Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [48]
“And Maxim was not fond of you?” he asked.
There was very faint color in her cheeks, so slight he noticed it only because she was facing the small high window and the light fell directly on her.
“Yes—yes, he was, in the past—but never to the degree where he could have left Louisa. Maxim is a very moral man. And anyway, I am alive. It is Thaddeus who is dead.” She said the last words without feeling, certainly without any shred of regret. At least there was no playacting, no hypocrisy in her, and no attempt to gain sympathy. For that he liked her.
“I saw the balcony, and the banister where he went over.”
She winced.
“I assume he fell backwards?”
“Yes.” Her voice was unsteady, little more than a whisper.
“Onto the suit of armor?”
“Yes.”
“That must have made a considerable noise.”
“Of course. I expected people to come and see what had happened—but no one did.”
“The withdrawing room is at the back of the house. You knew that.”
“Of course I did. I thought one of the servants might hear.”
“Then what? You followed him down and saw he was struck senseless with the fall—and no one had come. So you picked up the halberd and drove it into his body?”
She was white-faced, her eyes like dark holes. This time her voice would hardly come at all.
“Yes.”
“His chest? He was lying on his back. You did say he went over backwards?”
“Yes.” She gulped. “Do we have to go over this? It cannot serve any purpose.”
“You must have hated him very much.”
“I didn’t—” She stopped, drew in her breath and went on, her eyes down, away from his. “I already told Mr. Rathbone. He was having an affair with Louisa Furnival. I was … jealous.”
He did not believe her.
“I also saw your daughter.”
She froze, sitting totally immobile.
“She was very concerned for you.” He knew he was being cruel, but he saw no alternative. He had to find the truth. With lies and defenses Rathbone might only make matters worse in court. “I am afraid my presence seemed to precipitate a quarrel between her and her husband.”
She glared at him fiercely. For the first time there was real, violent emotion in her.
“You had no right to go to her! She is ill—and she has just lost her father. Whatever he was to me, he was her father. You …” She stopped, perhaps aware of the absurdity of her position, if indeed it was she who had killed the general.
“She did not seem greatly distressed by his death,” he said deliberately, watching not only her face but also the tension in her body, the tight shoulders under the cotton blouse, and her hands clenched on her knees. “In fact, she made no secret that she had quarreled bitterly with him, and would do all she could to aid you—even at the cost of her husband’s anger.”
Alexandra said nothing, but he could feel her emotion as if it were an electric charge in the room.
“She said he was arbitrary and dictatorial—that he had forced her into a marriage against her will,” he went on.
She stood up and turned away from him.
Then again he had a sudden jolt of memory so sharp it was like a physical blow. He had been here before, stood in a cell with a small fanlight like this, and watched another slender woman with fair hair that curled at her neck. She too had been charged with killing her husband, and he had cared about it desperately.
Who was she?
The image was gone and all he could recapture was a shaft of dim light on hair, the angle of a shoulder, and a gray dress, skirts too long, sweeping the floor. He could recall no more, no voice, certainly no faintest echo of a face, nothing—eyes, lips—nothing at all.
But the emotion was there. It had mattered to him so fiercely he had thrown all his mind and will into defending her.
But why? Who was she?
Had he succeeded? Or had she been hanged?
Was she innocent—or guilty?
Alexandra was talking, answering him at last.
“What?”
She swung around, her eyes bright and hard.
“You come in here with a cruel tongue and no—no gentleness, no—no sensibility at all. You ask the harshest questions.” Her voice caught in her throat, gasping