she had any intention of going out the window, as is now being suggested.”
Narraway frowned. “What are you saying, that she was raped too? By Forsbrook?”
“I think so. But I have no way of proving it. But this isn’t why you came. What can I do to help you with Catherine Quixwood?”
There was a horrible irony in Pitt’s sudden switch from Angeles to Catherine. Narraway tried to marshal his thoughts.
“Knox is a good man,” he began. “But he doesn’t seem to have gotten anywhere beyond the fact—which now seems inescapable—that she let the rapist in herself.” He watched Pitt’s face closely, trying to see if his thoughts were critical, or open. He saw no change in Pitt’s eyes at all. “I can see that he hates it, that he believes she had a lover,” he went on.
“What do you think?” Pitt asked.
Narraway hesitated. “I’ve done a lot of digging into her actions over the last six months or so.” He measured his words carefully. When he had been in Pitt’s job he had not allowed emotions to touch his judgment. Well, not often. Now he was thinking of Catherine Quixwood as a woman: charming, interested in all kinds of things, creative, probably with a quick sense of humor, someone he would have liked. Was it because the whole tragedy had nothing to do with danger to the country, no issues of treason or violence to the state, that he allowed himself to really visualize the people involved? People with dreams, vulnerabilities like his own? He could not have afforded to before.
“Was her marriage reasonably happy?” Pitt asked.
“Happy?” Narraway thought about it and was puzzled. “What makes a person happy, Pitt? Are you happy?”
Pitt did not hesitate. “Yes.”
For an instant Narraway was overtaken by a sense of loss, of something inexpressible that he had missed. Then he banished it. “No, I don’t think it was,” he answered. “She was making as much happiness for herself as she could, but through aesthetic or intellectual appreciation.”
“Has Knox given up looking for suspects?” Pitt asked.
“There’s a young man named Alban Hythe who seems likely,” Narraway replied. “He is smart, likes the same arts and explorations that she did, and attended many of the same functions. He admits to being acquainted with her, although since they were seen together a number of times he could hardly deny it.”
Pitt frowned. “Then what troubles you? Her reputation, if she was known to have a lover? Or are you concerned for Quixwood’s embarrassment? There’s nothing you can do about that.” His face was filled with regret. He gave a very slight shrug. “I’m finding it hard to face that fact myself.”
Narraway heard Pitt’s dilemma and for the moment ignored it.
“My problem is, I’m not certain I believe it was Alban Hythe,” he argued. “I met him and he seemed a decent chap. The rape was violent. Whoever did it hated her. It doesn’t seem like the crime of a lover unexpectedly denied—not a sane one.”
Pitt shook his head. “If rapists didn’t appear perfectly natural we’d find them a lot easier to catch.”
“I can believe it of an arrogant young pup like Neville Forsbrook a lot more easily,” Narraway retaliated, startled by his own anger.
Pitt looked at him in silence for several moments before replying. “If Hythe is innocent, then someone else is guilty,” he said at last. “Whether he was her lover or not, whoever it was raped her violently and killed her. That can never be excused.”
Narraway took a deep breath. “That’s another part of the problem,” he admitted. “The medical evidence suggests it’s possible he didn’t kill her directly. She actually died of an overdose of laudanum—it very easily could have been suicide. It will be difficult to convince a jury otherwise. It’s easy to believe, given the violence of the rape, that she was traumatized to the extent that she wanted to end her life.”
Pitt continued to stare at him, his gray eyes steady and full of pain. “We know far too little about it, this rape or any other,” he said levelly. “Perhaps we know too little about ourselves as well. But if Alban Hythe isn’t the man, and the circumstantial evidence is piling up against him, then you need to prove he’s innocent, or he may eventually be imprisoned, or worse, for something he didn’t do. Not to mention the fact that whoever did do it will escape entirely, and probably do it again. And there may be something to be salvaged of