Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [174]
“No it isn’t. There are facts to come out that will change everything, believe me.”
“Are there?” Damaris screwed up her face dubiously. “I can’t imagine that.”
“Can’t you?”
Damaris squinted at her. “You say that with extra meaning—as if you thought I could. I can’t think of anything at all that would alter what the jury think now.”
There was no alternative, no matter how Hester hated it, and she did hate it. She felt brutal, worse than that, treacherous.
“You were at the Furnivals’ house the night of the murder,” she began, although it was stating what they both knew and had never argued.
“I don’t know anything,” Damaris said with absolute candor. “For heaven’s sake, if I did I would have said so before now.”
“Would you? No matter how terrible it was?”
Damaris frowned. “Terrible? Alexandra pushed Thaddeus over the banister, then followed him down and picked up the halberd and drove it into his body as he lay unconscious at her feet! That’s pretty terrible. What could be worse?”
Hester swallowed but did not look away from Damaris’s eyes.
“Whatever you found out when you went upstairs to Valentine Furnival’s room before dinner—long before Thaddeus was killed.”
The blood fled from Damaris’s face, leaving her looking ill and vulnerable, and suddenly far younger than she was.
“That has nothing to do with what happened to Thaddeus,” she said very quietly. “Absolutely nothing. It was something else—something …” She hunched her shoulders and her voice trailed off. She pulled her feet a little higher.
“I think it has.” Hester could not afford to be lenient.
The ghost of a smile crossed Damaris’s mouth and vanished. It was self-mockery and there was no shred of happiness in it.
“You are wrong. You will have to accept my word of honor for that.”
“I can’t. I accept that you believe it. I don’t accept you are right.”
Damaris’s face pinched. “You don’t know what it was, and I shall not tell you. I’m sorry, but it won’t help Alexandra, and it is my—my grief, not hers.”
Hester felt knotted up inside with shame and pity.
“Do you know why Alexandra killed him?”
“No.”
“I do.”
Damaris’s head jerked up, her eyes wide.
“Why?” she said huskily.
Hester took a deep breath.
“Because he was committing sodomy and incest with his own son,” she said very quietly. Her voice sounded obscenely matter-of-fact in the silent room, as if she had made some banal remark that would be forgotten in a few moments, instead of something so dreadful they would both remember it as long as they lived.
Damaris did not shriek or faint. She did not even look away, but her skin was whiter than before, and her eyes hollower.
Hester realized with an increasing sickness inside that, far from disbelieving her, Damaris was not even surprised. It was as if it were a long-expected blow, coming at last. So Monk had been right. She had discovered that evening that Peverell was involved. Hester could have wept for her, for the pain. She longed to touch her, to take her in her arms as she would a weeping child, but it was useless. Nothing could reach or fold that wound.
“You knew, didn’t you?” she said aloud. “You knew it that night!”
“No I didn’t.” Damaris’s voice was flat, almost without expression, as if something in her were already destroyed.
“Yes you did. You knew Peverell was doing it too, and to Valentine Furnival. That’s why you came down almost beside yourself with horror. You were close to hysterical. I don’t know how you kept any control at all. I wouldn’t have—I don’t think—”
“Oh God—no!” Damaris was moved to utter horror at last. “No!” She uncurled herself so violently she half-fell off the settee, landing awkwardly on the ground. “No. No, I didn’t. Not Pev. How could you even think such a thing? It’s—it’s—wild—insane. Not Pev!”
“But you knew.” For the first time Hester doubted. “Wasn’t that what you discovered when you went up to Valentine’s room?”
“No.” Damaris was on the floor in front of her, splayed out like a colt, her long legs at angles, and yet she was absolutely natural. “No! Hester