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HE OPENED THE FRONT door of his house and saw the lights on in the kitchen. Never could he remember feeling so glad to know that Hester was home. His spirits lifted and the warm air wrapped around him. She called out from the kitchen, and when he did not go to her, she came out to find him.
“What is it?” She hurried forward. “William? What’s happened?”
Wordlessly, he drew her toward him and put his arms around her, holding her tightly.
She stayed with him for several moments, then pulled away. “What is it?” she said again. “Are you going to lose the case? Is it worse than that? You know which of your men betrayed you?” She searched his face, his eyes. “Not Hooper. I don’t believe that.”
“No.” He spoke at last, his voice sounding husky. “Nobody betrayed us. I should have known all along. I’m sorry. I was wrong. Wrong about the whole case.”
She frowned and pulled away a little, looking into his eyes. “Wrong about what? Who?”
“Just about everything,” he said. “And unless I can work out how to do it, tomorrow the case is going to close. Exeter will be found not guilty. You know he can never be tried again for any of these murders? Not Kate, not Lister, nor Bella Franken—and if they convict Doyle, not for his death either.”
“William…” Her voice froze. There was horror and the beginning of realization in her eyes, but she did not yet see clearly what it was she feared; only that he feared it, too.
“He will have got away with it. He killed them all, even Kate,” he said.
“But he was with you! And there were other men there.”
“No, there weren’t. We thought about it hard, Hooper and I. Wrote down a plan of Jacob’s Island and worked it out.”
She could not see it.
“If Laker and I have a fight,” he explained, “rough each other up quite a bit, and then tell you we were attacked by two men, already you have four in the fight, when in fact there were only two,” he explained. “Exeter was fairly thoroughly beaten. He said it was kidnappers. It could as easily have been like the fight Laker had, where he thought I was a kidnapper. And I thought he was. Multiply that. It only took two of them, and it would seem to be at least four—if Exeter knew exactly where each of us was. And he did: he actually drew it up.”
“Exeter and Lister?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did Lister kill Kate, then, and Exeter took his revenge on him later?”
“No. I believe Exeter killed her himself, while Lister kept us busy. Exeter killed Lister later on, to keep him quiet.”
“That’s…terrible. But why?” She was fighting herself whether to believe him and the horror of it. There had to be some other explanation.
He could see it so clearly in her eyes, because he had felt that himself as Hooper was telling him. “Because he’s corrupt, and she knew it and was on the verge of leaving him. And of course taking her own money with her. This way, she is dead, the picture of the perfect marriage is preserved, and he gets her money as ransom. Nobody is pushing him to pay his debts because they all know, or think they know, that he hasn’t got the money now. He has, instead, a most public sympathy.”
“And Bella Franken was beginning to see that?”
“Yes.”
“So he killed her and threw her body in the river? But William, Celia Darwin, who is Kate’s cousin and closest friend, testified that she was with Exeter at his house at the exact moment Bella was found. And she can’t have been killed more than a few minutes before that, or the river would have swept her—”
He did not let her finish. “I know. Celia lied.”
“Why?” she demanded. “It was clear she absolutely hated saying it, but honesty compelled her. Anyone could see that.”
“No. Love compelled her.”
“Love! William, she loathes him. She’s hiding it well because she’s been brought up not to feel such things, and above all, not to own that you do. But I could see it, and so could any other woman in that court who wasn’t asleep!”
“You saw a woman forced to lie or see the man she loves hanged!” he corrected her.
Hester was incredulous. “She loves Exeter? I don’t believe it. You’ve got something terribly wrong.”
“No!” He dismissed the idea as almost blasphemous. “She hates him as much as few hate at all! She loves Hooper.”
