Anne Perry - A Christmas Beginning

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.