Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [165]
Pitt wanted to say that if he had not, he might never have found the truth, but it was pointless now.
“Linus Chancellor—”
Chancellor pulled his hand out of the desk drawer. There was a small black pistol in it. He turned the barrel on himself and pulled the trigger. The shot was like a whip crack in the room and exploded in his head, splattering blood and bone everywhere.
Pitt was numb with horror. The room rocked like a ship at sea; the light from the chandelier seemed to splinter and break. There was a terrible smell in the air, and he felt sick.
He heard a running of feet outside. A servant threw open the door and someone screamed, but he did not know if it was a man or a woman. He stumbled over the other chair, bruising himself violently as he made his way out, and heard his own voice like a stranger’s sending someone for help.
12
“WHY?” Nobby Gunne stood in Charlotte’s front parlor, her face twisted with anxiety. Of course the newspapers had been full of the tragedy of Linus Chancellor’s death. Whatever discretion or pity may have dictated, it was impossible to conceal the fact that he had taken his life suddenly and violently in the presence of a superintendent of the police. No euphemistic explanation would have satisfied even the most naive person. It had to be because the police had brought him some news which was not only unbearable, but so threatening that his response was immediate.
Were it a normal tragedy, some solution to his wife’s death which destroyed the faith and trust he had had in her, or which implied some further disaster, he might well have felt there was no alternative but to take his own life; but he would have done it later, after contemplation, and in the privacy of his own company, perhaps late at night. He would not have done it in the police superintendent’s presence unless he had not only brought shattering news but also a threat to arrest him and place him under such immediate restraint as to make instant action the only possible way of escape.
There might have been other answers, but no one thought further than the murder of Susannah and that Chancellor himself was guilty.
“Why?” Nobby repeated, staring at Charlotte with urgency and mounting distress. “What did she do that he could not possibly have forgiven her? He did love her, I would have sworn to that. Was it—” she swallowed with great difficulty, as though there were something blocking her throat ”—another man?”
Charlotte knew what she feared, and wished intensely that she could have given an answer which would have been painless. But lies were no use.
“No,” she said quickly. “No, it was not another man. You are quite right, I believe they did love each other, each in their own way. Please …” She indicated the closest chair. “It seems …”
“Yes?”
“I was only going to say that it seems so … formal, so cold, to stand here face-to-face across the carpet discussing something so terribly important.”
“Is it … important?” Nobby asked.
“People’s feelings are always important.”
Reluctantly Nobby sat down, a matter of perching on the edge of one of the chairs. Charlotte sat in another opposite her, but farther back in it, less uncomfortably.
“You do know why, don’t you?” Nobby pressed. “Superintendent Pitt will have told you. I remember you used to be most involved in his cases … at the time of …”
“Yes, he told me.”
“Then please, it is of the utmost importance to me. Why did Mr. Chancellor kill Susannah?”
Looking at Nobby’s earnest face, Charlotte was deeply afraid that the answer she had to give was not the one Nobby most feared, but one that would in a way be every bit as hard.
“Because he felt she betrayed him,” she said gravely. “Not with another man! At least not in the way one would usually take that to mean: with another man’s ideas. And he found that intolerable. It would have become public, because she was intending to withdraw her support, and that of the part of the family banking business which was still in her influence. That could not remain private.” She looked at Nobby