Angel with Two Faces

betrayal – would have been so much worse.

‘I just wanted him to go away, you know,’ Nathaniel admitted. ‘It seems selfish now, but I even prayed for it. Not like this, though,’ he added, fighting back tears. ‘I never wanted it to happen like this.’

‘Did Morwenna know what was going on between you?’ Archie asked, and Nathaniel shook his head. ‘So the other day, after the funeral, when she said she blamed you for Harry’s death – what do you think she meant?’

Nathaniel answered Archie’s question with one of his own. ‘Did she say he killed himself?’

‘Yes, but she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – tell me why. Do you know?’

It seemed a long time before Nathaniel answered. ‘If Morwenna’s right,’ he said eventually, ‘and I hope to God she isn’t – but if Harry did commit suicide, it’ll be because of something I found out about him. Something I couldn’t keep to myself.’ Archie waited, knowing he had no authority to press Nathaniel but hoping that the curate would want to talk. ‘It was Loveday who told me,’ he continued. ‘She didn’t know what she was saying, of course, but it was about the night of the fire – the night their parents died.’

This was not at all what Archie had expected, but he nodded encouragingly at Nathaniel to go on. ‘She told me that she went back downstairs that night, after her parents had gone to bed. She often used to sneak down, apparently. She liked to hide under the table in the sitting room, snuggled up to their dog, and watch the fire die down in the grate. After a while, she heard Harry come downstairs and go into the kitchen. She was worried at first, because the kitchen was under her parents’ room and she didn’t want Harry to get into trouble – they’d been arguing recently, she said, and there’d been a lot of shouting, although they’d tried to hide it from her. She crept to the door and watched her brother moving about in the kitchen.’ He paused, not for dramatic effect but as if he found it hard to believe what he was saying. Archie, who had a horrible idea of what was about to come, realised he was holding his breath. ‘She saw Harry take a piece of paper – a letter of some sort – and set light to it in the kitchen fire. He watched it burn for a few seconds, then walked across the room, still holding it. She couldn’t see what happened after that because the door was half closed, but he came out soon afterwards and shut the door behind him. She said he was crying when he went back upstairs.’

‘So Loveday said that Harry started the fire deliberately, then went back upstairs to die with his parents and his little sister?’ Archie’s tone was incredulous. ‘Did you believe her?’

‘I believe that she saw what she says she saw. She didn’t draw any conclusions from it – Loveday doesn’t analyse things, and she doesn’t make connections between events – things just are what they are. People are either good or bad, and she doesn’t see any of those grey areas that make life so complicated for the rest of us. But she doesn’t lie, either, and she doesn’t exaggerate. So yes, I did believe her, and I reacted in exactly the same way as you.’

‘Has she never told anyone else all this?’

‘Apparently not. She said that no one ever wanted to talk about the fire in front of her – and that’s certainly true. I’ve seen people go quiet the minute she appears. If anyone had taken the trouble to ask, I dare say she’d have told them – but they didn’t. Everyone assumed it was a tragic accident, and even Loveday doesn’t understand what she saw.’

‘But you told Morwenna.’

‘Not straight away. I confronted Harry first – I suppose I hoped he’d explain it somehow, and convince me that Loveday had got it wrong.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘No. He didn’t admit it, but he didn’t bother denying it either. He just stared at me while I talked – while I shouted – and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look so sad. In the end, he simply turned and walked away. That was the last time I saw him. I had to tell Morwenna after that – I was worried about what he might do to Loveday.’

Archie tried – and failed – to reconcile the Harry Pinching he knew with someone who could harm his parents, let alone his little sister. ‘How did Morwenna react?’

‘She was hysterical,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I honestly thought she’d gone out of her mind with shock. First, she screamed at me that it was a pack of lies, then she cursed me for opening old wounds when it could do no good for anyone.’

‘Implying that she knew already?’

Nathaniel shrugged, almost dismissively, and Archie could see how much he wished he could simply brush this conflict of loyalties aside. ‘I don’t know if she knew or simply suspected. She tried to persuade me not to tell anyone else, but I couldn’t do it – it didn’t seem right to keep quiet about something like that if it was true. She threw me out of the house after that.’

‘When was this?’

‘A few days before the accident.’

‘And have you told anyone else?’

‘No – not until now. It didn’t seem right to betray Harry either.’

‘The other day, when Morwenna confronted you – I saw the look on your face when you realised what she meant. The idea of suicide was a shock to you, wasn’t it, even with what you knew about the fire?’

‘Yes, it was,’ he said emphatically, and Archie was sure he was telling the truth.

‘So you accepted that Harry’s death was an accident?’

‘I suppose I thought he might have brought it on himself,’ Nathaniel admitted, ‘but not in the way Morwenna meant. He’d been drinking heavily lately, and getting into a bit of bother here and there. He took up with Joseph Caplin not so long back, and the two of them were hardly ever without a glass in their hand. I used to wonder how Harry managed to stay on his horse – he was in no fit state to ride anywhere. When I heard what had happened, I assumed he’d pushed his luck too far.’

Why hadn’t Morwenna mentioned Harry’s drinking, Archie wondered? He could understand her being loyal to her dead brother’s memory, but did she really prefer to believe that he had taken his own life? And if she was so outraged at Nathaniel’s raking up the past, why risk it becoming public by mentioning the subject of suicide to a policeman? She must have known he’d ask questions – or had he been in London too long? Was her confidence simply that of a friend unburdening herself to someone she thought she could trust? Reconciling her love for her brother with a sense of justice for her parents must seem an impossible task to face alone – no wonder she’d needed to talk. ‘What sort of bother did Harry get into?’ he asked.

‘Oh, the usual stuff – brawling, gambling, and I heard that he’d run up a few debts. He was barred from the Commercial for a while for getting into a fight with some visitors from up country, and he’d fallen out badly with Jago because of something he’d said to Christopher.’

‘That’s all a bit out of character, isn’t it?’ Archie said, frustrated that he seemed to have got only half a story from Jago, too.

‘For the Harry we thought we knew or for the man who burned his parents to death in their beds?’ It was a good point, to which Archie had no answer. ‘It would have been at one time,’ Nathaniel continued, ‘but he’d changed so much. He was always a bit reckless, but he had a gentle side to him, a caring side – and he loved being with people. Lately, it was almost as if he was trying to alienate everyone who was close to him. Perhaps that was what his behaviour with me was about – he knew I’d keep away rather than confront him. The only time I ever saw a glimpse of the old Harry was when he was with Loveday – she seemed to be the only person he could trust. I know I panicked when I found out about the fire, but he was always the sort of big brother that any kid would want.’

Archie remembered Josephine’s suggestion, and how quickly he had dismissed it. Suddenly, he was less sure. ‘Did Harry ever hurt Morwenna?’ he asked.

‘You mean physically? Not to my knowledge.’ He thought for a moment, then added: ‘I’m sure he didn’t – well, as sure as I can be. That’s the trouble with finding out a secret about someone, isn’t it? You start to doubt everything else about them. I know the change in him hurt her, though. Sometimes I’d catch her looking at him as though she couldn’t understand why he was behaving like that, like he’d betrayed her in some way and she didn’t know how to reach him any more. She told Morveth that they’d argued on the night he died – she was very hard on herself about that, apparently, and there was nothing Morveth could say to comfort her.’

‘And what about you?’ Archie asked, conscious of how alone Nathaniel must feel. ‘Who do you have for comfort?’

He took a small, leather-bound book from the top pocket of his shirt, a battered old volume which Archie recognised as the Book of Common Prayer. ‘I’ve always had this,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘It doesn’t do a bad job –