‘Losing your sister breaks your heart, and I am sorry for it. But I had to tell you, did I not?’
‘Oh, why? Why could you not have just left me in ignorance, and with hope?’ she cried.
‘Because it was lies, Mrs Weekes,’ he said grimly. ‘Two girls were lost, not one.’
‘But I had hoped that it was otherwise, Mr Alleyn. I had hoped so much,’ said Rachel, brokenly. ‘It was the one thing that could have given Alice a happy ending.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If she was Abi, and not Lord Faukes’s, then there was no cause for anyone to harm her. If she was Abi, the two of you could have defied them, and wed. And if she was Abi she might indeed have run away with another, and perhaps be alive somewhere. But I cannot believe any of that if she was Alice. I cannot imagine Alice a happy ending.’
‘What are you saying? What do you mean, if she was not Lord Faukes’s?’ Jonathan was frowning now, that darkening look that she had learnt so well, and learnt to avoid. But she was too sad and sorry to be cautious, then. She took out the letter and handed it to him. ‘What is this?’ He stared at it as if she offered him a live snake.
‘It is Alice’s last letter to you. The one that reached you in Brighton.’
Jonathan froze. Still held in mid-air, the letter began to tremble. Clenching his teeth, Jonathan snatched it from her, and Rachel saw a tremor pass right through him. He closed his hand, crumpling the paper tight inside.
‘How came you by this?’ he said, grinding the words out.
‘I was given it, to return to you, by… by Harriet Sutton.’
‘Sutton? Then he-’ Jonathan swallowed, his throat constricting. ‘He had it all the while, and kept it from me? My friend… why?’
‘He… he didn’t want you to dwell on her, I think – on Alice. Once you were back with the army, and preparing to fight again…’
‘It wasn’t for him to decide that.’
‘No. No, it wasn’t. But he could have left it where you discarded it, and it would have been lost…’
‘Damn him!’ Jonathan burst out. He stormed out of his chair and paced the floor beside her, his face contorted with anger. ‘And you have read it, I take it?’ he snapped. Rachel looked away in shame.
‘I’d thought she was my sister-’
‘Even if she was, you had no right!’
‘No. I had none,’ she said.
‘But you made it your business, to enquire into mine. You and the rest of the world alongside you.’ Jonathan stopped pacing and looked down at her with that blankness she had seen before. Where is it he goes, when he is most angry or afraid? Slowly, Jonathan flattened the letter out and slid it into his pocket.
‘Aren’t you going to read it?’ said Rachel, wiping her face with her gloved fingers.
‘Not here,’ he said coldly. ‘Not now.’
‘She writes of the other man-’
‘Say nothing more!’
Jonathan half turned away from her and covered his mouth with one hand, and Rachel was suddenly, horribly reminded of Richard, and the pose from which he’d raised his arm to strike her, just hours before. When Ifirst met this man he would have choked me to death, were it not for Starling. ‘How long have you had this letter? How could you keep this from me? I trusted you!’ he said savagely. Rachel stood and moved away from him. She thought of the heavy glass jar, thrown down at her feet, and his blind empty eyes as he’d done it. So much that is good, and so much that is bad, contained in this one room. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to be enclosed by those four walls for a second longer. Jonathan’s face was terrible; he took two steps towards her, and Rachel fled.
She quit the house on Lansdown Crescent, and knew it would be for the last time. She would visit no more; see Jonathan no more. Who is he, in truth? The man I thought I knew, or the man Starling knows? She hurried down the steps and turned west along the crescent, away from the city centre. She wanted to quit Bath too, she realised then. She wanted to quit Richard, and her home, and everything she had found out since her arrival. I want none of it. I am alone; so let me be alone. Rachel began to cry again; the ache in her chest was agonising, and made it hard to breathe. There was a shout behind her.
‘Wait!’ She turned to see Jonathan following her, shrugging on a black coat. He was a monochrome creature: pale skin, dark hair, dark clothes, as though life and pain had robbed him of colour. He limped more than ever in his haste; hunching his shoulders and turning his face away from passers-by.
‘Leave me be!’ Rachel called back to him. She turned and carried on walking, past all the mournful buildings with their streaked stone and watchful, empty windows. She was at the gate to the high common when Jonathan came up behind her.
He caught her arm as she unlatched the gate.
‘Wait, Rachel. Where are you going?’
‘Away from here! Away from-’ Rachel coughed and sniffed; her face was wet, chilled.
‘Away from me?’ he said darkly. ‘Do you think… do you honestly think I killed her?’
‘Didn’t you?’ she cried. ‘Wouldn’t you have killed me, twice over, if Starling hadn’t stopped you one time, and I hadn’t dodged you the other?’ She twisted her arm and he let it go. Rapid thoughts shifted behind his eyes.
‘But I loved her,’ he murmured, brokenly. ‘I loved her. How, then, could I have harmed her?’ Rachel’s pulse was racing, it made her head feel bruised.
‘Because of what she told you! Because of what she alludes to in that letter, and what she then told you when you saw her – when you came back to Bathampton all mad and undone!’ she said. ‘Can you claim to remember differently?’
‘I… I…’ He shook his head. Rachel felt the last pieces of hope crumbling down around her feet, till there was nothing left.
‘I told Starling that she must have loved another, that that would be the only reason you might have to harm her, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? She was innocent all along. She was innocent.’ Jonathan said nothing, but he nodded. ‘You said to me once that you had killed innocents,’ Rachel said softly, full of dread. ‘You said you had done things that would send me screaming from the room. You said you’d tried to make it right, but nothing would.’ Still Jonathan only stared, and stayed silent. Rachel could hardly find the breath to speak; there seemed no air to breathe. ‘You’ve killed innocents,’ she said again.
‘Yes!’ he said.
‘Do not flinch from the memory of it – what right have you to do that? Look at it, and tell me what you see!’
‘I can’t.’
‘You must! It’s there, in the… in the dark spaces in your thoughts – I know it. Did you kill her?’ Rachel shouted. Jonathan would not look at her. His eyes were fixed on the shifting fog, searching. ‘Did you kill her?’ Rachel said again. Gradually, a change came over Jonathan. His eyes grew wider and lost their focus, so flooded with guilt and horror it looked like it would drown him. He took a slow, shuddering breath. ‘Did you?’ Rachel demanded. ‘Did you murder her?’ The words rang between them.
‘Yes,’ he breathed then, the word like a poison, killing all it touched. A sob punched through Rachel’s chest and made her wail.
‘Oh, God, how could you? I did not believe it! I believed she lived! I believed I… I defended you! When all this time Starling has denounced you, I argued against it, but she was right! It was all black lies, and you are the blackest of all! How could you?’ She slapped his face; a feeble blow, puny compared to the pain she was feeling, but it seemed to rouse him. He grasped at her hands, and she fought him off.