A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [46]
“I … er …” He blinked and shook his head, as if he were plagued by flies buzzing around him. “I … went to the stage, but it was cold and rather eerie there by myself. I decided not to bother, and I brought the script back and sat in the library. I didn’t really want to rehearse so much as think of some way of making my part more heroic at the end. Ballin wasn’t in the corridor then, I swear. I could hardly have failed to see him if he had been. Not if he was lying on the floor, as you say.”
“No,” she agreed. “Thank you. I don’t suppose you asked a footman to bring you a drink, or anything?”
“In the middle of the night?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve got more sense than that. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of Netheridge.”
She believed him. “Thank you.”
“Mrs. Fielding?”
She was almost to the door. She turned. “Yes?”
“Who the devil was Ballin? Does anyone know? And where’s his body gone to?” His face was white in the pale daylight of the room.
“Someone must know who he is,” she answered him. “You don’t sharpen a broom handle into a dagger to kill a stranger in the middle of the night, especially when you are snowed in with an entire group of people.”
He put his hands over his face. “Oh, God! And the body?”
“I have no idea. Have you?”
“Me? No!”
“I thought not. Thank you, James.”
Vincent Singer was no more help. Caroline went to him next because it was the encounter she looked forward to least and she just wanted to get it over with. She had little confidence that she could persuade him to talk, still less that she could trick him into saying anything he did not wish to, certainly not to reveal anything that would betray a vulnerability on his part.
She found him in the library, reading Netheridge’s copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
“Decay always fascinates me,” he observed, putting a piece of paper into the book to mark his place before closing it. “You look troubled. Are you also afraid that Ballin is perched upside down in the rafters somewhere, waiting for nightfall to come and suck our blood?”
“I think he is far more likely to rot in the warmth, and attract rats,” she said tartly.
He gave a long sigh. “What a curious woman you are, all sweetness and respectability one moment, and violent imagery of the charnel house the next.”
“If you think that is surprising, then you know very little of women,” she retorted. “Especially respectable ones. We usually only faint to get out of a situation we find embarrassing. I am surprised so many people believe it. Well, that, and on occasion, there are those who lace their corsets too tight.”
“How extremely uncomfortable, and faintly ridiculous,” he replied. “Though I don’t believe that’s what you came to say. You have a look of purpose about your face. No doubt it is a grim purpose.”
“Extremely. The police will come and investigate Mr. Ballin’s death, when the snow thaws. I think it would be very much more pleasant for us if we could solve it before then.”
Vincent’s eyes widened. “Really? And how do you propose to do that? I do remember you saying, several times, that your son-in-law was some kind of policeman. Did you take lessons from him?” He made no attempt to hide his sarcasm.
She sat down in the chair opposite him. “If you disagree, I am perfectly happy to see if we can clear everyone else, Vincent. It may be one of the servants, although I think that is very unlikely. Or one of the Netheridges, of course. Whom do you think the police will suspect? Mr. Netheridge, owner of the coal mine and the jet factory and philanthropist to half the county, or someone from a group of London actors here to perform Dracula for Christmas?”
Vincent stared at her, his face pale and tight as he realized immediately the truth of what she said.
“You have a tongue like a knife, Caroline,” he observed, but his voice was shaking, in spite of his usual inner control. “I can’t prove where I was at the time he was killed, which was obviously after we all said good night, and whenever it was you went back to the theater.”
“Midnight,” she told him.
“I was