Midnight at Marble Arch (27 page)

“Mrs. Quixwood is not his case, but he will help how he can. I fear, though, that it will not be easy, and it may take some time.”

Jemima smiled. “We’re lucky, aren’t we, to have Papa to look after us?”

“Yes, we are. But you will still not see young men alone, no matter who they are.”

“But …” Jemima began.

Charlotte raised her eyebrows slightly.

“But with others? If Fanny Welsh is there too, it’s all right?” Jemima insisted.

“I will take it under advisement, and let you know,” Charlotte replied.

12

N
ARRAWAY HATED PRISONS, BUT
it had quite often been necessary in the past for him to visit people awaiting trial, and sometimes even afterward when they were convicted. However, seeing Alban Hythe was more personal, and therefore painful in a quite different way.

Hythe looked ill. He was clearly exhausted and he seemed undecided as to whether he should even try to appear calm. He greeted Narraway courteously, but with fear jumping in his eyes.

Narraway tried to dismiss the overwhelming pity from his mind. He needed clarity of thought if he was to be of any help. They sat opposite each other across a scarred wooden table. Narraway had to use considerable influence to gain access and be left alone with Hythe, while the barrel-chested jailer remaining outside the door.

“I haven’t seen that brooch, and I never received love letters from Catherine!” Hythe said urgently. His voice shook a little. “We were
friends. That’s all! Never more than that. Maris is the only woman I’ve loved.”

“Did they show you the letter?” Narraway asked him.

“Yes, but I swear it’s the first time I ever saw it!” Hythe was barely in control. His hands twitched and there was a wild desperation in his eyes.

“Do you believe she wrote it?” Narraway pressed. “They say it is undoubtedly her handwriting, but is it also the kind of language she would’ve used?”

“I’ve no idea! The letter is all about love, and we didn’t speak of love. We only—” He stopped abruptly.

“What?” Narraway asked. “What did you talk about? This is not the time to be modest or circumspect. You’re fighting for your life.”

“I know!” Hythe shivered uncontrollably.

Narraway leaned forward. “Then tell me, what did you talk about? If it wasn’t you who did this, then who else could it have been?”

“Don’t you think I’ve racked my brain to remember anything she said that could help me?” Hythe was close to panic.

Narraway realized he had made a tactical error in frightening Hythe by bringing up the stakes so soon. He moderated his voice. “Have you any idea how often you met? Once a week? Twice a week? Her diaries suggest at least that.”

Hythe looked down at the scarred tabletop. His voice when he spoke was quiet. “The first time we met by chance, at a dinner party. I forget where. It was a business matter, and rather tedious. Then a little while later I was at an art gallery, filling time before meeting a client for luncheon. I saw Catherine and recognized her. It seemed quite natural that we should speak.”

“What did you discuss?” Narraway asked.

Hythe smiled for the first time, as if a pleasant memory had given him a few moments’ respite from reality. “Pre-Raphaelite paintings,” he answered. “She wondered what the models were thinking about, sitting still for so long while the artist drew them in such fanciful surroundings. We thought about where they had actually been—some
studio or just an ordinary room—and if they even knew the legends and dreams into which they were painted.

“Catherine was very funny. She could make one laugh so easily. Her imagination was … quite unlike that of anyone else I have ever known. She always had the right words to make one see the absurdity of things, but she was never mocking. She liked eccentricity and wasn’t afraid of anything.” His expression became sad. “Except loneliness.”

“And Quixwood never noticed that, clearly,” Narraway observed.

“A clever man, but with a pedestrian soul,” Hythe answered without hesitation. “Her soul had wings, and she hated being made to spend her time with her feet in the dust.” He bent his head suddenly. “I’m sorry; my judgment is unwarranted and cruel. She was just so alive; I hate whoever did this to her. They have spoiled something that was lovely and destroyed a friend I cared about. She was … she was good.” He seemed to want to add more. It was in that moment that Narraway knew Hythe was lying, in essence if not in word.

“Just a friend?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes!” Hythe jerked his head up. “Just a friend. We talked; we looked at pictures painted from great imaginations, at pages from books written on papyrus from the very first poets and dreamers in the world. We saw carvings of grace made by artists who died before Christ was born. She escaped from her loneliness, and I from my world of facts and figures, interest on loans, duty on imported treasures, and prices of land.”

His voice trembled.

“Haven’t you ever had friends, Lord Narraway? People you like enormously, who enrich your world, and without whom you would be poorer in a dozen ways—but you are not in love with them?”

Narraway instantly thought of Vespasia.

“Yes, I have,” he said honestly, feeling the warmth himself, for a moment.

“Then you can understand.” Hythe looked relieved. The ghost of a smile returned to his pale face.

Narraway felt a sudden stab of surprise, a question in his mind. What exactly did he feel for Vespasia? She was older than he by several
years. He had been elevated to the House of Lords because of his skills, and possibly as a sop to his pride for being dismissed from his position as head of Special Branch. She had been born into the aristocracy. They had become friends by circumstance. He had begun a little in awe of her, and he was quite aware that she had never been in awe of him—nor perhaps of anyone else either.

But she could be hurt. He had realized that only recently. Her feelings were far deeper than he had imagined, and she was not invulnerable. Was she also, occasionally, as lonely as Catherine Quixwood had been?

He forced it out of his thoughts. He was concerned with Alban Hythe, and whether the younger man was guilty or not, and what it was he still lied about, even though the shadow of the noose hung over him.

“Did you ever write to her?” Narraway asked a little abruptly.

“No,” Hythe said urgently. “We met by chance, or …”

“Or what?” Narraway demanded. “For God’s sake, man, they’ve charged you with rape, and the victim died. If they find you guilty they’ll hang you!”

He thought Hythe was going to pass out. The last vestige of color drained out of his face and for a moment his eyes lost focus.

Narraway jerked forward and grasped hold of his wrists and forced him upright.

“Fight!” he said between his teeth. “Fight them! Damn it, give me something to use! If you weren’t lovers, then what the hell were you doing meeting a married woman in half the galleries around London? You have no room and no time to protect anyone else!”

Hythe sat up against the hard back of the chair, breathing in and out slowly, trying to steady himself. Finally he lifted his eyes.

“We met by arrangement,” he said huskily.

Narraway bit back the angry answer that was on the edge of his tongue.

“So why were you meeting with such elaborate care as to make it appear by chance?”

“I promised her …” Hythe began, then tears of grief filled his eyes.

“She’s dead!” Narraway said brutally. “And precisely three weeks after they find you guilty, you will be too!”

The silence in the room was thick, as if the air had turned solid, too heavy to breathe.

Had Narraway gone too far? Had he frightened Hythe into a mental collapse? His mind raced for something to do, anything to rescue the situation. He had been irretrievably stupid, lost his touch completely. No wonder they had retired him!

“Hythe …” he started, his voice choking.

The other man opened his eyes. “She wanted something from me,” he began, then released a heavy sigh. “Advice.”

Narraway felt the sweat break out on his body and relief flood through him.

“What kind of advice? Financial?”

“Yes. She … she was concerned for her future,” Hythe said miserably. He was breaking his own professional code of honor by speaking of it, and it was obvious how profoundly difficult that was for him.

Still, Narraway sensed an evasion. There was something incomplete. Hythe might feel guilty about breaking a confidence, but there was nothing immoral in a woman being afraid her husband was rash with money, even a husband usually skilled in such affairs.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“Her husband was involved in investments,” Hythe said quietly. “She was afraid that something he was doing would end up being disastrous, but he wouldn’t listen to her. She wanted to have her own information and not depend on what he told her. It was … detailed. It took me a long time to find it and I gave it to her piece by piece, as I could. Each time it fell into place she would ask for something further. She believed that some investments currently worth a fortune might become useless, and others gain enormously.”

He was still lying, at least in part. Narraway knew it, and he could not understand why. Did Hythe still not understand his own danger?

“Was she trying to save her husband’s finances?” Narraway asked. “Did she have money of her own, or expectations?”

Hythe stared at him. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me why she needed the information, but I think it was more than that. I had the increasingly powerful feeling that she was afraid of something calamitous happening. I asked her, and she refused to say.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t press her.”

“How many times altogether did you meet?”

“A dozen maybe.” He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “I liked her, but I never touched her in a familiar way, and I certainly didn’t rape her! Why on earth would I? We were friends, and both her husband and my wife were perfectly aware of it!”

“You are sure that Quixwood was aware of it?” Narraway pressed.

“Of course! He and I even talked about an exhibition at the National Geographical Society, photographs of Patagonia. He told me how beautiful Catherine found it: great sweeping wilderness country; all pale, wind-bleached colors, light and shadow. Superb.”

“Did she speak to anyone else about the financial issues?”

Hythe thought for several moments, then met Narraway’s eyes.

“I don’t think so. From what she said to me, I gathered I was the only person she trusted.”

“She came to you for financial information, but you said she was warm, amusing, a lovely woman.”

“She was!”

“And Quixwood was cold, without a true understanding of her?” Narraway insisted.

“Yes.”

“So she was lonely, maybe desperately lonely?”

Hythe swallowed painfully. “Yes.” His voice was husky with emotion, guilt, and perhaps pity. “But I did not take advantage of that. I had no wish to. I liked her, liked … cared … but I did not love her.” He added no oaths, no pleas, and his words were the more powerful for it.

“It’s not enough. You have to think harder!” Narraway leaned forward again, a note of desperation in his voice. He heard it and forced
himself to speak more levelly. “Whoever it was that raped her, she let him in.” He swallowed hard. “She wasn’t afraid to be alone with him. What do you conclude from that?”

“That she knew him,” Hythe said miserably. He shook his head a little. “It doesn’t sound like Catherine at all, not as I knew her.”

“Then as you knew her, how do you explain it?” Narraway demanded. “What do you believe happened?”

“Do you think I haven’t tried to work it out?” Hythe said desperately. “If she let the servants go then she
wasn’t
expecting anyone. Letting them all retire for the night like that makes it obvious; Catherine was never careless in that way. It would be … unnecessarily dangerous. What if a footman had come down to check a door, or the butler came to ensure she didn’t need anything? Isn’t that what actually happened?”

“More or less,” Narraway agreed.

“So the person at the door had to be someone unexpected,” Hythe argued.

“But then why did she let him in?” Narraway persisted. “Why would the woman you knew have done that?”

“It must have been someone she knew and had no fear of,” Hythe answered. “Maybe he claimed to be hurt, or in some kind of trouble. She wouldn’t hesitate to try and help.” He stopped abruptly. He made no display of grief, but it was so deeply marked on his face that it was unmistakable.

Narraway suddenly was completely certain that Hythe had not raped Catherine or beaten her. Someone else had, but Hythe was going to face trial. The letter and the gift would damn him. And there was no one else to suspect. He felt a jolt of fear.

Who was going to defend Hythe in court, at the very least raise a reasonable doubt? That would not clear his name, but guilt would hang him, and finding the right person after that would matter little. Hythe would be dead, and Maris a widow and alone.