‘If you would be a friend to me, then I… Mr Alleyn has Alice’s letters. All of her letters, his letters to her as well. She kept hers in a rosewood box about as long as my forearm, and in all the chaos of the days after she vanished… only once I had recovered my wits enough to look for it did I find it gone. No one else would have taken it, and I have seen him reading them, upon occasion. He clings to them as though they might assuage his guilt. There could be some clue in them, as to what manner of thing made her break with him. For if it was grave enough that she would do that, then it is grave enough that he might kill her for the same. For insulting him.’
‘Do men kill over insults?’ asked Mrs Weekes, softly.
‘Only every day. See if you can find where he hides the box, and in it the other letters. For all the times I’ve searched his rooms, I’ve found it not – it must be in some secret place. If you can find it out, tell me. I need to know what she wrote to him in Brighton.’
‘All right. I will try.’ Rachel Weekes’s expression betrayed scant hope of success.
‘Say nothing of this! To anyone,’ Starling whispered fiercely. Rachel Weekes gave a quick, anxious nod, but made no move. She hardly knows where to go next, or what to do. Starling left her there.
She was loaded with a new and different mix of emotions as she ducked out into the crowded square. The fear was still there, but the anger gone; a nagging foreboding now, and the excitement even stronger, and beneath it all the unease that came from having so long trusted nobody, and suddenly finding trust assumed by another. Why should she trust me any more than I her? And yet she does. She does not scorn the things I told her. She does not side blindly with the Alleyns, as she might. As if the world had lurched slightly and come out of its old rut, it suddenly seemed as though the future would be different; life would change. But for better or worse, Starling couldn’t tell. Isn’t that what I intended when I brought her into that house? For twelve years they have woven such lies that I have not managed to penetrate them. Could she be the one to do it? Starling did not trust the woman, nor understand her one bit, but she felt less alone than she had before; less alone than she had since she was parted from Alice.
Rachel walked with little idea of her destination. She was distracted; she left her feet to find their own path and they stopped on a quiet corner of an unswept street, where rubbish and muck were piled high in the gutters and only the ice on the puddles kept her feet dry. A starving cat came to sniff her shins, hoping for food, but when Rachel lowered her hand to stroke it, it ran away. She leaned against the wall and shut her eyes for a moment, trying to marshal her thoughts. She’d known even before the girl had spoken. She’d known as soon as she’d seen the bruise on her face, and had thought of the way Richard had named her, in his anger. Starling. Named her even though he’d made every effort until then to deflect Rachel’s interest in the girl, and feign blindness to her existence. And she was pretty enough, though her face was pert and her red hair dishevelled. There was a sharpness about her; the liveliness of her expression spoke of intelligence, and wit. But Starling was afraid of Richard too; it was clear from the way she’d made Rachel swear to not reveal their meeting. It would go ill, for both of us. Rachel took several deep breaths to calm down. And he was with her right up until we wed. As we courted, and he said he could not live without me. And she loved him. Did he love her? Could he have, if he beats her now?
Long minutes later the cold begin to work on her, stiffening her fingers, making the joints ache. To keep herself from thinking about Richard, she thought about Jonathan Alleyn instead. Somehow, during her visits to him after the first one, she had written off his violence towards her as an aberration; he’d been so much calmer since, more sober. Black tempered, and alarming, but never violent again; yet she couldn’t deny that she’d witnessed that tendency in him, even if Starling’s story hadn’t had the ring of utter conviction. And all her conversations with him told her one thing above all – that he was tortured by regret and self-loathing. Could he have killed Alice? Is that what torments him so? The thought made her mouth go dry, and anxiety flutter in her stomach. Let it not be so. Yet she was confounded to find that she feared him no more now than she already had; though the thought of how she would even begin to discover where he kept Alice Beckwith’s letters was already troubling her. The one and only time she’d mentioned Alice’s name, he had cut her off abruptly. At least he is no worse than he appeared to be when I first met him, unlike someone else. She stood up from the wall and set off with greater purpose, towards Duncan Weekes’s house.
The old man had been sleeping, though it was early in the evening; he opened the door with a befuddled expression and his cap still on, blinking owlishly. His cheeks were rough with coarse white stubble; he smelled of stale skin, tallow and brandy.
‘Mrs Weekes… dear girl… I had not expected you,’ he mumbled. He stood up straighter, but it caused him to wince.
‘Forgive me, I… I wanted to talk to somebody. I shouldn’t have called at this hour…’ Rachel stammered. Duncan seemed to focus on her face; on her puffy, red eyes.
‘Come, come.’ He ushered her into the chilly room. ‘Are you all right? Has something happened?’
‘No, that is… yes…’ Rachel put her hands to her face and tried to keep hold.
‘Please, sit, Mrs Weekes,’ Duncan said kindly. ‘Be easy, you are safe here.’ Rachel glanced up at this; it seemed an odd thing for him to say. As though he expected her to be unsafe elsewhere. ‘You look chilled to the bone. Can I pour you a tot of brandy, to warm you?’
‘Yes, please.’ Rachel noticed that he poured himself one as well, and swigged it down before he handed hers to her. She sipped it, felt the fire in her throat, and coughed. Duncan smiled briefly and set about reviving the fire, which had all but burnt out while he slept. The few sticks and coals he tipped onto it were the last in the bucket.
‘Ah,’ Duncan murmured, indistinctly.
‘I will fetch more, if you tell me where the bunker is?’
‘No, no. Do not trouble yourself,’ he said, and looked so uncomfortable that Rachel suddenly guessed the truth.
‘There is more coal, isn’t there? You do have more?’
‘Not today, not today,’ he said, with fragile good cheer. ‘I’ve been in a bit of bad bread, lately. But tomorrow I have some work, down on the wharf. I shall buy coal when the day is done, and be warm as toast by nightfall.’
‘But what of tonight?’
‘Well. I have your company to warm my heart, do I not?’ He smiled wearily as he sank into the chair opposite her, and Rachel felt tears well up in her eyes again.
‘Mr Weekes…’
‘Here now, none of that. Tell me what troubles you, my dear, and do not fret over me. I’m a tough old bird, you’ll see.’
‘I… it’s Richard. My husband.’ And your son. Rachel was suddenly unsure whether to continue, but Duncan gazed at her with such sympathy that the words were out before she could stop them. ‘I found out that he… he has been wenching. Right up until the very moment we wed!’ She hung her head, ashamed, and wept again as much from embarrassment as sorrow.
Clumsily, Duncan Weekes put out a gnarled hand and patted hers.
‘Oh, my poor girl. And my foolish boy!’ He shook his head.
‘What should I do?’ said Rachel, desperately.
‘Do?’ Duncan Weekes smiled sadly. ‘Well, you can do nothing, my dear.’
‘Do nothing? But… but he has… he has…’
‘He has kept his wedding vows, you say?’