Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [83]
He did not bother to argue with her about passion and sense. It was true, but irrelevant to this. “Sarah wasn’t killed first,” he said, still holding her and feeling her pull against him, her muscles tight. “Elissa was.”
“You don’t know that! No doctor could tell you which of two people died first when it was within minutes of each other,” she retaliated.
“We found Elissa’s earring, torn from her ear in the struggle, fallen through a knothole in the floorboard . . . under where Sarah was lying.”
She drew in her breath, then let it out in a sigh. “Oh,” she said very quietly. The anger drained out of her, leaving only misery, and he pulled her unresisting body closer to him, then held her in his arms, feeling her shiver and struggle to keep from weeping.
It was several minutes, clinging close to him, before she finally drew back. “Then we’ve got to fight it,” she said, gasping over the words. “You . . . you mean Runcorn will arrest him, don’t you?”
“He already has. I took his clothes and razor to him.”
“He’s in . . . prison?” Her eyes were wide.
“Yes, Hester.”
“What?” She shuddered. “Don’t you dare tell me you think he could have done it!” Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t dare!”
“Why would you think I might?” he asked. He wished passionately that he could say anything other. She looked so frightened and vulnerable, so willing to take on the battle whatever the odds, and be hurt . . . horribly. And yet he could not have loved her so deeply had she been ready to give in, been wiser, more realistic, even more able to cast aside her emotions and arm herself against the loss.
She was furious because the tears slid down her cheeks. “Because you think he could be guilty,” she whispered.
“He could be,” he said. “Everyone has a breaking point, you know that as well as I do. We all reach a degree where we can’t bear it any longer, and either we crumple up and surrender, or we run away, or else we fight back. Sometimes we lose our balance and we do something we thought was outside even our imagination. I’ve been there. Haven’t you?”
She leaned against him again, her voice muffled because her face was buried in his shoulder. “Yes . . .”
It was several moments later before she spoke clearly. She sniffed hard and pulled away from him. “What are we going to do?” Her voice, her face, the angle of her body, all asserted passionately that they were going to do something.
“I don’t know.” He hated admitting it, but he had already exhausted every possibility he knew, or he would have argued with Runcorn and delayed the arrest even a day.
“Well, if it isn’t Kristian, it has to be someone else!” she protested with desperation. “We’ve got to find out who it is. I’ve done nothing so far. I don’t know how I can have been so stupid! So complacent! I took it for granted since I . . .” She looked away. “Since I refused to believe it could be Kristian. Where can I begin?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “Runcorn’s sent men to check if Max Niemann came to London more often than the times we know of, but we know of no reason why he would kill her.”
“Perhaps they were lovers?” She said the words with difficulty. “And they quarreled? You said Allardyce told you she met Niemann there. That makes sense . . . doesn’t it?” There was no conviction in her voice. Maybe she was remembering Niemann clasping Kristian’s hands at the funeral. The feeling between them that had looked intensely real. Yet it seemed as if one of them had killed the woman they had both loved, and with whom they had shared a noble and turbulent past. Which of them was lying so superbly, and what agony of emotions was pouring through him?
“Hester . . .” He drew in a deep breath. “Of course it could be someone else, but Kristian’s been arrested. He’ll stand trial. He’ll need a better defense than your belief that it could be Niemann, or someone else we don’t know.