Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

For a long moment he held her gaze, then the fury seemed to drain from her. She half turned from him, her head drooping as if her slender neck no longer had the strength to support it. “Patrick Rennie,” she said simply, “is my son.”

The small entrance building of Rievaulx Abbey sold tickets and souvenirs as well as serving as a sort of mini-museum. A glass-covered scale model of the complete abbey invited scrutiny. The walls were covered with drawings and photographs detailing the abbey’s history, but Hannah passed them by with only a glance. She’d done her homework last night, after Patrick mentioned he intended coming here.

Then it had simply seemed an opportunity to talk with him alone, skirting the dangerous edge of revelation. She’d meant to wait until their relationship had progressed a bit from its first spontaneous warmth-she’d meant to build trust and confidence between them, lead into it gently, ask him, perhaps, how he felt about his real mother.

Now her mind shied away from all her rehearsed scenarios, unable to fasten on anything coherent. But tell him she must. Somehow hearing Kincaid’s suspicions had forced her hand, made it impossible for her to continue the relationship under false pretenses. How could she expect Patrick to be honest with her if she hadn’t been honest with him? And she must hear his own account, judge for herself the truth of it. Could her son be capable of murder? She couldn’t bear not knowing.

Hannah pushed through the building’s rear exit and stepped onto the grass. Her first glimpse across the long, green lawns quite literally took her breath away. She felt the sharp prickle of tears against her eyelids, blinked them back.

Before her Rievaulx Abbey lay cupped in a natural hollow at the foot of Rievaulx moor, held like a jewel between brilliant green grass in the foreground and the red-golds of the trees covering the slope of the moor. The morning’s sun had given way to a soft, low overcast, and the moisture in the air seemed to saturate the colors with an elemental vividness.

She crossed the lawn slowly, her eyes on the soaring arches of the choir. Six hundred monks had lived here, eating, sleeping, praying, tending their sheep and their gardens. She could almost hear them singing as they worked, such was the timeless, dream-like quality of the place. She knew for a fleeting instant how close they must have felt to their god, and a shaft of envy stabbed through her.

Patrick sat on a ruined sill with his back against one of the choir arches, his hair bright against the weathered stone. The nubby, brown wool of his Shetland sweater might almost have been the rough brown cloth of a monk’s habit, but the smoke that curled from the cigarette he held between his fingers ruined the image. She’d never seen him smoke.

He showed no surprise at her presence, speaking only after she had stood there a moment, watching him. “I thought you might turn up. Magnificent, isn’t it?” He indicated the choir around them with a tilt of his head. He dropped the cigarette and ground the butt with his toe. At her look he said, “I don’t around Marta. I suppose I’d lose the advantage of my righteous superiority. Politicians,” he smiled, his voice lightly self-mocking in a way she hadn’t heard before, “never let go an advantage.”

“Is that why you wanted to make sure no one found out about Cassie?” Hannah said, surprised to find her own voice steady. She hadn’t meant to start that way, hadn’t meant to accuse him outright, but the words tumbled from her mouth of their own accord. “What were you willing to do, Patrick, to make sure Marta didn’t find out? To make sure you didn’t lose Marta’s parents’ support and your election with it?” Hannah found her breath coming in little gasps and she began to shiver as if with a chill.

Patrick’s brows lifted in surprise. He started to speak, then took a few steps toward the choir’s center and stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets. After a moment he said, evenly, “I realize we’re all suspect. Any fool would. But somehow I didn’t expect an attack from you. How,” he continued without turning, “did you come up with this… this fantasy?”

“Duncan Kincaid thinks Sebastian found out about you and Cassie and threatened to expose you-whether for money or just because he hated Cassie, I don’t know.”

He turned to face her now, still in that deliberately casual manner. “It won’t wash, Hannah. Do you seriously think that Marta would leave me over a little bit of marital infidelity? That she’d go running back to her parents and her set in Sussex with her tail between her legs and admit she couldn’t keep me? Or that her parents would publicly admit their daughter’s humiliation? Not bloody likely. It’s not only my ambition we’re dealing with here, it’s theirs as well and they’ll not willingly let it go. Even confronted with irrefutable evidence they’d all turn a blind eye because that’s what suits them. Oh, Marta would make catty little jabs at me and up her gin consumption, but that’s as far as it would go.”

“But what-”

“You think I’m callous, don’t you?” Patrick’s tone was surprisingly bitter. “You think that I chose Marta and her parents because of what they could do for me?” He stared at her challengingly for a long moment, but she didn’t speak. “Well, they chose me, Hannah. I was the perfect vehicle to fulfill their social aspirations, the pet to be coddled and groomed like a prize cat, the charming son-in-law always willing to be sacrificed to garrulous old ladies. I’d say I’ve kept up my end of the bargain fairly well.” The self-mockery touched his smile again.

It all sounded so smoothly, seductively plausible, thought Hannah. How could she not believe him as he stood before her, his shoulders hunched in an oddly vulnerable posture, the wind ruffling the straight, fair hair across his forehead?

“But Patrick,” Hannah struggled to find the words to go on, “what did happen that night, the night Sebastian died? Duncan thinks Penny saw you.”

Patrick came back to the choir arch and leaned against it, fishing a battered pack of Marlboros from his trouser pocket. He cupped the match against the wind and drew on the cigarette before he spoke. “I did go out that night. I told Marta I was going to the car for a book-whether she believed me or not I don’t know. She was more sober than usual. We’d just arrived that morning and Cassie had been avoiding me all day, until I’d begun to think she didn’t want to see me.” He watched the wind fan the glowing end of the cigarette as he spoke and didn’t raise his eyes to Hannah’s. “I went to Cassie’s cottage and knocked but she didn’t answer. I’d left a notebook in my car so I tore a page from it and scribbled a note for Cassie’s door.”

“And then you went straight back to the suite?” Hannah tried to keep her voice level, tried not to betray how desperately she hoped it were true.

“Not exactly.” Patrick dropped the match into the grass, still not meeting Hannah’s eyes. “I thought she might be working late, an excuse to wait for me in her office. Stupid of me, I suppose. The office was dark, empty, as was the sitting room, but when I’d come back through the sitting room and started through the reception area I heard a sound behind me.”

He seemed caught up now in his own tale, speaking more to himself than to Hannah, remembering detail by detail. “Someone’s sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp. I turned, and after the second it took my eyes to adjust I made out a form standing by the sofa. Enough light came through the sitting-room windows that I thought I recognized Penny. I started to speak, but there was something about the way she stood there, not moving, not speaking. Furtive, almost frightened. Well, it occurred to me that I didn’t really want to explain my movements either, so I just turned and left.” He raised his eyes to hers for the first time. “I should have spoken up in the beginning. I didn’t want to have to explain myself. Oh, I could have made some excuse, but excuses always sound like what they are. Then Penny didn’t speak either and it got more and more awkward. It would almost have been funny, if the outcome hadn’t been so tragic.”