Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [151]
They walked a few paces farther and then turned along the path towards the stone wall and the early roses spilling over it. The archway was in dappled sunlight, picking out the flat surfaces of the individual stones, and the tiny plants in the crevices low down where it was moist, ferns and mosses with flowers like pinprick stars. Above them there was a faint rustle in the leaves of the elm trees as a breeze moved, laden with the smell of grass and leaf mold.
She looked at his face and knew he was thinking of the pleasures of being home in England, the timeless grace of old gardens. Africa with its savagery, its gaudy vegetation, so often seared and withered by relentless sun, its teeming wildlife, all seemed unreal in this ancient certainty where the seasons had come and gone with the same nurturing pattern for a hundred generations.
But Susannah’s death would not go away. Law was also a thing more certain here, and Nobby knew Pitt well enough to have no doubt that he would pursue it to the end, no matter what that end might be. He did not bow to coercion, expediency or even emotional pain.
If the truth were unbearably ugly, she did not know if he would make public all the evidence. If the answer proved to be too desperately tragic, if it would ruin others for no good cause, if the motive caught his pity hard enough, he might relent. Although she could not imagine a reason that could ever mitigate the murder of someone like Susannah.
But that argument was pointless. It was not Pitt she was afraid of, or prosecution or justice, it was truth. It would be equally terrible to her if Kreisler were guilty, whether he were charged or not.
But why did she even entertain the thought? It was hideous, terrible! She felt guilty that it even entered her mind, let alone that she let it remain there.
As if reading her thoughts, or seeing the confusion in her face, he stopped just beyond the arch in the small shade garden with its primroses and honesty and arching Solomon’s seal.
“What is it, Nobby?”
She was abashed to find an answer that was neither a lie nor too hurtful to both of them.
“Did you learn anything?” She seized upon something useful to ask.
“About Susannah’s death? Not much. It seems to have happened late in the evening and when she was alone in a hansom cab, no one knows where. She had said she was going to visit the Thornes, but never arrived, as far as we know. Unless, of course, the Thornes are lying.”
“Why should the Thornes wish her harm?”
“It probably goes back to the death of Sir Arthur Desmond—at least that is what Pitt has apparently suggested. It makes little sense to me.”
They were standing so still a small, brown bird flew out of one of the trees and stood on the path barely a yard from them, its bright eyes watching curiously.
“Then why?” she said quietly, the fear still large within her. She knew enough of men who traveled the wild places of the earth to understand that they have to have an inner strength in order to survive, a willingness to attack in the need to defend themselves, the resolve to take life if it threatened their own, a single-mindedness that brooked nothing in its way. Gentler people, more circumspect, more civilized at heart, all too often were crushed by the ferocity of an unforgiving land.
He was watching her closely, almost searchingly. Slowly the happiness and the sense of comfort drained out of him, replaced by pain.
“You are not convinced that I did not do it, are you, Nobby?” he said with a catch in his voice. “You think I could have murdered that lovely woman? Just because …” He stopped, the color washing up his face in guilt.
“No,” she said levelly, the words difficult to speak. “Not just because she differed with you over settlement in Africa, of course not. But then we both know that would be absurd. If you had, it would be because of the shares she has in one of the great banking houses and the influence she might have over Francis Standish, and of course because of