me some ignorant man with talk of magic and working miracles is going to have any part of me or mine. We told Elizabeth, forbade her to go to their meetings. We warned her of what would happen! Goodness knows how many hours her mother spent talking to her. But would she listen? No she wouldn't! Well in the end she went off to some place in America with the tricksters and wasters and fools who were taken in as she was, or saw a way to make a profit out of gullible women. You do everything you think is right, all you can do to keep your family God-fearing and Christian, and then they serve you like this! Well, Mrs. Forrester and I say we have no daughter Elizabeth, and that's how it is.'
Pitt could see the man's grief, and his anger: he felt betrayed by his daughter and by circumstances, and it confused him, and the wound, for all his protestations, was not healed.
But Pitt had to pursue his own questioning.
'Was your daughter acquainted with a Mrs. Royce before she left England, Mr. Forrester?'
'Possibly. Yes, possibly she was. Another deluded young woman who would not take the counsel of her betters. But she died of typhoid or diphtheria as I recall.'
'Scarlet fever, seventeen years ago.'
'Was it! Poor soul. Dead without the time to repent, I daresay. What a tragedy. Still, the main damnation will be upon the heads of those who beguiled her away into idolatry and blasphemy against God.'
'Did you know anything of Mrs. Royce, sir?'
'No. Never saw her. Wouldn't permit any of those people through my door. I lost one daughter, that's more than enough. But I heard Elizabeth speak of her often, as if she were quality.' He sighed. 'But I suppose being of gentle birth is no help to a woman, if she has a delicate constitution
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and a weak will. Women need looking after, sir, guarding from charlatans like that-that blasphemer!'
Pitt could not bear to give up. 'Is there anyone who can tell me about Mrs. Royce? Did she ever write to your daughter? Would they have had mutual friends, anyone who still keeps that particular faith around here?'
'If there is, I don't know of them, sir, nor do I want to! Emissaries of the devil, performing his works!'
'It is important, Mr. Forrester.' Was that the truth? To whom did it matter, after all these years? Pitt, because he wanted to know why Elsie Draper's sick mind had clung so passionately all the long years in Bedlam to her hatred for Garnet Royce? But what difference did it make now?
Forrester was looking uncomfortable, his eyes not quite steady on Pitt's face, his color mottled.
'Well, sir.
'Yes?'
'Mrs. Royce did write some letters to Lizzie, after Lizzie'd gone. We didn't send them on. Didn't know where to send them, and we'd sworn we'd never speak of Lizzie again, like as though she were dead, which she was to us, but then since they weren't ours, we couldn't rightly destroy them either. We've still got them somewhere, up in the box room.'
'May I?' Suddenly Pitt was shaking with excitement, a wild hope beating upwards like a bird inside him. 'May I see them?'
''If you wish to. But I'll thank you not to mention it to my wife. You'll read them in the box room, sir, and that's my condition.'' He looked uncertain as to whether he might impose any condition upon the police, but his resolution to try was strong, his pale eyes defiant.
'Of course,' Pitt conceded. He had no wish to cause distress. 'Please show me the way.'
Fifteen minutes later Pitt was crouched under the beams of the roof in a small, stuffy, ice cold box room where three large trunks lay open, a variety of cases for hats and mantles
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were piled high, and in front of him at last were the six precious letters addressed to Miss Lizzie Forrester and postmarked from April 28 to June 2, 1871. They were all sealed, exactly as they had arrived.
