‘Mrs Bouchante, she was called. A widow, from France. She taught Alice until she turned sixteen and then left, so I never met her. Alice said she smelled of bitter almonds, and that her skin was as dry as a lizard’s,’ said Starling, with a smile. Rachel heard about Alice’s colour blindness, and her heart that fluttered and kept its own time; about her love of animals, and the little drawings she did of the insects and flowers they saw along the riverbank. ‘I wish I had one to keep. To remember her by. She sent most of them to Lord Faukes.’
‘What was Lord Faukes like?’ asked Rachel one day. ‘Mrs Alleyn says he was a good and great man.’ Starling stopped in her tracks at this, closing off in an instant.
‘He was all guts and garbage; a man who took without asking. He’s good now he’s dead, and I’ll say nothing else about him,’ she snapped. ‘See you again, Mrs Weekes,’ was all the farewell she gave as she turned and walked back up the hill, leaving Rachel startled.
When Rachel next saw Jonathan, he was restless and unable to keep still. He had deep shadows under his eyes, as he paced from chair to desk to window and back again, limping on his lame leg. Rachel watched him uneasily. His movements were jerky, and unpredictable. He spent a good deal of time rummaging in the drawers of his desk, searching for something with a frown of distraction.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked at last, exasperated. Jonathan looked up with a start, and then froze as if confounded by the question. He stood up slowly, his hands hanging limply at his sides.
‘I… do not remember,’ he said, troubled.
‘Please, come and sit down. Have you not slept?’
‘No, no. I cannot sleep. I do not sleep,’ he muttered, and began leafing randomly through the papers on his desk. ‘The note. The note from the lovers’ tree,’ he said quietly. ‘I was looking for it. I thought… I thought perhaps I had read it wrong. Perhaps there was something in it, some clue I had missed.’
‘The lovers’ tree? What is that? What note?’
‘The note! Not written by my hand, and not by hers… whose then? That is the question!’ His hair was falling into his face and he scraped it back impatiently with fingers that shook. He is exhausted. Without thinking, Rachel moved towards him. She put one hand on his arm to still him, then took his hand and drew him towards his chair, surprised by the warmth of his skin.
‘Mr Alleyn, please come and sit down. Come and sit with me. You are overwrought,’ she said softly. And now I hold that hand that would have choked the life from me, she thought, wonderingly. He would have killed me, and I am told he has killed another. Why then can’t I feel that, in my heart? Why don’t I believe he is a murderer? As if caught off guard by her touch, Jonathan let himself be led. He sat down on the edge of the chair, still frowning absently, and when she took her hand away she felt his fingers cling to hers, just for a second, as though he would have liked the touch to remain. That harrowing look of pain and regret was in his eyes, and Rachel felt pity gnawing at the unease he caused her.
‘You were looking for a note from Alice? A note she left you?’ Rachel asked. With a swell of nerves, she saw her moment to ask. ‘Perhaps it is with all the other letters? I will search for it amongst them, if you tell me where?’ The words sounded so duplicitous to her own ears that her mouth went dry, but Jonathan didn’t seem to notice.
‘Other letters? What other letters?’ He shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was heavy with despair. ‘No, it was a note for Alice. Not written by me, but left in our secret place. A place only she could have told him about. The other… person.’
‘The lovers’ tree? It was a place you used to meet at?’ she asked, and Jonathan nodded. ‘And this… other person, who left her a note. You think that it was a sweetheart?’ Starling swore it could not be so. But if he saw a note?
‘I was told… I was told she’d been seen with another. I did not believe it, not for a heartbeat. Still, I do not… And yet… and yet…’ He shook his head, perplexed. ‘I found a note left for her, with a time and day to meet. It was not signed… but it was not in her hand. Who, then, was she to meet?’ he said, in quiet desperation. Rachel thought for a moment, her strange but ever strengthening loyalty to Alice Beckwith shaping her answer.
‘It could have been entirely innocent, could it not, Mr Alleyn? People are ever quick to impugn a lady for the most harmless of gestures…’
‘That’s why I wished to read it again! But I can’t find it… I’ve looked everywhere… I searched all night. What if I… what if I never saw it? What if my mind is playing tricks on me again?’ He chewed savagely at his lower lip, and Rachel saw a thin line of blood spring up where he tore the skin.
‘Stop. Stop doing that.’ She took his hand again, pulled it away from his mouth. ‘You’re exhausted, and you need to eat something…’
‘I will not eat until-’
‘You will eat, sir. I will see you do so, or I will come no more; for I won’t sit by and watch you sicken.’
‘Watch me sicken?’ He almost laughed. ‘Madam, I sickened years and years ago.’
‘That much I can see, and perhaps it is time for you to stop revelling in it so,’ said Rachel, crisply. Jonathan frowned as she went to the door and called to Dorcas to bring coffee, bread and cheese.
‘Let me have some wine if I must take something.’
‘It’s not yet noon, sir. And there are more than enough wine-soaked men in my life as it is.’ Jonathan watched her steadily as she came to sit back down. ‘Do not eye me so, sir. I know your opinion of my husband well enough; I’m sure I don’t need to explain any further.’
‘You are different today, Mrs Weekes. You are bolder.’
‘I am tired too, Mr Alleyn.’
‘The kind of tired that sleep does not cure?’
‘Yes. That kind.’ For a moment they looked at one another, and neither one blinked.
‘Then perhaps we begin to understand each other,’ Jonathan murmured at last. Rachel looked away, suddenly selfconscious.
When the tray was brought up Rachel had some coffee as well. She cut a thick slice of bread and topped it with cheese for Jonathan, and watched him steadily while he ate. He seemed to recover his appetite as he did so, reaching for more without her prompting. The hot drink steamed the window glass, obscuring the view of brown autumn trees and city roofs. It gave the impression of the room closing in around them, isolating them from the rest of the house, the rest of the world. Rachel was surprised to find this comforting.
‘You said to me before that you wished to unsee things you had seen, and undo things you had done,’ she said at last. ‘Will you tell me which things?’ Jonathan stopped eating at once, letting the last piece of bread fall from his fingers.
‘Why would you wish to hear such things?’
‘Because… because I do not understand you, Mr Alleyn. But I wish to. And because I think, perhaps, long years of holding these things to yourself, and staying silent, have not helped you to forget them. Perhaps if you spoke of them, if you shared them…’
‘You would take up half my burden for me?’ he said bitterly. Rachel watched him, silently. He chewed his final mouthful and swallowed it laboriously. ‘Such things are not fit for a woman’s ears.’
‘Oh, what is a woman, but a human being?’ Rachel replied, irritated. ‘You haven’t borne the knowledge with any great stoicism, or grace. Why should I fare any worse than you?’ Jonathan stared at her and, slowly, his face filled with something like dread, and she understood that some part of him wanted to speak, and yet feared to.