‘Her killer will be found,’ I said confidently, although I was not at all sure this was true. ‘Sir Alain, I’m sure, has ideas of his own, and others of us in the village might be able to offer suggestions that may help.’ Warming to my theme, I hurried on. ‘I do not believe that her killer put her in my Granny’s grave,’ I said eagerly. ‘I think Derman found her — you know, he’s the simpleton who had been following her about — and he carried her out to the little island where my ancestors lie buried and put her in the grave because he cared about her and believed that was the right thing to do. But the man who strangled Ida must have been watching and, believing Derman had seen him, thought he had to kill Derman to keep him quiet.’
‘Derman,’ Lady Claude breathed. ‘Was that his name?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pleased that she was responding. ‘Did you see him lurking about when you were out with Ida collecting the flowers?’
‘The flowers?’
‘Yes, the ones she copied in her embroidery work on your sheets.’ I tried to recall what they had been, looking round to see if the sheets were to hand. I saw them neatly folded and stacked on top of a chest beside the door. ‘Here,’ I said, stepping over and picking up the top sheet. ‘Flag iris and-’
But she had leapt across the room, and now she grabbed the sheet out of my hands. ‘Leave that alone!’ she commanded coldly. She refolded it, put it back on the pile and smoothed it, her hands shaking.
Of course. It was Ida’s work, and therefore no doubt precious to her. ‘She sewed so beautifully,’ I said. ‘How lovely for you, that you will have a permanent reminder of her on your sheets, before your eyes every night when you go to sleep.’
Lady Claude gave a moan, grasped the sheet again and, before my horrified eyes, bit into the edge above the embroidered panel with small, sharp teeth. Then, holding it in a grip so tight that her knuckles were white, she tore it apart. The tear made a violently loud noise in the small space, and I watched as it snaked down through the cloth, ripping right through Ida’s delicate work. She tore off one long strip, then another.
Lady Claude threw the ruined sheet on the floor. ‘She fetched those flowers to give herself an excuse to go out alone,’ she said in a low, harsh voice. ‘She was always going out. Out to flaunt herself before that great shambling idiot, with his loose, wet mouth and his hungry eyes! Out to meet-’ She broke off, squeezing her eyes shut as if the gesture would blank off the things she could not bear to see.
Out to meet who? Oh, surely she hadn’t been about to say Ida had gone to meet Sir Alain. He had told Edild and me that Claude did not know about him and Ida. What if he was wrong?
Her face was working, and her eyes held a look in which there was more than a hint of madness. Her pale face had flushed, suffused with a sudden rush of blood. If she did not try to regain control of herself, I truly feared she might fall dead at my feet. I had to distract her.
I stepped forward, holding out my arms. ‘Lady Claude, sit down,’ I said gently. ‘Rest, and I will make you a soothing drink. Soon this business will be resolved and you will be able to put it behind you. Ida’s killer will be caught and-’
She acted so fast that it happened before I had time to react. She swooped down to gather up one of the long strips of linen and, in the same movement, grabbed my hands, twisted me round so that I had my back to her and bound my wrists together. Then she shoved me down on to her stool and tied the linen binding my hands to the leg of the stool.
She stood before me, and I stared up at her. I dared not speak. She was on the very edge of sanity, and I did not know how to bring her back.
Having restrained me, she appeared to relax a little. She began pacing up and down the room, pausing to rest her hand on her embroidered panels. ‘Ida,’ she murmured, ‘always Ida. She was lovely, wasn’t she?’ She glanced across at me. I had only seen Ida in death, and I did not reply. ‘Oh, yes — ’ she resumed her pacing — ‘everyone adored Ida, everyone told me how lucky I was to have such a skilled seamstress to help me, and what good fortune it was that she was such a delightful person as well, for she was kind, cheerful, and at ease with everyone from the smallest baby to the oldest grandfather or grandmother. Oh, everyone loved Ida, and they never stopped telling me so.’
It was the impression I, too, had received. I didn’t think I had heard one person speak ill of her. ‘She had the gift of making people like her,’ I said quietly.
I didn’t think Claude heard. Now she was nodding to herself, muttering under her breath, and I had to strain to hear her. I’d inadvertently roused her to fury with what I’d said about Ida, and now I was paying the price. Surreptitiously, trying not to make any noise, I wriggled my hands, testing the linen strip that bound me. If I could just manage to loosen the loop that tied me to the stool, I could make a lunge for the door and get away. .
‘Of course,’ Claude said, her voice louder now, ‘he had to take just one look at her to fall under her spell. I knew it would happen — he was betrothed to my sister, you know, before my mother arranged his marriage to me. It must have started right back then,’ she added wonderingly, ‘and nobody realized, clever little vixen that she was.’
Vixen. My Fox is male, but all the same his image sprang into my mind as Claude spoke the word. I closed my eyes and, with all my strength, pleaded with him to come to me.
‘I hated Ida,’ Claude was saying calmly. ‘I loathed her, with her dimples and her smiles and those sweet, round breasts that the men couldn’t take their eyes off.’ She nodded, smiling grimly. ‘But I was too clever for her, oh, yes!’ Now her expression turned crafty. ‘I used her own deceitful ways against her. I said, Ida, let us both go out together to the place where you found those pretty flowers. It is a fine day, so we shall take our work bags with us and sit out in the sunshine to sew.’ She glanced at me. ‘We went across the marshland until we reached the fen edge. She showed me where the pretty flowers were, in a place near to where the island lies close to the shore. Ida picked some flowers, and then I told her to get out the pieces of fabric she had brought in her basket. She sat there — I can see her now — starting to tear up a voluminous old linen shift to make strips on which to practise the new designs.’
She paused. I waited, hardly daring to breathe.
‘I had to be sure, although in truth I already knew,’ she went on softly. ‘So I spoke of him, Alain de Villequier, the man I am to marry. I spoke his name, and I watched her eyes light up, for she could not help herself.’ A spasm of pain crossed the thin, white face. ‘I looked at her, and I saw the signs. She was pregnant! She carried his child.’
She was panting from the raw emotion. ‘I did it,’ she said, eyes imploring as she stared at me. ‘I wrapped the plaited cord of my velvet bag around her throat, and I pulled it, pulled it, pulled it, until I could pull it no more.’
She fell silent, and I heard the echo of her terrible words sound again and again, diminishing until it was gone.
‘I came back here to the hall. I thought they would soon find her and realize what I had done,’ she said. She gave a little laugh; chilling, horrible. ‘But the idiot man found her first and put her in the grave. They thought he killed her, you see. I wanted them to go on thinking that, and so, before they found him and questioned him, he had to be removed.’
‘You tripped him up,’ I whispered. ‘He fell into the water, and you found a weapon and hit him on the head again and again till he was dead.’
‘Quite dead,’ she agreed. ‘I used a heavy piece of dead wood that I found floating on the water.’
And then, far too late, I realized what I should have been looking out for from the first moment I walked into the room. I saw her as she had been when I came in: sitting on the stool to which I was now bound, bent over her embroidery, her needle in her hand.