The Runaway McBride (36 page)

“Of course. I thought that’s what you would say.”

“Let’s go to my room.”

His provocative grin that was almost a leer did not offend her. “Faith,” he said, “what would James say if he could hear you now?”

It was the first time she had smiled in an age.

Faith put her pen down, closed her father’s commentary on Herodotus, and sat back in her chair. She had spent the last few hours transcribing her mother’s diary, and she drooped with fatigue. Everyone was in bed, and the only sounds she could hear were the ticking of the clock and the muted hiss of the gas lamp.

The substance of her mother’s message answered many of the questions that had troubled James and her. She ached for the senseless waste of a life. But there was more to Faith’s grief than this. Disappointment mixed with resentment shimmered through her. Her mother’s words drummed inside her head.
A clean break. A bargain. No regrets.
What kind of parents would do that to their child? Her mother had not even mentioned her by name. Faith was more forgiving to her father. He, at least, had tried to make a home for her, but it was all built on lies.

She got up and stretched her cramped limbs. Madeline showed no guilt at deserting her daughter. All she’d done was follow her star. She’d chosen her own destiny. Faith had known that Madeline was no ordinary woman, but she’d secretly hoped that there were extenuating circumstances to account for her mother’s exit from her life: an unhappy marriage or a love affair gone wrong. Something. But this cool and hurtful vindication of the choices she had made touched something inside Faith that shriveled and died.

Madeline had never once watched her daughter from afar. That she had never corresponded with her was certainly true. If her parents had communicated at all, it would have been through the solicitor.

She felt disoriented, as though her whole world had been turned upside down. Her life as a teacher at St. Winnifred’s now tasted like ashes in her mouth. She’d been proud of those girls and had tried to instill in them a desire to excel in their chosen fields, but not to the detriment of every finer feeling that made them human. Had she ever told them that?

It was fatigue, she told herself, that was making her fractious. She knew that the few references to herself were no more than footnotes. It was the substance that mattered, not a mother’s indifference to her only child. She was a grown woman. She would get over it. What she couldn’t understand was why it hurt so much.

It would have been harder for her father to get over Madeline. Her intuition told her that he had never stopped loving her mother. Whether he could live with her was a different matter. Single-minded people who were totally focused on following their own destiny thought nothing of breaking a few hearts.

She got up and squared her shoulders. One good thing had come from her mother’s diary. She’d learned that she didn’t want to be like her. In time, perhaps, she would come to admire her again, but she would not be willfully blind to her faults.

She was on her way to bed when her eye fell on the book she had treasured for as long as she could remember, her father’s commentary. On a sudden impulse, she picked it up and flicked through the pages. In many of the margins, he had penciled in notes to draw her attention to items of interest. Blinking back tears, clutching her most precious possession to her bosom, she went to bed and fell asleep almost at once.

 

 

“Well,” said James, “your mother’s diary certainly fills in many
of the blanks.” He carefully placed the pages Faith had given him on the sofa table.

Two days had passed since Sophie Hughes’s death, two days in which James was confined to his bed. It was now late evening, and he and Faith had shut themselves up in the yellow parlor so that they could talk freely without interruption. James was lounging on a sofa, propped up with cushions. Faith had taken one of the upholstered chairs and seemed lost in her own thoughts.

“What did you say? ”

He leaned forward and studied her pale face. “Try to put Sophie Hughes out of your mind, Faith. She can’t hurt you now.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Sophie. I was thinking of my mother. That coded message took me hours to work out. I don’t know how she managed to get all that down in the short time she had left.”

“Practice. She knew the code inside out. Though she makes light of it, I think she must have been very frightened.” When Faith’s face lost the little color it had, he steered the conversation onto a different path. “I saw the photograph of Arthur Toombs, you know. It’s still there on the mantelpiece of the house on Greek Street. I read the name after I’d decoded the first few lines of your mother’s diary, and it seemed familiar. The name came up in one of the replies to your advertisement. The woman who wrote to you said that she thought her aunt, Bertha Toombs, had once known your mother.”

His words arrested her. “Then why didn’t I reply to it?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t seem genuine. She was only interested in any money that might have been left to her aunt. As it turns out, the only thing she knew was that a woman named Madeline Maynard had once boarded with her. It was the photograph that mattered, because I knew it was Hughes. He has changed in the intervening years, of course, but he is still recognizable as the man in the photograph. ‘Oily,’ your mother called him, and he had that look about him even then. ‘Ingratiating,’ I would call it. No wonder he was shy of the camera.”

She said musingly, “I’m surprised he wasn’t terrified that his face would be recognized in London.”

“No one from his old life moved in his new circles. He took chances, there’s no doubt about that. But he was not a murderer.”

She swallowed hard. “That was who Madeline feared—Basil Hughes, not Sophie. So much killing, and for what? Basil Hughes was a confidence trickster and a humbug. Sophie knew it, and she did not care.” She looked up. “They’re all touched by the same brush, aren’t they? I mean Sophie, Dora Winslet, and the steward, John Arden? They were willing to do almost anything for the one they loved. I should say ‘the one they worshipped.’ Sickening, isn’t it?”

“Sickening,” he agreed. “Even though he’s facing the hangman’s noose, Arden won’t say a word against his mistress.”

She looked at him curiously. “Where are you getting your information? ”

“From my father. He has made it his business to keep abreast of the case. I’ve never known him expend so much energy in, well, anything that doesn’t involve Drumore. It’s not as though one of his sons is facing the hangman’s noose.”

“Your father? I’m not surprised. When we brought you home looking as if you were at death’s door, he went to pieces; they all did.” She edged forward in her chair and looked intently into his eyes. “Your family loves you dearly, James. I hope you know how lucky you are.”

She could see that she had surprised him, so she pressed on. “Do you know what I think, James? I think your father has too much time on his hands. He’s bored. When there is something worthwhile to do, he rises to the occasion.”

He shook his head and smiled indulgently. “My father is never bored when he is in the company of good Scotch whiskey and a pack of cards.”

Noting the prim set of her lips, he changed the subject. “He did find out something of interest, though. Your other abductor, the one you so handily disabled in the house that was being demolished—” He paused as he remembered how panicked he’d been when he could not get into her mind to discover where she was, and he clenched his good hand to suppress a tremor.

“What about him? ”

“He’s singing like a bird. Trouble is, he doesn’t know very much. He played only a minor part in things. But he did tell the police that he and John Arden waylaid us after we left Lady Cowdray’s place. He was only following orders, he said, and no one was supposed to get hurt.”

She snorted. “And what about abducting me? What did he have to say about that? ”

“Same thing. He did, however, tell the police how they knew how to find you. It seems that at Danvers’s funeral my aunt told Sophie Hughes that you had an appointment with your dressmaker on the day in question to select materials for your trousseau.”

Faith sat back in her chair. “I didn’t have an appointment with Madame Digby. It was the exhibition that we were going to take in, and yes, do a little window shopping.”

“I know. I believe my aunt wanted to surprise you. Something to do with making you a present of your wedding gown.”

Faith looked down at her clasped hands.

James shifted his position and winced when pain shot through his shoulder and down his arm. “No, I’m fine,” he said quickly when she started to her feet. “The doctor warned me that any sudden movement would hurt like the devil.”

She sank back in her chair. After thinking things over, she said, “Does this mean that there is going to be a big trial?”

“I can’t say for sure. Arden is pleading guilty to Danvers’s murder. That’s about all they can prove against him anyway. But we may be called upon to testify. In fact, I’m sure we will.”