Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [64]
Then the coffin was lowered into the ground, and Beamish scattered something on the lid where it lay a little crooked deep in the hole. It looked ill-fitting. What did it matter? George would not care. All of him that was real had gone, gone somewhere bright and warm, leaving the fears of earth behind.
Emily bent and picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them in with a clatter. She started to say something, but her voice failed.
Charlotte took her arm and they turned away, keeping Edward between them.
They rode home in silence. Emily had said good-bye to Edward and left him with Mrs. Stevenson to go back to his own home, his nursery, safe and familiar. In her mind she was already alone.
She had not killed George. Someone else had crept into the pantry and slipped the digitalis into the coffeepot. But why? It was the last act at the end of a long succession of events and emotions. Perhaps many people had contributed, each a word, a small addition; but was it Emily herself who had given the major part?
It would be nice to think that George knew some secret that was worth killing to keep; it would drive out the dark thoughts that intruded more and more. There were three real suspects: William, Sybilla, and Jack Radley. And all of them had the same reason—George’s infatuation with Sybilla.
Emily had to be part of it. If she had been warm enough, interesting enough, generous, tactful, gay, witty, then George would never have felt more than a passing attraction to Sybilla. Nothing that mattered, nothing that hurt Emily or William, and nothing that Sybilla would be desperate over losing.
Was she? Had she been so much in love with George? Aunt Vespasia had said Sybilla had had many admirers, and William had never before shown jealousy. She was discreet, and however far it had gone, it was her secret. And even with George there had been nothing that anyone could be sure was more than they saw in the open. She had accepted his admiration, even encouraged it. But had she actually taken him into her bed? The thought hurt deeply; it was a betrayal of all her own most intimate and precious moments, but to try and skirt round it was idiotic. Emily did not know the answer, and there was no reason to imagine that William did.
No, it was far more likely to be a game for Sybilla, a compliment to her vanity, and perhaps a ripple of danger made it more fun.
If William were suddenly jealous, then the one thing he would guard would be his vanity. He had remained complacent all these years. He would not now make a spectacle, a laughingstock of himself by attacking George. There might be sympathy for the cuckolded husband but there was also laughter, a pity profoundly scarred with cruelty, relief that it was someone else. There were ribald jokes, slurs against manhood—and that was the ultimate insult, the unbearable thing that robbed the stuff of life but denied the peace of death. The victim was still sentient and raw to all the awareness of his loss. He would never have brought that upon himself, never—not in hot temper nor in cold revenge.
No. She did not believe William had killed George. It would only bring upon him the very thing every man found intolerable.
Sybilla?
George was charming, fun, generous, but only if she were totally hysterical would she fall so in love with a man she could not marry that a quarrel would turn her into a murderess. She had had other affairs. They must all have ended one way or another. Surely she knew how to conclude it gracefully, how to sense the coming of the break, see the signs, and be the first to cool. She was not eighteen, and far from inexperienced.
Could this affair really have been so radically different? Why should it? Emily could think of no reason.
That left Jack Radley, and the answer to that was the ugly thought she had been trying to avoid all the time. She had encouraged him, and she had enjoyed it. In spite of the misery inside her,