There was Havers to be dealt with. But beyond Havers, there was the truth. For underneath her bitter, unfounded accusations, her ugliness and hurt, the words she spoke rang with veracity. Had he not indeed spent the last year of his life fruitlessly seeking a replacement for Deborah? Not in the way Havers had suggested, but in a way far more dishonest than an inconsequential coupling in which two bodies meet, experience momentary pleasure, and separate to lead their individual lives, untouched and unchanged by the encounter. That, at least, was an expression of some sort, a giving of the moment no matter how brief. But for the last year of his life he had given nothing to anyone.
Behind his behaviour, wasn’t the reality that he had maintained his isolated celibacy this last, long year not because of Deborah but because he had become high priest in a religion of one: a celebrant caught up in devotion to the past? In this twisted religion, he had held up every woman in his life to unforgiving scrutiny and had found each one wanting in comparison to Deborah, not the real Deborah but a mystical goddess who lived only in his mind.
He saw now that he had not wished to forget the past, that he had done everything instead to keep it alive, as if his intention had always been to make it, not Deborah, his bride. He was sick at heart.
With the sickness came the realisation that there were facts to be faced about Stepha as well. But he could not bring himself to them. Not yet.
As the final movement of the symphony came to a close, he turned down the winding road from the moors into Keldale. Autumn leaves flew from under the car’s wheels, leaving a cloud of red, gold, and yellow billowing behind him, promising winter. He pulled in front of the lodge and spent a moment gazing at the windows, numbly wondering how and when he was going to piece together the fragments of his life.
Havers must have been watching for him from the lounge, for she came to the door as soon as he switched off the car’s ignition. He groaned and steeled himself to another confrontation, but she gave him no chance to make preliminary remarks.
“I’ve found Gillian,” she announced.
13
She had somehow survived the morning. The dreadful row with Lynley followed by the horrors of Roberta’s bedroom had served to wear down her anger and wretchedness, abrading them both into a dull detachment. She knew he was going to sack her anyway. She certainly deserved it. But before he did, she would prove to him that she could be a decent DS. In order to do that, however, there was this one last meeting to get through, this one last opportunity to show her stuff.
She watched Lynley’s eyes roam over the unusual collection of items spread out on one of the tables in the lounge: the album containing the defaced family pictures, a dog-eared and well-thumbed novel, the photograph from Roberta’s chest of drawers, the additional one of the two sisters, and a collection of six yellowed newspaper pages, all folded and shaped to the identical size, seventeen by twenty-two inches.
Lynley absently felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, lit one, and sat down on the couch. “What is this, Sergeant?” he asked.
“I think these are the facts on Gillian,” she responded. Her voice was carefully modulated, but a slight quaver in it caught his attention. She cleared her throat to hide it.
“You’re going to need to enlighten me, I’m afraid,” he said. “Cigarette?”
Her fingers itched to feel the cylinder of tobacco; her body ached for the soothing smoke. But she knew, if she lit one, it would betray her shaking hands. “No, thank you,” she replied. She took a breath, kept her eyes on his noncommittal face, and went on. “How does your man Denton line your chest of drawers?”
“With some sort of paper, I should guess. I’ve never noticed.”
“But it isn’t newspaper, is it?” She sat down opposite him, squeezing her hands into fists in her lap, feeling the sharp crescent pain of nails biting palms. “It wouldn’t be, because the newsprint would come off on your clothes.”
“True.”
“So I was intrigued when you mentioned that Roberta’s drawers were lined with newspapers. And I remembered Stepha saying that Roberta used to come every day for the Guardian.”
“Until Paul Odell died. Then she stopped.”
Barbara pushed her hair back behind her ears. It was quite unimportant, she told herself, if he didn’t believe her, if he laughed at the conclusions she had drawn after nearly three hours in that horrible room. “Except that I don’t think the reason she stopped coming for the Guardian had anything to do with Paul Odell. I think it was Gillian.”
His eyes drifted to the newspapers and Barbara saw him take in what she herself had noticed: that Roberta had lined her drawers with the classified section. Moreover, although there were six pieces of newspaper on the table, they were duplicates of only two pages of the Guardian, as if something memorable had appeared in a single issue, and Roberta had collected that day’s edition from the villagers to keep as souvenirs.
“The personal column,” Lynley murmured. “By God, Havers, Gillian sent her a message.”
Barbara pulled one of the sheets towards her and ran her finger down the column. “‘R. Look at the advert. G,’” she read. “I think that’s the message.”
“Look at the advertisement? What advertisement?”
She reached for a representation of the second saved page. “This one, I think.”
He read it. Dated nearly four years previously, it was a small, square announcement of a meeting in Harrogate, a panel discussion involving a group from an organisation called Testament House. The members of the panel were listed, but Gillian Teys was not among them. Lynley looked up, his brown eyes frankly quizzical.
“You’ve lost me, Sergeant.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Aren’t you familiar with Testament House? Never mind, I keep forgetting that you haven’t been in uniform in years. Testament House is run out of Fitzroy Square by an Anglican priest. He used to teach at university but evidently one day one of his students asked him why he wasn’t bothering to practise what he preached—feeding the hungry and clothing the naked—and he decided that was something in his life that he ought to address. So he started Testament House.”
“Which is?”
“An organisation that collects runaways. Teenaged prostitutes—both male and female—drug abusers of every colour and shape, and everyone else under the age of twenty-one who’s hanging about aimlessly in Trafalgar or Piccadilly or in any of the stations just waiting to be preyed on by a pimp or a whore. He’s been doing it for years. The uniformed police all know him. We always took kids to him.”
“He’s the Reverend George Clarence that’s listed here, I take it?”
She nodded. “He goes out on fund-raising tours for the organisation.”
“Do I understand you to mean that you believe Gillian Teys was picked up by this group in London?”
“I…Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
It had taken her ages to find the advertisement, ages longer to decipher its significance, and now everything—most especially her career, she admitted—depended upon Lynley’s willingness to believe. “Because of this name.” She pointed to the third on the list of panelists.
“Nell Graham?”
“Yes.”
“I’m completely in the dark.”
“I think Nell Graham was the message Roberta was waiting for. She faithfully searched the paper each day for years, waiting to see what had happened to her sister. Nell Graham told her. It meant Gillian had survived.”
“Why Nell Graham? Why not,” he glanced at the other names, “Terence Hanover, Caroline Paulson, or Margaret Crist?”
Havers picked up the battered novel from the table. “Because none of those were born of one of the Brontës.” She tapped the book. “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is about Helen Huntington, a woman who breaks the social code of her time and leaves her alcoholic husband to start a new life. She falls in love with a man who knows nothing about her past, who knows only the name she has chosen for he
rself: Helen Graham, Nell Graham, Inspector.” She finished and waited in agony for his reponse.
When it came, nothing could have surprised her more, could have disarmed her more quickly. “Bravo, Barbara,” he said softly, his eyes lit and a smile breaking over his face. He leaned forward earnestly. “What’s your theory on how she came to be involved with this group?”
The relief was so tremendous that Barbara found she had begun trembling from head to toe. She took a ragged breath and somehow found her voice. “My…I suspect that Gillian had enough money to get to London but that ran out fairly soon. They may have picked her up off the street somewhere or in one of the stations.”
“But wouldn’t they return her to her father?”
“That’s not how Testament House works. They encourage the kids to go home or at least to phone their parents and let them know they’re all right, but no one is forced to do it. If they choose to stay at Testament, they just have to obey the rules. No questions asked.”
“But Gillian left home at sixteen. If she is this Nell Graham, she would have been twenty-three when she was on this panel in Harrogate. Does it make sense that she would have stayed with Testament House for all those years?”
“If she had no one else, it makes perfect sense. If she wanted a family, they were her best bet. At any rate, there’s only one way we can know for sure—”
“Talk to her,” he finished promptly. He got to his feet. “Get your things together. We’ll leave in ten minutes.” He rooted through the file and took out the photograph of Russell Mowrey and his family. “Give this to Webberly when you get to London,” he said as he scribbled a message on the back.
“When I get to London?” Her heart sank. He was giving her the sack then. He’d as much as promised that after their encounter at the farm. It was, indeed, all she could expect.
Lynley looked up, all business. “You found her, Sergeant. You can bring her back to Keldale. I think Gillian’s the only way we’re going to get through to Roberta. Don’t you agree?”
“I…What about…” She stopped herself, afraid to believe the meaning behind his words. “You don’t want to phone Webberly? Have someone else…? Go there yourself?”
“I’ve too many things to see to here. You can see to Gillian. If Nell Graham is Gillian. Hurry up. We’ve got to get to York so you can catch the train.”
“But…how should I? What approach should I use? Should I simply—”
He waved her off. “I trust your judgment, Sergeant. Just bring her back as quickly as you can.”
She unclenched her hands, aware of the numbing relief sweeping over her. “Yes, sir,” she heard her voice whisper.
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and regarded the house cresting its smooth slope of lawn. By driving like the devil, he had managed to get Havers on the three o’clock train for London and now he sat in front of the Mowrey home, trying to decide how best to approach the woman inside. Wasn’t the truth, after all, better than the silence? Had he not at least learned that?
She met him at the door. The wary glance that she cast back over her shoulder told him he was far less welcome than when they had previously met. “My children are just home from school,” she said in explanation and stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind her. She drew her cardigan firmly round her slender body. It was like the body of a child. “Have you…Is there word about Russell?”
He reminded himself that he couldn’t have expected her to ask about her daughter. Tessa, of all people, had said goodbye to the past, had made a surgical cut and walked away cleanly. “You need to involve the police, Mrs. Mowrey.”
She paled. “He couldn’t. He didn’t.”
“You must telephone the police.”
“I can’t. I can’t,” she whispered fiercely.
“He’s not with his relatives in London, is he?” She shook her head briefly, once, and kept her face averted. “Have they heard from him at all?” Again, the same response. “Then isn’t it best to find out where he is?” When she didn’t reply, he took her arm and led her gently towards the drive. “Why did William keep all those keys?”
“What keys?”
“There was a box of them on the shelf in his wardrobe. But there are no keys anywhere in the rest of the house. Do you know why?”
She bent her head, put a hand to her brow. “Those. I’d forgotten,” she murmured. “I…It was because of Gillian’s tantrum.”
“When was this?”
“She must have been seven. No, she was nearly eight. I remember because I was pregnant with Roberta. It was one of those situations that come up out of nowhere and are blown all out of proportion, the kind that families laugh about later when the children are grown. I remember William said at dinner, ‘Gilly, we’ll read from the Bible tonight.’ I was sitting there—daydreaming probably—and expected her to say, ‘Yes, Papa,’ as she always did. But she decided that she wouldn’t read the Bible that night, and William decided just as definitely that she would. She became absolutely hysterical about it, ran to her room and locked the door.”
“And then?”
“Gilly had never disobeyed her father before. Poor William simply sat there, astonished. He didn’t seem to know how to handle it.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing that helped particularly, as I recall. I went to Gilly’s room, but she wouldn’t let me in. She’d only scream that she wouldn’t read the Bible any longer and that no one could make her. Then she threw things at the door. I…I went back down to William.” She looked at Lynley with an expression that combined both perplexity and admiration as she went on. “You know, William never scolded her. That wasn’t his way. But he later took the keys from all the doors. He said if the house had burned down that night and he hadn’t been able to get to Gilly because she’d locked her door, he would never have forgiven himself.”
“Did they go back to reading the Bible after that?”
She shook her head. “He never asked Gilly to read the Bible after that.”
“Did he read it with you?”
“No. Just alone.”
A girl had come to the door as they spoke, a piece of bread in her hand and a thin line of jam traced across her upper lip. She was small like her mother but with her father’s dark hair and intelligent eyes. She watched them curiously.
“Mummy,” she called. Her voice was sweet and clear. “Is anything wrong? Is it Daddy?”
“No, darling,” Tessa called back hastily. “I’ll be in in a moment.” She turned to Lynley.
“How well did you know Richard Gibson?” he asked her.
“William’s nephew? As well as anyone could have known Richard, I suppose. He was a quiet boy but immensely likable, with a wonderful sense of humour, as I recall. Gilly quite adored him. Why do you ask?”
“Because William left the farm to him, not to Roberta.”
Her brow furrowed. “But why not to Gilly?”
“Gillian ran away from home when she was sixteen, Mrs. Mowrey. No one ever heard from her again.”
Tessa drew in a breath. It was sharp and quick, like the reaction to an unexpected blow. Her eyes fixed themselves on Lynley.
“No,” she said. It was not so much denial as disbelief.
He continued. “Richard had been gone for a time as well. To the fens. There’s a chance that Gillian followed him there and then perhaps went on to London.”
“But why? Whatever happened? What could have happened?”
He considered how much to tell her. “I’ve got the impression,” he said, spacing the words delicately, “that she was involved with Richard somehow.”
“And William found out? If that’s the case, he would have torn Richard limb from limb.”
“Suppose he did find out and Richard knew what his reaction would be. Would that be enough for Richard to leave the village?”
“I should think so. But it doesn’t explain why William left the farm to him and not to Roberta, does it?”
>
“It was apparently a bargain he’d struck with Gibson. Roberta would continue to live there for her lifetime with Richard and his family, but the land would go to the Gibsons.”
“But certainly Roberta would marry someday. It hardly seems fair. Surely William would have wanted the land to remain in the immediate family, to be passed on to his grandchildren, if not to Gilly’s children, then to Roberta’s.”
Even as she spoke, Lynley realised what a vast chasm the nineteen years of her absence had caused. She knew nothing of Roberta, nothing of the girl’s hidden storehouse of food, nothing of her vacant, rocking catatonia. Roberta was just a name to her mother, a name who would marry, have children, grow old. She was not at all real. She did not actually exist.
“Did you never think about them?” he asked her. She looked down at her feet, employing in the act an intensity that suggested all of her concentration was centered on the smooth, rusty suede of her shoes. When she didn’t reply, he persisted. “Did you never wonder how they were, Mrs. Mowrey? Did you never imagine what they looked like or how they’d grown up?”
She shook her head once, sharply. And when she answered him at last, in a voice so controlled that it spoke volumes on the emotion she had spent on the subject, she kept her eyes on the minster in the distance. “I couldn’t let myself do that, Inspector. I knew they were safe. I knew they were well. So I let them die. I had to if I wanted to survive. Can you understand?”
A few days ago he would have said no. And that would have been the truth of the matter. But that was not the case now. “Yes,” he replied. “I do understand.” He nodded to her in farewell and walked back to his car.