Anne Perry - A Christmas Beginning

Runcorn was stunned, as if he had walked face-first into a wall and the pain of it dizzied his senses. Naomi Costain with her strange, powerful face, and a late-born, illegitimate child, which she had murdered with her own hands. Why? To hide her adultery? The obvious thought. But perhaps the child had been misshapen, abnormal? He found himself blinking and his throat inexplicably tight and rough. Could that be forgiven, such a helpless child robbed of life? Or snatched from pain? Or was she only saving herself, her humiliation? And then to be faced with blackmail by Olivia? “I can’t do anything,” he said aloud. “You’ll need police authority to follow that.” It was not cowardice speaking, even though he was glad he had no jurisdiction here.

“I’ll get it for you,” Faraday said hoarsely. “Please, Runcorn? These people are my friends, my neighbors. I have no idea how to deal with a crime like this.”

Runcorn almost wanted to remind Faraday that it was he who had discovered this element of tragedy while Runcorn had not even guessed at it. He had talked with Naomi and seen nothing of this in her, no unfed hunger that consumed all honor and loyalty, no loss of her only child to whatever brutal end. His professional skills had failed him completely.

And it was Faraday, whose profound judgment he so despised, who had seen the answer. Faraday, who was going to marry Melisande.

He should be grateful, for her sake, that he was not the fool Runcorn had thought him. If he loved her, he was no fool.

He knew this thought should comfort him as he walked away down the hill, wind harder and traces of snow making a flurry of white in the gloom.

During the night the sense of his own failure deepened. He had come to Anglesey a stranger. He loved the vast silence disturbed only by the wind and the echo of waves on the shore. People here spoke more slowly, and there was a lilt of music in their voices, but he knew now that he only imagined he understood them. He had been as wrong as possible, not only about Olivia, who may have threatened to expose her own family, but also about Naomi, whom he had believed so strong but who had betrayed her husband, then her child, and finally Olivia. The one skill he believed he possessed had left him.

How did Faraday know about Olivia? Had Naomi admitted anything? Runcorn would not leave it like this, so many questions unanswered, so many of his own impressions mistaken.

As soon as he had dressed and had breakfast, he walked across the crisp frost and the pale fingers of new snow whitening the windward sides of the uneven ground. Far in the distance Snowdonia gleamed white.

He was admitted to the vicarage straight away, and Naomi came to the morning room where he had been asked to wait. He rose to his feet as she closed the door behind her and invited him to be seated again.

“Good morning, Mr. Runcorn,” she said gravely.

He struggled to remove all emotion from his face, even his voice. He was unnaturally stiff, but he could not help it. Defeat and an overwhelming sense of loneliness almost choked him.

“Good morning, Mrs. Costain.” What could he say to her that was not absurd? Obviously Faraday had not spoken to her yet. She was almost at the end, and she had no idea. Within months she could be hanged.

“What can I do for you? There is nothing further I can tell you.” Her face was bland, polite, not exactly at peace, but less scoured with grief than before, as if she were beginning to come to terms with the murder. Was she denying to herself what she had done, or was she merely a superb actress?

“Miss Costain had three suitors that I know of, ma’am: Mr. Faraday some time ago, then Mr. Newbridge, and most recently Mr. Barclay. She declined them all. Did you favor any of those for her?”

“No,” she said easily. “I had no desire that she should marry without love. Mere affection would never have been enough for Olivia. She would have been wretched with a good but tepid man like Alan Faraday. It would have made them both unhappy, because he would have been aware of his failure to please her and it would have both confused and hurt him. She was not wise enough to know how to hide it. Melisande Ewart is gentler, much older within herself. She will probably accept the inevitable and if she has tears of despair, she will hide them from him. She is also, I think, kinder than Olivia. She will bring out the best in Alan, and he will never know it was she who did it, nor will she ever say so.”

Runcorn was overtaken with a sense of loss, as if he were exiled far from all light and fire and the sound of laughter. He was too numb even to answer her.

“Newbridge is a good man, so far as I know,” she went on gravely, almost as if she were speaking as much to herself as to him. “But I cannot say that I like him. My husband chides me now for it. But regardless, I had no wish that Olivia should marry him if she did not wish to. He wants many children, in order to establish his family again. I am not sure Olivia wanted to be that kind of woman. If you are devoted to a man then it is a pleasure and a privilege to work beside him, but if you are not, it is an imprisonment, a lifelong denial of yourself.”

In his mind’s eye he saw the woman in green who had walked past, her head high, and he almost was glad she had escaped these loveless fates. Then he realized what he was thinking, and who had brought him to that vision, and he was disgusted with himself. What had happened to his basic instincts?

“And as for John Barclay,” Naomi went on. “Olivia did not refuse him, it was he who rejected her, suddenly and very bluntly.” Now there was pain in her voice, but not the anger Runcorn would have expected. It was like an old wound reopened, not the outrage of a new one. Again he had the certainty that there was something profound about Olivia that this woman was hiding from him, perhaps from everyone.

“Did she know Mr. Barclay before this recent courtship?” he asked, the matter suddenly urgent.

Now the anger was there in her eyes, blazing up for an instant. “No,” she said without hesitation. “Why do you ask?”

“It seems … brutal, if she did not rebuff him.”

“It was,” she agreed with a twist of her mouth. “But I do not think John Barclay is a nice man. He did not love Olivia, he wanted her, as a collector wants a rare and beautiful butterfly, to preserve it, not for its happiness. He will be content to put a pin through its body and capture its colors forever in death.”

Runcorn remembered Olivia’s body on the grave-side, stained with blood, and thought for a moment that he was going to be sick.

“I’m sorry,” Naomi said very quietly. “That was a bad thing for me to say. I apologize for it. Perhaps my grief is not as well-controlled as I imagined. Please forgive me.”

Faraday was wrong, he had to be. There was a deeper answer to find. Perhaps he, too, was trying to protect Melisande from the fact that her brother was a cruel and manipulative man. But Runcorn knew that it could not be done. No matter how much you love, covering evil and allowing the innocent to walk in the shadow of blame is not a path you can take. There is no light at the end of it.

“Thank you, Mrs. Costain,” he said gently. “Anger is like a knife, it can be dangerous when out of control, but you need it sometimes, to cut away what must go.”

Her eyes widened with a flare of surprise. “Are you still working on the case, Mr. Runcorn? I thought you had given up. I’m so glad I was mistaken.” The shadow was still there across her face; the lie she clung to.

“Yes. I’m still working,” he said, knowing that that, at least, was true.