A Great Deliverance (21 page)

“There are contraceptives—”

“William’s Catholic, Inspector. There are no contraceptives.” She turned from the window to face them again. The light bled colour from her cheeks, effaced eyebrows and lashes, and deepened the creases from nose to mouth. If she sensed this, she made no move to avoid it. Rather, she remained, as if willing to allow her age to be exposed. She went on.

“But I really think, looking back on it, that it was sex, not conception, that frightened William. At any rate, I got him back to my bed eventually. And eight years after Gilly, Roberta was born.”

“If you had what you wanted—a second baby to love—why did you leave?”

“Because it began again. All of it. She wasn’t mine any more than Gillian had been. I loved my little girls, but I wasn’t allowed near them, not the way I wanted to be. I had nothing.” Although her voice quavered on the last word, she drew herself in, cradling her body tighter, and found control. “All I had once again was Darcy. My books.”

“So you left.”

“I woke up one morning just a few weeks after Roberta was born and I knew that if I stayed I would shrivel to nothing. I was nearly twenty-five. I had two children I wasn’t allowed to love and a husband who had begun to consult the Bible before dressing in the morning. I looked out the window, saw the trail leading to High Kel Moor, and knew I would leave that day.”

“Didn’t he try to stop you?”

“No. Of course I wanted him to. But he didn’t. I walked out of the door and out of his life, carrying just one valise and thirty-four pounds. I came to York.”

“He never came to see you? Never tried to follow you?”

She shook her head. “I never told him where I was. I just ceased to exist. But I’d ceased to exist so many years before for William that what did it matter.”

“Why didn’t you divorce him?”

“Because I never intended to marry again. I came to York longing for an education, not a husband. I planned to work for a while, to save money, to go to London or even emigrate to the States. But six weeks after I arrived in York, everything changed. I met Russell Mowrey.”

“How did you meet?”

She smiled at the memory. “They’d fenced off part of the city when they began the Viking digs.”

“Yes, I recall that.”

“Russell was a graduate student from London. He was part of the excavation team. I’d stuck my head through a bit of a hole in the fence to have a look at the work. And there was Russell. His first words to me were, ‘Jesus, a Norse goddess!’ and then he blushed to the roots of his hair. I think I fell in love with him then. He was twenty-six years old. He wore spectacles that kept slipping down his nose, absolutely filthy trousers, and a university jersey. When he walked over to speak to me, he slipped in the mud and fell directly onto his bottom.”

“Not much of a Darcy,” Lynley said kindly.

“No. So much more. We were married four weeks later.”

“Why didn’t you tell him about William?”

She knotted her brows, appeared to be searching for words that would enable them to understand. “Russell was an innocent. He had such … such an image of me. He saw me as a kind of Viking princess, a snow queen. How could I tell him I had two children and a husband that I’d left on a farm in the dales?”

“What would have changed if he’d known?”

“Nothing, I suppose. But at the time, I believed
everything
would have. I believed that he wouldn’t want me if he knew, that he wouldn’t be willing to wait for me through a divorce. I’d been looking for love, Inspector. And finally, here it was. Could I take a chance that it might escape me?”

“But you’re only two hours from Keldale here. Were you never worried that William might one day show up in your life? Even as a chance encounter on the street?”

“William never left the dales. Not once in the years that I knew him. He had everything there: his children, his religion, his farm. Why on earth would he ever come to York? Besides, I thought at first that we’d go to London. Russell’s family is there. I’d no idea that he’d want to settle here. But here we stayed. We had Rebecca five years later. Then William eighteen months after that.”

“William
?”

“You can imagine how I felt when Russell wanted to call him William. It’s his father’s name. What could I do but agree?”

“And you’ve been here, then, for nineteen years?”

“Yes,” she replied. “First in a small flat in the city centre, then a row house near Bishopthorpe Road, and last year we bought this house. We’d … saved for so long. Russell worked two jobs and I’ve my job at the museum as well. We’ve been,” she blinked back her first tears, “so happy. God, so happy. Until now. You’ve come for me, haven’t you? Or have you brought me word?”

“No one’s told you? You haven’t read about it?”

“Read about it? Has something … He isn’t …” Tessa looked from Lynley to Havers. It was obvious that she saw something in their faces, for her own face flashed fear before she went on. “The night Russell left, he was terribly angry. I thought that if only I said nothing, did nothing, it would work itself out. He’d come home and—”

Lynley suddenly understood that they were talking about two entirely different things. “Mrs. Mowrey,” he said, “do you not know about your husband?”

Her eyes widened, growing dark with apprehension. “Russell,” she whispered. “He left that Saturday the investigator found me. Three weeks ago. He’s not been home since.”

“Mrs. Mowrey,” Lynley said carefully, “William Teys was murdered three weeks ago. On Saturday night between ten and midnight. Your daughter Roberta was charged with the crime.”

If they had thought she might faint, they were wrong. She stared at them without speaking for nearly a minute, then turned back to the window. “Rebecca will be home soon,” she said tonelessly. “She comes home for lunch. She’ll ask about her father. She does every day. She knows something’s wrong, but I’ve managed to keep most of it from her.” A trembling hand touched her cheek. “I know Russell’s gone to London. I haven’t phoned his family because, of course, I didn’t want them to know anything was wrong. But I know he’s gone to them in London. I
know
.”

“Do you have a photograph of your husband?” Lynley asked. “His family’s London address?”

She swung on him. “He wouldn’t!” she cried passionately. “This is a man who has
never
lifted his hand to strike one of his own children! He was angry—yes, I’ve said that—but his anger was with
me
, not with William! He wouldn’t have gone, he couldn’t have—” She began to cry, horribly, shedding what were probably her first tears in three agonising weeks. Pressing her forehead against the window glass, she wept bitterly, as if she would never be consoled.

Havers got to her feet and left the room. Good God, where is she going? Lynley wondered, half-expecting a repeat of her disappearing act in the pub last night. But she returned moments later with a pitcher of orange juice and a glass.

“Thank you, Barbara,” he said.

She nodded, shot him a diffident smile, and poured the woman a glass of the liquid.

Tessa Mowrey took it but rather than drink, she clutched it as if it were a talisman. “Rebecca mustn’t see me like this. I’ve got to pull myself together. Must be stronger than this.” She saw the glass in her hand, took a sip, and grimaced. “I can’t abide tinned orange juice. Why do I have it in the house? Oh, Russell says that it’s not that bad. I suppose it isn’t, really.” When she turned back to Lynley, she looked, he saw, every single day of her forty-three years. “He did not kill William.”

“That’s what everyone in Keldale says of Roberta.”

She flinched. “I don’t think of her as my daughter. I’m sorry. I never knew her.”

“She’s been placed in a mental asylum, Mrs. Mowrey. When William was found, she claimed to have killed him.”

“Then if she’s
admitted
to the crime, why have you come to see me? If she says she killed William then certainly Russell…” Her voice drifted off. It was as if she had suddenly heard her own words and realised how eager she was to trade daughter for husband.

He could hardly blame her. Lynley thought of the barn stall, the ornate Bible, the photograph albums, the cool silence of the melancholy house. “Did you never see Gillian again?” he asked abruptly, waiting for a sign, the smallest indication that Tessa knew of Gillian’s disappearance. There was none.

“Never.”

“She never contacted you in any way?”

“Of course not. Even if she’d wanted to, William wouldn’t have allowed it, I’m sure.”

Probably not, thought Lynley. But once she ran off, once she cut the ties with her father, why had she not sought her mother then?

“Religious fanatic,” Havers declared decisively. She shoved her hair back behind her ears and gave her attention to the photograph she held. “But
this
one’s not half bad. She did okay on her second time round. Too bad she didn’t bother with a divorce.” Russell Mowrey smiled up at her from the photograph Tessa had given them. He was a nice-looking man in a three-piece suit, wife on his arm. Easter Sunday. Havers put it in the manila folder and gave herself back to the passing scenery. “At least we know why Gillian left.”

“Because of the father’s religion?”

“That’s the way I see it,” Havers replied. “Obviously, a combination of that and the second baby. There she’d been, for eight years the centre of her father’s life—Mum doesn’t appear to have counted for much—when all of a sudden a new baby arrives. It’s supposed to be Mummy’s, but Dad doesn’t trust Mummy to do right by her children, so he takes this one over as well. Mummy leaves and Gillian follows.”

“Not exactly, Havers. She waited eight years to go wherever she went.”

“Well, you can’t expect her to have run off when she was eight years old! She bided her time, probably hating little Roberta every second for stealing her dad.”

“That doesn’t make sense. First you say that Gillian left because she couldn’t abide her father’s religious fanaticism. Then you say she left because she’d lost his love to Roberta. Now what is it? She either loves him and wants to be his favourite again, or she can’t abide his religious devotion and feels she has to escape. You can’t have it both ways.”

“It’s not black and white!” Havers protested loudly. “These things never are!”

Lynley glanced at her, amazed by the affront in her voice. Her stubby features looked like paste. “Barbara—”

“I’m sorry! Dammit! I’m doing it all over again! Why do I bother? I’m no
good
at this. I
always
do it. I never—”

“Barbara,” he interrupted firmly.

She stared straight ahead. “Yes, sir?”

“We’re discussing the case, not arguing before a bar of justice. It’s fine to have an opinion. I want you to, in fact. I’ve always found it extremely helpful to talk a case over with someone.” But it was more than that, really. It was arguing, laughing, hearing the sweet voice say
Oh, you think you’re right, Tommy, hut I shall prove you wrong!
He felt loneliness settle on him like a cold, wet shroud.

Havers moved restlessly in her seat. With no music playing, the tension was screaming to be heard.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said at last. “I get into the fray and forget what I’m doing.”

“I understand.” He let the matter drop, his eyes following the meandering pattern that the stone walls made on the hillside across the dale from the road on which they travelled.

He thought about Tessa. He knew that he was trying to understand her and that he was ill-equipped to do so. Nothing in his life of Cornwall and Howenstow, of Oxford and Belgravia, even of Scotland Yard, explained the paucity of experience of life on a remote farm that would drive a girl of sixteen to believe that her only future lay in immediate marriage. And yet surely that was the foundation of what had happened. No romantic interpretation of the facts at hand—no reflections upon Heathcliff, no matter how apt—could hide the real explanation. The drudgery and sheer ennui of those weeks when she had been forced to stay home and help out had made an otherwise simple Yorkshire farmer look arresting by comparison. Thus, she merely moved from one trap into another. Married at sixteen, a mother before her seventeenth birthday. Wouldn’t any woman have wanted to escape such a life? Yet, if that was the case, why marry again in such a hurry?

Havers broke into his thoughts. An underlying note of urgency in her voice made Lynley glance at her curiously. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She swallowed noisily. “What I can’t see is the … Tessa’s shrine. The woman walks out on him—not that she didn’t appear to have every right to—and he sets up a virtual Taj Mahal of photographs in a corner of the sitting room.”

It suddenly dawned on Lynley. “How do we know
William
set up the shrine?”

Havers came to her own quick terms with the knowledge. “Either of the girls could have done it,” she responded.

“Who do you imagine?”

“It had to be Gillian.”

“As a bit of revenge? A little daily reminder to William that Mummy’d run off? A little knife inserted between the ribs since he’d started to favour Roberta?”

“Bet on it, sir,” Havers agreed.

They drove on for several miles before Lynley spoke again. “She could have done it, Havers. Something tells me she was desperate enough.”

“Tessa, d’you mean?”

“Russell was gone that night. She says she took aspirin and went directly to bed, but no one can verify it. She could have gone to Keldale.”

“Why kill the dog?”

“He wouldn’t have known her. He wasn’t there nineteen years ago. Who was Tessa to him? A stranger.”

“But decapitate her first husband?” Havers frowned. “Would have been easier to divorce him, I’d think.”

“No. Not for a Catholic.”

“Even so, Russell’s a better candidate if you ask me. Who knows where he went?” When Lynley didn’t reply, she added, “Sir?”

“I …” Lynley hesitated, studying the road ahead. “Tessa’s right. He’s gone to London.”

“How can you be certain of that?”

“Because I think I saw him, Havers. At the Yard.”

“So he
did
go to turn her in. I suppose she knew all along that he would.”