Elizabeth George - A Great Deliverance

In response, he only heard breathing, harsh and rapid, that told him a living creature was on the other side of the grill.

“And did Gillian confess? Or was she too frightened? Did you talk to her about what her father did to her? Did you try to help her?”

“I…” The voice sounded as if it were coming from a great distance. “Understand and forgive.”

“That’s what you told her? Understand? Forgive? What about Roberta? Was she supposed to understand and forgive as well? Was a sixteen-year-old girl supposed to learn to accept the fact that her father raped her, made her pregnant, that he then murdered her child? Or was that your idea, Father?”

“I didn’t know about the baby. I didn’t know! I didn’t know !” The voice was frantic.

“But you knew once you found it in the abbey. You damn well knew. You chose Pericles , Father Hart. You damn well knew.”

“He…he never confessed to that. Never!”

“And what would you have done if he had? What exactly would his penance have been for the murder of his child? And it was murder. You know it was murder.”

“No. No!”

“William Teys carried that baby from Gembler Farm to the abbey. He couldn’t wrap it in anything because anything he used might have been traced back to him. So he carried it naked. And it died. You knew when you saw it whose baby it was, how it got to the abbey. You chose Pericles for the epitaph. Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke . You damn well knew.”

“He said…after that…he swore he was cured.”

“ Cured ? A miraculous recovery from sexual deviance, nicely engineered by the death of his infant child? Is that what you thought? Is that what you wanted to think? He was recovered, all right. His idea of recovery was that he’d stopped raping Roberta. But listen to me, Father, because this is on your conscience and by God you shall hear me, he stopped nothing else.”

“No!”

“You know it’s the truth. He was addicted. The only problem was that he needed a fresh young fix for his habit. He needed Bridie. And you were going to let it happen.”

He swore to me-”

“He swore ? On what? The Bible that he used to make Gillian believe she had to give her body to her father? Is that what he swore on?”

“He stopped confessing. I didn’t know. I-”

“You knew. From the moment he started on Bridie, you knew. And when you went to the farm and saw what Roberta had done, the real truth came crashing right down, didn’t it?”

There was a stifled sob. And then growing out of it a keening of grief that rose like the wail of Jacob and broke on the utterance of three nearly incoherent words. “ Mea…mea culpa! ”

“Yes!” Lynley hissed. “Through your fault, Father.”

“I couldn’t…it was the silence of the confessional. It’s a holy oath.”

“There is no oath more important than life. There is no oath more important than the ruin of a child. You saw that, didn’t you, when you went to the farm? You knew that it was finally time to break the silence. So you wiped off the axe, you got rid of the knife, and you came to Scotland Yard. You knew the real truth would come out that way, the truth you lacked the courage to reveal.”

“Oh God, I…understand and forgive.” The whisper was broken.

“Not for this. Not for twenty-seven years of physical abuse. For two ruined lives. For the death of their dreams. There is no understanding. There is no forgiveness. By God, not for this.” He shoved open the door of the confessional and left.

Behind him a querulous voice rose in agonising prayer. “‘Fret not thyself because of evildoers…they shall soon be cut down like the grass…trust in the Lord…he shall give thee the desires of thy heart…evildoers shall be cut off…’”

Scarcely able to breathe, Lynley fl ung open the church door and stepped out into the air.

Lady Helen was leaning against the edge of a lichened sarcophagus, watching Gillian, who stood at the small, distant grave under the cypress trees, her cropped blonde head bent in contemplation or prayer. She heard Lynley’s footsteps but did not stir, not even when he joined her and she felt the sure, steady pressure of his arm against her own.

“I saw Deborah,” he said at last.

“Ah.” Her eyes remained on Gillian’s slight form. “I thought you might see her, Tommy. I hoped you wouldn’t but I did think you might.”

“You knew they were here in Keldale. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Still she looked away from him, but for a moment she lowered her eyes. “What was there to say, really? We’d said it already. So many times.” She hesitated, wanting to let it go, to let the subject die between them once and for all. But the backward abysm of time that constituted the many years of their friendship would not allow her to do so. “Was it dreadful for you?” she made herself ask.

“At fi rst.”

“And then?”

“Then I saw that she loves him. As you did once.”

A regretful smile touched her lips briefl y. “Yes. As I did once.”

“Where did you find the strength to let St. James go, Helen? How on earth did you survive it?”

“Oh, I muddled through somehow. Besides, you were always there for me, Tommy. You helped me. You were always my friend.”

“As you’ve been mine. My very best friend.”

She laughed softly at that. “Men say that about their dogs, you know. I’m not sure I ought to be flattered by the appellation.”

“But are you?” he asked.

“Most decidedly,” she replied. She turned to him then and searched his face. The exhaustion was there as it had been before, but the weight of sorrow was lessened. Not gone, that would not happen quickly, but dissolving and leading him out of the past. “You’re beyond the worst of it now, aren’t you?”

“I’m beyond the worst. I think, in fact, I’m ready to go on.” He touched the fall of her hair and smiled.

The lych-gate opened and over Lynley’s shoulder Lady Helen saw Sergeant Havers coming into the graveyard. Her steps slowed momentarily when she saw them talking tranquilly together, but she cleared her throat as if in warning of her intrusion and strode towards them quickly, her shoulders squared.

“Sir, you’ve a message from Webberly,” she said to Lynley. “Stepha had it at the lodge.”

“A message? What sort?”

“His usual cryptogram, I’m afraid.” She handed the paper to him. “‘ID positive. London verifies. York informed last P.M.,’” she recited. “Does it make sense to you?”

He read the message over, folded the paper, and looked bleakly off through the graveyard to the hills beyond. “Yes,” he replied, but the words were not coming easily to him, “it makes perfect sense.”

“Russell Mowrey?” Havers asked perceptively. When he nodded, she went on. “So he did go to London to turn Tessa in to Scotland Yard. How strange. Why not turn her in to the York police? What could Scotland Yard-”

“No. He’d gone to London to see his family, just as Tessa guessed. But he never made it farther than King’s Cross Station.”

“King’s Cross Station?” Havers repeated.

“That’s where the Ripper got him, Havers. His picture was on the wall in Webberly’s office.”

He went to the lodge alone. He walked down Church Street and stood for a moment on the bridge as he had done only the night before. The village was hushed, but, as he took a final look at Keldale, a door slammed nearby. A little red-haired girl hurtled down the back steps of her house and darted to a shed. She disappeared, emerging moments later, dragging a large sack of feed on the ground.