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“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?”
