He was, I realized, adopting another tactic: leading me away from the subject of Isabella Linkinhorne by trying to start a dispute between us over our rival merits in the eyes of my wife.
‘Nor have I ever understood it,’ I agreed, beating him at his own game. ‘It is, moreover, undeserved,’ I added with far more sincerity than he could possibly have guessed at. ‘But all this is beside the point. I still think you were the man that Isabella was seen talking to on what proved to be the last morning of her life.’
Richard bit his lip. ‘Oh, very well,’ he admitted savagely after a moment’s silence. ‘Yes, the last time I ever saw her was on a very stormy morning early in the year. It might have been March. I don’t really remember. But that it was the last morning of her life is more than I know. Or you, either, I fancy.’
‘Perhaps. But it seems to be the last occasion on which anyone saw her alive. What did you talk about? How did you come to meet her? Had you arranged to do so, or was it by chance?’
He stood up suddenly, his face contorted with fury, his stool clattering to the floor behind him, his fingers gripping the edge of the table until the skin of his knuckles seemed in danger of splitting.
‘Hell’s teeth! Who do you think you are, Roger Chapman, to come here questioning me in this fashion? Me!’
I half expected him to order me from the cottage, and was preparing to retreat in good order. Instead, he began pacing up and down the floor, looking daggers at me, it was true, but also appearing to be debating with himself. Finally, he came back to the table, righted the stool and sat down again.
‘I didn’t kill Isabella Linkinhorne,’ he said quietly, ‘although it grieves me very much to have to say so. That anyone could think me capable of murder, least of all you, is shaming.’
‘Why?’ I demanded bluntly. ‘Whatever face you choose to present to the world, Richard, I know you’re quite capable of paying someone to beat me black and blue in order to protect yourself; capable, as I reminded you just now, of trying to arrest me for a killing I didn’t do-’
‘The evidence pointed to you,’ he defended himself, and I was forced to admit that that was true. But spite had informed the attempt. And as though in sudden acknowledgment of the fact, he raised his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I met Isabella by chance that morning. We hadn’t arranged a rendezvous, and when I saw what the weather was like, I doubted if even she would go out riding. Yet it was worth the risk. Little deterred her from taking those daily gallops across the downs. But by the time I’d reached the heights above Bristol, the wind and rain had increased twofold — threefold — to what they had been down here in the shelter of the city walls, and I had no real expectation of seeing her.’
‘But you did.’
‘Yes. I chided her for coming out in such weather, but she said she’d been unable to remain cooped up indoors.’
‘Did she say why?’
My companion shook his head. ‘She didn’t really need a reason. She was wild, was Isabella. Headstrong. It was part of her great charm, at least for me. And she hated her parents. Perhaps hated is too strong a word, but she disliked them. She found their overwhelming love oppressive. It drove her, literally, I think, a little mad. She told me once that, when she was a child, she had attacked her mother with a knife, and only her nurse’s timely intervention had prevented her from killing Mistress Linkinhorne. I longed to be able to free her by marrying her, but in those days I was in no position to support a wife.’
Once again, I was amazed by the inability of these men who had loved Isabella Linkinhorne to understand her. All three had wished to free her from her parents’ tyranny by making her their wife; by removing her from one golden cage to what she would undoubtedly have seen as yet another; by rescuing her from her mother’s and father’s overwhelming love only to smother her with their own.
‘What did you and she talk about that morning?’
‘God alone knows!’ Richard gave a sudden rueful grin, displaying one of his rare flashes of humour. ‘And probably even He’s forgotten.’ He was immediately serious again. ‘How do you expect me to remember after all this time?’ He sounded testy. ‘It wasn’t the weather for idle chatter. I told you, I chided her for being abroad on such a morning, but what she said in answer or what I said after that I’ve not the smallest recollection.’
‘She didn’t say that she was on her way to meet someone? That she was going to another man?’
‘No, she did not.’ Richard’s face was grim, as though the knowledge that this might have been the case, even after all those years, had the power to hurt him. ‘You don’t listen, Roger. I’ve explained that I had no idea, back then, that there was any other man — let alone two — but me.’ He hesitated before asking, ‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘If Robert Moresby was telling me the truth, then yes. But,’ I went on quickly, ‘I think it extremely doubtful that Isabella ever intended to honour her pledge to meet him at Hambrook Manor. If you can bear the truth, I think she enjoyed making fools of you all.’
‘And what do you know of her?’ Richard asked, rounding on me savagely.
‘I’ve learned enough about her in these past three weeks and more to work that out.’ I softened my tone. ‘Does it rankle so much?’
‘I loved her,’ he answered simply. ‘And I thought she loved me.’
‘First love is often like that, I suppose.’ I rubbed my forehead, a sudden bleak feeling around my heart. ‘It’s the one you remember most.’
He glanced curiously at me. ‘Adela wasn’t your first love, then?’
I shook my head, recalling soft blue eyes, delicate, pale skin, lips that I had longed to kiss, but never had, a villainous father whom I had brought to justice, an act which made me her enemy and exiled me from her life …
I realized with a sudden shock that Richard and I were on the brink of becoming friends. Worse still, I was being unfaithful to Adela yet again, if only in my thoughts. With an effort, I pulled myself together and returned to the matter in hand.
But what else could I ask Richard Manifold? He had finally admitted to knowing the murdered woman; had acknowledged that he was the man seen speaking to her on the morning of the day she disappeared, and yet I was no nearer finding the killer than I had been at the outset of these enquiries. He could be any one of the three men I had spoken to, or none of them. If one, two, or all three were lying to me, how could I prove it after twenty years? Isabella Linkinhorne had, in some way, brought her death upon herself by her deliberate betrayal of the men who loved her. She had mocked their affection for her by abusing their trust and laughing at them behind their backs. It would be all too easy to say that what had happened to her was no one’s fault but her own.
But that would be to condone murder, to ignore the injunction laid on us by God: Thou shalt not kill. (Nor commit adultery either, whispered a voice inside my head, but I ignored it. I was finding it easier with practice.)
‘Well?’ Richard Manifold’s voice cut across my thoughts. ‘What have you decided, Chapman? Am I guilty of Isabella’s death, do you think?’
I sighed and rose to my feet.
‘The truth is,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘No, nor never will,’ my companion sneered, also rising. ‘The real truth is that you would have done better to heed my warnings to leave well alone. It’s all too far in the past, and you and our Mayor between you have done nothing except open up old wounds, stir memories that are best forgotten and throw mud that all too readily sticks to the innocent as well as the guilty.’
‘You’d prefer a murderer to go unpunished, then?’ I asked, looking him straight in the eye.
If I’d hoped to shame him, I was disappointed.
‘In this case,’ he answered steadily, ‘yes.’ He added honestly, ‘The reason for your visit here is bound to get out. Even a couple of dunderheads like Jack and Pete are capable of adding two beans to three and making five, and they are both incapable of holding their tongues. They won’t mean to blab, of course. They just won’t be able to help themselves. And as I pointed out to you a moment ago, mud, once thrown, has a nasty habit of sticking. What authority will I have, if people are wondering if I could possibly have murdered a woman?’