Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [86]
It was late when they sat down, well after ten, and everyone was at the table. Even William, ashen, hands shaking, eyes haggard, apparently preferred the noise and occupation of company to the loneliness of his room next door to Sybilla.
Emily sat rigid, her stomach knotted so hard she could not bear to eat. It would make her ill. She sipped a little hot tea and felt it burn her tongue and slide painfully down her closed throat. The sounds of crockery and talk alternately outraged and frightened her, swirling round her like so much empty rattle. It could have been the sound of carriage wheels over gravel, or geese in a yard.
Charlotte was eating because she knew she would need the strength it would give her, but the carefully coddled eggs and thin sliced toast might as well have been cold porridge in her mouth. The sunlight glittered on silver and glass and the clink of cutlery grew louder as Eustace fought his way through fish and potato, but even he found little joy in it. The linen was so white it reminded her of snowfields, glaring and cold with the dead earth underneath.
This was ridiculous. Fear was paralyzing her, solidifying like ice. She must force herself to listen to them all, to think, to make her brain respond and understand. It was all here, if only she could tear the fog from her mind and recognize it. It ought to be familiar to her now—she had seen enough murder before, the pain and the fear that led to violence. How could she be so close, and still not know it?
She looked round the table at them one by one. Old Mrs. March was tight-lipped and her fist was clenched beside her plate. Perhaps anger against the injustice of fate was the only way she could keep from being overwhelmed by the tragedy which was engulfing the family in which she had invested her whole life.
Vespasia was silent. She had shrunk; she seemed smaller than Charlotte had thought her, her wrists bonier, her skin more papery.
Tassie and Jack Radley were talking about something totally immaterial, and she knew even without listening that they were doing it to help, so that the silence would not creep in and drown them all. It did not matter what was said; anything, the weather would do. Everyone, each imprisoned in a private little island of horror, was trying to grasp back something of last week, only a tiny span of days ago, when the world had been so ordinary, so safe. They would gladly have brought back the anxieties that seemed pressing then, and so infinitely trivial now.
Charlotte had seen Pitt briefly. He had called her into Sybilla’s bedroom. At first she had drawn back, but he had told her the body was laid out quietly, the hair undone, a sheet over the terrible face.
“Please!” he had said fiercely. “I need you to come in!”
Reluctantly, shivering, she had obeyed, and he had almost pushed her through the door, arms round her. “Sit on the bed,” he had ordered. “No—where Sybilla was.”
She had stood rooted to the spot, pulling against him. “Why?” It was unreasonable, grotesque. “Why?”
“I need you to,” he had said again. “Charlotte, please. I have to know if she could have done it herself.”
“Of course she did!” She had not moved, pulling hard against his strength, and they remained frozen like that, locked in a tug-of-war in the middle of the carpet in the sun.
Pitt was getting cross, because he was helpless.
“Of course she could!” Charlotte had been shaking. “She had it round her throat; then round the bedpost. It’s just like tying a scarf behind your neck, or doing up the back of a dress. She used the bedpost to make it tight enough—the carving on it tightened it again when she slipped down a bit. She must have meant to, or she wouldn