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He did not bother to argue. He recounted briefly his visit to Graves’ house in Herne Hill with Miriam fford Croft and what they had observed at the murder scene.
Mercy poured herself a cup of tea and sat beside him. ‘If what Graves said is true, then Ebony’s character is by the way and has nothing to do with her death. The purpose is to blame Graves and silence him.’
Daniel nodded. ‘That is pretty brutal!’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
He thought for a moment, forcing his mind to remain on the immediate problem. ‘Then why burn her face? That makes it very personal.’
‘All I could find about her, she was a woman who aroused deep feelings,’ Mercy said thoughtfully. ‘But more liked than disliked. She fought hard for what she believed in and she didn’t hold her tongue, when perhaps she ought to have. Enthusiast, you know? If you are enthusiastic, too, she’s wonderful. If not – she would be very irritating. Rather an . . . irresponsible sense of humour, as one woman put it.’ Suddenly her face filled with sorrow. As if the reality had suddenly reached her. ‘I think I would have liked her.’
Blackwell started to speak.
Mercy held up her hand. ‘I know.’ She sniffed. ‘I know for you to burn someone’s face away because they irritate you, it was not easy to do. It requires a cold heart, an overbearing need, and something to make it burn. Flesh does not burn by itself. And why?’ She looked at Daniel. ‘I tried to find something she knew that was dangerous. Nothing. It makes no sense.’
Daniel drew a deep breath. ‘Then you think she could have been killed just to cause Graves to be hanged?’
Blackwell nodded slowly. ‘Mercy’s told me all she found out. No one had a reason to kill Ebony. Jealousy, yes, maybe.’ His face expressed what he thought of that. ‘Disagreed with her ideas, definitely. But I’m afraid none of the changes she wanted are likely to happen within the next ten years, anyway. And then, maybe, nothing will stop them. If she’d been slashed in a fight, I’d believe it. Another woman’s jealousy, maybe. But finding a way into her house, when her children were at home – nothing was heard, no noise, no lock picked, no window broken – and burning her face?’ He looked from one to the other of them.
‘I see,’ Daniel cut in. ‘You are right. If it were a personal thing, it would have cleared up suddenly, and would have been an attack, a fight, and all happening there and then. It would not be a break-in to her own house, after dark, and an attack in her bedroom by someone
who left no trace.’
‘And came prepared,’ Mercy added. ‘And I found no one who suggested her affairs were more than flirtations. From what I heard of Graves, I commend her restraint. I would’ve gone a lot further!’
‘You would have left him,’ Blackwell said.
‘If it had been he who had been killed, I would have understood it,’ Mercy replied ruefully. She looked across at Daniel. ‘I’m sorry, I know nothing of use.’ She looked momentarily crushed, and Daniel realised how very much she wanted to repay the debt she owed him for saving Blackwell.
He forced himself to smile at her, but it felt artificial. ‘There’ll be other times.’ He leaned back in the chair and looked again at Blackwell. ‘I wish I could believe Graves killed her. It would be so much easier. I could let him hang with an easy conscience. I would have done all I could.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I don’t. I hear the pain in him now, I see the fear in his eyes, his anger, too. He’s desperate not only to save his life, but he sees this all as urgent and unanswerable. He believes it’s worth fighting, because it wasn’t fair.’
Mercy rolled her eyes. ‘You are too soft-hearted for your own good. Defending someone in the law doesn’t mean you have to believe they’re innocent!’
‘But you said yourself, you couldn’t find any enemy that hated her with that kind of intensity, that—’
‘Not among her acquaintances,’ Mercy interrupted him. ‘I can quite easily believe that her husband could have. If she mocked him, rejected him, made fun of him . . . any abilities he might have – he’s a proud man, by all accounts.’ She made a little grimace of disgust. ‘Yes? He could well have lashed out at her. You described him as arrogant, condescending . . .’
‘Yes, to me, after he had been convicted, and was very afraid,’ Daniel answered. ‘He would hate me because I’ve seen him defeated and, whether he likes it or not, he’s depended on me to save him. That would scald his pride like acid!’
‘And if he failed in the bedroom, and his wife laughed at him, do you not think that would burn his pride even more than acid?’ Mercy asked. ‘He would never forget it. And I dare say she would never let him, and he knew that. He would lash out, maybe kill her in one blow.’
‘But why the burning?’ Daniel persisted.
‘Take the smile off her face,’ Mercy answered with a shrug, as if the answer were self-evident.
‘All this may well be true, but it doesn’t answer your problem.’ Blackwell leaned forward a little. ‘You must find who gave Graves the information for his book. And more than anything, you have to save the reputations of people you love. Cover their weaknesses, if they had them, with the privacy we all need. But first of all, make sure that none of your father’s men did this.’ There was no lift of question in his voice. It was a statement of fact.
Daniel drew a breath to argue, and knew it instantly from Blackwell’s face that he understood and, more than that, he saw the gentleness in him. Perhaps he loved Mercy the same way, with the same absence of judgement or condemnation.
‘We’ve got just over two weeks,’ he said.
‘Then we’d better get on with it.’ Mercy poured more tea, as if she were free to start again. ‘What do you need to know?’
Daniel thought for a moment. ‘Where did Graves get his information and how reliable is it? Did anyone in Special Branch betray Narraway, or my father, and if so, who was it? I don’t think why matters now, and even whether or not it was deliberate, or just carelessness: trusting the wrong man, drunken misjudgement, a confidence to a lover. We need to find out just who, so no one else will be implicated.’
Blackwell was making notes in what looked to be a script of his own invention. ‘Would your father do that anyway?’ Blackwell asked.
‘Yes. But he doesn’t have access to Graves. I do.’ He winced as he said it. The thought of going back to Graves and trying to begin, or indeed ask him for information, was enough to chill him inside, in spite of the hot tea and the two bacon sandwiches.
