A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett [182]
“I find it hard to accept,” Edward said. “I know Micky is wicked in some ways, but to think he would kill….”
“He would, though,” Augusta said.
“How can you be sure?”
Edward looked so pathetic that Augusta was tempted to share her own secret knowledge with him. Would it be wise? It could do no harm. The shock of Hugh’s revelation seemed to have made Edward more thoughtful than usual. Perhaps the truth would be good for him. It might make him more serious. She decided to tell him. “Micky killed your uncle Seth,” she said.
“Good God!”
“He suffocated him with a pillow. I caught him red-handed.” Augusta felt a flush of heat in her loins as she remembered the scene that had followed.
Edward said: “But why would Micky kill Uncle Seth?”
“He was in such a hurry to get those rifles shipped to Cordova, don’t you remember?”
“I remember.” Edward was silent for a few moments. Augusta closed her eyes, reliving that long, wild embrace with Micky, in the room with the dead man.
Edward brought her out of her reverie. “There’s something else, and it’s even worse. You remember that boy Peter Middleton?”
“Certainly.” Augusta would never forget him. His death had haunted the family ever since. “What about him?”
“Hugh says Micky killed him.”
Now Augusta was shocked. “What? No—I can’t believe that.”
Edward nodded. “Deliberately held his head under the water and drowned him.”
It was not the murder itself but the idea of Micky’s betrayal that horrified her. “Hugh must be lying.”
“He says Tonio Silva saw the whole thing.”
“But that would mean Micky has been wickedly deceiving us all these years!”
“I think it’s true, Mother.”
Augusta realized, with a growing sense of dread, that Edward would not give credence to such a wild story without a reason. “Why are you so willing to believe what Hugh says?”
“Because I knew something Hugh didn’t know, something that confirms the story. You see, Micky had stolen some money from one of the masters. Peter knew and was threatening to tell. Micky was desperate to find some way of shutting him up.”
“Micky was always short of money,” Augusta recalled. She shook her head in incredulity. “And all these years we’ve thought—”
“That it was my fault Peter died.”
Augusta nodded.
Edward said: “And Micky let us think it. I can’t take it in, Mother. I believed I was a killer, and Micky knew I wasn’t, but he said nothing. Isn’t that a terrible betrayal of friendship?”
Augusta looked sympathetically at her son. “Will you throw him over?”
“Inevitably.” Edward was grief-stricken. “But he’s my only friend, really.”
Augusta felt close to tears. They sat looking at each other, thinking about what they had done, and why.
Edward said: “For nearly twenty-five years we’ve treated him as a member of the family. And he’s a monster.”
A monster, Augusta thought. It was true.
And yet she loved him. Even if he had killed three people, she loved Micky Miranda. Despite the way he had deceived her, she knew that if he walked into the room at this moment she would long to take him in her arms.
She looked at her son. Reading his face, she saw he felt the same way. She had known it in her heart but now her mind acknowledged it.
Edward loved Micky too.
CHAPTER TWO
OCTOBER
1
MICKY MIRANDA was worried. He sat in the lounge of the Cowes Club smoking a cigar, wondering what he had done to offend Edward. Edward was avoiding him. He stayed away from the club, he did not go to Nellie’s, and he did not even appear in Augusta’s drawing room at teatime. Micky had not seen him for a week.
He had asked Augusta what was wrong but she said she did not know. She was a little odd with him and he suspected that she knew but would not say.
This had not happened in over twenty years. Every now and again Edward would take offense at something Micky did and go into a sulk, but it never lasted more than a day or two. This time it was serious—and that meant it could jeopardize the Santamaria harbor money.
In the last decade, Pilasters Bank had issued Cordovan bonds about once a year. Some of the money had been capital