‘Important? Do you have any idea—’

‘All right, love, don’t get yourself worked up.’ Tom glanced apologetically at Mary, and showed her to the door. ‘You’ve got to be more careful,’ he insisted, when they were on their own again. ‘Think about what you’re saying.’ 250

‘I can’t do this, Tom,’ she said quietly, knowing as soon as she had spoken the words that there was no going back on them. ‘It’s all been for nothing, and I can’t keep lying, not even for you. This is so wrong.’

He took her face in his hands and she began to resent the despair in his eyes, the only thing now that was stopping her from ridding herself once and for all of this crippling guilt. ‘Please Nora, just trust me,’ he begged. ‘If we hold our nerve, we can get through this. It was an accident, for God’s sake. You didn’t mean to hurt her. I’ve only made it look like what it was.’

‘But what if they find out what you’ve done? Penrose isn’t stupid. They might be able to prove that Emily didn’t fall down the stairs.’

‘Even if they can, they won’t suspect you. Sooner or later, they’ll find out who killed the vicar, and the chances are they’ll lay Emily’s death at the same door.’

He had thought it all through, she realised, and the knowledge that he was prepared to sacrifice someone else to save her filled her with a bewildering mixture of horror and gratitude. Then another thought struck her. ‘But Penrose knows I was in the church,’ she said, with panic in her voice. ‘What if he thinks that I killed them both?’

251

9

The address in Southwark wasn’t a house but a basement flat, part of a tired-looking building in a terrace of similar properties, all skulking in a maze of narrow streets off the Blackfriars Road. Kids were playing up and down the street as Fallowfield arrived, full of energy in the joy of their release from family duties, and he smiled as a volley of snowballs hit the car on its way past. It seemed that the children were the only ones left standing in this cold, mid-afternoon lull, the footnote to Christmas morning and still far too early for the evening revelries to begin. As he parked outside the address he had been given, it seemed to Fallowfield that most of the city had retreated behind drawn curtains to its fireside.

He got out and stood at the top of the basement steps, noticing that the chaste white snow – undisturbed as far as the door – seemed out of place in this run-down part of London. There were no lights on that he could see, here or in any other room of the house, and he guessed that the flats above were empty or deserted for the Christmas holidays; either way, Alex Fielding’s most immediate neighbours would be of no use to his inquiries. The one window at basement level had its curtains tightly drawn, so he went straight past and knocked firmly on the front door. As he had expected it to, the house frustrated him with its silence.