Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [85]
Although that picture fitted his mind’s perception of Afton Nash better. There was cruelty in him, a delight in the frailty of others, especially the sexual frailty. He was a man who might well pander to tastes he despised, for the pleasure of reveling in his own superiority at the same time. Pitt could not think of anyone he had disliked as much. To be the victim of one’s own faults, however grotesque, he could find a pity for. But to delight in and prey upon the weakness of others was beyond the realm of any compassion he could muster.
Afton was standing at the head of the grave, his eyes on the minister, grim and hard. But then he had buried a brother and had a sister murdered in one short summer. Was it conceivable he was the arch-hypocrite and had violated and killed his own sister, then stabbed to death his brother to keep his secret? Was that why Phoebe was disintegrating in terror before their eyes, descending from eccentricity into madness? Dear God, if it were, Pitt must catch him, prove it, and have him taken away. Pitt had never enjoyed hanging. It was commonplace, a part of society’s mechanics to purge itself of a disease, but still he found it repellent. He knew too much about murder, about the fear or the madness that impelled it. He had seen and smelled the grinding poverty, the unnumbered deaths from and diseases of starvation in the rookeries, and he knew there were forms of murder that never soiled the hands, long-distance extermination that blind society and profit never looked at. Death from hunger happened a hundred yards from death from obesity.
And yet he felt, if Afton were guilty, he could have sent him to the gallows without any personal pity.
The Frenchman, Paul Alaric, was there, if indeed he were French? Perhaps he came from one of the African colonies? He was far too smooth, too wry and subtle to be from the great wind-and-snow-driven plains of Canada. There was something incredibly old in him; Pitt could not conceive of him belonging to the New World. Everything about him spoke of centuries of civilization, roots deep enough to cling to the very core and heart of old cultures and rich, dark history.
He stood now with black head bent and the rising wind, sleek and beautiful even in this graveyard. He mirrored respect for the dead, courteous observance of custom. Was that all he was here for? Pitt had discovered no relationship between him and Fulbert except that of neighbors.
Could Alaric be the supreme actor? Was there unfulfilled hunger under that intelligent face, hunger so violent it had driven him to attack first Fanny and then the all-too-willing Selena? Or was Selena not really willing, when it came to the point?
He dared not dismiss it, it was his duty to consider everything possible, however unlikely. And yet he could not force himself to believe that Alaric was so different from every appearance. Over years of studying people, Pitt had become a skilled judge, and he had found most people do not hide much of themselves from a careful watcher, one who listens to every phrase, watches the eyes, the hands, the small deceptions to build the vanity, the tiny exhibitions of greed or ambition, the betrayals of essential selfishness, the straying eyes, the grubby innuendos.
Alaric might be a seducer, but a rapist Pitt could not believe.
That left Hallam Cayley. He was standing over the grave from Jessamyn, staring at her, as they at last began to shovel in the earth. The hard clay rubble clattered on the lid, sounding hollowly, almost as if there were no body inside. One by one they turned and walked away—the observances were over. Now it was the gravediggers’ duty to finish, fill in the earth and stamp it down. A fine misty rain hung on the wind, slicking the paths and making them dangerous.
Hallam walked behind Freddie Dilbridge. As Pitt moved from the yews, hurrying to keep pace with them, he saw Hallam’s face. He looked like a man in a nightmare; the pock marks in his skin seemed to have become