Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [129]
“In their case, I don’t think they know yet.” Charlotte shook her head. “And it will be very sad if they pay too much for their chance together and then discover it isn’t what they really want and it won’t work. Then they’ll have nothing.”
“I don’t think they want to hear that,” Emily pointed out.
Charlotte smiled for the first time. “I’m sure they don’t. I wonder how Kezia will feel? I hope she can find it in herself not to be too satisfied.”
Emily was surprised. “Why? Do you like him? I thought you didn’t much.”
“I don’t. I think he’s cold and pompous. But I like her. And whatever he is, he’s the only brother she has, the only family. She’ll hurt herself horribly if she doesn’t offer him some gentleness, whatever he does with it”
“Charlotte …”
“What?”
Now it was not so hard. There would never be a better time. “I’m sorry I flew at Thomas yesterday. I know it was unfair. I’m terrified for Jack.” She might as well say it all now. “Not only in case they try again to kill him, but because they’ve given him an impossible task and they might blame him if he can’t succeed.”
Charlotte held out her hand. “I know you are. The whole situation is horrible. But don’t worry about Jack not solving the Irish Problem. In three hundred years nobody else ever has. They might hate him if he did!”
Emily almost laughed, but she might too easily cry if she let go her control right at that moment. Instead she took Charlotte’s hand and held it tightly, then put her arms around her and hugged her.
After helping get the meat out of the icehouse for Emily, Pitt changed his mind about seeing Kezia and instead went to find Tellman. They needed to start again from the beginning.
“Back to Greville?” Tellman said with raised eyebrows. “I’d like to go back to Denbigh, myself, but I don’t suppose they’ll let us do that. I hate conspiracies.”
“What do you like?” Pitt asked wryly. “A nice domestic murder where the people have known each other for years, perhaps all their lives, lived under the same roof in open love and secret hate? Or someone who has been abused beyond bearing and has finally retaliated the only way they knew how?”
They were walking outside through the stable yard entrance and across the gravel path to the long lawn. The grass was wet, but the feel and smell of it was clean, and the air was still and not unpleasantly cold.
“How about simple greed?” Tellman replied grudgingly. “Someone hit over the head and robbed, then I can work out who did it and be happy to take them in and see them hanged. Well, not happy, but satisfied.”
“I shall be extremely satisfied to see this one taken,” Pitt rejoined.
“And hanged?” Tellman asked, looking sideways at him. “That’s not like you.”
Pitt shoved his hands into his pockets. “I might make an exception for people who plot political overthrow and random violence,” he replied. “I take no joy in it, but I think I can grant the necessity.”
“Got to catch him first.” With a faint smile Tellman put his hands in his pockets also.
“Who killed Greville?” Pitt said.
“I think Doyle,” Tellman replied. “He had the best reason, personal as well as political … at least as much sense in the political reason as any of them. It’s all stupid to me.” He frowned. His boots were soaking in the heavy dew on the grass, but he was used to wet feet. “Besides, Doyle has a weight about him, a passion which could carry through his beliefs.”
“Moynihan’s daft enough,” Pitt said, mimicking Tellman’s tone of a few moments earlier.
Tellman shrugged. “His sister has more real nerve than he has.”
“I agree.” Pitt nodded as they walked under the shadow of the huge cedar, their feet falling softly on the bare earth. “And I don’t suppose he killed McGinley. That looks like an accident, the bomb meant for Mr. Radley.”
“O’Day?” Tellman asked.
“Not Greville,” Pitt replied. “Both McGinley and his valet saw him in his own room at the relevant time. And he overheard their conversation about shirts.