Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

She was speaking to herself as if she had accepted that identifying the murderer was her responsibility. But who else was there who could possibly do it? None of them had any experience of murder, except herself. Douglas Paterson was possibly guilty! He had loathed Ballin, and made no secret of the fact that he thought Ballin was deluding Alice that she had talent when she did not. And even if she did, it was not a talent Douglas was willing for her to use. It would mean her leaving Whitby, where his future lay. If she did not marry him, then perhaps he did not have a future—not in the way he had imagined, and intended. Charles Netheridge was a very wealthy man indeed. The house more than attested to that, quite apart from his frequent and large investments in the London theater. Alice was his only child. That was why he had been willing to invite an actor of Joshua’s fame and quality up to Yorkshire for the whole Christmas period, and pay his expenses and those of his company, on the understanding that he, Netheridge, would stake them next London season.

But could Douglas have hated Ballin so much for helping Alice? Or could anyone in the company have hated Ballin so much? He was a stranger to all of them. What danger could he present? Surely nothing in the four days since he arrived had given birth to a passion so violent it had ended in that terrible act in the corridor?

He must have known one of them before. Had he come intending to seek revenge for some old wrong?

Caroline watched the sky. The dark clouds over the sea were closer now, and heavier. A gust of wind stirred the bare branches, sending piles of snow falling off into the deep drifts beneath.

Was it possible that Ballin had not been the intended victim? In the uncertain light of the corridor could the killer have mistaken Ballin for someone else? He was tall, but so were Vincent and James. With his back to the candlelight, would such a mistake be possible? If so, they must not have spoken; Ballin’s voice was too distinctive.

Netheridge was of average height, and broader than any other man here. He walked quite differently. Douglas Paterson was a good height, but he had not the practiced grace or elegance of Ballin.

No. She could not believe there had been such a mistake.

The sharpened broom handle was a very carefully prepared weapon. It had been created, not used in any spur-of-the-moment anger or self-defense. Nobody possessed such a weapon offhand, never mind carried it around with them in the middle of the night, unless they had an attack in mind.

Was it possible someone really did believe in vampires? Was anyone so crazy? Surely not? They were actors; they played all sorts of parts, real and fantastic. They could take up roles as they stepped onto the stage, and discard them again as they left it. She had seen Joshua as every character imaginable, from a pensive hero like Hamlet to a blood-soaked tyrant like Tamburlaine; as philosopher, cynic, and wit in the works of Oscar Wilde; and the lover Antony to Mercy’s Cleopatra. None of them was the real Joshua, the man she knew.

Had Ballin known his killer? Had they intended to meet there in the middle of the night? It was ridiculously unlikely that the meeting was purely a chance encounter, surely? Which meant that Ballin knew his attacker at least well enough to be willing to keep a midnight tryst.

Why was the body moved?

She thought of Mercy’s fear of the “undead,” which she had dismissed as a vain woman’s pretense to get attention. But the fact that the body had apparently disappeared now made her fancies seem less ridiculous. Was it likely that someone had hidden the body to cause and heighten that very fear?

Possibly. But it was more likely the body was moved because there was something about it that would give away the truth of the crime. What could that be? Either something of the identity of whoever had killed Ballin, or something about Ballin’s own identity, which would betray whom he had known well enough for them to hate or fear him with such passion.

Whom could she ask for help? The only person she trusted without question was Joshua. However, he would be fully occupied trying to keep up morale and sensible behavior among the cast, especially now that there would be no performance, at least in the foreseeable future. He would have to find them something to do, to keep them at bay and hold them together as a group. Any old jealousies or squabbles that surfaced now might result in near hysteria, and things could be said or done that could not be mended.

Someone must find out who had killed Ballin, and prevent the wrong person from being accused. She, Joshua, and the rest of the players were strangers here in close-knit Whitby. Who would suspect Douglas Paterson, never mind Netheridge himself, when they had the perfect scapegoats in a group of strangers, and actors at that?

She must squash down her own emotions and think clearly. What would her son-in-law, Thomas Pitt, do? He would ask questions to which there would be precise answers and then compare those answers. If she did the same, with luck a picture would emerge, even if it was merely an understanding of who was lying and who was telling the truth.

Maybe she would be better equipped if she knew more about everyone present. For a start, she would definitely need the help of Eliza to speak to the servants. She did not imagine for an instant that any of them had killed Ballin; why on earth would they? But they should be eliminated as suspects all the same.

She found Eliza in the housekeeper’s room. After waiting several minutes for her to complete her conversation, she followed Eliza as she walked back to the main part of the house.

“I was wondering if I could be of help in any way,” Caroline began. “I don’t know if you have told the servants or not.”

Eliza looked very pale in the white daylight reflected off the snow outside. The fine lines around her eyes and mouth were cruelly visible.

“Charles said I should not,” she replied. “He has told them that Mr. Ballin was taken ill. We were going to say that he had died and we had placed him in the coldest storeroom until the authorities could come, but of course now we don’t know where he is.” She stopped and turned to Caroline, her face tight with misery. “Where on earth do you think he could be? Why would anyone move him?” She was trembling very slightly. She seemed to want to say more, but some discretion or embarrassment prevented her.

Caroline longed to be able to help her. Eliza looked frail and a little smaller than she had seemed only yesterday. Had she been about to ask Caroline if she had any belief in the supernatural, but stopped because she feared seeming ridiculous?

“Perhaps to frighten us,” Caroline answered with a very slight smile. She meant it to be reassuring, but was suddenly anxious in case Eliza imagined that it was out of mockery, or amusement at her superstition. “And they’ve succeeded,” she went on hastily. “We are all unnerved by it. But honestly I think it is probably for a more practical reason. If we were to look at the body more closely we might learn something that would indicate which one of us killed Ballin.”

Eliza looked close to tears. She stood still and stared at the huge hall with its magnificent decoration and its oil portraits of various Yorkshiremen of note, portraits that were the choice of a rich man who had local roots, but no ancestry of which he was proud.

Eliza gazed at them one by one on the farthest wall, her face filling with dislike.

“I don’t even know who they are,” she said softly. “Charles’s mother chose them, and there they hang, watching us all the time.”

“There aren’t any women,” Caroline observed.

“Of course not. They’re councilors and owners of factories who gave great gifts to the poor,” Eliza told her. “I think they look as if they parted with their money hard.”