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“I…I don’t know. He’s familiar with crime, Daniel. He’s a policeman.”
“So is our father, but everyone is different. Our father is not half as intuitive as Victor Narraway! And neither of them is as subtle to the dimensions of the mind as Aunt Vespasia.” He winced. “I still miss her.”
“You always will,” Jemima said gently. “She’s part of everything that was good when we were children, and after that. You never die in the memory of the people who loved you.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said.
She saw a momentary tremble of his lips and smiled. “You changed it. You’re looking for what it is you don’t know about Sidney. And it’s possible the assault was not at all what it seems. Or if Tobias was mistaken as to who it was that night? Or if he’s lying? Anything to prove Sidney is not guilty?”
“Not…not really. I’m looking for a reason he would do such a crazy thing! Even with Morley Cross and his murder, the center isn’t there. Why kill him?” He looked totally puzzled. “There’s something a lot darker behind all this. Does Patrick know something he doesn’t realize fits in?”
“Such as what?” Jemima racked her mind, but she could think of nothing.
“I don’t know,” Daniel answered. “Does Patrick owe more to the Thorwood family than he’s told you? It doesn’t have to be a debt of money. It could be anything. It could even be a secret he knows about them, that has earned his pity.”
She did not answer him, her mind searching the past.
“Don’t be slow, Jem. You know as well as I do, if someone has a deep vulnerability that only you know about, a fear, or a failure, a secret they are ashamed of, you would never betray them. You can’t.”
“I don’t know!” She wanted to, and yet she was also afraid to. Patrick had trusted her with his emotions. At least it seemed so. But everyone has to have a private area, somewhere where even those closest to them did not go uninvited. It was part of becoming an adult, being able to keep secrets. It was part of knowing someone that you did not intrude, or even want to. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “But I have no sense of it. I’m alm
ost certain Patrick really believes Thorwood saw Sidney in the corridor. Which means he was there. And even if Rebecca invited him, he should have known better than to take advantage of her.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “That’s bad behavior, but not something to ruin his career over. And why take the pendant?”
“Perhaps…” She struggled for an answer. “It was only rock crystal, not a diamond.”
“That’s no answer!” Daniel’s disbelief was clear in his face. “Come on, Jem. He tore it off her neck. It must have hurt. And why did she scream? If she invited him there, the last thing she would do is scream and wake the household! It has to make sense—at least to someone.”
“I know. To the someone who did it!” She gulped. “What you’re really asking is, does Patrick believe it was Sidney, and has made him look guilty of embezzlement to punish him for it?”
Daniel nodded minutely. “Yes. It could be for a perfectly honorable reason that he wants to make sure Thorwood gets justice for Rebecca’s assault. Perhaps Thorwood is a witness to some crime, and Patrick is afraid for him. Or Thorwood is involved in something dangerous and needs Patrick’s protection. Or perhaps Patrick knows of Sidney’s guilt in some way he can’t reveal…to protect someone else? There are lots of answers that leave him innocent of any wrong, but unable to speak. Crime can get very complicated. Debt is difficult, and you cannot walk out of it when it gets expensive, or uncomfortable.”
Ideas poured through her mind, but the fear eased away. “Do you think so? Please…please unravel it carefully.”
“I’m not sure I can unravel it at all,” Daniel replied. “But I will be careful, I can promise you that!”
* * *
—
JEMIMA DID NOT confront Patrick when he returned from his visit to the Tower with Charlotte. He was full of enthusiasm, partly out of courtesy to Charlotte and the fact that he found her company enjoyable—she was too much like Jemima for him not to—but also out of fascination with the relics of history he had seen, even touched. Charlotte had told him how, ten years after William the Conqueror’s conquest in 1066, he had had an accounting made of his new kingdom. The Domesday Book named every house and holding, every hamlet and steading. And of course she included what she could remember of the Yeomen Warders—the Beefeaters, as they were known—who guarded the Tower in their traditional heraldic scarlet uniforms.
When they were upstairs changing for dinner, Jemima made herself take the opportunity to bring up the subject of the trial.
“Did you have a good day, too?” Patrick asked, not casually as if in good manners, but watching her, as though he cared.
“Yes, Sophie was looking on while Cassie and I built sandcastles.”
“All day?” he smiled.
“No, not all day. Daniel came.”
He caught the difference in her tone immediately. “In the middle of the afternoon? Why? It must be serious to take him away from the court. The trial isn’t over…unless Sidney has changed his plea. Has he?”
“Do you think he might?” she asked. She did not explain that Kitteridge was now defending him, too. Maybe she would be spared having to ask him about Tobias Thorwood.
“He would if he had any sense,” Patrick replied. “In fact, he should have pleaded guilty in the first place, and avoided a trial at all. Then we would have had no chance at all of raising the assault. Daniel hasn’t done it yet, has he? Jem, is that what you’re looking so tense about?”
