Silence in Hanover Close by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery.Historical
ISBN: 9780345523730
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2011-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

7

EMILY WAS APPALLED when she came into the library in answer to Albert’s summons and saw Pitt standing there. Thank heaven the circumstances had given him little time to express his outrage or to press his demand that she leave. When Veronica returned to consciousness, Pitt had been obliged to remain silent, except for the few remarks to excuse himself, leaving Emily alone with her mistress propped up against the cushions, looking like death warmed over.

Emily felt so intense a pity for her it was like a new wound, but she also knew that she would probably never have a better chance than now, when Veronica was shocked and off balance, to draw some unguarded word from her as to what had frightened her so profoundly.

She bent down beside her and touched her hand. “Ma’am, you do look ill,” she said gently. “Whatever did he say to you? He ought not have been allowed!” She stared so intently at Veronica’s ashen face that some sort of answer was unavoidable.

“I—I think I fainted,” Veronica whispered at last.

Mentally Emily apologized to Pitt for the injustice she was about to do him; then with all the skill she could muster, she let genuine compassion fill her eyes. “Did he threaten you, ma’am? What did he say? He has no right! You should report him: What was it?”

“No,” Veronica said quickly, then bit her lip, struggling with the lie. “No—he—he was really quite civil. I. . .” For a moment her eyes met Emily’s and she hesitated on the brink of speech, the temptation to trust so vivid that Emily could trace every thread of it, the wavering, the rival fears.

Emily held her breath.

But the moment passed. Veronica turned away and the tears spilled and ran down her cheeks. She lay back and closed her eyes.

Emily longed to put her arms round her and tell her she understood, she knew what it was like to lose your husband suddenly, violently, in the horror of murder, with the knowledge that someone must hate so much that only death could satisfy them. And she also knew the fear that grew day by day, fear of confusion, of a whole world become incomprehensible and full of secrets, some of them hideous; and the fear that the truth might be worse than you could bear. And there was the fear that with knowledge you, too, might become a victim—and at the back of every other fear, the one that you might be guilty of some stupidity, or some neglect that had contributed to it all, a permanent rising, whispering guilt!

And for Emily, too, there had been the fear that the police would suspect her. Her motive had looked to be so obvious!

Was that what Veronica was afraid of now? Did she feel Pitt treading closer? Was it terror for herself that had made her faint?

Or was she afraid for someone she was protecting— someone like Julian Danver? It was more like Pitt to be oblique, to go for

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