The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [146]
Gracie was finishing tidying away after the children’s supper and she whisked the last dishes off the table and put them on the dresser before dropping him a hasty bob and fleeing upstairs. A passing thought occurred to him to wonder why, but Jemima launched herself at him with cries of delight and demands that he listen to her account of the day. Daniel pulled faces and tugged at his sleeve to show him a paper kite he had made.
Charlotte dried her hands on her apron and came over to him immediately, poking her hair back into its pins, then smiling as she kissed him. For several minutes he was involved in giving everyone due attention before Daniel and Jemima departed, satisfied, and they were left alone.
“You look very tired,” Charlotte said, looking at him closely. “What’s happened?”
He was glad not to have to find a way of cutting through her stories of the house and its triumphs and disasters in order to catch her attention and tell her. Too often if he had to seek for her to listen, there was no sense of sharing and no release in it.
“I arrested Jerome Carvell,” he replied. He knew she was watching his face and would read the emotions in him. She knew him far too well to imagine it would please him or give him any sense of victory.
“Why?” she asked.
It was not the response he had expected, but it was a good one. He told her everything that had happened during the day, including his visit to Uttley. She listened in silence, but she did smile towards the end.
“You are not sure Carvell did it, are you?” she said at last.
“I suppose my head tells me he must have, at least Scarborough, even if not the others. It was certainly his gig that was used to take him from the house to the park, and he had an excellent reason if the man was blackmailing him.”
“But?” she asked.
“But I find it so hard to think he would kill Arledge. I cannot help but believe he loved him.”
“Is it possible he killed Scarborough but not Arledge?” she asked.
“No. His only reason would be if Scarborough knew something that would damn him. The relationship itself doesn’t seem enough after all this time. He must have known about it before. And servants who betray confidences about their masters’ private lives don’t find another position. He would have to make enough out of his blackmail to live on for the rest of his life. No—it—” He fell silent. There was really nothing more to say.
She finished cooking the dinner and they ate it in companionable silence. He went up to see the children, and read a very short story, before saying good-night, then came back down again and sat in the parlor, thinking that for all the pleasure of moving to a larger house, a beautiful house with a garden in which he would take intense delight, if he ever had the time, still there had been so much of his happiness here in this house, rich memories, and he would not leave it without regret and a sense of tearing.
Charlotte sat on the floor beside him, her sewing idle, her thoughts who knew where, but the warmth of her close to him gave him a sense of peace so sweet he eventually fell asleep in his chair, and she had to waken him to go to bed.
At noon the following day Bailey came into the Bow Street station looking worried and out of breath, his long face flushed and his eyes filled with a strange mixture of anxiety and determination.
Pitt was downstairs with Tellman and le Grange, discussing the final details of evidence.
“You’ve still got to find the weapon, or at least—”
“He could have thrown it anywhere,” Tellman argued.
“In the river,” le Grange added with a glance of sympathy at Pitt. “We may never find it. It could be under the mud by now. It’s tidal, you know?”
“Of course I know it’s tidal!” Pitt said. “If you hadn’t interrupted me I would have said, or at least the place where he was killed. He can’t have thrown that away.”
“He killed Scarborough right where he was found,” Tellman replied, disregarding Bailey,