‘It would have been humiliating for anyone to be treated like that,’ Rhiannon continued, ‘but it was only a matter of time before Edwin had a fit up there in front of everyone, like some sort of freak-show entertainment. We were there once when it happened. Everyone was laughing or shouting obscenities at him, and the noise was unbearable. None of the attendants did anything to help. If anything, I think they were grateful for the distraction.’
Penrose glanced at Gwyneth. She had closed her eyes and he could only imagine the pictures she was seeing in her mind. ‘What happened to Edwin?’ he asked quietly.
‘He had a fit one night and hit his head, alone in a cell where they’d put him as a punishment for something. God knows what. He was supposed to be under constant supervision, but he’d been dead for nine hours by the time someone found him.’ She took Gwyneth’s hand and held it. ‘He was just a young man, Mr Penrose, and so sweet-natured. Is it really any wonder that she didn’t want that for Taran, that she’d do anything to avoid it?’
Penrose knew that she was pleading with him for her friend’s sake, but he doubted that any legal recrimination would be as harsh as the one Gwyneth had given herself. ‘It was all right while I was there to protect Taran,’ Gwyneth said quietly, as if she had read Penrose’s thoughts, ‘but I knew they’d take him away if anything happened to me‚ and I never expected to live a long life. Now, every day I wake up is another day of guilt for the time he could have had, and look what it’s all led to.’
‘Mrs Draycott, you can’t hold yourself responsible for every evil thing that David Franks has ever done,’ he said. ‘The murders he committed in America are . . .’
The rest of his sentence was lost in the cry of protest from the bed. Gwyneth Draycott clutched desperately at the sheets and tried to sit up. ‘Please leave now,’ Rhiannon begged, looking at Penrose. ‘She needs to rest. She’s had so little sleep since she heard about David‚ and she’s more likely to have an attack if she’s tired.’
Penrose did as he was asked and waited outside on the landing. Another flight of stairs led up to an attic room‚ and, through the open door, he caught sight of what looked like a child’s nursery. Rhiannon was still occupied with Gwyneth, so he climbed the steps and looked inside. There were toys lying on the floor by the window: stuffed animals, tin soldiers, a wooden Noah’s Ark, all the more poignant because this was not the house where Taran had lived, but where he had died. What caught Penrose’s attention, however, was a collection of small carved figures, arranged in groups on a long table down one wall. He walked over to look at them more closely and saw that each arrangement represented an everyday scene: a family having a meal‚ a classroom of children‚ a woman reading a bedtime story. It was a life lived out in miniature, the story of growing up which every mother took for granted but which had been denied to Gwyneth.
‘She’s lived in that world more and more these past few years.’ Penrose had been too absorbed in what he was looking at to notice Rhiannon’s footsteps on the stairs. ‘It’s as if she can’t face reality any more; hardly surprising, I suppose. David made all those figures for her. He was always clever like that.’ She picked up one or two of the other toys and tidied them away in a chest. ‘David was the perfect son she never had.’ She saw his face and tried to explain. ‘In Gwyn’s eyes, I mean. He was always so full of life – handsome, bright, strong, successful. Everything she had once wished for Taran she saw fulfilled in him. She had watched him grow up, remember. Every summer the Gypsies came back here, he spent more time with her‚ and he never really wanted to leave. From Gwyneth’s point of view, his mother was dead‚ and it was safe for her to care for him as a son, free from all the fears that tainted her love for her real child. After what happened to Taran, theirs was the ultimate bond, I suppose: you don’t share a secret like that without an enormous amount of trust on both sides.’
‘Why didn’t David stay with Gwyneth after his father was killed?’
‘That’s what both of them wanted‚ but Grace didn’t think it was safe for him here‚ and she asked Bella to take him. Looking back, I wonder now if the two of them suspected the truth and got him as far away as they could. Either way, it was the worst possible thing for Gwyneth‚ and she always resented Bella for taking him from her.’
‘What about when he came back to England in the twenties?’
‘He lived in London‚ but he visited Gwyneth all the time, I gather. Grace was dead by then‚ and Gwyneth had moved back here, but she and David had always kept in touch. Just before the war, when he went to America for the second time, he begged her to go with him. He’d inherited Bella’s money‚ and he offered to move us both out there where we’d be safe, but she wouldn’t leave here because of Taran. David saw that as a choice, I think, although if he resented it, he never said.’
‘Did she know what he was doing in America?’
‘No.’ Penrose looked doubtfully at her and she relented a little. ‘You saw her reaction earlier when you mentioned it‚ and it’s the same if I try to talk to her. She’s in denial, and I suspect she always has been. Every so often, he came back here‚ and there seemed to be a pattern to his visits: he’d arrive troubled and withdrawn, stay a few weeks and then go back like his old self. My guess is that he came here whenever he had killed, but that’s all it is – a guess. He never told me anything‚ and I would swear that he never spoke to Gwyneth about his crimes either. He didn’t need to confess to find peace here. This was always his sanctuary.’
‘Somewhere he could come to be forgiven,’ Penrose said, trying to keep any note of judgement out of his voice.
‘More than that. Somewhere he could come to be loved for what he was, where there was nothing
to
forgive.’
‘And you? You’re obviously an intelligent woman; was it so easy to turn a blind eye?’
‘He frightened me.’ She said it with such feeling that Penrose regretted his naivety in even asking the question. ‘Particularly towards the end. He was coming back here more often‚ and I knew he was out of control. He had no affection for me other than as the person who cared for Gwyneth. Would you have challenged him if you were in my shoes, or done anything braver than pray for him to be caught?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I would.’
She glanced round the attic and gave a shudder. ‘I’m sure you have more questions‚ but do you mind if we go downstairs? I hate this room.’
In truth, Penrose was glad to leave it too. ‘Where do you fit into this, Mrs Erley?’ he asked bluntly when they were both seated back in the kitchen. She frowned at his use of the name, but said nothing. ‘The story is that you ran off with Henry Draycott all those years ago, and yet here you are caring so fondly for his wife. You didn’t leave here with him, did you?’
‘No.’
‘Were you even having an affair with him?’
‘He paid me for sex, Mr Penrose. You’ll have to decide what you’d like to call that relationship.’ She softened, realising perhaps that sarcasm was not the best line to take with so little in her favour; privately, Penrose admired her spirit, although he would never have admitted as much. ‘As I said, Gwyneth and I were brought up together. My parents died when I was very young‚ and hers were kind enough to take me in. We were roughly the same age, and we took to each other straight away. Had we been real sisters, I doubt we would have been closer‚ and we’ve stayed friends all our lives.’
‘Did she know about your arrangement with her husband?’
‘Of course she did. She had always been honest with Henry about what their marriage would be if it went ahead: they would never be husband and wife in the truest sense‚ and he could never expect children from her, but she would care for him and look after his house and turn a blind eye when he looked for sex elsewhere.’
‘And that’s where you came in.’
‘Yes. It was an arrangement that suited us all for a while. I’d married for what I thought was love when I was very young, but it didn’t take me long to discover that he was a bastard and I was a fool. I won’t bore you with a list of his qualities except to say that he drank, was handy with his fists and extremely possessive in that one-sided way which comes naturally to so many men.’ In spite of the circumstances, Penrose suppressed a smile. ‘We lived next door to his family, and sometimes I found it hard to remember whether I’d married him or his mother. My plan was to make enough money to leave him and start again somewhere else, and Gwyneth made sure I was well paid for my services to her husband.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘We didn’t take into account the fact that Henry loved Gwyneth to the point of obsession. Sex with me – or any other woman, for that matter – was never going to satisfy him in the long term. He would have agreed to anything to marry her, but he always believed that he’d win her round.’
‘Hadn’t she explained why those conditions were there?’
‘Yes, of course. She wouldn’t have been able to hide her illness for long in a marriage. One day, when she was sick of Henry trying to persuade her to sleep with him, she took him to the Castle to see what sort of life her brother was living, but even that wasn’t enough: Henry couldn’t stop himself. He forced her to give him what he wanted‚ and, once he had crossed that line, he wouldn’t stop. It was only a matter of time before she fell pregnant, and she was terrified.’
‘Did she know that David had seen it happen?’
‘What?’ She stared at him in horror.
‘It’s in his confession.’
‘She had no idea. Good God, she’d have died of shame if she’d known; she was reluctant even to tell me, but she was desperate.’
‘So what did being desperate lead her to do? Or lead
you
to do? Did you blackmail him?’
She laughed scornfully. ‘With what? She was his wife, for God’s sake. No man would have blamed him for taking what he was entitled to.’ Penrose wanted to argue, but he remembered what Marta had said and knew in his heart that she was right. ‘She could have killed him, I suppose, but she wasn’t capable of that, so the only way round it was to make him as afraid as she was. It was a way out for both of us.’ She avoided his eyes for the first time, and he guessed she was either searching for words or deciding how much to tell him. ‘Henry liked his sex on the rough side,’ she said eventually. ‘I imagine Gwyneth’s resistance made things more interesting for him. He was certainly never very considerate with me‚ and I earned my money. He particularly enjoyed knocking me about or having his hands round my throat. One day, I simply didn’t get up. I let him think he’d gone too far.’
‘He thought he’d killed you?’
Even as he said it, Penrose doubted his own interpretation of her words, but she nodded. ‘I can see what you’re thinking; I never thought he’d be that stupid, either. But he panicked, and nobody acts rationally in a situation like that. He was horrified at what he’d done‚ and he would have agreed to anything to get away with it. Gwyneth made him promise to leave. If he went immediately and swore never to come back, she said she’d hide my body and tell everyone we’d run off together. As you can imagine, it didn’t take much consideration. Rightly or wrongly, murder is a capital offence and adultery isn’t; he barely stopped to pack a bag.’
‘He died thinking he was a killer?’ As contemptible as he found Henry Draycott’s behaviour, Penrose could not reconcile what had happened to him with his own personal sense of justice. Whatever else he had failed at, Draycott had excelled in the role of scapegoat for the rest of his life, even in his own mind, and David Franks’s undertaking at Portmeirion had been made so much easier as a result. Franks had gambled on the human readiness to judge, and he had been right. Rhiannon must have sensed his disapproval because she made no effort to defend what she and Gwyneth had done. ‘Who else knew about this?’
‘David and his father. I had to leave quickly – it was only a matter of time before Gareth Erley came knocking at the door, demanding to know where Henry Draycott had taken his wife – and they helped me get away. Tobin was pleased to do it. There was no love lost between him and my husband. The feud was long-standing, and I expect you know how it ended.’
‘What about Bella Hutton? Did she know?’
‘No. She believed that Henry had run off with me at first. Then Gwyneth got a letter from her, saying she knew what had really happened and that Henry couldn’t be allowed to get away with murder. This was back in the thirties, just before Henry died. It wasn’t the truth at all, of course. David must have put it into her head.’
‘Because he knew that Bella would do something about it and he could use that to destroy them both?’ She shrugged. ‘Did you know what David was planning to do that weekend, Mrs Erley?’
‘No, absolutely not. I hadn’t seen him since I left here, and he was still just a boy then. All I knew was that Gwyneth had been in touch to say that it was safe for me to come back – if I wanted to.’
‘Safe because Henry and Bella would soon be past caring whether you were dead or alive.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she repeated calmly. ‘I just knew that Gwyneth was getting worse and she needed someone to care for her. I wanted to make up for all the years – all those difficult years with Taran – when I couldn’t be there for her.’
‘A kind of penance for not being around to stop her making that terrible decision?’
‘If you like, yes.’
‘So you were back here by the time the murders took place?’
‘I came back the following morning.’
What excellent timing, Penrose thought. ‘And did you go to Portmeirion that weekend?’ If Henry Draycott had been the third murder victim mentioned in Franks’s confession, it was not inconceivable that Rhiannon Erley had been waiting in that Bell Tower to help him on his way while Franks was conspicuous on the terrace. It would have been risky, but she would just have had time to get down the steps and out before he arrived at the scene.
‘No. I’ve
never
been there.’
She had no trouble meeting his eye, and Penrose believed her. ‘Did Gwyneth know about the murders in advance?’
Rhiannon hesitated. ‘She knew something was up when she saw Henry outside the house. It terrified her – she thought he’d discovered the truth and come back to punish her. She told me that she’d telephoned David at the hotel to find out what was happening and he just told her not to worry. She trusted him to protect her.’