Anne Perry - A Christmas Beginning

Runcorn felt gradually sicker with every new piece of information. It looked as if Barclay could have killed Olivia, and was carefully making it appear that Newbridge had.

In the evening he met with Faraday.

Faraday was angry and embarrassed, his face was pink not only from the warmth of the room, but from the high flush of emotion.

“You’ve been investigating John Barclay,” he said as soon as Runcorn had closed the door. “For God’s sake, man, if you felt you had to do it, could you not at least have been a little more careful? I told you he had discovered Mrs. Costain’s secret, I didn’t expect you to tread exactly in his footsteps, and then all but imply he was incriminated in it! He’d never even been to Anglesey at that time! What on earth are you thinking of?”

Runcorn was startled. Had he really been so clumsy that Barclay already knew he was pursued? Apparently. Or was it the suspicions of a guilty man, always looking over his shoulder because he expected pursuit?

The only honest answer now was to tell Faraday what he had learned.

When he finished, Faraday stared at him, all the hectic color drained from his face. “Are you certain of this, Runcorn?” he asked.

“I’m certain of all I’ve told you,” Runcorn replied. “I’m not yet sure what it means.”

“It means poor Olivia was killed for it,” Faraday said sharply.

Runcorn was still standing, cold and unhappy, yet again blocked from the fire by Faraday. “Yes, but by Newbridge, or Barclay?”

“Find out,” Faraday commanded him. “And for the love of heaven, this time be discreet.”

In the morning, Runcorn left early to begin again. The ground was rock hard from the frost and the grass edges were white. Even so, Melisande was waiting for him at the end of the road. He barely recognized her at first; she was so closely wrapped within her cloak that it hid the outline of her body and shielded her face. She seemed to be staring towards the sea, until she heard his boots crunching the ice, then she turned.

“Good morning, Mr. Runcorn.” Even in so few words her voice was sharpened with fear.

He felt that twist of emotion inside himself, but fiercer than before.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ewart.” It would be absurd to ask her if she was waiting for him. There was no other reason she would be standing here growing steadily colder. He searched her eyes, wide and dark with dread.

She did not waste words. She was trembling with cold. “Alan told me that he had discovered why Mr. Newbridge abandoned Olivia so hastily, and why John also ceased to court her. I believe he told you also?” That was barely a question, but the disappointment was painful, a dull ache beneath the words.

Temptation surged up inside him to tell her that it was he, not Faraday, who had found the truth, but he did not want to tell her until he had proven that it was not Barclay who had killed Olivia, but Newbridge. He drew in his breath to explain, and realized how intensely such an explanation was for his own sake. It was not she whose heart he longed to ease, but his own, because she thought he had let her down. He wished her to think well of him. Vanity, and above all, his own hunger.

That was why Faraday had taken the credit for something he had not done, because he needed Melisande to think him cleverer than he was.

Runcorn took a deep breath and swallowed it down. “Yes,” he said simply. “The child was hers. He died almost immediately, so she never needed to tell anyone else. And perhaps the loss was easier to bear if other people did not speak of it.”

Melisande’s eyes swam with tears. She struggled to speak and failed. Her pity for Olivia was so intense it drowned out even her fear for Barclay. For moments they stood there in the ice and the widening morning light, overshadowed by the same aching grief. The sun sparkled on the frost, as if the rough grass were encrusted with diamonds. In the distance the sea was flat calm, its surface disturbed only by currents and little ruffles of breeze, like the weft of silk.

“I wish I had known,” Melisande said at length. “I would at least have told her that it made no difference to me. How terribly alone she must have been.”

“Not alone,” he said gently. “Naomi was always with her.”

She turned to him, hope flaring up in her eyes. “Was she? Please don’t tell me something to comfort me if it is not true. Please, always tell me the truth. I need one person who doesn’t lie, however kind the reason.”

“I won’t lie,” he promised rashly. He would have promised her anything. “Naomi never let her down.”

She smiled slowly, a soft sadness filling her face, more beautiful to him than the radiance of the sun over the ground. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I must go, before they ask me why my morning walk took so long. Please … please don’t stop your search. It is too late now to hide anything.” And without waiting for his answer, she walked with increasing speed up the hill back towards the great house.

Runcorn began straight away. He loathed Barclay and despised him for what he seemed to have done both to Olivia and to Newbridge, but still, he wanted to prove beyond all further question that he was not legally guilty of murder even if morally he was. That was a different issue and the law had no remedy for it.

Runcorn knew the date of the birth, it was a matter of tracing back to nine months before that. He was already convinced that Costain knew nothing about the child. His eagerness to marry Olivia to first Faraday, then Newbridge, and finally Barclay, meant that either he was unaware of her child and its death, or he was unbelievably insensitive. Runcorn was certain it was the former.

Still, he should ask Naomi again.

She received him in her own room in the vicarage, a quiet space on the ground floor filled with gardening gloves, secateurs, string, outdoor boots and trugs for carrying cut blooms and greenery. She was arranging a bowl of holly with berries the color of blood, small golden onions, and sprigs of leaves and evergreen that he could not name. Some leaves were dark red as wine, and the bowl glowed with purple, green, gold, and red. He admired it, quite honestly. There was a rich warmth to it, as if it proclaimed hope and abundance in a dark season.

He did not waste her time, or his own, with prevarication. “Do you know who was the father of Olivia’s child, Mrs. Costain?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “But it was no one you know, and I have no desire to tear up his emotions or ruin his reputation, so there is no purpose in your pursuing it. He never knew she was with child, and he is too far away from here to have had any part in her death.”

“Percival, I assume,” he concluded. “I had not thought it was Mr. Newbridge, but I needed to be certain.”

“Newbridge?” she looked startled, almost amused. “Good heavens, no! Whatever made you imagine that?”

“You are perfectly sure?” he persisted.

“Perfectly,” she said with feeling. “But if you doubt me, you can prove it for yourself. He was away in England at the time, Wiltshire, I think. Certainly he was miles from here. He was staying with his sister, and buying cattle, or something of the sort. At that time he was more concerned with improving his livestock than gaining a wife.”

“What sort of man was Percival?” Another idea was gaining strength in his mind.

She smiled, placing a last golden onion in its place to complete the light and shade of the arrangement.

“I never thought of using onions like that,” he said.

“One uses what one has,” she replied. “And onions keep very well. What was he like? He was fun, full of ideas, an imagination which could make you laugh and cry at the same time. He was not particularly handsome, but his face was unique, and he had a smile that lit up his eyes and made you feel as if you could survive anything as long as he liked you.”