Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

Then as she stood dazed, her heart pounding, her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, and the form came into focus. It was a man lying crumpled on his side, his legs half-folded under him. Was it a drunken footman? What on earth was the stupid man doing here?

She bent to shake him, and only then did she see the long handle of the broom slanting upward. Except it was only half of the handle. The brush was missing, and the shaft ended abruptly in the man’s back. She felt the shadows blur and swim as if she were going to faint. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. It was not a footman, it was Ballin. His eyes were open and his mouth was open, as if he had screamed when the makeshift spear had struck him. She had no doubt whatsoever that he was dead.

Should she yell for help? It seemed ridiculous to scream now, deliberately. Added to that, her mouth was as dry as if she had been eating cotton. She should stand up, control herself, make her legs walk back up the stairs to Joshua. Please heaven no one come along this corridor in the meantime.

Her legs were wobbling. It was all she could do not to fall again. What had happened? Was there any imaginable way it could have been an accident?

Don’t be absurd, she told herself, crossing the hall as silently as she had the first time, a world and an age ago. Nobody takes the head off a broom and spears themselves with the handle by accident. In fact, it must have been sharpened into a purposeful weapon, or it wouldn’t have even penetrated the skin anyway.

She reached the stairs and clung to the newel post, climbing up hand over hand, pulling and balancing. She had seen murder before. One of her sons-in-law was a policeman.

She was at the top of the stairs. She reached her own bedroom door and opened it. She saw the light on Joshua’s brown hair, the fair streaks in it shining.

“Joshua …”

He turned around slowly, smiling, the pen still in his hand. Then he saw her face.

“What is it?” he asked huskily, starting up from the desk. “Caroline!”

“Someone has killed Mr. Ballin.” She gulped, struggling now not to sob, not to let her knees buckle. He was beside her, arms holding her.

“I tripped over his body in a dark stretch of the corridor to the theater,” she went on. “Before you ask, yes, I am sure he was killed … murdered. He has been stabbed through the chest with the broken-off handle of a broom. You could say …” She gulped again and the room swam and blurred in the corners. “You could say down through the heart with a stake.” She wanted to laugh but it ended in a sob.

He was guiding her to the bed, still holding her.

“Have you told anyone else?” he asked, his voice unsteady.

“No. I … I thought of screaming, but it seemed so stupid. We must tell Mr. Netheridge. Do you know which is their bedroom?”

“No. I shall call one of the servants to wake him.” He glanced at the window, then back at Caroline. She was sitting on the bed now, and he still held both her hands. “We will have to deal with it ourselves … without the police.”

“Joshua, it’s murder!” she protested. “We can’t just … just deal with it, as if it were some kind of domestic accident!”

“Caroline. Who’s going to walk through that snow to fetch the police?” he asked very gently.

“Oh … oh.” She took a deep breath. “Yes … I see. How stupid of me. We’ll have to … Oh, heaven!” Now she leaned against him as her body began to shake. “That means one of us must have done it.”

He touched her hair gently, pushing the long strands away from her face.

“I’m afraid it does. There won’t be any more strangers out in the night coming here, or anywhere else.” He let out a long, shaky breath. “I’ll go and get one of the servants. Butler, I suppose. He’ll call Mr. Netheridge. At least we must provide a little decency for the body, for the time being.” He took a step.

“Joshua!”

He turned. “You stay here,” he told her. “Perhaps you had better not let anyone else in.”

“Put a blanket over the body, if you like,” she told him. “But you’d better not move it until someone has looked at it. We have to find out who killed him.” She smiled bleakly and it felt like a grimace. “I’ve been around rather a lot of crime scenes, one way and another. Thomas is a policeman, if you remember.”

“We can’t leave it there until the thaw,” he protested. “We’ll have to find a better place for it, somewhere cold. But yes, perhaps we should take a very careful look at it first. I don’t know who, Netheridge himself, I suppose. It’s his house. You know, I have the odd feeling that Ballin would have been the best person to take charge in a situation like this.”

He looked very pale. For a ridiculous moment she thought, what a disappointment it was that they would hardly be able to put on the play now. It really had become very good.

“Yes,” she agreed. “He was very able. I’m … sorry he’s gone.” It sounded so inadequate, and yet it was all she could think to say.

“Stay here,” he repeated, then he went out the door.

t was nearly half an hour later when Joshua returned. Caroline insisted on going down with him to the withdrawing room, where the rest of the company was gathered. All had dressed again, but hastily, and none of the women had bothered to pin up their hair. Everyone was clearly shocked and frightened. James and Mercy sat together on the couch, holding hands. Douglas stood behind the big armchair in which Alice was hunched up. Her face was white, and she was clearly distressed. Lydia sat alone, as did Vincent.

Eliza sat close to where her husband stood with his back to the fire, which had been stoked up again. The huge stained-glass window made the room look like a church.

Joshua and Caroline took places on the other sofa.

Netheridge cleared his throat. “It seems we have a very ugly tragedy in the house,” he said with deep unhappiness. “No doubt you all know by now that the stranger, Mr. Ballin, has met with a very sudden death.” He glared at Vincent, who had seemed about to interrupt him. “We don’t yet know what happened, whether it was some sort of accident, or worse. If anybody has anything they can tell us about it, now would be the time to do so. Obviously we can’t call a doctor, or the police. We have no way of getting out to do it, and they have no way of coming to us until the weather improves. No doubt they will clear the roads as soon as they can.” He looked around the group.

No one said anything.

“Come now. Who was Ballin?” he demanded. “He appeared out of the night and asked for shelter. We gave it to him, as we would. Who knew where he came from? Did he talk to any of you? Did he say who he was going to visit here in Whitby? Why? What does he do? Where does he live? We don’t know anything about him!” His glance embraced Eliza, Alice, and Douglas.

“For heaven’s sake, we don’t know him, either,” James said heatedly. “We don’t even know anyone else in Whitby.”

“Well, why would anybody kill him, then?” Netheridge asked.

“He was an objectionable, interfering, and arrogant man.” Douglas pulled his mouth into a thin, hard line. “He was not difficult to dislike.”

Caroline lost her temper, which happened very rarely indeed, largely because she had been brought up to believe that ladies never did such a thing.

“Mr. Paterson, this man has been run through the chest with a broom handle. The fact that you did not care for him is irrelevant. Unless you are saying that your dislike was sufficiently intense for you to have murdered him? And I do not think that is what you mean. Somebody here obviously had a far deeper hatred or fear of him, beyond simple dislike. One does not take another human being’s life violently, in the middle of the night, without a passion that has slipped out of all control. Your resentment of his generosity in working with Alice, and his assistance in helping her believe in her ability, is surely not of that order, is it?”