"Maybe there's a portrait in the attic,"Havers replied.
Lynley glanced at her in surprise. Thus far today, she had been so
markedly diligent about behaving appropriately, about cooperating
completely and promptly with his every order, that to hear her break
away from that and say something amusing was a bit of a shock. A nice
one, in fact. "Honours to you, Sergeant,"he chuckled. "Let's see what
Mrs. Mowrey has to say."
She met them at the front door, looking from one to the other in
confusion and—was it veiled just behind the eyes?—a touch of fear. "Good
morning,"she said. Down from the roof terrace, she looked at least more
like a woman approaching middle age. But the hair was still
sunny-blonde, the fi gure slight, the skin lightly freckled and
virtually unlined.
Lynley showed her his warrant card. "Scot
land Yard CID. May we come in, Mrs. Mowrey?"
She looked from Lynley to Havers's grim face and back again. "Of
course."Her voice was quite even, polite and warm. But there was a
hesitation, a rigidity in her movements, that suggested strong emotion
withheld.
She led them to the left, through an open door that took them into the
sitting room, where she gestured wordlessly at the furniture, beckoning
them to sit. It was a well-furnished, tasteful room, with pieces of a
modern design, pine and walnut that mingled with subdued autumn colours.
A clock was ticking somewhere, light and rapid like a racing pulse.
Here was none of the riotous disorder of Olivia Odell nor the mechanical
precision of Gembler Farm. Rather, this room was obviously the
gathering place for a congenial family, with informal photographs
displayed, souvenirs of trips, and a stack of boxed games and cards
shelved among books.
Tessa Mowrey chose a chair in the farthest corner where the light was
weakest. She sat down on its edge, her back upright, her legs crossed,
her hands folded in her lap. She wore a plain gold wedding band. She
didn't ask why Scotland Yard had come calling. Rather, she followed
Lynley with her eyes as he walked to the mantel and took note of the
photographs that were its display.
"Your children?"he asked. There were two of them, a girl and a boy,
pictures taken on a family holiday in St. Ives. He recognised the
familiar sweep of the bay, the grey and white buildings on the shore,
and the assortment of boats left beached at low tide.
"Yes,"she responded. She volunteered nothing else. Quiescent, she
awaited the inevitable. The silence continued. Lynley allowed it to do
so. Eventually, sheer nervousness compelled her to go on.
"Has Russell telephoned you?"There was an edge of despair in her voice.
It was dull-sounding, as if she'd experienced the full range of grief
and there was nothing left in her, no depth of emotion to plummet
further. "I thought he might. Of course, it's been three weeks. I'd
begun to hope he was only punishing me till we sorted everything
out."She stirred uneasily when Sergeant Havers took out her notebook.
"Oh, must you?"she asked
faintly.
"I'm afraid so,"Lynley replied.
"Then I'll tell you everything. It's best."She looked down at her hands and tightened their grip on each other.
Odd, Lynley thought, how as members of the same species we inevitably
rely on the same set of gestures for our nonverbal signals of distress. A
hand raised to the throat, arms cradling the body protectively, a quick
adjustment of clothing, a flinching to ward off a psychic blow. Tessa,
he saw, was gathering strength now to get through this ordeal, as if one
hand could give the other a transfusion of courage through the simple
expedient of fi ngers intertwined. It seemed to work. She looked up, her
expression defi ant.
"I had just turned sixteen when I married him. Can you understand what
it's like to be married to a man eighteen years older than yourself when
you're only sixteen? Of course you can't. No one can. Not even
Russell."
"You didn't want to stay on in school?"
"I'd planned to. But I'd left school to help on the farm for a few weeks
when Dad's back went bad. It was only a temporary arrangement. I was
supposed to return in a month. Marsha Fitzalan gave me work to do so
that I wouldn't fall behind. But I fell behind, and there was William."
"How do you mean?"
"He'd come to buy a ram from Dad. I took him out to see it. William
was…very handsome. I was romantic. He was Heathcliff come to claim Cathy
at last, as far as I was concerned."
"Surely your father had some concern about his sixteen-year-old daughter
wanting to marry? And to marry a man so much older than herself?"
He did. Mother as well. But I was stubborn, and William was responsible,
respectable, and strong. I think they believed that if they didn't let
me marry him, I would turn out wild and go desperately bad in one way or
another. So they gave their consent, and we married."
"What happened to the marriage?"
"What does a sixteen-year-old girl know about marriage, Inspector?"she
asked in answer. "I wasn't even certain how babies got themselves born
when I married William. You'd think a farm girl would have a bit more
sense, but you have to remember that I spent most of my free time with
the Brontës. Charlotte, Anne, and Emily were always a bit vague when it
came down to the details. But I found out quickly enough. Gillian was
born before my seventeenth birthday. William was thrilled. He adored
her. It was as if his life began the moment he saw Gilly."
"Yet a number of years passed before you had a second child."
"That's because Gilly changed everything between us."
"How?"
"Somehow she—this tiny, fragile baby— made William discover religion and nothing was quite the same after that."
"I've somehow got the impression he was always religious."
"Oh no. Not till Gillian. It was as if he couldn't quite be a good
enough father, as if he had to purify his soul to be worthy of a child."
"How did he do it?"
She laughed shortly at the memory, but the sound was regretful and
unamused. "The Bible, confession, daily communion. Within a year of our
marriage, he became the backbone of St. Catherine's and a devoted
father."
"And there you were, a teenager, trying to live with a baby and a saint."
"That's exactly what it was like. Except that I didn't have to worry so
much about the baby. I wasn't quite good enough to care for William's
child. Or perhaps not holy enough because, at any rate, he mostly cared
for her himself."
"What did you do?"
"I retreated to my books."She had sat nearly motionless through the
initial part of their conversation, but now she moved restlessly,
getting up and pacing across the room to look out the bay window where
York Minster loomed in the distance. But instead of the cathedral,
Lynley guessed that Tessa saw the past. "I dreamt that William would
become Mr. Darcy. I dreamt that Mr. Knightley would sweep me off my
feet. I hoped that any day I might meet Edward Rochester if I only
believed enough that my dreams were real."She crossed her arms in front
of her as if that could ward off the pain of that time. "I wanted
desperately to be loved. How I wanted to be loved! Can you possibly
understand that, Inspector?"
"Who couldn't understand?"Lynley replied.
"I thought that if we had a second child, we would each have someone special to love. So I…I seduced William back to our bed."
"Back?"
"Oh yes, back. He'd left me shortly after Gilly was born and had begun
to sleep elsewhere. On the couch, in the sewing room, anywhere but with
me."
"Why?"
"He used as an excuse the fact that Gilly's birth had been so hard on
me. He didn't want me to become pregnant and go through the torture
again."
"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?"
