did he know that Narraway and Maris did not?

Quixwood was still searching for words, his eyes on Maris’s face, troubled and almost tender. “I don’t think it is likely,” he said at last. “It is far better that you do not know the details, but I assure you, it was not a random maniac who did this deed. It was very personal. Please, think no more of it. You must concern yourself with your own well-being. If there is anything I can do to help, I will.” He gave a very slight smile, wry and self-deprecating. “It would be a favor to me. It would give me someone to think of other than myself.”

A warmth of gratitude filled her face, and also a very genuine admiration. Narraway was sure that Quixwood had seen it, and it must indeed have given him some small comfort.


THE FOLLOWING DAY NARRAWAY called early at the club where Quixwood was still living. He had to wait until the man rose and came into the dining room for breakfast, then joined him without asking permission, because he had no intention of accepting a refusal.

Quixwood looked startled, but he made no objection. He regarded the older man with some curiosity.

Narraway smiled as he finished requesting poached kippers and brown toast from the steward. As soon as the servant left, he answered Quixwood’s unspoken question.

“I hear several different accounts of Catherine,” he said, watching Quixwood’s eyes. “I assume that you loved her, and also that you knew her better than anyone else. Nothing need come out in court that puts that in doubt, and still less in the newspapers, but I think it is time we discussed her without the glittering veil of compassion that usually shrouds the dead.”

Quixwood sighed, but there was no resistance in him. He leaned back a little and his dark eyes met Narraway’s. “Do you not think it was Alban Hythe who killed her?” he said anxiously. “It will bring terrible grief to poor Maris if it is, of course. She still believes in him.”

Narraway did not answer the question directly.

“If they were lovers, Catherine and Hythe, why on earth would he suddenly turn on her like that?” he said instead. It was a reasonable question.

“Does it matter now?” Quixwood wrinkled his brow.

“If we are going to convict the man and hang him, it has to make sense,” Narraway said bluntly.

Quixwood winced. “Yes, of course, you are right,” he conceded. He began to speak in a very low voice. His eyes were downcast, as if he was ashamed of being forced into making such admissions.

“Catherine was a very emotional woman, and she was beautiful. You never saw her alive, or you’d understand. She hated going to the sort of functions where you and I might meet. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t press her. It wasn’t only out of kindness to her, but also because she was so charming, so very alive, that she attracted attention she was not able to understand for what it was, or deal with.”

Narraway was puzzled, but he did not interrupt.

“She loved attention,” Quixwood continued, a warmth lighting his face, probably for the first time since the night of Catherine’s death. “She responded to it like a flower to the sun. But she also was easily bored. When someone did not live up to her expectations, or have the imaginative enthusiasm she did, she would drop their acquaintance. It could cause, at the very least, a degree of embarrassment.”

At last he looked up and met Narraway’s eyes. “I loved her, but I also learned not to take her sudden passions too seriously. She lived a good deal of her life in a world of her own creation: mercurial, entertaining, but quite unreal.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I fear young Alban Hythe would have had no idea how changeable she was, how … fickle.”

He made a slight gesture of dismissal. “She would mean no cruelty, but she had no concept of how deeply an idealistic, rather naïve young man might fall in love with her, and—when she rejected him—feel utterly betrayed.”

He blinked and looked away. “If they were lovers, or he thought she had implied they would be, and then without warning she felt he had not lived up to what she expected of him, he surely would have felt utterly cheated. He might have damaged irreparably his relationship with a wife who was devoted to him in favor of a woman who seemed incapable of loyalty to anyone—who had built a castle in the air out of his dreams and then destroyed it in front of him. Do you see?”

Narraway did. It was a persuasive image. And yet he did not quite believe it.

“But what about taking the laudanum to end her life?” Narraway asked, his voice sounding harsher than he had meant it to.

“Perhaps she realized what she had done,” Quixwood said with a small, helpless gesture of his hands, barely a movement at all. “She was passionate, but she was not strong. If she had been, she would have lived in the real world …” He left the rest and all its implications unsaid.

“Thank you,” Narraway responded quickly, as the steward arrived with his poached kippers, and bacon, eggs, sausage, and deviled kidneys for Quixwood. They both turned, with little joy, to their food and harmless, matter-of-fact subjects of conversation as the dining room filled up.


AFTER LEAVING THE CLUB, Narraway decided that he still did not know enough about Catherine Quixwood. The woman her husband had described was very different from the one Alban Hythe had seen and believed he knew and had liked so deeply. Moreover, both were different again from the one Narraway had seen in death.

Who would have known all of her, fitted the disparate pieces into a whole, however complex? No one wished to speak ill of the dead, and most particularly of someone who had died so horribly.

Would there be any point in asking Knox for his help? Probably not. He had arrested Alban Hythe, which meant that he had formed a picture of Catherine he could now not afford to alter.

Narraway circled back to the idea that perhaps the person who knows a woman best is her lady’s maid. But he had already spoken to Flaxley, more than once. Did she have anything left to tell him? He decided it was worth one more try.

Narraway stepped into the street and hailed a cab, giving Quixwood’s address.

Then the obvious way around Flaxley’s reluctance came to him like sudden daylight. If anyone could persuade a loyal servant to discuss the details of her mistress’s character, it would be Vespasia.

He leaned forward and knocked on the front of the cab, asking the driver to take him instead to Vespasia’s house.


“REALLY, VICTOR,” SHE SAID with slight surprise when he told her what he wished her to do. “And what shall I give the poor woman as a reason why I consider her mistress’s character to be any of my concern?”

They were sitting in her morning room, all cool colors and stark white frames to the windows. There was a bowl of early blooming white roses on the low table, and the sunlight through the glass was hot and bright. In spite of his reason for calling, Narraway found himself relaxing. It was extraordinarily comfortable here.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He found himself telling her not only what Alban Hythe had said of Catherine, and what Quixwood himself had said, but also his own impressions and the depth of feeling it aroused in him.

She watched him gravely the whole time, without interrupting.

“I see,” she said when she was certain he had no more to add. “It is not possible for both opinions to be entirely true, and perhaps neither of them? It would be a curious thing to see yourself as others do. I imagine it would seldom be comfortable.” She smiled very slightly. “I am very glad that I shall not be present at my own funeral, even to hear the eulogies that, I’m sure, will make me sound quite unreal.”

He was caught with a sudden icy coldness. He had never imagined Vespasia dying. The thought was so painful, it shocked him.

“My dear, don’t look so tragic,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I quite see the necessity of someone speaking to Flaxley, and your argument that it should be I who does so is perfectly sensible. I shall make the arrangements.”

“Thank you,” he said a little awkwardly, afraid she might suddenly understand what it was that had really shaken him so much.


NARRAWAY DINED WITH VESPASIA the following evening. He chose to make it a formal affair—a dinner at the finest restaurant he knew. For his own pleasure, he wished to behave as if it were a celebration of something, rather than the pursuit of the last act of a tragedy.

She flattered him by dressing with all the glamour he had associated with her when they had first met. She wore heavy ivory silk with guipure lace at the neck and over the bodice, and as she did so often, she ornamented it with ropes of pearls. He saw other diners, especially several gentlemen and senior members of Parliament, look at him with distinct envy.

Vespasia conducted herself with the nonchalance he would have expected, although a slight flush of pleasure did rise in her cheeks as they entered the dining room.

He wanted to find out if she had succeeded in learning anything, but it would be unbecoming to ask too soon. Additionally, it might give her the totally mistaken idea that that had been his sole motive in inviting her.

They had reached the dessert (a most exquisite French apple tart) before the subject was raised, by Vespasia.

“I spoke at some length to Catherine’s maid,” she said, setting her fork down on her plate. “At first she was naturally reluctant to say anything but the sort of respectful praise that loyalty would dictate. I’m afraid I took the liberty of mentioning that if we did not prosecute the right man, the real murderer would escape detection and very probably commit a similar crime against someone else. I am not certain if that is true, of course, but I am quite sure that Catherine herself would not wish the wrong man convicted.”

“I’m afraid it probably is true,” he replied gravely. “What did she tell you? Is Quixwood right about Catherine?”

“No,” she said without hesitation. “But, of course, I can’t say whether he believes he is. It is quite clear that she did not find in him either the love or the friendship she wished for. His defense against that may have been to see her as the cause of the problem rather than he himself, or the simple fact that perhaps they were mismatched.”

“And you are sure the maid was not merely being loyal?” he pressed.

She smiled. “Yes, Victor, I am quite sure. I have had a lady’s maid all my life. I can read between the lines of what they say, or decline to say.” Her eyes were bright with amusement, but there was no impatience in them, no condescension. He had the distinct feeling that she was pleased to have been asked for her help.

“Would you like Armagnac, perhaps?” he said impulsively.

“Champagne is sufficient for me,” she answered, smiling.

He hesitated.

She looked at the light, sparkling wine in her glass and raised her delicate eyebrows. “Is this not champagne, then?” she asked.

For a moment he was not certain of the compliment. Then, meeting her eyes, he understood and found himself coloring with pleasure, and even a little self-consciousness. He raised his glass to hers without answering.


IN THE MORNING NARRAWAY went to find Knox again. He began at the police station and was told that there had been an unpleasant brawl down on the waterfront and Knox had been called to the scene.

Narraway obtained the precise location, thanked the constable, and left to find a hansom to take him there. It was not a long journey but it took time weaving in and out of the traffic, dense at that time of day, the roads crowded with drays, wagons, and men and women on foot busy with their early errands. He passed lightermen, stevedores, crane drivers, wagon masters, and ferrymen, already busy. Gulls wheeled and dived, screaming as they fought over fish. Up and down the highway of the river Narraway saw strings of barges ride the tide, and on the land behind them men shouted at one another and the rumble of wheels jolted over the uneven cobbles.

He found Knox standing on the stone slipway where the fight had taken place, his jacket collar high round his ears, wind whipping his hair.

Fortunately, in this crime no one was dead, although there was still blood on the stones from a knife wound.

“I know you didn’t want Hythe to be guilty,” Knox remarked after he had greeted him. “Neither did I. Sometimes I don’t understand people at all. I’d have sworn he hadn’t it in him, but you can’t argue with that letter.” He pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “And don’t tell me it isn’t in her hand, because it is. First thing I did was have it checked by the experts who can spot a forgery. Although I don’t know why anybody’d bother with that; it’s not as if we had any other suspects.”

Narraway felt crushed by the logic of it. “Then there’s something about this case that we’ve missed,” he said stubbornly, although he could think of nothing.

Knox looked at him with a frown, puzzled. “Haven’t you ever found that an anarchist, who wanted to bring the whole social order down around our ears, was actually quite a nice fellow if you met him down at the pub, my lord?”

“Yes, of course I have,” Narraway said irritably. “But Hythe liked Catherine Quixwood, and he understood her a lot better than her husband did.”

Knox hunched his shoulders and pulled his coat more tightly around him, as if he were cold, although the wind off the river was mild.

Water slopped noisily on the stones as the wash from a string of barges reached them.

“My lord, we both know what was done to Mrs. Quixwood. Think what you like about Hythe, but if he’s the guilty party—and he is the one charged—there was no like nor understanding between him and Catherine Quixwood at the end.”

Narraway said nothing. He stood in the sun by the water. The rising tide would wash away the bloodstains at his feet, but, remembering the injuries Dr. Brinsley had described, he thought nothing would ever rid his mind of the images they conjured, or the sick misery that filled him.