Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [152]
He was very pale, his features twisted with hurt.
“For God’s sake, Nobby! How would my murdering her help?”
“It is one supporter less….” She trailed off, looking away from him. “I am not supposing you killed her, only that the police might think so. I am afraid for you.” That was the truth, but not the whole truth. “And you were angry with her.”
“If I killed everyone I was angry with, at one time or another, my whole career would be littered with corpses,” he said quietly, and she knew from the tone in his voice that he had believed only the truth she had spoken; the lies and the omissions he understood for what they were.
The bird was still on the path close to them, its head cocked to one side.
He put his hands on her arms and she felt the warmth of him through the thin sleeves of her dress.
“Nobby, I know that you understand Africa as I do, and that at times men are violent in order to survive in a violent and sudden land, where the dangers are largely unknown and there is no law but that of staying alive, but I have not lost my knowledge of the difference between Africa and England. And morality, the underlying knowledge of good and evil, is the same everywhere. You do not kill people simply because they stand in your way, or believe differently over an issue, no matter how big. I argued with Susannah, but I did not hurt her, or cause her to be hurt. You do me an injustice if you do not believe that … and you cause me deep pain. Surely I do not need to explain that to you? Do we not understand each other without the need for speeches and declarations?”
“Yes.” She answered from the heart, her head ignored, silenced in a deeper, more insistent certainty. “Yes of course we do.” Should she apologize for even having entertained the thought? Did he need her to?
As if he had read it in her eyes, he spoke, smiling a little.
“Good. Now let us leave it. Don’t go back over it. You had to acknowledge what passed through your mind. Don’t let there be dishonesty between us, the need to hide behind deceit and politeness for fear of the truth.”
“No,” she agreed quickly, a ridiculous smile on her face in spite of all that common sense could tell her. “Of course I won’t.”
He leaned forward and kissed her with a gentleness that took her by blissful surprise.
Pitt was sitting at the breakfast table slowly eating toast and marmalade. The toast was crisp and the butter very mildly salted. Altogether it was something to be savored to the last crumb.
And he had been out until nearly midnight the previous evening, so if he were late at Bow Street this morning, it was justifiable. The children had left for school and Gracie was busy upstairs. The daily woman was scrubbing the back steps, and would presently put black lead on the range, after cleaning it out, a job which Gracie was delighted to have got rid of.
Charlotte was making a shopping list.
“Are you going to be late again this evening?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I doubt it,” he replied with his mouth full. “Although we still haven’t found the hansom driver yet….”
“Then he’s involved,” she said with certainty. “If he were innocent he would have come forward by now. If he doesn’t want to be found, how will you get him?”
He finished the rest of his tea. “By the long, slow process of questioning every driver in London,” he assured her. “And proving whether they were where they say. And if we are lucky, by someone informing. But we don’t know where she went into the water. It could have been upriver or down. All we do know is that she seems to have been dragged some distance by her clothes being caught in something.” Charlotte winced. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
“Have you found her cloak?” she asked.
“No, not yet.”
He ate the last of his toast with satisfaction.
“Thomas …”
He pushed out his chair and stood up. “Yes?”
“Do bodies often wash up at Traitors Gate?”
“No—why?”
She took a deep breath and let it out
“Do you think it is possible that whoever it was intended her to end