A Christmas Beginning c-5 Read online

  Costain jerked back as if he had been hit.

  “Really!” Faraday protested.

  “Mr. Runcorn is quite right,” Naomi said softly, her voice sounding with a trace of hesitancy in the quiet room. “We must all put up with a little inconvenience or embarrassment if it is necessary to learn the truth. It is very good of you, Alan, to wish to protect us, and I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but we must face … whatever we must to put this behind us.”

  Faraday waited only a moment, then he turned again to Runcorn. He had no choice but to concede. He got it over with quickly. “Yes. Yes, I regret it, but that does seem to be the situation. Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to give us some of your time, and it is most honorable of you, when I assume you are on holiday. Naturally I shall require you to report to me regularly, not only anything that you may feel you have learned, but also, of course, your intentions for the next step. I had better advise you what we have done so far, and where you should proceed.”

  “Yes sir,” Runcorn said quietly. He had no intention whatsoever of taking instructions from Faraday, who was obviously as concerned with appearances and order as with the darker sides of truth.

  Faraday turned to Costain. “If I might speak alone with Runcorn for a few minutes?” he requested. “Is there somewhere suitable?”

  “Oh … yes, yes, of course.” Costain rose wearily to his feet. He looked like an old man, confused, stumbling in both mind and body, although he was barely over fifty. “If you would come this way.”

  Runcorn excused himself to Naomi, thanking her for her support, nodding to Warner, then he followed Faraday and Costain across the hall to a small study. The fire in this small room was only just dying, still offering considerable warmth, since Faraday didn’t resume a position in front of it. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn against the night and the spattering of rain on the glass was almost inaudible here. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Runcorn had a moment to spare in which to notice that, predictably, a large proportion of them were theological, a few on the history or geography of biblical lands, including Egypt and Mesopotamia.

  As soon as the door had closed behind Costain again, Faraday turned to Runcorn.

  Outside the thunder cracked again.

  “I appreciate your help, Runcorn, but let me make this perfectly clear, I will not have you taking over this investigation as if it were some London back-street. You will not cross-question these good and decent people about their lives as if they were criminals. They are the victims of a hideous tragedy, and deserving of every compassion we can afford them. Do you understand me?” He looked doubtful, as if already he was seeking a way to extricate himself from his decision to allow Runcorn to help.

  “Even in London, people are capable of honor and grief when someone they love is murdered,” Runcorn said hotly, his good intentions swept away by a protective anger for the people he had known, and for all the other victims of loss, whoever they were. The poor did not love any less or have any different protection from pain.

  Faraday flushed. “I apologize,” he said gruffly. “That was not what I meant to imply. But these people are my responsibility. You will be as discreet as you can, and report to me every time you make any discovery that could be relevant to Miss Costain’s death. Where do you propose to begin?”

  “With the family,” Runcorn replied. “First I would like to know far more about her than I do. Ugly as it is, she was killed by someone who was standing in front of her, and she was not running from him. She must have known him. Had a stranger accosted her alone at night, in the churchyard, she would have run away, or at the very least have fought. She did neither.”

  “For God’s sake, what are you suggesting?” Faraday said hoarsely. “That someone of her family butchered her? That is unspeakable, and I will not have you …”

  “I am stating the facts to you,” Runcorn cut across him. “Of course I will not put it in those terms to her family. What are you suggesting, sir? That we allow whoever it was to get away with it because looking for him might prove uncomfortable, or embarrassing?”

  Faraday was white-faced.

  Runcorn had a sudden idea. “If you allow me to ask the ugly questions, Sir Alan, it will at least relieve you of the blame for it. You may then be able to be of some comfort to these families afterwards.” He did not quite say that Faraday could blame Runcorn for any offense to their privacy, but the meaning was plain.

  Faraday seized it. “Yes, yes I suppose that is so. Then you had better proceed. But for heaven’s sake, man, be tactful. Use whatever sensitivity you have.”

  Runcorn bit back his response. “Yes, sir,” he said between his teeth. “I shall begin immediately with Mr. Costain, as soon as you have finished speaking with him yourself.”

  “For God’s sake!” Faraday exploded. “It’s already nearly eight o’clock in the evening. Let the poor man have a little peace. Have you no …”

  “No time to waste,” Runcorn concluded for him. “It will be no less upsetting tomorrow.”

  Faraday gave him a look of intense dislike, but he did not bother to argue any further.

  It was no more than quarter of an hour before the door opened and Costain came in alone.

  “Please sit down, sir,” Runcorn indicated the armchair opposite the desk.

  Costain obeyed. The angle of light from the gas lamp on the wall showed the ravages in his face with peculiar clarity.

  “I’m sorry to pursue this, Mr. Costain,” he began, and he meant it honestly. The vicar’s emotions vividly revealed themselves on his aging face. “I will make it as brief as I can.”

  “Thank you. I would be obliged if you did not have to trouble my wife with this. She and Olivia were …”—Costain’s voice caught and he needed a moment to regain control—“were very close, more like natural sisters, in spite of the difference in their ages,” he finished.

  For a moment there was life again in Costain’s face as memory flooded back. “They both loved the island. They would walk for miles, especially in the summer. Take a picnic and spend all day away, when duties allowed. My sister was especially fond of wild-flowers. We have many here that one does not find anywhere else. And of course birds. Olivia loved them, too. She would watch them ride the wind.”

  For an intensely vivid moment Runcorn remembered her face as she had passed him in the aisle of the church, and he found it easy to believe her heart had flown with the birds, her imagination far beyond the reach of earth. No wonder she had been killed with passion. She was the kind of woman who would stir uncontrollable feelings in others: inadequacy, failure, a sense of blindness and frustration, perhaps envy. Not love; love, however unrequited, did not destroy as Olivia had been destroyed.

  Costain had overcome his feelings again, at least enough to continue. “But I cannot see how that is of help to you, Mr. Runcorn. Olivia was … good-hearted but … I regret to say it, undisciplined. She had great compassion, no one was more generous or more diligent in caring for the needy of the parish, whether in goods or in friendship, but she had no true sense of duty.”

  Runcorn was confused. “Duty?” he questioned.

  “Of what is appropriate, of what is …” Costain hunted for the word. His face showed how acutely aware he was of their social difference as he searched for a way to explain what he meant without causing offense. “It was already late for her to marry,” he said with a slight flush in his cheeks. “She refused many perfectly good offers, without reason except her own … willfulness. I had hoped that she would accept Newbridge, but she was reluctant. She wanted something from him quite unrealistic, and I failed to persuade her.” The edge of pain in his voice was like a raw wound. “I failed her altogether,” he whispered.

  “I believe Mr. Barclay also courted her?” Runcorn asked, longing to fill the silence with something more than pity.

  “Oh yes. And he would have been an excellent match for her, but she showed no inclination to accept him, either.” Costain’s shoulders
bowed in confusion and defeat.

  Runcorn saw Olivia as a beautiful creature refusing to be bound by the walls of convention and other people’s perception of her duty. He remembered Melisande standing in the doorway of her brother’s house in London, wanting to help, because she had seen a man leaving the nearby house where a murder had taken place, and Barclay had ordered her inside because he was unwilling that either of them should become involved in something as ugly as murder. He did not care about the bruising to her conscience that she hid. It had probably not even occurred to him. Had he been thinking of her more practical welfare, trying to protect her from dangers she did not see? Or merely protecting himself?

  He saw in Costain a man imprisoned in his calling and his social station, bound to duties he had no capacity to meet. Perhaps no one could have. He was too filled with misery to offer Runcorn much more practical help.

  “Thank you, sir,” Runcorn said as gently as he could. “Would you please ask Mrs. Costain to spare me a few minutes.”

  Costain looked up sharply. “I asked you not to disturb my wife any further, Mr. Runcorn. I thought you understood that?”

  “I wish I could oblige you, sir, but I cannot. She may be able to tell me of things Miss Costain confided in her, a quarrel, someone who troubled her or pursued her …”

  “You are suggesting it was someone my sister knew! That is preposterous.” He stood up.

  Runcorn felt brutal. “It was someone she knew, Mr. Costain. The evidence makes that clear.”

  “Evidence? Faraday said nothing of that!”

  “I will describe it if you wish, but I think it is better if you do not have to hear it.”

  Costain closed his eyes and seemed to sway on his feet. Perhaps it was only a wavering of the lamplight. “Please do not tell my wife this.” His voice was no more than a whisper. “Is this why you think Faraday inadequate to the investigation?”

  Runcorn was caught off guard. He had had no idea his opinion was so clear. He certainly had not meant it to be. Should he lie? Costain deserved better, and he had already seen far more of the truth.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then do what you have to.” Costain turned and made his way to the door, fumbling with the handle before he could open it.

  Naomi Costain came in a few moments later and closed the door behind her before she sat down. Her face was pale, and in the lamplight the stain of recent tears was visible, even though she had done her best to disguise it. There was a kind of hopelessness in her more eloquent than all the words of loss she might have spoken.

  “I will be as brief as I can, ma’am.” Runcorn felt a deep sense of intrusion.

  “There is no need to,” she replied. “Time is of no importance to me. What can I tell you that would help?”

  “Mr. Costain said that you and your sister-in-law were very close.” He hated his own words, they sounded so trite. “If I knew more about her, I might understand the kind of person who would wish her harm.”

  She stared into the distance for so long he began to think she was not going to answer, possibly even that she had not understood that it was a question. He drew in his breath to try a different approach when at last she ended the silence.

  “She had imagination,” she said slowly, testing each word to be certain it was what she meant. “She would never be told what to think, and my husband found that … willful, as if she were deliberately disobedient. I don’t believe it was disobedience. I think it was a kind of honesty. But it made her difficult at times.”

  Runcorn knew little of society, especially on an island like this. He needed to understand the jealousies, the ambitions, the feelings that could escalate into the kind of savagery he had seen perpetrated against her.

  “Was there anyone she challenged?” he asked, fumbling for a way to ask what he wanted without hurting her even more. “She was beautiful. Were there men who admired her, women who were rivals?”

  Naomi smiled. “You knew her?”

  He felt as if some opportunity had passed him by. “No. I saw her once, in church.”

  The smile faded.

  “Oh. Yes, of course. I expect people were envious. It happens, especially against those who do not conform to the way of life expected of them. She did not have many friends, she grew very impatient sometimes. It is not a good quality. I used to hope she would learn to curb it, in time.” She sighed. “She liked Mrs. Ewart. At first I thought it was just because she was from London, and brought a touch of glamour with her. She could speak of the latest plays and books, music, and that sort of thing. But then I saw it was deeper than that. They understood something that I did not.” A sadness filled her face again, a kind of loneliness that Runcorn found, to his amazement, that he understood. It was a knowledge of exclusion, as if someone had gone and left her alone in the dark.

  “Was she happy?” he asked impulsively.

  She looked at him with surprise. “No.” Then instantly she regretted it. “I mean that she was restless, she was looking for something. I … no, really, please disregard me, I am talking nonsense. I have no idea who could have been so deranged by envy or fear, as to have done such a thing.”

  He had the overpowering feeling that she was lying. She knew something she was not prepared to tell him. “The best thing you can do for her, Mrs. Costain, is to help us find who killed her,” he said urgently.

  She rose to her feet, her face weary, her eyes very direct. “Do you believe that it would be best, Mr. Runcorn? How little you know us, or perhaps anyone. You are a good man, but you do not know the wind or the waves of the heart. Landlocked,” she added, walking to the door. “You are all landlocked.”

  It was too late for Runcorn to see anyone else that night, and his mind was in too much confusion to absorb any more. He thanked Costain, and went out into the darkness to walk back to Mrs. Owen’s lodging house. The rain had stopped and the wind was bitter, but he was thankful to be alive. He liked the clean smell of the sea, wild as it was, and the absence of human sounds. There were no voices, no clip of horses’ hooves, no rattle of wheels, only the hoot of a tawny owl.

  It was difficult to gain an interview with Newbridge and it took Runcorn the best part of the morning before he finally stood face-to-face with him in his withdrawing room. The house was old and comfortable. Possibly it had stood in those grounds for two centuries or more, occupied by the one family in times both fat and lean. There were portraits on the walls that bore the same cast of features back to the times of Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War. They were dressed in the ruffles and lace of the Cavaliers. There were no grim-faced, white-collared Puritans.

  Some of the furniture had been magnificent in its time, but it now bore marks of heavy use—legs were uneven, one or two surfaces were stained and needed refinishing. But Runcorn had time to notice no more than that before he was aware of Newbridge’s impatience.

  “What is it you want, Mr. Runcorn?” There was a thickness to his voice and he moved his weight from one foot to the other as though he were anxious to be elsewhere. “I have nothing I can tell you about poor Olivia’s death. If I had, I would have told Faraday, for God’s sake! Is it not bad enough that we have to live with this tragedy without having to drag out all our memories and our grief over and over again for strangers?” He stood leaning against the mantelshelf, an elegant man, tall and a little lean, with thick wavy hair that grew high from his forehead. His eyes were hazel, deep set, and there was the thin, angry line to his mouth that Runcorn had first noticed in church.

  Runcorn found his tolerance already stretched. Loss had different effects on people, and most of them were not attractive. In men it often turned to anger, a kind of suppressed fury as if they had been dealt a blow.

  Runcorn bit back his own emotions. “In order to have some better idea of who might have killed her, sir, I need to know more about her. Her family are overweighed with grief just now, and of course they see only one side of her. It is very difficult to speak anything but good of love
d ones you mourn. And yet they were also human. She was not killed by accident. Someone was consumed by an unholy rage, and stood face-to-face with her, and even at the last moment, she did not run away. That needs explaining.”

  Newbridge was very pale and his chest was rising and falling as if he had climbed to a great altitude and was struggling for breath.

  “Are you saying that something in her nature provoked the act, Mr. Runcorn?” he said at last.

  “Do you think that impossible?” Runcorn kept his voice low, as though they were confiding in each other.

  “Well … it’s … you place me in a terrible situation,” Newbridge protested. “How can I observe any decency, and answer such a question?”

  “There was no decency in the way she was killed, or indeed, that she was killed at all,” Runcorn pointed out.

  Newbridge sighed. His face was even paler. “Then you force me in honor to speak more frankly than I would have wished. But if you repeat it to her family, I shall deny it.”

  Runcorn nodded very slightly.

  “She was charming,” Newbridge said, looking somewhere away from Runcorn into a distance only he could see. “And beautiful, but I imagine you know that. She was also childish. She was twenty-six, an age when most women are married and have children, and yet she refused to grow up.” His body stiffened.

  “She would not take any responsibility for herself, which placed an unfair burden upon her brother. I think she took advantage of the fact that he is childless, to remain immature herself, and charge him with her care long past the time when she should have accepted that burden herself.”

  “Do you think Reverend Costain resented this?”

  “He is too good a man to have refused to care for her,” Newbridge answered. “And frankly, I think he indulged her. His sense of obligation as a Christian minister was out of proportion. She knew that and took advantage of it.”