We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [83]
“No. That’s why I’m telling you now, while he’s away,” she explained. “She doesn’t want him to, in case…in case it’s more than he can bear. She loves him, and she’s terrified it will turn him from her, or that what was love will become pity…especially since she’s discovered that she’s pregnant.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Judith, he’s going to have to know! You can’t…she’s not going to lie about it, is she?” He tried to keep the emotion out of his voice, and failed.
“No, I don’t think she’d do that, although I couldn’t blame her if she did. How could she love the child, knowing how it was conceived? She’s going to need a lot of help, Matthew.” She stared at him, needing to see that he understood. “All that we can give her. I don’t think she’s got anyone else. First her husband is murdered, now this! And if she loses Joseph it’s going to hurt like hell. But after Eleanor and the baby, then Mother and Father, and all the other friends since, can Joseph take this as well?” She wanted him to reassure her, tell her that Joseph would be all right, that he would accept it and be strong. Perhaps if he tried hard enough he could even make Lizzie believe it.
He sat still on the edge of the cot, struggling for the answer. Finally he sat up a little straighter. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we can’t tell him, I’m certain of that. Not yet. She doesn’t need his pain to deal with as well as her own. In fact, maybe she doesn’t need to know that you’ve told me. Do whatever you think is right on that. Just let me know.”
She nodded, uncertain what the answer would be, but glad to have the freedom to judge for herself.
“But we know for certain now that Schenckendorff’s innocent,” he went on. “Which doesn’t mean he’s everything he says he is regarding the Peacemaker, but there’s no way we can prove it until we get to London. We have to assume he is and get him there. I’d rather make an almighty fool of myself by trying and being proved wrong than be a coward who could have caught the Peacemaker but hadn’t the guts to put it to the test. What we’ll lose as fools will be personal, and relatively little, compared with what Europe will lose if we were right and did nothing.”
“And we need to find whoever did kill Sarah Price,” she added. “He’s still around.”
“The police can do that,” he replied.
She looked at him, frowning. “I don’t think that’s enough for Lizzie,” she answered. “If it were me, I’d want to be sure he was put away. Not for revenge, but so I was absolutely positive he wouldn’t ever come after me again.”
He raised his eyes, wide with horror. “God Almighty! I never even thought of that. Poor Lizzie.” He reached across suddenly and put his hand on Judith’s. “We will find him, I promise you.”
After Judith had gone, Matthew remained on the edge of the cot for several minutes. The oil lamp flickered on the table, lighting the earth walls boarded up to keep them from collapsing inward, the bookcase hastily knocked together out of packing cases and filled with Joseph’s books, and the copy of Dante’s portrait from his study at St. John’s. How would he bear knowing that Lizzie had been another victim of the rapist? Matthew hugged the thought of it inside him like a wound too deep to let go, in case it bled away all the strength he had.
He and Judith could work all they liked, every hour, without sleep, but he knew they would find it hard to learn anything sufficient to stop Jacobson from shipping Schenckendorff out. Matthew had promised to do it because he wanted to, and to comfort her, not because he really believed it was possible. He could not tell Joseph anything. His brother would know he was being lied to, at least partially; he would work out some of the truth and then worry out the rest. They needed help other than his, but who else had the kind of mind that could detect and deduce, and was not bound by the loyalties or debts that crippled everyone else?
The answer was clear even