‘What?’ cried Harriet, her eyes wide, the muscles in her face working in anxiety. ‘What is this other proof?’
Dido looked down at their joined hands. Harriet had ceased to struggle against her now and her hands lay passive, as if she awaited her own sentence of death. ‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘I looked at the pieces of gold and silver taken from the lake with Miss Fenn’s body. Harriet, they are not all coins.’
‘Not coins?’ repeated Harriet. ‘I do not understand you. What are they?’
‘Two of the pieces which I had at first taken for misshapen shillings, are buttons – silver buttons – just such as your father wore.’
‘No! No! I will not listen to you.’
‘You must. Those buttons were torn from his coat as that poor woman struggled against him.’
Harriet began to tremble. Her hands twisted until they were gripping her friend’s. Her eyes pleaded. Her lips moved again – but no sound came from them.
‘You have known it all the time, have you not?’ said Dido. ‘That is why you have been working against me to obscure the truth – taking the letters and the ring. But now,’ she continued with all the force of conviction, ‘you must listen to me. You must help me put right some of the wrong that your father did. If you do not, I swear I will take those buttons to Mr Wishart and tell him that his inquest must be reopened.’
‘I do not know what to do,’ said Harriet, her eyes darting desperately to and fro. ‘I do not know what Papa would have wanted …’
‘No! No! You must not think of what he would want. The time has come, Harriet, to think for yourself.’
Harriet only stared wildly. In the silence, the ghostly strains of a violin just beginning upon Montgomery’s Reel crept into the chamber. The two women faced each other over the candle’s flame, the light flickering across their cheeks and throwing long shadows up the pale chimney piece and seeming to make the birds and foliage move upon the bed-hangings. Dido looked defiantly into her friend’s eyes. Pity was tearing at her – but she must not give in to it. There was a greater duty to be performed here than the everyday obligation of friendship. Justice must be done. She gripped tighter at the cold hands which lay unmoving in her grasp.
And then, at last, Harriet bowed her head. ‘He had no choice,’ she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. ‘It all started in kindness to my mother, you see. She was dying – the only thing she wished to hear was that she had borne a son. She asked … He could not hurt her. He told her that the baby was a boy … And after that …’ She broke down, shaking her head helplessly.
‘And after that,’ Dido continued for her, ‘it occurred to him that the deception might be carried on. He told the whole world that his third child was a son. And, for the first few years nothing more was needed to perpetuate the lie than a nursemaid utterly devoted to the family – and that he had ready to hand.’
Harriet nodded, her eyes still staring down upon the candle. ‘No one else knew the child was a girl.’
‘Except for you?’
‘Yes. I found out when Silas … when the child was but a few months old. I was twelve, you know and very anxious to help care for the new baby …’
‘But you told no one the truth?’
Harriet’s head jerked upward. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Papa told me not to.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Dido listened a moment to the slight drumming of feet which now accompanied the reel. ‘But I suppose he always knew that after a few years he would need to take some other action.’
‘He had business interests in Great Farleigh – we have a mill there,’ explained Harriet matter-of-factly. ‘I believe that is how he discovered Mrs Pinker’s establishment.’
‘And so he was lucky enough to encounter Miss Fenn – a woman who needed a daughter as badly as he needed a son.’
‘Yes. The exchange was made when the children were five. And all would have been well. All was well for two years. No one suspected anything. And then,’ said Harriet plaintively, ‘she attempted to go back upon her word.’
‘She could not bear to see the boy growing up without knowing her.’
Harriet nodded.
There was one question which Dido knew she must ask, though she dreaded hearing the answer. ‘Did you know?’ she said quietly. ‘I mean, did you know fifteen years ago that your father had killed Miss Fenn?’
‘No …’ Harriet stared down at the candle flame, her face working in shifting expressions of misery. In the silence voices and laughter echoed up from the hall below – the company was going in to supper. ‘Yes …’ whispered Harriet. ‘That is, I do not know whether I knew or not. I never knew for sure. I knew that he was gone to meet her that evening. I knew that she was never seen again …’ She drew a long shuddering breath. ‘But …’ she spread her hands and looked up at her friend. ‘Is it possible to know something and not to know it at the same time?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I believe it is.’
‘And what,’ whispered Harriet, ‘do you mean to do now?’
‘I mean,’ said Dido firmly, ‘to lay the ghosts of Madderstone to rest for once and for all.’ She stooped down and blew out the candle on the hearth. Then she took Harriet’s hand. ‘Come,’ she said, drawing her to her feet and leading her across to the window.
With the candle extinguished the moonlight was gaining power in the room. Showing up rich embroidery and well-polished mahogany – and the shabby bible and the severe text above the bed,
Dido had a strong sense of being in the presence, not only of her God, but also a ghost. In this room of outward luxury, a woman had lived out a simple life: a life of renunciation. For Lady Congreve had withdrawn from the world as surely as any old-time nun – even taking a new name, as nuns did.
‘“I was wrong to ever agree to this pretence,”’ said Dido quietly as they came to the window and looked out together into the moonlit grounds. ‘That is what she wrote, you know. And I think it was not only her longing for her son which made her say it. Harriet, I believe she had determined upon ending the deception – and that is why she had become happier in the last few weeks of her life. She was no longer struggling against her conscience. She had acknowledged to herself the deep injustice of the arrangement she had made with your father.’
‘Injustice? Dido, what exactly are you talking of?’
‘I am talking of the one person you and I have not yet mentioned. I am talking of Penelope; the little girl who was sent away from her family, because she was not the son that everyone wished her to be.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet tried to snatch away her hand but Dido held it firmly.
‘This is the price you must pay for my silence, Harriet. If you wish me to hold my tongue – if your father’s name is to go untarnished – then you must let your sister come home.’
By next morning the fog was entirely cleared away. The sun shone as Dido and Mr Lomax walked beside the lower pool, and the trees blazed forth gloriously against a cloudless blue sky. The pool was almost returned now to its old level; an enterprising pair of ducks had already taken possession of it and scores of curled, bronze oak leaves drifted across its ruffled surface, driven by a brisk, cold wind.
They stood upon the bank in silence for a while: her hand just resting on his arm.
‘Will you tell me the end of the story?’ he asked quietly at last. ‘Your countenance this morning seems to say that the “business” which took you from the ballroom yesterday was successfully completed.’
‘Yes, it was.’ She looked up into his brooding face. His eyes were fixed upon the peacefully sculling ducks, his jaw set in obstinate disapproval. ‘But if I tell you about it, it will be the cause of another quarrel between us. I fear,’ she said quietly, ‘that we must give up free and open discussion, for it will always end in my arguing like a woman – and your being displeased.’
He sighed heavily. ‘To quarrel when there is no possibility of changing one another’s mind is a fruitless indulgence. If you are so kind as to honour me with an account of last night’s events, I will undertake – I will
She searched his cheek for that restless little muscle, which always betrayed him when he reigned in his anger; but she could discern no sign of it. However she did notice that the sunlight was once more bringing forward
