A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [39]
She was speaking to herself as if she had accepted that identifying the murderer was her responsibility. But who else was there who could possibly do it? None of them had any experience of murder, except herself. Douglas Paterson was possibly guilty! He had loathed Ballin, and made no secret of the fact that he thought Ballin was deluding Alice that she had talent when she did not. And even if she did, it was not a talent Douglas was willing for her to use. It would mean her leaving Whitby, where his future lay. If she did not marry him, then perhaps he did not have a future—not in the way he had imagined, and intended. Charles Netheridge was a very wealthy man indeed. The house more than attested to that, quite apart from his frequent and large investments in the London theater. Alice was his only child. That was why he had been willing to invite an actor of Joshua’s fame and quality up to Yorkshire for the whole Christmas period, and pay his expenses and those of his company, on the understanding that he, Netheridge, would stake them next London season.
But could Douglas have hated Ballin so much for helping Alice? Or could anyone in the company have hated Ballin so much? He was a stranger to all of them. What danger could he present? Surely nothing in the four days since he arrived had given birth to a passion so violent it had ended in that terrible act in the corridor?
He must have known one of them before. Had he come intending to seek revenge for some old wrong?
Caroline watched the sky. The dark clouds over the sea were closer now, and heavier. A gust of wind stirred the bare branches, sending piles of snow falling off into the deep drifts beneath.
Was it possible that Ballin had not been the intended victim? In the uncertain light of the corridor could the killer have mistaken Ballin for someone else? He was tall, but so were Vincent and James. With his back to the candlelight, would such a mistake be possible? If so, they must not have spoken; Ballin’s voice was too distinctive.
Netheridge was of average height, and broader than any other man here. He walked quite differently. Douglas Paterson was a good height, but he had not the practiced grace or elegance of Ballin.
No. She could not believe there had been such a mistake.
The sharpened broom handle was a very carefully prepared weapon. It had been created, not used in any spur-of-the-moment anger or self-defense. Nobody possessed such a weapon offhand, never mind carried it around with them in the middle of the night, unless they had an attack in mind.
Was it possible someone really did believe in vampires? Was anyone so crazy? Surely not? They were actors; they played all sorts of parts, real and fantastic. They could take up roles as they stepped onto the stage, and discard them again as they left it. She had seen Joshua as every character imaginable, from a pensive hero like Hamlet to a blood-soaked tyrant like Tamburlaine; as philosopher, cynic, and wit in the works of Oscar Wilde; and the lover Antony to Mercy’s Cleopatra. None of them was the real Joshua, the man she knew.
Had Ballin known his killer? Had they intended to meet there in the middle of the night? It was ridiculously unlikely that the meeting was purely a chance encounter, surely? Which meant that Ballin knew his attacker at least well enough to be willing to keep a midnight tryst.
Why was the body moved?
She thought of Mercy’s fear of the “undead,” which she had dismissed as a vain woman’s pretense to get attention. But the fact that the body had apparently disappeared now made her fancies seem less ridiculous. Was it likely that someone had hidden the body to cause and heighten that very fear?
Possibly. But it was more likely the body was moved because there was something about it that would give away the truth of the crime. What could that be? Either something of the identity of whoever