‘You’re a liar.’ The words hissed from her and he felt spittle warm against his face. She drew an arm back to slap him, but the Constable reached out and took a light hold of her wrist.
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m not lying. I told her husband two days ago and the news almost broke him. There’s one thing I didn’t mention to him, though. Your daughter was pregnant with her lover’s child.’
She tried to move her arm, to bring it round to hit him, but he kept his grip tight on her. Her eyes flamed, and her husband stared at the floor. He had them. Nottingham released her wrist and stepped backwards. ‘But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?’
Neither of them replied, but he could feel the guilt in their silence.
‘I’m sure you really were ill,’ he told her, ‘although I’ll never be able to prove it one way or the other. The timing was fortunate, though, wasn’t it, with the servants dismissed?’
‘You’ve been told before, she never came here,’ Lady Gibton said.
The Constable smiled. ‘I’ve been told many things in the last few weeks. A few of them have even been true. But that wasn’t one of them. Sarah arrived here that Thursday after the servants had gone. You hadn’t been expecting her but it turned out well. There were only the four of you in the house when she gave you her news — you two, your daughter and her maid. I haven’t forgotten about Annie.’
Gibton stood and began to walk out of the room.
‘Are you leaving, my Lord?’ Nottingham asked. ‘I’ve not even sketched an outline yet.’
The baron stopped, then turned. ‘I won’t stay to listen to this,’ he announced.
‘Your wife doesn’t seem to want to leave yet,’ the Constable said. ‘I think it would be better if no one went. After all, so far I’m not sure which of you killed your daughter.’
Twenty-Two
This time Lady Gibton’s open hand came up before he could move and cracked him hard across the cheek. He felt the hot, sharp sting on his flesh.
‘Get out,’ she screamed. Her face had turned wild and feral, and he had to reach out and pin both her arms to stop her hitting him again.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘You’re both going to hear this.’ He waited until the tension in the room dropped slightly.
‘You’d better have extremely good proof that we killed Sarah,’ Gibton said threateningly. ‘She was our daughter. We loved her.’
‘Of course you did. You loved her enough to keep her away from the man she wanted to be with, and sold her so you could have all this.’ He glanced around the room, taking in the portrait and the new furnishings. ‘I’ll tell you one thing I can prove — that the knife which killed Sarah came from here. One of the servants recognized it and said it went missing during those few days you sent them all away.’ He paused again, hoping they would fill the silence. ‘That should be damning enough for any jury, I’m sure you’ll agree. They’d have no choice but to hang you both — unless the mob dragged you out of jail and did it themselves. It’s happened before. In my experience, people hate those who kill their own children.’
He looked from one of them to the other.
‘Hanging can either be fast or slow,’ he continued, his voice low and hypnotic. ‘Did you know that some people going to the gallows pay the hangman to make it quick, so the neck breaks and it’s over?’ As they watched he brought his hands together and made a snapping motion. ‘Like that. The people who die that way are the lucky ones, so it’s said. If no one will do that for you, or the drop isn’t long enough, you choke. It takes up to twenty minutes; I’ve timed it. That’s all those long minutes when the pressure grows on your neck and you feel your life slowly leaving you, and the mob watching everything. I’ll wager you a penny to a guinea that no one would take your money to speed it up. They’d be gathered on Chapeltown Moor for you two. Minor aristocracy, killed your own daughter. It would even be in the London papers. You’d be famous.’
‘You’ve ranted and threatened, but you still haven’t said why we’re supposed to have killed Sarah,’ Lady Gibton said icily. ‘Tell me, Constable, why would we kill our flesh and blood?’
‘Money, plain and simple,’ he replied. ‘If she’d run off with Will Jackson, Godlove would have cut you off. All this would have gone.’ He gestured to take in the house. ‘You’d been waiting all these years until Sarah had grown up and you could arrange a marriage for her that would leave you well off. Now she was going to take everything away from you, and all for something as trivial as love. So you killed her.’
‘Do you really think anyone will believe that?’ she said.
‘I know they will,’ he answered confidently. ‘We have proof of Sarah’s visits to Will Jackson every week. He was selling his business. You’d be surprised what we’ve discovered.’
‘Facts you’ve twisted,’ she sneered.
‘You know, you should have encouraged her with Will,’ he told them. ‘He went on to do very well indeed. And he’s the one she wanted.’
‘Her husband loved her,’ Gibton said.
‘Yes, he did,’ Nottingham agreed sadly. ‘He was besotted with her. It’s just a pity she could never return that. She was a lucky girl in a way, having the love of two men. But there was only one for her.’
‘She was better off with Godlove,’ Lady Gibton said firmly. ‘I told her so.’
‘No,
Gibton pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards the Constable so that both husband and wife now stood close to him.
‘And do you honestly think you’ll obtain a conviction in court?’ he asked disdainfully. ‘You’d do well to remember who sits on the bench. It’s not the likes of you, Constable — ’ he spat out the title ‘- in your rag bag of clothes. It’s the kind of people who’d dine here, people who send us invitations, people who understand what life is like for us.’
He didn’t need to say more; Nottingham understood. Money could build thick walls against justice. A title could make them impregnable. But he wasn’t going to be cowed now.
‘My guess is that it was Lady Gibton who wielded the knife,’ he said. ‘Let’s be generous and say she was still in her madness, and perhaps she didn’t know what she was doing.’ Her eyes gave nothing away, her stare flinty. ‘You still had to kill Anne and get them away from here to finish the job. That was calculated. I don’t know what you wanted people to think when you left Sarah at Kirkstall Abbey. I can’t even guess at that. If you’d dumped her the way you did Annie I’d never have suspected a thing. Just two young women killed by robbers.’ He inclined his head in the direction of Roundhay. ‘You know, I can leave here and ride into the village. The Taylors are desperate to know who killed their daughter and why. I can tell them who was responsible and why. If I do that do you really believe you’ll last until the end of the day?’
He gave them time to consider that. He might not be able to put them on the gibbet but there were other kinds of justice.
‘I’m giving you until Friday to decide what you’re going to do,’ he told them. ‘That’s when I tell Annie’s parents and Mr Godlove what happened. You will let me know what you plan to do before then. And if you believe my threats are all bluster, then I suggest you wait and do nothing. I’ll warn you now, though, that I’m not a man to say things idly.’
Gibton reached out to take his wife’s hand. As his fingers began to curl around hers she pulled away sharply. ‘You won’t do it,’ she said.
Nottingham raised an eyebrow. ‘Won’t I?’
She smiled coldly. ‘You’re a little man. All you can do is bluff.’
‘You’d better wait and see, hadn’t you? Even we little men can keep our word.’
He left them standing in the room and walked out into the sunlight. It felt bright and clean on his skin.
‘I thought you were going to arrest them after I gave you the nod,’ Sedgwick said as they rode back down the long hill towards Leeds.
