A Christmas Beginning Page 10

  “I’ll get it for you,” Faraday said hoarsely. “Please, Runcorn? These people are my friends, my neighbors. I have no idea how to deal with a crime like this.”

  Runcorn almost wanted to remind Faraday that it was he who had discovered this element of tragedy while Runcorn had not even guessed at it. He had talked with Naomi and seen nothing of this in her, no unfed hunger that consumed all honor and loyalty, no loss of her only child to whatever brutal end. His professional skills had failed him completely.

  And it was Faraday, whose profound judgment he so despised, who had seen the answer. Faraday, who was going to marry Melisande.

  He should be grateful, for her sake, that he was not the fool Runcorn had thought him. If he loved her, he was no fool.

  He knew this thought should comfort him as he walked away down the hill, wind harder and traces of snow making a flurry of white in the gloom.

  During the night the sense of his own failure deepened. He had come to Anglesey a stranger. He loved the vast silence disturbed only by the wind and the echo of waves on the shore. People here spoke more slowly, and there was a lilt of music in their voices, but he knew now that he only imagined he understood them. He had been as wrong as possible, not only about Olivia, who may have threatened to expose her own family, but also about Naomi, whom he had believed so strong but who had betrayed her husband, then her child, and finally Olivia. The one skill he believed he possessed had left him.

  How did Faraday know about Olivia? Had Naomi admitted anything? Runcorn would not leave it like this, so many questions unanswered, so many of his own impressions mistaken.

  As soon as he had dressed and had breakfast, he walked across the crisp frost and the pale fingers of new snow whitening the windward sides of the uneven ground. Far in the distance Snowdonia gleamed white.

  He was admitted to the vicarage straight away, and Naomi came to the morning room where he had been asked to wait. He rose to his feet as she closed the door behind her and invited him to be seated again.

  “Good morning, Mr. Runcorn,” she said gravely.

  He struggled to remove all emotion from his face, even his voice. He was unnaturally stiff, but he could not help it. Defeat and an overwhelming sense of loneliness almost choked him.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Costain.” What could he say to her that was not absurd? Obviously Faraday had not spoken to her yet. She was almost at the end, and she had no idea. Within months she could be hanged.

  “What can I do for you? There is nothing further I can tell you.” Her face was bland, polite, not exactly at peace, but less scoured with grief than before, as if she were beginning to come to terms with the murder. Was she denying to herself what she had done, or was she merely a superb actress?

  “Miss Costain had three suitors that I know of, ma’am: Mr. Faraday some time ago, then Mr. Newbridge, and most recently Mr. Barclay. She declined them all. Did you favor any of those for her?”

  “No,” she said easily. “I had no desire that she should marry without love. Mere affection would never have been enough for Olivia. She would have been wretched with a good but tepid man like Alan Faraday. It would have made them both unhappy, because he would have been aware of his failure to please her and it would have both confused and hurt him. She was not wise enough to know how to hide it. Melisande Ewart is gentler, much older within herself. She will probably accept the inevitable and if she has tears of despair, she will hide them from him. She is also, I think, kinder than Olivia. She will bring out the best in Alan, and he will never know it was she who did it, nor will she ever say so.”

  Runcorn was overtaken with a sense of loss, as if he were exiled far from all light and fire and the sound of laughter. He was too numb even to answer her.

  “Newbridge is a good man, so far as I know,” she went on gravely, almost as if she were speaking as much to herself as to him. “But I cannot say that I like him. My husband chides me now for it. But regardless, I had no wish that Olivia should marry him if she did not wish to. He wants many children, in order to establish his family again. I am not sure Olivia wanted to be that kind of woman. If you are devoted to a man then it is a pleasure and a privilege to work beside him, but if you are not, it is an imprisonment, a lifelong denial of yourself.”

  In his mind’s eye he saw the woman in green who had walked past, her head high, and he almost was glad she had escaped these loveless fates. Then he realized what he was thinking, and who had brought him to that vision, and he was disgusted with himself. What had happened to his basic instincts?

  “And as for John Barclay,” Naomi went on. “Olivia did not refuse him, it was he who rejected her, suddenly and very bluntly.” Now there was pain in her voice, but not the anger Runcorn would have expected. It was like an old wound reopened, not the outrage of a new one. Again he had the certainty that there was something profound about Olivia that this woman was hiding from him, perhaps from everyone.

  “Did she know Mr. Barclay before this recent courtship?” he asked, the matter suddenly urgent.

  Now the anger was there in her eyes, blazing up for an instant. “No,” she said without hesitation. “Why do you ask?”

  “It seems … brutal, if she did not rebuff him.”

  “It was,” she agreed with a twist of her mouth. “But I do not think John Barclay is a nice man. He did not love Olivia, he wanted her, as a collector wants a rare and beautiful butterfly, to preserve it, not for its happiness. He will be content to put a pin through its body and capture its colors forever in death.”

  Runcorn remembered Olivia’s body on the grave-side, stained with blood, and thought for a moment that he was going to be sick.

  “I’m sorry,” Naomi said very quietly. “That was a bad thing for me to say. I apologize for it. Perhaps my grief is not as well-controlled as I imagined. Please forgive me.”

  Faraday was wrong, he had to be. There was a deeper answer to find. Perhaps he, too, was trying to protect Melisande from the fact that her brother was a cruel and manipulative man. But Runcorn knew that it could not be done. No matter how much you love, covering evil and allowing the innocent to walk in the shadow of blame is not a path you can take. There is no light at the end of it.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Costain,” he said gently. “Anger is like a knife, it can be dangerous when out of control, but you need it sometimes, to cut away what must go.”

  Her eyes widened with a flare of surprise. “Are you still working on the case, Mr. Runcorn? I thought you had given up. I’m so glad I was mistaken.” The shadow was still there across her face; the lie she clung to.

  “Yes. I’m still working,” he said, knowing that that, at least, was true.

  Disliking every step of it, Runcorn traced Barclay’s actions over the last days before Olivia’s death. It was not easy to be discreet, but it was a skill he had learned over his professional life. Barclay had clearly shown a great curiosity about Olivia. He was courting her, in rivalry with Newbridge, and it was natural that he should seek to know all he could about her, following her journeys.

  Then it grew clearer as he asked questions, heard descriptions, that it was actually Naomi whose actions he was following, she in whose travels, whose expenditures he showed such an interest, not Olivia.

  Runcorn’s mind whirled. What had Barclay been seeking? He had come here to Caernarfon asking questions about Naomi, looking for times and dates, patterns of behavior. He had visited a hotel, a church which led him to a hospital, a quiet doctor with a small, expensive practice. Runcorn went to see Dr. Medway, inventing an excuse, and found a handsome man in his fifties, courteous and distinctly uncommunicative.

  Was it possible Faraday was right after all? An illegitimate child fitted all these facts and places. In the later stages Runcorn learned that Olivia had come with her sister-in-law.

  Why had she come? Had Naomi been desperate, perhaps heavy with child and in need of help? Had she trusted the one person on earth she should not have?

  Except how
could her husband not have known? Were they really so distant? What ice was in that house, or what storms, in those days?

  All this happened some time after Olivia had sought refuge in friendship with the explorer poet, and longed to go with him to Africa, or wherever it was he intended. Had she remained at home because it was impossible for a woman to go to such parts of the world? Had he simply not asked her? Or was it from a duty to look after her sister-in-law in terrible distress, and for the life of the child, if nothing else?

  And then Naomi had killed the child anyway.

  But how could Runcorn have seen nothing of that in their faces? Or was he looking at the whole thing from the wrong side? Maybe the love story was Olivia’s, not Naomi’s. The child was Olivia’s, and it was Naomi who had protected her, and was still protecting her name, even after she was dead.

  What had happened to the child? Was it not a far greater sin to kill a live child than to abort one before it was born? Abortion was dangerous for the mother, but so was birth.

  He turned and walked into the wind, back to the doctor’s house. He knocked on the door, in spite of the late hour. If he missed the last train and spent the night on this side of the strait, it was immaterial.

  “Yes, Mr. Runcorn?” Dr. Medway said curiously.

  Runcorn already knew what he meant to do. “I have a story to tell you,” he said. “And it is necessary that you listen to what I say. If you are not free to comment, I will understand, but you know the truth of what is being said, and you may decide that I need to know the truth of what happened.”

  The doctor smiled. “In that case you had better come in.”

  Runcorn accepted swiftly, and over an excellent supper by the fire, he told Dr. Medway of Olivia’s death, what he had deduced, and what was said or hinted at darkly.

  “I see,” Medway said finally, his voice carrying the weight of tragedy. “You understand I cannot betray confidences, Mr. Runcorn? I will tell you no names, nor will I confirm any.”

  “Yes,” Runcorn agreed.

  Medway’s face was very pale. “The child died soon after birth. It was one of the most harrowing losses of my career. I fought all I could to save him, but it was beyond my skill, or I believe, anyone’s. No one was to blame, least of all the mother.”

  Runcorn pictured Olivia, weeping over the baby for which she had paid so much to bring into the world. Perhaps Percival had been the man whom she had truly loved. She had given up going with him in order to carry and deliver the child, and yet the baby had died. Or perhaps he had not been worthy of her, had not loved her for more than the swift infatuation of the moment. Runcorn chose to believe the former.

  Thank God Naomi had been there, so at least she had not been alone. And she was even now protecting Olivia’s memory, even if narrow and vicious men like John Barclay were happy to malign her.

  Of course! That was why he had quarreled with her and dramatically ceased to court her! Did he hate her for her pregnancy? She had, in his mind, deceived him, allowed him to believe she was fit for him to marry. Would she ever have told him? Or if he had not found out, might she have accepted his proposal? No. But did Newbridge know that? Or did he arrogantly imagine she was intent upon trapping him?

  Had Newbridge known? Was that why he, too, had apparently lost interest in her? There was nothing to suggest he had suspected anything. Runcorn had found no trace of him in his pursuit of Naomi. If he had known, then could it be that Barclay had told him?

  Why? He could have let Newbridge marry her, and told him afterwards. That would have been an exquisite revenge.

  But upon whom? Newbridge! And it was Olivia who had deceived him. Runcorn had learned enough about the gentry to understand that if that had happened, Barclay himself might have suffered a certain ostracism. They would have closed ranks around Newbridge to protect him, here in Anglesey at least. But word would have spread. Faraday, soon to be Barclay’s brother-in-law, would also have believed it a betrayal, and despised Barclay accordingly.

  However, if Barclay told Newbridge beforehand, that could be regarded as the act of a friend, a warning in time. What would Melisande think of his warning? Runcorn was uncertain. To him it was an act of cruelty he found repellent, but then he had in his own mind seen so much of Melisande in Olivia, the same loneliness, the dreams that could never be realized, the hunger for something more than daily obedience to the expectations of those who loved them, protected them, and imprisoned them with failure to understand.

  Or perhaps it was he who did not really understand. He confused the romantic with the real.

  And he was still no closer to proving who had slashed Olivia with a carving knife in hatred for duping him, letting her believe she was all he wanted, when in fact he was nothing she wanted. Was it Barclay? Newbridge? He was terribly afraid that it was Barclay, and the revelation of it would hurt Melisande unbearably. It might even prevent her marriage to Faraday, or anyone else that could make her happy and safe.

  What could Runcorn do to prove Barclay’s innocence, that would not ruin Olivia’s reputation and hurt irreparably the people who had loved her? And even showing Barclay innocent of murder could not conceal that his cruelty was self-serving and repellent.

  He would start again with every detail about Barclay. It might be possible to prove that he could not have taken the knife from the kitchen and followed Olivia up to the graveyard, or perhaps that he could not have returned and changed his clothes, disposed of them without anyone knowing! Maybe he could prove no clothes were missing? It would be long and tedious, but for Melisande’s sake it could be done.

  It was now only three days before Christmas, but here there was no excitement in the air, no shouts of “Merry Christmas,” or sounds of laughter. Even the smell of Christmas was blown away in the wind.

  It took Runcorn two careful, unhappy days to ascertain that Barclay had learned enough of the story to be sure of the rest, and had certainly spoken alone with Newbridge just before Newbridge had been seen in such a rage as to be white-faced, and almost blind to those around him, two days before Olivia’s death.

  Runcorn felt gradually sicker with every new piece of information. It looked as if Barclay could have killed Olivia, and was carefully making it appear that Newbridge had.

  In the evening he met with Faraday.

  Faraday was angry and embarrassed, his face was pink not only from the warmth of the room, but from the high flush of emotion.

  “You’ve been investigating John Barclay,” he said as soon as Runcorn had closed the door. “For God’s sake, man, if you felt you had to do it, could you not at least have been a little more careful? I told you he had discovered Mrs. Costain’s secret, I didn’t expect you to tread exactly in his footsteps, and then all but imply he was incriminated in it! He’d never even been to Anglesey at that time! What on earth are you thinking of?”

  Runcorn was startled. Had he really been so clumsy that Barclay already knew he was pursued? Apparently. Or was it the suspicions of a guilty man, always looking over his shoulder because he expected pursuit?

  The only honest answer now was to tell Faraday what he had learned.

  When he finished, Faraday stared at him, all the hectic color drained from his face. “Are you certain of this, Runcorn?” he asked.

  “I’m certain of all I’ve told you,” Runcorn replied. “I’m not yet sure what it means.”

  “It means poor Olivia was killed for it,” Faraday said sharply.

  Runcorn was still standing, cold and unhappy, yet again blocked from the fire by Faraday. “Yes, but by Newbridge, or Barclay?”

  “Find out,” Faraday commanded him. “And for the love of heaven, this time be discreet.”

  In the morning, Runcorn left early to begin again. The ground was rock hard from the frost and the grass edges were white. Even so, Melisande was waiting for him at the end of the road. He barely recognized her at first; she was so closely wrapped within her cloak that it hid the outline of her body and shielded her fa
ce. She seemed to be staring towards the sea, until she heard his boots crunching the ice, then she turned.

  “Good morning, Mr. Runcorn.” Even in so few words her voice was sharpened with fear.

  He felt that twist of emotion inside himself, but fiercer than before.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ewart.” It would be absurd to ask her if she was waiting for him. There was no other reason she would be standing here growing steadily colder. He searched her eyes, wide and dark with dread.

  She did not waste words. She was trembling with cold. “Alan told me that he had discovered why Mr. Newbridge abandoned Olivia so hastily, and why John also ceased to court her. I believe he told you also?” That was barely a question, but the disappointment was painful, a dull ache beneath the words.

  Temptation surged up inside him to tell her that it was he, not Faraday, who had found the truth, but he did not want to tell her until he had proven that it was not Barclay who had killed Olivia, but Newbridge. He drew in his breath to explain, and realized how intensely such an explanation was for his own sake. It was not she whose heart he longed to ease, but his own, because she thought he had let her down. He wished her to think well of him. Vanity, and above all, his own hunger.

  That was why Faraday had taken the credit for something he had not done, because he needed Melisande to think him cleverer than he was.

  Runcorn took a deep breath and swallowed it down. “Yes,” he said simply. “The child was hers. He died almost immediately, so she never needed to tell anyone else. And perhaps the loss was easier to bear if other people did not speak of it.”

  Melisande’s eyes swam with tears. She struggled to speak and failed. Her pity for Olivia was so intense it drowned out even her fear for Barclay. For moments they stood there in the ice and the widening morning light, overshadowed by the same aching grief. The sun sparkled on the frost, as if the rough grass were encrusted with diamonds. In the distance the sea was flat calm, its surface disturbed only by currents and little ruffles of breeze, like the weft of silk.