Anne Perry's Silent Nights_ Two Victorian Christmas Mysteries - Anne Perry [36]
“Over what?” he asked. “Who would she meet in the churchyard? He came with a knife, as if he intended harm.”
She winced and shivered, holding her arms around herself. “I have no idea.”
He had a sharp sense that she was lying. It was nothing obvious, only a subtle tightness in her shoulders, an altered tone in her voice. Was she protecting her husband? Or even herself? Was the threat that Olivia posed far closer to home than anyone had previously thought? Had Olivia, in desperation, tried to force her brother into keeping her for the rest of his life, and had he found the endless, draining expense too much to endure? Had his tortured self-control broken, and had he seized a terrible escape? This situation answered every fact they knew.
But what secret? What did this quiet, sad, seemingly conventional house hide?
“I think you have an idea, Mrs. Costain,” he told her. “You knew your sister-in-law as well as anyone did. You cared for her, and you understood her. You also must know the expense of her remaining unmarried, and refusing offer after offer for no reason she was prepared to give, unless it was to you?”
She turned around to stare at him, anger flaring in her eyes, her mouth hard. “If I knew who murdered Olivia, I would tell you. I do not. Nor do I know anything that would be of use to you. I have admitted that she was a disturbing person, and hard for many to understand. I can tell you nothing new. Please do not waste any more of your time, or mine, in asking me such things. Good day, Mr. Runcorn. The maid will show you out.”
How dare you behave with such crass insensitivity?” Faraday accused him that evening when he answered his summons to the big house. They were standing in the library. The gas lamps were lit and a good fire roared and hissed in the grate.
“You will not approach Mrs. Costain on the subject again,” Faraday went on. “If anything should be necessary to ask, I will do it. Have you no sense at all of how the poor woman must be feeling?” His face was red and his features pinched with anxiety and perhaps a sense of panic as failure crept closer around him. They knew nothing more than they had the morning after Olivia was found. Every thread they pulled came loose in their hands. But this was not Runcorn’s jurisdiction, no one was going to blame him if Olivia’s murder went unsolved. Faraday was the only one with something to lose.
“She is lying,” he said aloud. “She knows something that could have provoked the kind of rage we saw in that murder.”
“Dear God!” Faraday exploded. “Tell me you didn’t say so to her!” He closed his eyes. “You did! Don’t bother to deny it, it’s in your face. You oaf!” Suddenly he was shouting, his voice raw. “This may be the way it is done in the alleys and brothels you usually police, but these are decent people, gentry, people of class and Christian values. Runcorn, the man’s a vicar! Have you really no …” He drew in his breath and let out a heavy sigh. “No. I suppose you haven’t. It was my failure that I even let you in at the door.”
Runcorn felt as if the fire had burned out of the grate to scorch him. Perhaps Faraday was right. He was clumsy, and had always lacked the grace of someone gifted like Monk. He had achieved his rank by plodding patience, determination, the will to succeed, and perhaps now and then a flash of understanding of how the poor and the frightened had found ways of retaliating. He kept his word, so people trusted him, but he was not a gentleman; he had never known how to be.
“I did not tell her she lied,” he said quietly. “I said I believed she knew something relevant that she had not said. I think she is complaining so hard because that is true.”
“Don’t make it any worse!” Faraday begged. “Man, you are like a cart horse in the dining room. Just get out of it! God alone knows who killed Olivia Costain, but we aren’t going