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‘I do see,’ Aaron said. ‘It’s perfectly possible that a woman would know about a pregnancy on the fifteenth of May for a child she went on to deliver at the end of January, but…Well, what then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Suppose Prue was indiscreet with Toby. Do you propose to shame her for a decade-old weakness, or to suggest that as a motive for murder?’
‘I went to see her. She’s bitter. She was widowed, and then she lost her only child. He was eight when he died.’
Aaron winced. ‘Poor Prue.’
‘And she’s angry,’ Jem said. ‘I didn’t really understand quite why she was so angry, because it seemed to me that she’d chosen to go home and to marry—but if that was forced on her by necessity, wouldn’t one be angry?’
Aaron’s brows drew together. ‘There are other means of dealing with the consequences of indiscretion.’
‘You mean…abortion?’ Jem almost whispered the word. ‘You can go to prison for that.’
‘For life. It is an extremely serious offence, for both the practitioner and the patient. And yet women seek abortions nonetheless, because they need them. They put themselves in the hands of quacks and liars and ignorant old wives operating in filthy conditions; they poison themselves with God knows what concoctions ordered through the newspapers, or bleed to death from botched procedures, and yet they do it every day, because they feel the need. It should be a purely medical issue: it is criminal that the law makes it criminal.’
‘I’m sure,’ Jem said uncertainly. ‘But Prue had the child.’
‘Indeed.’ Aaron settled back in his chair, relaxing his shoulders. ‘I merely intended to observe that women deal with unwanted pregnancies in many ways.’
‘If she’d been prepared to break the law and risk her health.’
‘And if she knew she was pregnant then, and indeed if she actually was. Have you any reason to believe that the child was Toby’s?’
‘No. But she loved him, and she didn’t have a gentleman follower, did she?’
‘I wasn’t aware of one. But there are alternative explanations.’
‘Such as what?’
‘For God’s sake, Jem,’ Aaron said irritably. ‘An outrage—a stranger, a fellow student. The notion that children are only conceived through pleasure has been entirely exploded, sad to say. Or a simple indiscretion. It is hardly unusual to turn elsewhere for comfort when one’s affection is not returned.’ Jem tried not to wince at that. ‘The parentage of Prue’s son might well be a deeply distressing topic to her even if it is in no way relevant to Toby’s death. You should tread exceedingly lightly.’
‘I realise that.’
Aaron hesitated, then went on, carefully, ‘And Prue is not the only person who might want the dead to bury their dead. Who might resent you digging up old scandals from a decade ago. To be quite honest, I’m astonished thatyouwant to do that.’
‘Toby is dead,’ Jem said, reddening. ‘Surely that matters more.’
‘Maybe. But someone resented Toby enough to kill him ten years ago, and that person has a great deal more to lose now. If you must proceed with this business…’ He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘You should probably let someone know where you’re going.’
Aaron’s words stuck in his mind all day.A great deal more to lose.
He hadn’t quite faced that until now. He would be pitting himself against someone who had been driven to kill Toby, and who now also had a murder to conceal. Someone who killed people. He was provoking a killer.
He was frightened, and, once he recognised that, he realised he’d been frightened for a very long time, at a level so deep he hadn’t known it. One of the people he most loved had become a murderer, and he’d never trusted anyone again.
He sat in a park for a while, nerves prickling, unpleasantly aware of everyone who passed. A tall dark man in the corner of his eye made him think,Hugo,and look round with urgency that cricked his neck. Of course it wasn’t. Nobody was following him.
Only, he’d told three of them that he was going to find out who did it.
He hadn’t told Nicky or Ella yet, and it was their names that kept coming up. Nicky and Ella, who had loved Toby and hated him. Speaking to them would make this irrevocable.
He had time to stop. He could say he’d changed his mind, let the others know he was sinking back into silent obscurity and…
And what? Sink and be silent, for the rest of his life?
No. He was not going to run away; he’d done that too often. Toby was dead and Jem was barely alive. He’d had ambition once; he’d intended to make a splash in the world. Well, this would be the splash. He’d just have to be careful.
