Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [101]
He felt as if she had slapped him. His flesh should have been stinging hot. It was startling how deeply words could injure.
“Eldon Prentice was murdered by one of our own men,” he replied in a low, grim voice. “I despised him for lots of reasons, for Edwin Corliss, for Charlie Gee, and for his moral pressure on General Cullingford. But none of those things, repulsive as they are, make his murder acceptable. I need to know who did it, to protect those who didn’t, if nothing else.”
Her voice was husky, her face was paler. “Are you thinking the general did it? He wouldn’t! Prentice was thoroughly rotten, but Cullingford wouldn’t do that, no matter what it cost. You can’t think . . .”
“No I don’t, but that doesn’t matter, Judith. It’s what we can prove.”
“If anybody killed Prentice over his moral blackmail, it would be Hadrian,” she answered almost under her breath. “General Cullingford was far to the north and east of where you were, and that’s easy enough to prove. I know it myself.”
“Of course. No one thinks he crept out in the mud and shell holes himself, in order to push Prentice’s head under the water,” he replied. “I asked Hadrian. He was in the right area. He said he had a breakdown that he fixed with a silk scarf.”
She must have heard the doubt in his voice. “You don’t believe him!” she challenged.
“Do you?” he asked.
She hesitated too long, and realized it. “I don’t know. He could have.”
“But you have no way of knowing,” he reasoned.
“Yes, I have,” she said immediately. “It won’t be difficult to ask the other men who drove the cars if he brought one back with a silk scarf in place of a broken belt. If there was one, somebody’ll know. Then you can check everywhere he says he was, and see if it’s true. You can, Joseph! Cars are too precious around here. We know what happens to each one. Do it!” Her face was keen now, she was leaning a little toward him. “If you really are trying to prove who’s innocent as much as who’s guilty, you can find out about Hadrian.” There was challenge in her voice, and fear in case she was wrong. She was still angry, frightened and deeply hurt that Joseph blamed her, and was forcing her to blame herself.
“I’ll find out,” he replied. “But it doesn’t change anything else. If Prentice gained permission to go forward from Cullingford, by blackmailing him over you, it was you who made that possible.”
“There are times, Joseph, when you are insufferably pompous!” She almost choked on her words, spitting them at him, her fists clenched. “We were all devastated when Eleanor died. It was terrible. She was lovely, and you didn’t deserve to lose her. But you’ve run away from feeling anything since then. You’ve become cold, detached, full of brains and emptyhearted. I’m not always right, but I’m not a coward! I’m not afraid to feel!” And without waiting either to look at him and see what pain she had caused, she swiveled round and stormed into the hallway of the building and through the far door, letting it slam after her.
He walked back outside into the darkness of the fast-falling night, numb inside from the weight of what she had said. She was wrong to stay with Cullingford when she knew he was in love with her, whatever his loneliness or the depth of his need for at least one contact of compassion, laughter, human tenderness, the hunger above all things not to be alone, even if it was only for an hour. An hour led to a day, a week, the ache for a lifetime.
He