Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [69]
“But you think it was Tassie?” he pressed on, but she refused to look at him. Carefully, breath tight in her throat, she moved past him towards the door.
“No—probably because I don’t want to. I don’t want to think it of anyone, but I cannot avoid it.” She was in the night nursery now, and he was close behind her. “There was as good a reason for William to have done it as for me.” It was a miserable thing to say, but all she could think of was escaping, reaching the stairs and getting down them to the main landing where there would be people.
“Of course,” He was still beside her, very close, ready to catch her if she felt faint again. “If he cared. I never saw any sign that he did. And George was certainly not the first man to be besotted with Sybilla, you know.”
“I can imagine, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t mind!” She was walking rapidly now, too rapidly. The thought of safety only yards away was too sweet; relief welled up inside her, tightening her throat. She must just get down the stairs ahead of him, where he could not push or trip her. She wanted to run, to make sure of it now.
Then with almost unbearable horror she felt his hand close over her elbow. She wanted to wrench away, call out, scream. But there might be no one else, even beyond that flight of steps. Then she would have betrayed her fear and be left alone with him. She froze.
“Emily,” he said urgently. “Be careful!”
Was it a threat? At last she looked at him, almost involuntarily. But she had to know.
“Be careful of William,” he said earnestly. “If it was William, and he realizes you know, he might hurt you—even if only by trying to incriminate you somehow.”
“I will. In fact I shall try not to discuss it, if I can.”
He laughed without pleasure. “I mean it, Emily.”
“Thank you.” She gulped and all but choked. They were at the top of the stairs. She could not stay here; he would know she expected him to push her—and that knowledge would be enough to bring it about. He could not dare let her live, and he would never have a better chance than this. A simple slip of the foot and she would pitch down, breaking her back, or her neck. Her feet were already on the second step. She forced herself, shaking, knees weak—the third, the fourth. He was behind her; it was too narrow to come beside. The seventh step, the eighth—she tried not to hurry. With every second she was nearer. At last she was at the bottom—safe! For now.
She took an enormous breath, scuffed her shoes with the clumsiness of relief, and hurried across the landing towards the main stairs.
8
PITT ATTENDED THE funeral, but at such a discreet distance that he was sure none of the family saw him. Afterwards he followed them back to Cardington Crescent and this time entered through the kitchen, taking Stripe with him. They had gone over and over the meager evidence, pursued the few threads of conversations overheard, impressions formed, hoping to surprise an unguarded revelation, but nothing had stayed in his mind sharper than the rest, nothing led him more clearly through the maze.
He left Stripe to question the servants one more time, on the chance that in repetition a fragment would be remembered, that some flash of new recollection would rise to the surface of the mind.
He wanted to see Charlotte. No absorption in this case, the Bloomsbury one, or any other, could drown out the loneliness in the evenings when he returned home, often close to midnight, and found only the night-light burning in the hall, the kitchen empty and tidy, everything put away but for the supper Gracie had carefully prepared and left on the table for him.
Every night he ate silently by the remains of the fire in the stove; then he took his boots off and tiptoed up the stairs, looking in first at the small, motionless forms of Jemima and Daniel in the nursery before going on to his own bed. He