by Anne Perry
“All right! So, he’s my little brother.”
“I like it. And actually, I like him. And I had to tell him yesterday that it’s highly possible the man he’s defending for petty embezzlement is also guilty of murder. The body of some other man who worked at the embassy just washed up on the shore of the Potomac. He took it well…considering.”
She let out a gasp, then a sigh of sorrow. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yes. It’s bad,” Patrick agreed. “And I see that you’ve got to be on his side, a bit.” After a moment, he added, “You know when you look at someone you love, you’re beautiful, really beautiful.”
She looked at him and found her eyes full of tears. “That’s because I love you. It doesn’t mean I agree with you over everything!”
He doubled up with sudden laughter.
“I don’t!” she shouted.
“I’m a detective, sweetheart. I had that worked out the second time I met you!”
“That doesn’t mean Sidney’s guilty, or innocent…or right, or wrong.”
“Nobody’s always right, or always wrong.”
“Nonsense,” she returned. “You’re always right—aren’t you?”
CHAPTER
Thirteen
“WHAT IN HELL was that about?” Kitteridge demanded as he caught up with Daniel and walked down the steps of the courthouse into the warm August air of the street. They both turned automatically toward the underground station.
Kitteridge’s case had finished early and he’d come along to observe the puzzling case of Philip Sidney, on which he had spent so much time helping out Daniel.
For a moment or two, Daniel did not answer.
Kitteridge grasped his arm and pulled him to a stop in the middle of the pavement.
“I don’t know,” Daniel answered before Kitteridge could ask again. “It seemed wrong. Do you want him to get off on appeal because he had an incompetent defense?” At the moment it was a very real fear. “I don’t know if I want him condemned at all, but certainly not because I made a mess of it. For his sake, or mine either.”
“You don’t think he’s guilty! Do you?” Kitteridge said, as if making a sudden discovery. It was not so much a question as a challenge. “If he’s innocent, is someone else guilty? Someone at the embassy, for example?”
“Guilty of what?” Daniel asked. The body of Morley Cross, dragged out of the Potomac, haunted his mind. “Let go of my arm!” He snatched it away. “Stop standing here in the street and let’s go and get a beer, or something. We’ve got to get this sorted out. This trial isn’t going on forever. Even a snail arrives somewhere in the end.”
“Stop talking rot!” Kitteridge said tartly. “You’re avoiding the question. Did Flannery arrange this somehow, to avenge Rebecca Thorwood? Isn’t that what he and your sister are really over here for?”
“I’m not going to believe that unless I have to,” Daniel said more quietly. “That would be…” He had been going to say “awful,” but then he wondered what he would have done in their place. He had been angry, hurt, confused enough to be sorely tempted to step outside the law in the Graves case. Would he, if things had been different? If he had felt sure enough? He was certainly not sure enough now! Of anything. Not of Thorwood, certainly. And less and less of the truth about Sidney and the assault of Rebecca. But with growing certainty he believed Patrick in that the events were tied to the murder of Morley Cross.
They came to a decent-looking public house and went inside. They ordered ale and cold mutton sandwiches with horseradish sauce.
“I would feel better if I knew what Hillyer wanted,” Kitteridge said while they waited for their food to arrive. “How did the case get brought at all? Did the Foreign Office bring it? Is there any way of finding out?”
“You mean like asking my father?” Daniel raised his eyebrows. “I agree, it’s very unlike the Foreign Office to wash its dirty linen in public.”
“I asked somebody I know in government.” Kitteridge fiddled with his napkin, turning it over, his knuckles white. “He said he’d have expected them to throw Sidney out, without notice or pay, and then shut up about it. It’s his reputation, as well as theirs. In fact, if I were the Foreign Secretary, I’d want to know why in hell they let it go this far. Wouldn’t you? Pitt, there’s more here than a piece of rather clumsy embezzlement.”
“Some of it forged,” Daniel added, evading the real subject.
“Well, we’d better be damned quick about finding out what!” Kitteridge said.
The waitress brought their food and the ale. They thanked her and waited until she was out of earshot.
“Politics?” Kitteridge suggested, before taking a mouthful of his sandwich.
“Embassy politics? Or do you mean international ones?” Daniel said. He bit into his sandwich. It was really good—fresh, coarse bread, crusts crumbling, thick-cut mutton, and just enough horseradish to give it a tingle. “Or British? I don’t see what issue could be involved, or how removing Sidney could affect it anyway. I looked into the stuff he was handling, as far as they would let me. Somebody else took it all over. Nothing really changed.”
“So, it was personal about Sidney?”
“Or Thorwood?” Daniel suggested.
“What does he have to do with the embassy?”
“Nothing that I know of. I was thinking revenge for Sidney having assaulted Rebecca, and taken the pendant. But then he’d have had to have some influence at the embassy to bring about his revenge with the charge of embezzlement.”
“Is the pendant worth a lot?” Kitteridge asked.
“Jemima told me it wasn’t worth anything. It’s made of crystal, not diamond. It was only sentimental, because it was May Trelawny’s.”
“Whom Sidney has never heard of, I imagine?”
“Don’t know. But if he has, it would have been from Rebecca. I can’t think of anyone else who would mention Miss Trelawny to him,” Daniel said.
Kitteridge ate another mouthful of his sandwich, then looked up, intensely serious. “So, you think Sidney did it.”
“Which, the assault or the embezzlement?” Daniel was playing for time to think, and he saw in Kitteridge’s face that he knew that.
“Well, the embezzlement came first,” Kitteridge pointed out. “They are going to say he stole the pendant in the hope of selling it and putting the money back before anyone knew it.”
“What?” Daniel said incredulously. “I hope they do! It’s nonsense. Is Hillyer half-witted? He didn’t look like that to me. Anyway, why is Hillyer doing this?”
“Presumably, his firm is appearing for the Crown. What else? The…”
“The what?”
“The Foreign Office will have employed him. He’s very reputable.”
“Then he must owe somebody a favor. Or he’s bucking for silk! Maybe Sir James Hillyer, King’s Counsel? Has a ring to it.”
“Do you think so?” Kitteridge said doubtfully.
“No, I don’t,” Daniel replied. “I’d want ermine, never mind silk, to argue that!”
“Seat in the House of Lords? You’re an ass, Pitt!”
“Not a big enough ass to argue that Sidney steadily embezzled five or ten pounds here and there for three years, then decided to put it back by breaking into Thorwood’s house and assaulting his daughter before pinching a glass pendant by ripping it off her neck. Then escaping, allowing himself to be seen by someone who knew him well enough to recognize him by sight. In the hope of…what? Recovering all the individual papers that prove his embezzlement, and replacing them with five-pound notes! Then fleeing the country? What defense did he intend to plead—insanity? We could always make that stick!”
Kitteridge stared at him. “Well, what is it, then?”
“I don’t know! But there’s something we’ve been missing, because this doesn’t make sen
se.”
Kitteridge rolled his eyes. “For heaven’s sake, Pitt, half the cases we get don’t make sense. Where the hell did you ever get the idea that they did? Didn’t your father teach you anything? Haven’t I taught you anything?”
“The law doesn’t always make sense,” Daniel agreed. “But there is a kind of cumulative structure to it. There will be to this case, when we have it all. There’s something missing. Hillyer is not a fool, however much we might like to think that he is. He knows something that makes sense, at least to him. We’ve got to find out what it is.”
“Someone in the Foreign Office wants to get rid of Sidney? Or…is it tied into Morley Cross’s murder?” Kitteridge suggested. “I can’t see how. Perhaps Sidney knows something? An indiscretion? Only a fool would try blackmail at that level, but perhaps he is a fool? Or someone thinks he is?”
“I believe you’re right,” Daniel said. “And it will come out soon. I think proof of it is what Hillyer is stringing this all out for…”
“And Cross was working in the same department of the embassy in Washington as Sidney!” Kitteridge exclaimed.
Daniel watched Kitteridge’s face and saw the play of emotions on it, from horror to pity, and pity to understanding of what it meant.
“And that points to Sidney?” Kitteridge went on, his voice catching in his throat.
“I’ve no idea. But it could,” Daniel replied. “They haven’t fixed the time of death yet, and maybe they won’t be able to, exactly. Could be just before Sidney left Washington…or just after.”
Kitteridge was, for once, lost for words.
“It will be a capital case as soon as they get the information organized,” said Daniel. “That completely explains why Hillyer is boring the jury half to death. Anything to keep them there while he awaits a positive identification, and time of death, if at all possible.”
“Why would Sidney kill Cross?” Kitteridge asked.
“Because he knew Sidney was guilty of embezzling. In fact, they very possibly did it together. Perhaps they quarreled over the money…”
“A hundred pounds? Don’t be idiotic. Anyway, by that time there was probably nothing left of it. You said it was only a few pounds at a time.”
“They’ll find a motive,” Daniel said miserably. “Maybe we’ve missed something.”
“No,” Kitteridge interrupted. “Next thing is, Sidney and Morley Cross fight over the pendant, diamond or not, and Sidney kills Cross. Perhaps he gets it back, or perhaps it is in the Potomac and so we’ll never know.”
“All right,” Daniel agreed. “But why? Sidney is very glad to accept Armitage’s help to get back to England without being charged for the assault on Rebecca.”
“Does Armitage know about the murder of Cross?” Kitteridge asked.
“I don’t think so, but he knows that Sidney’s accused of taking a pendant from Rebecca, in particularly unfortunate circumstances…according to the Thorwoods. But that would be some passionate motive…so maybe we’ve got the thing all wrong? There’s no big political stake. Sidney’s not that important. He might have been, someday, but he’s nobody now. And he’s not connected to anybody who I can trace. And believe me, I’ve tried. Marcus actually looked into it and asked around. Sidney’s not even courting anybody interesting. Or anybody at all! I looked into that, too, in case some parents wanted to make sure their precious daughter didn’t marry beneath her. I tried money, title, influence. Nothing!”
“I suppose Rebecca couldn’t be it?” Kitteridge said, but even as he framed the words, he lost belief in that possibility. “No, you’d have known about it by now,” he answered for himself. “From Flannery or your sister, if no one else. Sidney’s not connected to anyone, poor devil. It’s something else. And I think Sidney knows what it is, and it’s nothing he can afford to admit. He’s facing ruin, if they find him guilty, and we don’t have a real defense. We’re playing at it. Hitting each ball as it comes. But you haven’t got a plan. You know it, and I know it. We aren’t really hacking it for him. Look at his face!”
Daniel thought for a moment. “Does he look like a man who’s taken the blame for somebody else?”
“No.”
“I don’t think so either. I think he’s even more lost than we are,” Daniel agreed, noticing with a wave of relief that Kitteridge had said “we” and not “you.” “But we’d better find something soon. We’ve got to do more than discredit one witness. Can we prove that some of the embezzlement letters or receipts are forged? And the assault on Rebecca. Did it happen? Did it happen the way Rebecca says, and her father says? For that matter, was May Trelawny’s pendant a diamond or really just glass? Or both?”
“It can’t be both,” Kitteridge pointed out meticulously.
“Yes, it can. A diamond that was sold, given away, stolen, or whatever, and replaced by glass. Or maybe it never existed at all.”
“Don’t, you’re making it even worse than it is already.”
Daniel leaned forward. “I’m trying to work out what we really know, and what we are assuming.”
“All right. In order. There’s the money missing from the embassy,” Kitteridge began.
“No! In order. And we don’t know that Sidney took it anyway.”
“The money had to be stolen before the assault,” Kitteridge corrected him. “After the assault, Sidney had no chance…”
“Good point,” Daniel agreed.
“Go on.”
“The first thing we know of it is that Tobias reports an assault on his daughter, substantiated by her, except for the identification of Sidney. But he was sure she was too upset to make note. And by now, Morley Cross, if he is involved, has the diamond—let us say it was a diamond—or he thought it was. For the purpose of motive, that’s as good. Next thing is that Sidney leaves America for England to escape prosecution. That could be us protecting our own. I’m not sure if that’s really a good thing to do, but I suppose it’s understandable. Patriotism—misguided—or the wish to prosecute him for the embezzlement, but that…”
“Makes no sense,” Kitteridge finished for him. “An enemy in the embassy does. But we can’t find one. He was generally liked.”
“The next thing to happen is that the Thorwoods arrive in London,” Daniel went on.
“Next thing was your brother-in-law and your sister arrive in London. Sorry, but it’s true.”
“Yes. Right. Then the Thorwoods arrive in London, and Sidney is arrested for embezzlement, and then tried, and the evidence emerges, forged or not,” Daniel summed up. “And Hillyer is waiting to hear more about Cross: body, time of death, and so on, before he adds murder to the charge. What’s missing?”
“A real motive,” Kitteridge replied. “And a connection between the events. A purpose! If Sidney’s not guilty, why is he being made to look it? Who hates him? Who is profiting? It has to be more than the hundred pounds. If it was even embezzled at all? There’s no core to it, Pitt, no…center. Men don’t kill each other over five pounds!”
Daniel said thoughtfully, “I was looking for a thread through it, something that ties it together. But what if it isn’t all connected? I mean, not the way we can see…”
“The pendant is missing and Sidney appears not to have it. That is something to profit from and is worth over a few pounds if it’s real. But if it is only of sentimental value, that doesn’t make sense,” Kitteridge replied. “What started it off? With a crime, there’s something that makes it happen that day, that way.”
“You don’t need to explain it. I understand,” Daniel responded. “Circumstances change in a way that is intolerable to someone. Or an opportunity comes that someone can’t resist. Who needed a bit of money, a few pounds in the beginning? And saw how easy it was and made it a habit? But what happened that caused the first theft?”
“We should be able to find that out, if we hunt hard enoug
h. We’ve got notes of all the embezzlement letters. What happened in Sidney’s life?”
“Or somebody else’s.”
“What?” Kitteridge looked taken aback.
“It doesn’t have to be in Sidney’s life, if somebody else is behind it all.”
“Why would something in somebody else’s life make Sidney assault Rebecca?”
“Aren’t we starting from the beginning?” Daniel asked. “What is this really about? What’s the passion behind it? Is Sidney the heart of it, or is he only collateral damage along the way?”
Kitteridge winced. “That sounds brutal. Collateral damage? Morley Cross as well? Shot in the back of the head.”
Daniel winced. “A lot of us only see what we can afford to believe,” he said. “What changed then? For anyone? We’re missing something, Kitteridge. I don’t even know what shape it is to begin to look for it. Who does know? Is it anyone we are looking at, or someone we haven’t even thought of, not in the way we need to see them?”
Kitteridge shivered. “Then we’d better hurry up and find it, or Sidney’s going to pay the price. Do you really think he’s innocent?”
“I’m not sure. Is that good enough for you?”
“No.” Kitteridge ate the last of his sandwich.
Daniel drank the rest of his ale and stood up. “I’m going back to see Sidney…”
Kitteridge stared at him. “Tonight?”
“Tomorrow’s too late. He must know something. He’s scared, but not scared enough.”
“Don’t scare him so badly he can’t think,” Kitteridge warned. “Most of us can’t think clearly when we’re really terrified. But you’ve got to tell him about Morley Cross.”
“I will,” Daniel said miserably. He knew there was no escape. “But now your case is finished, will you take over this case?”
“No. I’ll second chair. I know I said I’d never do that again after the last case. But sometimes ‘never’ is less time than you think.”