‘The inspector already knew the truth. He’d spoken to Burns.’
‘Don’t mention that hateful name again!’
‘We have to face facts, Stanley. He may be involved here. Burns would have more reason than anybody to want Father killed. He has to be a suspect.’
‘He wouldn’t dare,’ snapped the other. ‘We scared him away.’
‘You never understood what happened between him and Lydia, did you?’
‘I understood enough to know that it was a grotesque misalliance.’
‘That was what I felt as well,’ said Agnes. ‘Lydia was so reckless.’
‘Did you really want your sister married to a gardener?’ asked Stanley, curling his lip. ‘That cunning wretch led her astray, Lucas. I daren’t think what he did to Lydia. It’s too unsettling. Burns should have been horsewhipped.’
‘The inspector told me something that I didn’t know,’ said Lucas.
‘We don’t want to hear it.’
‘That’s your trouble, Stanley. You never want to learn the truth. You just close your ears and block everything out. How can you make a fair judgement on anything until you’re aware of all the facts?’
‘The main fact was all I needed to know — Burns tried to seduce our sister.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it went that far,’ protested Agnes.
‘That’s all he was after.’
‘You’re quite wrong about him,’ said Lucas, ‘and so was I. The inspector told me something that’s made me revise my opinion of Burns and showed me just how much he meant to Lydia.’ He paused for a few moments. ‘It was no passing fancy. They were planning to elope and get married.’
Lydia knew that her friend was deeply upset. The moment that the visitors had left, Beatrice retired to her room and stayed there for well over an hour. Nonetheless, Lydia felt that she’d been right to speak to Madeleine Colbeck. It was foolish to pretend that she had no interest in the murder inquiry. Part of her wanted to know what had happened and when the person responsible would be caught. Madeleine had probed gently away without causing the slightest offence or discomfort. When she was leaving with the sergeant, Madeleine had given her an address where she could be reached in case she thought of anything that might be useful to the inquiry. Lydia had felt soothed. In the wake of Beatrice’s departure upstairs, the sensation quickly evaporated. There would be repercussions and Lydia was not looking forward to them.
Beatrice finally emerged from her room and came downstairs but she made no immediate contact with Lydia. Instead, she wandered about the house from room to room as if deliberately avoiding her. It was left to Lydia to make the first move. She intercepted Beatrice outside the kitchen.
‘We must talk,’ she said.
Beatrice feigned indifference. ‘Must we?’
‘To begin with, I owe you an apology. When all is said and done, this is still your house. I had no right to invite someone in when you clearly objected to them.’
‘That’s certainly true.’
‘I’m very sorry, Beatrice.’
‘What I’m sorry about is that you made me look foolish and deceitful. If you heard them mention your name, you must also have heard me telling them that they’d made a mistake in coming here. Then out you pop and contradict me.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘They knew I’d been lying. I felt betrayed.’
‘Why didn’t you simply tell them that I live here?’
‘I didn’t want them interfering,’ said Beatrice, petulantly. ‘I didn’t want strangers to walk in off the street and … take you away.’
‘They made no suggestion about taking me anywhere.’
‘I’m talking about your mind, Lydia. They filled it with all the things that you ran away from. When they did that, they took you away from me.’
Lydia touched her arm. ‘But I’m still here, Beatrice.’
‘Only in body — your mind is back in the Midlands.’
‘I can’t just ignore what happened to my father.’
‘You’ve managed to do that very effectively, so far. After a month of living here, you stopped mentioning his name. It was as if he didn’t exist.’
‘In that sense, he still doesn’t.’
‘Then why did you spend such a long time talking about him?’
‘I was answering questions about the family.’
‘You were being drawn back into a past you swore to escape. And while you were doing that,’ said Beatrice, unhappily, ‘I was trapped in the other room with that ugly detective. He frightened me, Lydia.’
‘Then that’s something else I have to apologise for,’ said the other, ‘but he did the right thing in leaving me alone with Mrs Colbeck. I could talk to her in a way that would have been impossible with a man.’
‘What did you say to her?’
Lydia chose her words with care. Though she’d taken her friend into her confidence about the reasons for coming to London, she had spared Beatrice the more disturbing details. She had said nothing about the threat made to her about Gerard Burns by her father or about the violence she’d suffered. When she’d dared to defend her actions, Vivian Quayle had lost his temper and struck her across the face. He’d then grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her before hurling her to the floor. On the following day, when he’d calmed down, he’d mumbled an apology but the damage was irreparable by then. All that Lydia could think about from that point onwards was her eventual escape. When the break came, she’d resolved never to see her father again and she’d kept her vow.
‘It wasn’t my fault that they came here,’ she pointed out. ‘It was yours.’
Beatrice tensed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re the one who belongs to the Lending Library. How clever of them to find this address by asking about readers with a passion for Italy! I’d never have thought of doing that.’
‘There are other ways to discover where you are, Lydia.’
‘Nobody else has any reason to find me.’
‘That’s not true.’
Lydia felt as if she’d just walked into something very solid and she was dazed for a moment. Beatrice’s revelation was stunning. Evidently, she knew. Lydia had concealed from her the fact that her younger brother had learnt her address by employing a private detective and had then written to her. The only way that her friend could possibly know about the correspondence was by going into Lydia’s room and finding the letter in the bedside drawer. There was profound awkwardness on both sides. Lydia was shocked that her privacy had been violated and Beatrice was horrified that her friend had kept something so important from her. The taut silence lasted for minutes.
‘I should have been told, Lydia,’ said the older woman at length.
‘It would have been hurtful to you.’
‘It was far more hurtful to learn that you hid the truth from me.’
‘You had no call to search my bedroom.’
‘I had to find out the truth.’
‘How did you even know that I’d received a letter? You were out at the time.’
‘Dora told me.’
‘Then why not ask me directly?’
Beatrice’s tone sharpened. ‘Why not save me the trouble of asking?’
The awkwardness between them suddenly intensified and the whole balance of their relationship seemed to shift. Beatrice knew that her friend had not been entirely honest with her and, by the same token, Lydia knew that the older woman had gone behind her back to search for something. Neither of them knew what to say. Beatrice felt both let down and guilty while Lydia was at once hurt and chastened. She wanted to tell Beatrice that she had replied to her brother and told him not to contact her again but the words simply would not come. For her part, Beatrice had an urge to enfold her in a tearful embrace yet she was quite unable to move.
Two close friends had just reached an impasse, unable to decide if they’d somehow been drawn closer by their respective mistakes or if their relationship had been shattered beyond recall.
Since he knew the train that Leeming would catch in London that morning, Colbeck walked to Derby station to meet it. When an earlier train steamed in, one of the passengers who alighted was Elijah Wigg, adjusting his hat and jacket. He was obviously so proud of his uniform that Colbeck wondered if the man could ever be persuaded to take it off. Wigg strode across to him.