Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [155]
“Do you? Do you know who killed Mr. McGinley yet?”
“No.” Charlotte smiled in sad irony. “But we know who did not kill Mr. Greville ….”
“We already know who did not,” Justine said, still keeping a suitably good temper in the circumstances. “Mr. O’Day and Mr. McGinley, and the valet Hennessey, if you had considered him. I hope you would know it was not Mrs. Greville, or Piers, but I suppose you cannot take that for granted. Is that what you have come to say … that it was not Mrs. Greville?” She put her hand on the covers as if to get out.
Charlotte leaned forward and stopped her.
“I don’t know whether it was Mrs. Greville or not.” She met Justine’s dark eyes levelly. “But I should think it unlikely, although she might very well know who did. It was someone very skilled, very professional at killing.” She watched Justine closely, her eyes, her movement. “It was done with one very accurate blow.”
Justine sat absolutely motionless, but she could not keep the start of shock from her eyes. The instant after came a shadow of fear as she wondered how much Charlotte knew, what she had seen in her face. Then it was gone again.
“Was it?” she asked, her voice very nearly steady. Any huskiness in it could easily be attributed to the unpleasantness of the subject and the fact that she had been awoken from the first deep sleep of the night.
“Yes. His neck was broken.”
This time the surprise was accompanied by bewilderment, and for all her iron will and practiced composure she could not hide it. She masked it the instant she saw the recognition in Charlotte’s eyes. She shuddered in revulsion.
“How horrible!”
“It is cold-blooded,” Charlotte agreed. She clenched her hands in her lap where Justine could not see them. “Less understandable than the person who came in after that, with a maid’s cap on and a maid’s dress over her own, and walked behind him with ajar of bath salts in her hand and hit him over the back of the head, then, believing him senseless from the blow, pushed him under the water and held him there.”
Justine was white. She grasped the sheets as if they kept her afloat from drowning.
“Did … somebody … do that?”
“Yes.” Charlotte kept all doubt out of her voice.
“How …” Justine swallowed in spite of her effort at control. “How do you … know that?”
“She was seen. At least her shoes were seen.” Charlotte smiled very slightly, not a smile of triumph or blame. “Blue fabric slippers, stitched on the sides, with blue heels. Not a maid’s shoes. You wore them today at luncheon, with your muslin dress.”
This time Justine made no pretense. She would not lose her dignity so far as to continue to fight when the battle was over.
“Why?” Charlotte asked. “You must have had a very powerful reason.”
Justine looked drained, as if the life had ceased inside her. In a few words Charlotte had ended everything she had longed for and worked for, and almost had within her grasp. There seemed nothing she could say which would alter or redeem even a portion of the loss. There was no anger in her, only resignation in the face of absolute disaster.
Charlotte waited.
Justine began in a low, quiet voice, not looking at Charlotte, but down at the embroidered edge of the linen sheet under her fingers.
“My mother was a maidservant who married a Spanish sailor. He died when I was very young. He was lost at sea. She was left with no money and a small child to bring up. Because she had married a foreigner, against her family’s wishes, they would have nothing to do with her. She took in laundry and mending, but it barely kept us alive. She didn’t marry again.”
She smiled a curious, half-amused smile. “I was never beautiful. I was too dark. They used to call me names when I was a child: gypsy, dago, and worse. And make fun of my nose. But as I got older I had a kind of grace, I was different, and it interested some people … especially men. I learned how to be charming, how to awaken interest and to sustain it. I …” She kept her eyes studiously away from Charlotte’s. “I learned how to flatter a man and make him happy.” She