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.”
The roar of a lawnmower shattered the deep peace of the precinct. Hannah, startled, thought she’d never heard a more incongruous sound. Patrick sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “I have no proof of anything, Hannah. No proof that I did nothing else that night but go to bed. But no one else has any proof that I did.” He waited, looking at her now, expecting some response.
“What would you have done if things had gone the way Duncan said? If Sebastian had told Marta, and she had left you and taken her parents’ money with her?” She spoke without heat, curiously.
“If I don’t win this by-election, I’ll win the next one, or the one after that, and I don’t need their help to do it. I could be P.M. someday, Hannah, if I grab the right coat tails, and Marta is becoming more of a liability than an asset.”
“Why,” Hannah asked in the same flat voice, “after you married one woman who wanted to use you, would you pick another with the same thing in mind?”
He shrugged. “Bad judgment, I guess. I’d begun to see that, of course, but she’s still very… attractive. I may know my strengths as a politician, but that doesn’t make me infallible. Besides, I never meant to marry Cassie.” His mouth quirked in that small, ironic smile and he straightened up, moving a step closer to her. “Now, let me ask something of you, Hannah. What gives you the right to accuse me? Or rather,” he smiled again, “I should ask myself why I feel obligated to offer you a defense. Something… compels me to be honest with you. I don’t understand it.”
Hannah turned from him. She stood on the brink, the choice before her. To speak now required more courage than anything she had ever done in her life. He had placed the perfect opening in her hands, yet she stood mute, her mind frozen. She forced herself to breathe. After a long moment the halting words came, but they bore no resemblance to the ones she’d prepared.
“You should have seen me at sixteen, Patrick. Too tall, too bony, all arms and legs and awkward angles. No boy ever showed the least interest in me until I went home with a school friend for the long vac, and her older brother took pity on me. He must have been all of nineteen, and terribly sophisticated in my eyes. I was curious, and flattered, and he was very inept-but I didn’t know that at the time, just that it was all rather disappointing.” She half turned and risked a glance at his puzzled face before continuing.
“Of course, the consequences of such… such stupidity and naiveté were inevitable. You can’t imagine what it was like to have to tell my parents I was pregnant. My parents… didn’t make allowances for mistakes. I had already been accepted at university for the next year. To them it was unthinkable that I should keep the baby. And I… I didn’t have the courage to withstand them. I could have managed-left school, found a job. I could have done something.” Hannah’s voice had risen. She found herself trembling again and clasped her arms tightly across her chest. After a moment she spoke again, more calmly. “It was all very discreetly arranged. I went to stay with an aunt. When the baby came my parents took him away, saying they had found a suitable home.”
She turned now to face him, dropping her arms to her sides as if baring herself. “It wasn’t until last March, when my father died and I had access to his personal files, that I found out what they had actually done. My father-he was a solicitor, did I say?-had among his clients a Major and Mrs. Rennie, desperate for a child of their own. Of course my father never told them it was his own grandchild he offered them. All neat. All so very tidy.” Hannah strangled a sudden hysterical desire to laugh. “Do you know the worst thing of all? My father kept up with you all those years, and I never knew it. Your parents sent him school reports, photos of Patrick’s first cricket match, Patrick’s first pony-and I never saw them. To him you were a real person, but I… I never had that privilege.” The words ran down, finally. She had no justification left to offer. For the first time since Hannah had begun she looked at him directly. Not until she saw the white stillness of his face did she realize just how unruffled he’d been when she had more or less accused him of murder.