Together, they walked a short distance away from the house, keeping close to the high wall of the garden so that they would not be seen from inside, then turned to face one another.
‘Well, then,’ said Starling, for want of a better commencement.
‘Well. Your face has finally healed; I’m glad to see it,’ said Mrs Weekes.
‘I’ve healed far worse wounds in my time. You’ve said nothing to Dick Weekes? Good,’ she said, when Rachel Weekes shook her head. ‘And what did you discover from Mr Alleyn today? Have you found Alice’s letters?’
‘No. I mentioned them to him some days ago but he… he didn’t know what I was talking about. Starling, I don’t think he has them. He was looking for something in particular, though – a note he said he found in the lovers’ tree. Do you know of such a place? He said there was a note to arrange an assignation, left in that place, but not written by him or by Alice – though it was addressed to Alice.’
‘He’s lying,’ Starling said at once, though the news made her stomach turn over. There can’t have been.
‘He was confused… he seemed to think it might be a letter sent to Alice from the man she eloped with. He’d been searching for it in his room; he wanted to read it again in case it would tell him something new. But how could it, after so many years?’
‘It’s you, Mrs Weekes. The way you look so much like her… You’re bringing it all back to him.’ As you are bringing it all back to me.
‘But why has he not mentioned this note before? To anyone?’
‘It is an invention. There’s no such note, and Alice had no other lover. He seeks to deceive you, Mrs Weekes!’
‘It did not seem that way. He was not calculating. He was frantic… confused…’
‘In what way confused?’ Starling demanded. Mrs Weekes seemed taken aback by her tone – she was always so sensitive, yet so measured. It ruffled Starling all the more, and impatience gnawed at her every thought.
‘He… he did say he wasn’t sure he had seen this letter, truly. But it seemed to me that he had.’ Rachel Weekes sounded uncertain.
‘Well, how can you be sure if he had, if he is not sure and the note cannot be found?’ said Starling, tersely. When Mrs Weekes made no reply she took a deep breath to calm down, clenching her teeth. I should not have encouraged this woman to interfere. Dick’s wife was disturbing things – upsetting the fine balance she’d wrought between Jonathan’s sanity and his madness; tipping it the wrong way. Rachel Weekes wore a reproachful look on her pale, serious face.
‘He spoke of your pranks. “One of Starling’s little pranks”, he said, when he mentioned the stink in his rooms the first time I called. What do you suppose he meant by that?’
‘How should I know what he meant? He is only half sane at the best of times, and hardly knows what he’s saying.’ Guilt nudged at her. Somehow, knowing that Jonathan was aware of her persecution made her feel almost embarrassed; like a child caught out.
‘He doesn’t seem mad to me. Only… disturbed,’ Rachel Weekes said stubbornly. ‘Sick in spirit.’
‘Aren’t they one and the same thing? You have a very forgiving soul, Mrs Weekes, or perhaps it is only a short memory.’
‘I have not forgotten how he attacked me; believe me, I have not. But he was not himself that day. As I come to know him a little better, I can see that he was not himself.’
‘And what of more recently, and the smashed jar? He was not drunk then – why did he attack you?’
‘I… we were speaking of love and fate, and of… selfmurder.’
‘You condemned it?’ said Starling.
‘Of course I did,’ said Rachel Weekes. Starling grunted.
‘Well, that would do it.’ She glanced up at the woman’s incomprehension, and took a deep breath. ‘He tried to end his own life. A few years ago.’
It was after his mother ordered all caches of opium removed from his rooms, and he was locked inside to rail and curse against her and God and the world. For days the door stayed locked, and nobody went in to him. Wild sounds of destruction were heard; vile curses bellowed out in pain and rage. Starling saw Josephine Alleyn standing with her back against his door, listening in silence, all ashen and clammy with anguish. When peace returned they opened the door just long enough to push through a tray of food and water. And so it continued.
It was weeks before Jonathan was well enough for life, such as it was in that house, to go on. He was skin and bones when Starling next saw him, appallingly thin. Death’s head upon a mop stick. His sunken face was that of a stranger, and when he saw her shock he smiled bitterly.
‘What’s the matter, Starling? Don’t you like to see me suffer?’ The smile crumbled away; he hung his head. ‘If Alice could see me now,’ he whispered. ‘If she could…’
‘If she could see you now she would despise you,’ said Starling, knowing it was not true. She fled into his bedchamber, stood in darkness to catch her breath. The loud sound of breaking glass called her back out. Jonathan was a soldier; he knew which wounds bled the worst. He’d stabbed the bottle into the top of his thigh, near his groin, and his leg was already glossy with blood. For a second, Starling did nothing. For a second, she held the power of his life and death in her hands, and it filled her mind with fire, and rang in her ears. No. You shan’t rest. She ran forwards, splayed her hands across the wound, shouted so loudly for help that it made her throat ache.
Rachel Weekes gasped; a sharp intake of breath as though she’d been slapped.
‘He said I was wilfully stupid,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps he was right.’ She shook her head. ‘How great must his torment have been, to do such a thing? How deep his wounds must go.’ Her words brought Starling back to the present, with the memory of that moment hurting her throat anew.
‘What wounds he has he gave to himself. It is his guilt that torments him; and that violence is his true self – any gentility is but a mask.’
‘Perhaps so.’ Mrs Weekes looked sad, and seemed to think for a moment. ‘He himself would argue that conclusion, I think.’
‘Well, then – oughtn’t he to know?’ said Starling. There was a pause.
‘Mr Alleyn has begun to talk to me, at least. To confide in me. He has begun to tell me about the war,’ said Rachel Weekes, hurriedly, as if she couldn’t bear the empty air.
‘About the war? What use is that? You must make him confide in you about Alice. The war did not sit well with him, that much we all know. He came back mad and violent, that much we all know. Countless other men came back and managed to continue with their lives without resorting to the murder of innocents.’
‘Did they?’
‘Aye! Better, stronger men than he, I think.’
‘Or less moral ones, some of them; less impressionable ones.’
‘What is this? Why do you try to make him a poor lost lamb? I’ve known him near all my life, Mrs Weekes, so do not seek to tell me what he is!’ said Starling, feeling horribly unnerved each time the woman spoke. It was like looking down from a high place, a feeling of losing balance, teetering. She couldn’t trace the cause of it, so she summoned anger to burn it away, and had the satisfaction of seeing Rachel Weekes flinch. She would turn my head, if she could. She would make me doubt the things I know.