Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [66]
“If he is dead, ma’am, it is most probable he was killed because he knew something which his killer could not afford to have him tell.”
“That is the obvious conclusion,” she agreed.
“The only thing we know that is so monstrous as that is the identity of the rapist and murderer of Fanny.” He must still not patronize her or let her once suspect he was leading her.
Her mouth twitched in bitter amusement.
“Everyone desires their privacy, Mr. Pitt, but few of us need it to the point where we will kill our neighbors to preserve it. I think it would be ridiculous, without evidence, to suppose there are two such appalling secrets in the Walk.”
“Exactly,” he agreed.
She gave a very small sigh.
“So that brings us back to who raped poor Fanny,” she said slowly. “Naturally, we have all been thinking about it. We can hardly avoid it.”
“Of course not, especially someone as close to her as you were.”
Her eyes widened.
“Naturally, if you knew anything,” he went on, perhaps a bit hastily, “you would have told us. But maybe you have had thoughts, nothing so substantial as a suspicion, but, as you say—” He was watching her closely, trying to judge exactly how much he could press, what could be put into words, what must remain suggestion. “—as you say, you cannot dismiss the matter from your mind.”
“You think I may suspect one of my neighbors?” Her blue eyes were almost hypnotic. He found himself unable to look away.
“Do you?”
For a long time she said nothing. Her hands moved slowly in her lap, unwinding some invisible knot.
He waited.
At last she looked up.
“Yes. But you must understand it is only a feeling, a collection of impressions.”
“Naturally.” He did not want to interrupt. If it told him nothing of anyone else, at worst it would tell him something of her.
“I cannot believe anyone in their right mind, in their true senses, would do such a thing.” She spoke as if weighing each word, reluctant to speak at all, and yet pressed by obligation. “I have known everyone here for a long time. I have gone over and over in my memory all that I know, and I cannot believe such a nature could have been hidden from all of us.”
He was suddenly disappointed. She was going to come up with some impossible suggestion about strangers.
Her fingers were stiff in her lap, white against the green of her dress.
“Indeed,” he said flatly.
Her head came up, and there was a flame of color in her cheeks. She took in a deep breath and let it out, collecting herself.
“I mean, Mr. Pitt, that it can only have been someone laboring under the influence of a quite abnormal emotion, or perhaps intoxicated. When they have had too much to drink, people sometimes do things that in sobriety they would never dream of. And I’m told that even afterward they do not always recollect what has happened. Surely that would also account for an apparent innocence now? If whoever killed Fanny cannot clearly remember it—?”
He recalled George’s blank about the night, Algernon Burnon’s reluctance to name his companion, Diggory’s anonymous gambling. But it was Hallam Cayley who had repeatedly been drunk so often lately that he overslept. In fact, Afton had said he had been in an alcoholic sleep at ten o’clock on the very morning Fulbert’s disappearance had been discovered. It was not a foolish suggestion at all. It would explain the lack of lies, of any attempt to mislead or cover up. The murderer could not even remember his own guilt! There must be a black and dreadful void in his mind; he must wonder; in the night terrors must creep out to fill the space with fragments of violence, images, the smell and sound of horror. But more drink would bring more oblivion.
“Thank you,” he said politely.
She took a deep breath again.
“Is a man to blame for what