possible everything you know about Tuesday night, starting with why you weren’t where you were supposed to be when Nathaniel jumped from the balustrade.’
‘Loveday and Morwenna needed me,’ Morveth said. ‘Loveday was ill and Morwenna came to find me. I suggested they take Jago’s van to get home – it was quick and it meant no one else had to be involved. I helped Morwenna get Loveday up the hill and settled into the van, and I watched them drive off.’
‘But that was earlier in the evening, wasn’t it? Morwenna told me they were away from the theatre before Nathaniel died.’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t bring myself to go straight back. I sat there for a while in the darkness, thinking about everything that had happened to that family over the years, all the sadness and the lies and the guilt. It should have been a wonderful night, with Harry on stage and his sisters watching him proudly in the audience – but it was a mockery of everything that was normal and right. Harry was dead – or so I thought – and his fourteen-year-old sister was pregnant with his child, and Morwenna – well, who can say what grief and insanity she’s been fighting. So I was mourning them, Archie, when Nathaniel died – not just Harry, but the whole family, Sam and Mary too. And suddenly all that artifice and play-acting on stage seemed so wrong. I just wanted to put a stop to the whole thing, but someone else did that for me, and in the most terrible way imaginable.’
‘But can you say for certain who that was?’ Archie persisted.
‘Not for certain, no, but I knew I couldn’t stay away from the play for ever, so I started to make my way backstage by the steps that run alongside the auditorium, and before I’d got very far, I found the cloak – one of the brown habits. It wasn’t hidden – just cast aside, like someone had taken it off in a hurry.’
‘But you hadn’t seen anyone?’
‘No. I picked the cloak up and went further down, and by that time, of course, the play had been stopped and everyone was just standing around, wondering what had happened.’
‘You must have realised that the two things were connected. What did you do with the cloak?’
‘I took it backstage and put it with the rest of the costumes as people were taking them off, next to the bishop’s outfit so that I could find it again.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to hand it over as evidence?’ Archie asked angrily.
‘I was going to say something, but then I met Jago. He was upset, because he thought he’d glimpsed Christopher in the auditorium but he couldn’t find him anywhere – and I was horrified.’
‘You thought that Christopher might have left the cloak there? That he killed Nathaniel because of the business with his parents?’
‘Yes, and I couldn’t put Jago through that – he’s never really forgiven himself for what we did all those years ago – so I kept quiet until I could find out more about what had gone on. But then I went back to the cloak and, when I picked it up again and held it closer to me, I knew it wasn’t Christopher who’d been wearing it.’
‘How?’
‘Because of the smell. Harry always took a pipe – do you remember?’ Archie nodded. ‘He used to smoke his father’s tobacco – one of those childish acts of rebellion that he indulged in until he found something much more serious to get himself into trouble with – and he never lost the habit. It was always one of the first things you noticed about him – that and his smile. There’s nothing quite like it when you’ve lost someone – the smell of them, I mean. On their clothes, in their books – but that cloak had never been near Harry while he was alive. Yet he might as well have been standing there in it.’
‘And Christopher doesn’t smoke?’
‘No. He might have the odd cigarette to act like a man, but not like this. Pipe tobacco’s very different, and Harry’s brand was quite distinctive.’
‘It still seems odd to me that you’d leap to that conclusion – to pin a murder on a dead man.’
‘Not after what I’d heard that afternoon. I knew about the fire and I heard Nathaniel telling you how he panicked when he found out, so there was no question in my mind that Harry would have good reason to make sure Nathaniel kept his mouth shut. And I couldn’t get the words Nathaniel used out of my head – something about Harry standing beside him and taking him to hell. That’s what he looked like that night on the cliff path, you know – a man in a living hell.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in my asking where the cloak is now, is there?’ Archie said, knowing full well what the answer would be. ‘Destroying evidence is serious, Morveth, and
‘I know, but I
‘Or that you made it possible for him,’ said Josephine sharply.
Morveth looked at her sadly. ‘Do you think I could ever forget that?’ she asked. ‘My own conscience is far more ruthless than a stranger’s tongue.’
‘But instead of doing anything about it, you’ve just been waiting for him to turn up, haven’t you?’ Josephine continued, ignoring her. ‘That was another reason for driving me out of Loe Cottage yesterday – you think he’ll come back for them, and you’re keeping watch.’
‘Have you said anything to Morwenna?’ Archie asked, standing up ready to go.
‘No – like I said, I’m not certain of any of this, and it’s better that she believes him dead until we know otherwise.’
‘I’m afraid I beg to differ there. She may be in danger.’
‘No, Archie – he’d never hurt them.’
‘Are you sure about that? Eight years ago, Harry was desperate enough to wipe himself out and take most of his family with him. If you’re right about what he’s done now, he’s got even less to lose – and this time, he won’t leave without Morwenna.’
When Morwenna went back upstairs, Harry was sleeping soundly. She watched him for a moment, taking a last look at his face against the pillow, then took the matches from her pocket. The piece of material which she carried – a scarf that Harry had been wearing the first time they made love and the one thing of his which she could not bear to destroy – was faded and worn now, and smelt overpoweringly of petrol; still, if she closed her eyes to blot out the present, she fancied she could still catch the faint scent of earth and leaves and a fourteen-year-old autumn that felt so recent. Who could have predicted then that she would finish what Harry had started, and that this would be her final gift to her brother? An oblivion which she longed for herself, free of the fear and pain that had filled Nathaniel’s last conscious seconds.
As the fire took hold, she shut the bedroom door behind her and locked it, thinking about all the times that she had closed it from the other side, desperate to keep Harry out and deny everything that he had ever meant to her. She paused, glancing towards Loveday’s room, and wondered if she should take something with her to remind her of her sister – but there was really no need; the guilt she felt over the way that she had treated her was more than enough to carry. She locked the side door and removed the key, then went out through the kitchen and back to the empty stable where she had made her decision. Quickly, she took the reins from their hook and ran down through the garden and out into the woods. She had to get away before her resolve weakened and sent her screaming back into the house to save Harry and damn herself.
They saw the smoke long before they were anywhere near Loe Cottage. Archie drove faster, forcing the car down the narrow country lane, and Josephine sat silently beside him, willing them to be in time – for what, she could not honestly have said. Morveth’s conversation with Archie had left her searching for an outcome which could conceivably be described as for the best, and so far it eluded her.
When they pulled up outside, the fire seemed confined – so far – to the first floor and could not have begun long ago. Nevertheless, the flames were making short work of the thatch and a small crowd had already gathered at a safe distance in the garden to watch this new assault on such an ill-fated cottage. Instinctively, Josephine looked up at Loveday’s window, remembering the girl’s face pressed to the glass the day before; please God, let her be all right, she thought. It was an uncharacteristic appeal to an authority in which she did not believe, but that Loveday should be spared seemed to her the only certainty in an unimaginable sequence of events, and she was willing for once to lend her faith indiscriminately.
For want of a better explanation, Josephine realised with a mixture of astonishment and relief that her prayers had been answered. As she and Archie got out of the car, she saw beyond the front row of onlookers to where a group of women had gathered around a small figure – a living and breathing figure, albeit one whose face was blackened by smoke and stained with tears. ‘Loveday – thank God,’ she said, acknowledging her own hypocrisy
