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Jem couldn’t imagine who had said such a thing to a grieving mother, even if it held a kernel of truth. Doubtless an Oxford-educated widow without a child could find a better post than that of village schoolmistress, but if anyone in this village had been so damned crass as to say so—well, frankly, it supported the argument that she should indeed move away, which he wasn’t going to offer twice.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had so much to bear,’ he said. ‘I’ve never married, and I can’t imagine losing a child. I, uh…’
‘You want to talk about who killed Toby,’ Prue said. ‘You came here for that, not me. You might as well get on with it.’
Jem cringed internally, but she was right: he was here for that, and to leave now would be a waste of money he couldn’t afford. ‘I’d like to know what you meant about Ella and Aaron,’ he said. ‘You think he lied for her sake? Not the other way around?’
‘I think he lied for her. I think he’d have done anything for her, and she’d have taken it as her due.’
‘Hugo thought she lied because that racialist police investigator was determined to blame Aaron.’
Prue’s mouth tightened. ‘How generous of him. How kind, absolving them both from blame. How very like Hugo.’
Jem felt slightly sick. He hadn’t wanted to believe that he was the only one of the Seven Wonders to be destroyed by Toby’s death; he’d taken a kind of unpleasant satisfaction in seeing that the others bore wounds, but Prue’s bitterness was unspeakable.
‘What do you think, then?’ he asked. ‘Why do you think they lied?’
‘I expect Aaron thought Ella did it because Toby was going to prevent their marriage,’ Prue said calmly. ‘She adored Aaron. I didn’t know she was capable of it. I don’t suppose she did kill Toby, but I promise you, she will have wanted to.’
‘But how could Toby have stopped them?’ Jem asked. ‘She wouldn’t have to break off with Aaron just because her brother disapproved.’
She shrugged one shoulder. ‘You saw Toby that night. He meant Aaron nothing but ill. And Ella didn’t care about anyone else then. Not Toby any more, and certainly not me.’
The hurt was audible in her voice. Jem shifted uncomfortably. ‘But I can’t believe she killed him, even so. She was histwin.’
‘Nor do I, really,’ Prue said. ‘But not because she was incapable of it. Just because it’s obvious who did.’
‘Who—’
‘Oh, come on, Jem,’ she said testily. ‘Who’s tall, good with a blade, and hated Toby as much as he loved him?’
Jem’s throat dried. Prue gave him a look composed of what felt like pity and contempt. ‘Nicky was monstrous that night. He used you like a, athingand threw you aside because for those people, the Nickys and Hugos and Tobys and Ellas, there are the people who matter and the people who don’t, and you and I never mattered, not really. Well, that night, Nicky understood he didn’t matter to Toby either. It was about time he noticed.’
‘You think it was Nicky?’
‘Yes,’ Prue said. ‘I think it was Nicky, because he loved Toby, and Toby was hateful to him.’
Jem could taste bile in his throat. He swallowed and took a gulp of the now-cold tea, controlling his stomach. ‘I…don’t want to believe that.’
‘Don’t you?’ Prue asked. ‘Really, after everything? Oh, come, Jem, you used not to be a fool. If you don’t think it was Aaron or Ella, and I suppose it wasn’t me or you, then it was Nicky or Hugo, and Hugo was the only one of the seven of us whodidn’twant to commit murder that night. Or maybe he did. He was denied, after all, and Hugo never heardno, did he? He didn’t know what the word meant. I can’t see why he’d have killed Toby for it, but, looking back, I don’t understand anything of those times at all. It was gilt slapped on lies, and I’m glad it’s over.’
‘That’s not true,’ Jem said. He wasn’t sure where this fierce defence had come from; he ought to be agreeing, since it was how he’d felt for years, but hearing it aloud made him need to deny this awful picture. ‘I remember all of you on the banks, screaming like fools as I brought the boat home. I remember how we celebrated when Hugo and Nicky got their Blues. When you became Treasurer and Hugo put you on that pedestal—’ Prue’s face convulsed, and she flung a hand up as if warding off a blow. ‘Prue?’
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me to remember all the golden times and how wonderful it was. It’s such a lovely lie, and it makes everything worse now. Stop dreaming about the spires. It was a dreadful place and those were dreadful people, and you and I got caught in their games and paid for it. And you may not want to remember how much we hurt each other, but Toby is rotting in the ground to prove it. I think you should go. I don’t have anything else to say. Leave me alone.’
Jem was shaking as he set off back along the road to Tring station. He ought, he knew, to find a ride, but he couldn’t bear to sit and wait. He needed to move. He needed to think.
I think it was Nicky, because he loved Toby.
It was vile. Prue was vile for having those thoughts, and Jem was vile for listening.
He knew the narrative of the rejected, hysterical queer too well. One heard the stories, hinted at in newspaper reports full of euphemisms or discussed in undertones—or worse, with brash, vulgar laughter, in the pub with no women present—and it always sickened him. As though the fact that Nicky looked at Toby rather than Ella made him a slave to his emotions.
That sort are, people would say, and it made Jem’s stomach twist horribly.That sort. Nicky’s sort.
Not Jem’s sort. He wasn’t flamboyant, or louche, or emotional; he didn’t drawl or make a fuss. Not under usual circumstances, he thought, refusing to consider that awful time after the murder, at home, curled on his bed, crying and raging. But that had been an illness. Nervous exhaustion. The doctor had said so. He wasn’t like that.
And yet.
