A Great Deliverance

She scooped the bird up and placed it on the step between them. With a level, dispassionate look at Lynley, Dougal began grooming his shining feathers.

  “Daddy read to me,” Bridie said in answer. Her voice was a shade lower and her concentration on her shoe tops was total. “And then he went away.”

  “Went away?” Lynley wondered if this was a euphemism for his death.

  “He went away one day.” Bridie rested her cheek on her knee, pulled the bird to her side, and stared at the river. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” She turned and kissed the duck’s smooth head. He pecked at her cheek in return. “I would’ve said goodbye,” she whispered.

  “Would you use the word angel or sunshine to describe someone who drank, swore, and ran around like mad?” Lynley asked.

  Sergeant Havers looked up from her morning eggs, stirred sugar into her coffee, and thought about it. “I suppose it depends on your definition of rain, doesn’t it?”

  He smiled. “I suppose so.” He pushed his plate away from him and regarded Havers thoughtfully. She wasn’t looking half bad this morning: there was a hint of colour on her eyelids, cheeks, and lips, and her hair had a noticeable curl to it. Even her clothes had distinctly improved, for she wore a brown tweed skirt and matching pullover which, even if they weren’t exactly the best colour for her skin tone, at least were a marked improvement over yesterday’s ghastly blue suit.

  “Why the question?” she asked.

  “Stepha described Gillian as wild. A drinker.”

  “Who ran around like mad.”

  “Yes. But Father Hart said she was sunshine.”

  “That is peculiar.”

  “He said Teys was devastated when she ran away.”

  Havers knotted her thick eyebrows and, without thinking about how the action redefined their relationship, poured Lynley a second cup of coffee. “Well, that does explain why her photos are gone, doesn’t it? He’d devoted his life to his children and look at his reward for the effort. One of the two vanishes into the night.”

  The last four words struck a chord in Lynley. He rummaged through the file on the table between them and brought out the picture of Russell Mowrey that Tessa had given them.

  “I’d like you to take this round the village today,” he said.

  Havers took the photograph, but her expression was quizzical. “But you said he was in London.”

  “Now, yes. Not necessarily three weeks ago. If Mowrey was here then, he would have had to ask someone for directions to the farm. Someone would have had to see him. Concentrate on the high and the patrons of the pubs. You might go to the hall as well. If no one’s seen him—”

  “We’re back to Tessa, then,” she finished.

  “Or someone else with a motive. There seem to be several.”

  Madeline Gibson answered the door to Lynley’s knock. He’d climbed his way over two quarrelling children in the war-torn front garden, manoeuvred past a broken tricycle and a dismembered doll, and avoided a plate of congealing fried eggs on the front steps. She surveyed all this with a bored glance and adjusted an emerald green peignoir over high, pointed breasts. She wore nothing under it and made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t have arrived at a more inconvenient time.

  “Dick,” she called, her sultry eyes on Lynley, “put it back in your trousers. It’s Scotland Yard.” She gave him a lazy smile and held the door open wider. “Do come in, Inspector.” She left him in the tiny entryway among the toys and the dirty clothes and strolled to the stairwell. “Dick!” she called again. She turned, folded her arms across her breasts, and kept her eyes on Lynley. A smile played over her features. A well-formed knee and thigh showed themselves between the folds of thin satin.

  There was movement above them, a man’s mumbling, and Richard Gibson appeared. He clattered noisily to the bottom of the stairs and caught sight of his wife. “Jesus Christ, put on some clothes, Mad,” he said.

  “You didn’t want them on five minutes ago,” she replied, looked him over with a knowing smile, and made her way deliberately—revealing as much of her slim body as possible—up the stairs.

  Gibson watched her with wry amusement. “You should see what she’s like when she really wants it,” he confided. “She’s just teasing now.”

  “Ah. Yes. I see.”

  The farmer laughed through his nose. “At least it keeps her happy, Inspector. For a while.” He scrutinised the chaos of the cottage and added, “Let’s go out in front.”

  Lynley thought the front garden was even less appealing a place for their encounter than the malodorous cottage, but he held his tongue and followed the other man.

  “Go in to your mother,” Gibson ordered his two wrangling children. With his foot, he pushed the plate to the edge of the front step. In a moment, the family’s mangy cat appeared from the tangle of dry and dying bushes and began to devour the remains of the eggs and toast. It was the greedy, surreptitious eating of a scavenger, and it reminded Lynley of the woman upstairs.

  “I saw Roberta yesterday,” he said to Gibson. The other man had sat down on the step and was lacing his work shoes tightly.

  “How was she? Any improvement?”

  “No. When we first met, you didn’t mention the fact that you’d signed Roberta into the asylum, Mr. Gibson.”

  “You didn’t ask, Inspector.” He finished with the boots and got to his feet. “Did you expect me to leave her with the police in Richmond?”

  “Not especially. Have you arranged for a solicitor as well?”

  Gibson, Lynley saw, wasn’t a man who expected the police to concern themselves with the legal representation of confessed murderesses. The question surprised him. His eyelids quivered and he spent a moment tucking his flannel shirt into his blue jeans. He took his time about answering.

  “A solicitor? No.”

  “Intriguing that you’d make arrangements to have her put into hospital but not make arrangements for her legal interests. Convenient as well, wouldn’t you say?”

  A muscle worked in Gibson’s jaw. “No, I wouldn’t say.”

  “Can you explain yourself, then?”

  “I don’t think I need to explain myself to you,” Gibson said tersely. “But it seems to me that Bobby’s mental problems were a wee bit more pressing than her legal ones.” His swarthy skin had darkened.

  “Indeed. And if she’s found incompetent to stand trial—as no doubt she will be—you’re in a good position, aren’t you?”

  Gibson faced him. “By God, I am, yes,” he retorted angrily. “Free to take the damn farm, free to have the damn house, free to screw my damn wife on the dining room table if I want. And all without Bobby hulking about. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it, Inspector?” He thrust his face forward belligerently, but when Lynley offered no reaction to this aggression, he backed away. His words, however, were no less angry. “I’ve just about had it with people believing I’d hurt Bobby, with people believing Madeline and I would be only too happy to see her put away for life. You think I don’t know that’s what everyone believes? You think Madeline doesn’t know it?” He laughed bitterly. “No, I didn’t get her a solicitor. I got one myself. And if I can get her certified mentally incompetent, I intend to do so. Do you think that’s worse than seeing she ends up in prison?”

  “So you think she did kill her father?” Lynley asked.

  Gibson’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is Bobby’s not the same girl that I knew when I left Keldale. That girl wouldn’t have hurt a fly. But this new girl…she’s a stranger.”

  “Perhaps that has to do with Gillian’s disappearance.”

  “Gillian?” Gibson laughed incredulously. “I’d say Gilly’s leaving was a relief to all concerned.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say Gilly was advanced for her years, shall we?” He glanced back at the house. “Let’s just say she’d have made Madeline look like the Virgin Mary. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Perfectly. Did she seduce
you?”

  “You are direct, aren’t you? Give me a fag and I’ll tell you about it.” He lit the cigarette that Lynley offered from his case and looked off into the fields that began just across the unpaved street. Beyond them, the trail to High Kel Moor weaved into the trees. “I was nineteen years old when I left Keldale, Inspector. I didn’t want to leave. God knows that was the last thing I wanted to do. But I knew if I didn’t, there’d be hell to pay eventually.”

  “But you slept with your cousin Gillian before you left?”

  Gibson snorted. “Hardly. Slept isn’t exactly the word I’d use with a girl like Gilly. She wanted control and she had it, Inspector. She could do things to a man…better than a high-class tart. She made me crazy just about four times a day.”

  “How old was she?”

  “She was twelve when she first locked her eyes on me in an uncousinly fashion, thirteen the first time she…performed. Then for the next two years she drove me wild.”

  “Are you telling me you left to escape her?”

  “I’m hardly that noble. I left to escape William. It was only a matter of time before he caught her going at me. I didn’t want that to happen to either of us. I wanted it to end.”

  “Why did you never just speak to William about it?”

  Gibson’s eyes widened. “As far as he was concerned, neither of those girls could do anything wrong. How was I supposed to tell him that Gilly, the proverbial apple of his eye, was rubbing up to me like a cat in heat and taking me on like a whore? He’d never have believed it. Half the time, I didn’t myself.”

  “She left Keldale a year after you, didn’t she?”

  He tossed his cigarette into the street. “That’s what they tell me,” he replied.

  “Did you ever see her again?”

  Gibson’s eyes slid away. “I never did,” he replied. “And it was a blessing.”

  Marsha Fitzalan was a bent, withered woman with a face that reminded Lynley of the kind on American dolls carved from apples: it was a mass of delicate wrinkles that traced a pattern across her cheeks up to her eyes. These were blue. They danced in her face with interest and amusement and told anyone who looked at her that the body was indeed old but the heart and the mind had not changed from youth.

  “Good morning,” she smiled, and then with a look at her watch, “or nearly afternoon. You’re Inspector Lynley, aren’t you? I thought you might be by sooner or later. I’ve lemon pie made.”

  “For the occasion?” Lynley asked.

  “Indeed,” she replied. “Come in.”

  Although she lived in one of the council houses on St. Chad’s Lane, its appearance couldn’t have been more different from the Gibsons’. The front garden was planted, parterre-like, with neat patterns of flowers: in the spring there would be alyssum and primrose, snapdragons and geraniums. They had been trimmed back for the coming of winter, the soil turned over lovingly round each plant. On two of the stepping stones leading to the door, birdseed had been fashioned into small, accessible piles, and a set of metal wind chimes hung near a window, its six notes still managing to be heard over the din of the Gibson children next door.

  The contrast to the Gibsons’ small cottage continued indoors, where the smell of potpourri in the air reminded Lynley of long afternoons spent in his grandmother’s bedroom at Howenstow. The tiny sitting room was comfortably if inexpensively furnished and two of its walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books. A small table under the single window was covered by a collection of photographs, and several needlepoint tapestries hung above an ancient television set.

  “Will you come into the kitchen, Inspector?” Marsha Fitzalan asked. “I know it’s dreadful to entertain in the kitchen, but I’ve always been far more comfortable there. My friends tell me it’s because I grew up on a farm, and the life of a farm always centres itself in the kitchen, doesn’t it? I suppose I never got over that. Here, please sit at the table. Coffee and pie? You do look hungry. I imagine you’re a bachelor. Bachelors never eat as well as they should, do they?”

  Again there was the memory of his grandmother, that unmistakable security of unconditional love. As he watched her busily putting together a tray, her hands sure and unshaking, Lynley knew for a certainty that Marsha Fitzalan held the answer.

  “Can you tell me about Gillian Teys?” he asked.

  Her hands stopped. She turned to him with a smile. “Gilly?” she said. “What a pleasure that shall be. Gillian Teys was the loveliest creature I’ve ever known.”

  11

  She returned to the table and placed the tray between them. It was an unnecessary nicety. The kitchen was so tiny that only a few steps were needed to move across the room, yet still she preserved the semblance of gentility and countered the claustrophobia of poverty by using the tray. It was covered with a piece of old lace upon which rested fine bone china. Both plates were chipped, but the cups and saucers had somehow managed the years unscathed.

  Autumn leaves in a pottery jug served to decorate the plain pine table, and onto its surface Marsha Fitzalan set everything out carefully: plates, cutlery, and linen. She poured the steaming coffee into their cups and added sugar and milk to her own before she began to speak.

  “Gilly was exactly like her mother. I taught Tessa as well. Of course, it betrays my age dreadfully to admit to that. But there you have it. Nearly everyone in the village passed through my classroom, Inspector.” Her eyes twinkled as she added, “Except Father Hart. He and I are of the same generation.”

  “I should never have guessed,” Lynley said solemnly.

  She laughed. “Why is it that truly charming men always know when a woman is fishing for a compliment?” She dug into her pie enthusiastically, chewed appreciatively for a few moments, and then continued. “Gillian was the mirror image of her mother. She had that same lovely blonde hair, those beautiful eyes, and that same wonderful spirit. But Tessa was a dreamer and Gillian was a bit more of a realist, I should say. Tessa’s head was always in the clouds. She was all romance. I think that’s why she chose to marry so young. She was determined that life was all about being swept off one’s feet by a tall, dark hero, and William Teys certainly fit the image.”

  “Gillian wasn’t worried about being swept off her feet?”

  “Oh no. I don’t think the thought of men ever entered Gilly’s head. She wanted to be a teacher. I can remember her coming by in the afternoons, curling up on the floor with a book. How she loved the Brontës! That child must have read Jane Eyre six or seven times by her fourteenth birthday. She, Jane, and Mr. Rochester were all rather intimate acquaintances, as I recall. And she loved to talk about everything she read. But it wasn’t just chatter. She talked about characters, motivations, meanings. She would say, ‘I shall have to know these things when I’m a teacher, Miss Fitzalan.’”

  “Why did she run away?”

  The old woman studied the bronze leaves in the jug. “I don’t know,” she replied slowly. “She was such a good child. There was never a problem that she couldn’t seem to solve with that quick mind of hers. I honestly don’t know what happened.”

  “Could she have been involved with a man? Perhaps someone she was running after?”

  Miss Fitzalan dismissed the idea with a movement of her hand. “I don’t believe Gillian was interested in men yet. She was a bit slower to mature than the other girls were.”

  “What about Roberta? Was she much like her sister?”

  “No, Roberta was like her father.” She stopped suddenly and frowned. “Was. I don’t want to talk about her in the past tense like that. But she seems to have died.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?”

  The woman looked as if she appreciated his concurring with her. “Roberta was big like her father, very solid and silent. People will tell you she had no personality at all, but that’s not true. She was simply excruciatingly shy. She had her mother’s romantic disposition, her father’s taciturnity. And she lost herself in books.”

  “Like Gil
lian?”

  “Yes and no. She read like Gillian, but she never spoke about what she read. Gillian read to learn. Roberta, I think, read to escape.”

  “Escape what?”

  Miss Fitzalan fussily straightened the lace that covered the old tray. Her hands, Lynley saw, were spotted with age. “The knowledge of being deserted, I should guess.”

  “By Gillian or her mother?”

  “By Gillian. Roberta worshipped Gillian. She never knew her mother. You can imagine what it must have been like having Gilly for an older sister: so lovely, so lively, so intelligent. Everything Roberta wasn’t and wished she could be.”

  “Jealousy?”

  She shook her head. “She wasn’t jealous of Gilly. She loved her. I should think it hurt Roberta dreadfully when her sister left. But unlike Gillian, who would have talked about her pain—Lord knows, Gilly talked about anything and everything—Roberta internalised it. I remember, in fact, the poor child’s skin after Gilly left. Funny that I would still remember that.”

  Lynley thought of the girl he had seen in the asylum and was not surprised that the teacher would remember the condition of Roberta’s skin. “Acne?” he asked. “She would have been young for that.”

  “No. She broke out in the most dreadful rash. I know it was nerves, but when I spoke to her about it she blamed it on Whiskers.” Miss Fitzalan dropped her eyes and toyed with her fork, making delicate patterns in the crumbs on her plate. Lynley waited patiently, convinced there was more. Finally she went on. “I felt so inadequate, Inspector, such a failure as a friend and as a teacher that she couldn’t talk to me about what had happened to Gilly. But she just couldn’t talk, so she blamed it all on being allergic to her dog.”

  “Did you speak to her father about it?”

  “Not at first. William had been so crushed by Gillian’s running off that he wasn’t the least bit approachable. For weeks it seemed the only person he would talk to at all was Father Hart. But in the end, frankly, I felt I owed it to Roberta. After all, the child was only eight years old. It wasn’t her fault that her sister had run away. So I went out to the farm and told William I was worried about her, especially considering the pathetic story she’d made up about the dog.” She poured herself more coffee and sipped it as she brooded over that long-ago visit. “Poor man. I certainly needn’t have worried about his reaction. I think he must have felt terribly guilty about having ignored Roberta, because he drove to Richmond directly and bought three or four different kinds of lotion to put on her skin. It may well have been that all the poor girl needed was her father’s attention, because the rash went away after that.”