Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [45]
“He quarreled with Sybilla?”
“Yes.”
There was no point in asking her if the quarrel had been violent enough to prompt murder: she could not answer, nor would it mean anything if she did.
He stood up, letting her hand go gently. “If you think of anything at all, please send for me. I can’t leave it go.”
“I know that. I’ll tell you.”
He smiled at her very slightly, to blunt the edge of what he had said and to try to throw the frailest of lines across the gulf between the policeman and the man.
She swallowed hard, and the corners of her mouth lifted in an answering shadowy smile.
It was an hour later when the bedroom door opened again and Charlotte came in. She said nothing at all, but came and sat on the bed, reached out her hand to Emily, and slipped her arms round her and let her weep as she needed to, holding her close and rocking a little back and forth, murmuring old, meaningless words of comfort from childhood.
6
WHEN AT LAST Emily lay back against the pillows her face was drawn, her eyes puffy, with dark shadows below them, and her usually pretty hair straggled in untidy wisps. The sight of her brought home to Charlotte the reality of death and fear far more violently than all the words imaginable, or excessive weeping. People weep for many things.
She began with the painful, practical help she knew was the only way to move to any real healing. She rang the bell by the bed.
“I don’t want anything,” Emily said numbly.
“Yes, you do.” Charlotte was firm. “You want a cup of tea, and so do I.”
“I don’t. If I take anything I shall be sick.”
“No, you won’t. But if you go on crying you will. It’s enough for now. We have things to do.”
Suddenly Emily was furious; all her shock and fear exploded in resentment because Charlotte was still safe, wrapped up in her own marriage, and this was just one more adventure for her. She was sitting on the bed with a businesslike complacency in her face, and Emily hated her for it. George had been carried away, white and cold, only an hour ago, and Charlotte was busy! She should have been shattered and frozen inside, as Emily was.
“My husband was murdered this morning,” she said in a tight, hard voice. “If all you can do is exercise your curiosity and self-importance, then I’d feel a lot better if you’d go back home and get on with your housework, or whatever it is you do when you haven’t got anyone else’s life to meddle in.”
For a moment Charlotte felt as if she had been slapped. The blood burned in her face, and her eyes stung. The retort stopped on her lips only because she could find no words for it. Then she took a deep breath and remembered Emily’s pain. Emily was younger; all the protective feelings of childhood came back in a tumble of images, always Emily the smallest, the last to achieve any milestone to maturity. Emily had envied her, admired her, and tried desperately to keep up, just as she herself was always a step behind Sarah.
“Who murdered George?” she asked aloud.
“I don’t know!” Emily’s voice rose dangerously.
“Then don’t you think we had better find out—very quickly, before whoever it is makes it look even more as though you did?”
Emily gasped, and her face looked even grayer than before.
At that moment the door opened and Digby came in. As soon as she saw Charlotte her expression hardened.
But Charlotte had not forgotten all her early years in her parents’ home, when she was accustomed to having a lady’s maid, and the habit returned automatically.
“Will you be kind enough to bring us a tray of tea,” she said to Digby. “And perhaps something sweet to eat with it.”
“I don’t want