Текст книги "An Expert in Murder"

Автор книги: Nicola Upson

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

‘Is there trouble, then?’ Ronnie asked wickedly, settling in for a 239

good story, but Archie interrupted before Josephine could feel obliged to satisfy her curiosity.

‘You say that belongs to Marta?’ he asked, looking thoughtful.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘And Lydia definitely didn’t give it to her?’

‘No, she just looked bewildered when Marta thanked her for it.

Is it important? Why do you look so worried all of a sudden?’

‘Because I’ve already seen one flower like that today, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The first was at Grace Aubrey’s – she had a vase of them. Bernard planted them for her, apparently. Its common name is widow iris.’

‘All this horticultural chat is fascinating, but I’d rather shoot myself than take up gardening so would you mind telling us what your point is,’ Ronnie said, but Josephine understood immediately what Archie meant.

‘You think Bernard’s killer left it for Marta as some sort of message, don’t you?’ she said, and Lettice slammed the vase down on the cocktail cabinet and moved hurriedly away from it. ‘And if that’s the case, the obvious implication is that Lydia’s next.’

As Ronnie and Lettice looked at him in disbelief, Archie said,

‘I certainly think she could be in danger, and whoever’s doing this is capable of anything. It’s funny – Lydia’s been on the periphery of everything this weekend; she was at the station with you when Elspeth was killed and she found Bernard’s body. It’s all too close for comfort, but at least she’s safely at the Yard now

– I think that’s the first stroke of luck we’ve had since this started. I’d better get back straight away and make sure she’s still there. Just before I go, though – is there any chance that Lydia could be in some way connected to Aubrey other than through the theatre? This is confidential,’ he added, looking pointedly at Ronnie, whose expression implied she had much to teach the Virgin Mary on the subject of innocence, ‘but Aubrey left her a considerable lump sum in his will. I just wondered if she could possibly have had any part to play in what happened with Arthur?’

‘I really don’t think so,’ Josephine said. ‘I haven’t known her 240

that long, of course, but we have talked a lot about our lives and she’s never mentioned anything that could possibly fit in. She had a brother who was shot in the trenches, but I’m sure she didn’t meet Bernard until long after the war was over.’

‘I’m not surprised he wanted to look after her financially,’

Lettice added. ‘They really were good friends, you know, and he valued her opinion on everything. I think she was closer to him than anyone, and of course he always admired her professionally.

He wasn’t one to let sentiment interfere with his business, but their personal friendship would have been strong enough to last through any decisions that the actress in Lydia didn’t like.’

Josephine agreed. ‘Lydia has a talent for friendship, if not for relationships,’ she said. ‘She was always fiercely loyal to Bernard and I think he prized loyalty above most things. It’s not a terribly common currency in theatre.’

‘But if the killer suspects they were close enough for Bernard to have confided in her about Arthur, that would be enough to make her a target,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll go and speak to her, and I’ll telephone to let you know she’s all right. Would you explain the situation to Marta when she gets here? I’m afraid it’ll mean coming clean about the flower, but try not to alarm her too much. I could be over-reacting and Lydia could be perfectly safe – let’s hope so –

but I don’t want another death on my hands, so I’ve got to consider every possibility. I’m happy to look stupid – even in front of Marta Fox – but not negligent.’

‘Is Marta coming over?’ asked Lettice, casting another suspicious glance at the flower which had so recently enchanted her.

‘Yes, in fact she should be here by now.’ Josephine looked at the clock, still distracted by what Archie had said. ‘I wonder what’s keeping her?’

‘Perhaps she’s sparing a thought for nervous policemen.’ Archie smiled and kissed her goodbye. ‘Try not to worry about Lydia,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I won’t let anything happen to her, even if I have to keep her under lock and key for her own protection.’

‘Thanks, Archie,’ Josephine said, walking him to the door. ‘And not just for that.’ When she returned to the middle studio, she was 241

surprised to see that Ronnie and Lettice had put their coats on.

‘Are you going out again already?’

‘Apparently so,’ said Ronnie peevishly. ‘It seems we’ve got to walk the streets to give you time to reassure Marta in peace.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Lettice said. ‘We can go to George’s for an hour or two. It would be better for you if you were on your own with her, wouldn’t it?’ she asked Josephine. ‘You’ll be all right?’

‘Of course I will. I don’t want to drive you out again, but it would make things easier and I’ll bring you up to date when you get back. There’s an awful lot you don’t know yet.’

‘Yes, like who the fuck Arthur is for a start,’ Ronnie called over her shoulder as they clattered down the stairs. Josephine waited a minute or two, then picked up the telephone. It was more than an hour now since she had spoken to Marta, and Lydia’s flat was only a ten-minute walk away. Where on earth could she have got to? Anxiously, she waited for a reply but none came. Perhaps Marta had simply got carried away with something else, but was now on her way? She was about to replace the receiver when the call was answered and she heard Marta’s voice, sharp and slightly agitated.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Josephine. Are you all right?’

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’ she snapped, then softened.

‘I’m sorry, Josephine, I should have telephoned. I can’t come over after all – not at the moment, anyway. Perhaps later – but I’ll ring first. I need some time on my own. All right?’

It could be her imagination, but it seemed to Josephine that she was being despatched as quickly as possible. Why was that, she wondered? ‘That’s fine. I hope you and Lydia work it out, but you know where I am if I can help.’

‘It was very sweet of you to offer, but I think it’s something we need to sort through ourselves.’

As Josephine recalled, it was Marta who had asked rather than she who had offered, but there was no point in splitting hairs.

‘Have you heard from Lydia?’ she asked.

‘No. I told you – she’s at the police station. I don’t expect her 242

back for a while yet. Now, I really must go. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow.’

There was no further explanation, and Josephine heard the line go dead long before she had a chance to raise the subject of Lydia’s safety. God, Marta was volatile. How could her attitude have changed so much in such a short time? It was like speaking to two different people. She was about to hurry down to the street to stop the girls making themselves scarce unnecessarily, but paused as she passed the ominous flower, incongruously dumped between bottles of Cointreau and crème de menthe. The widow iris. Of course, in her anxiety for Lydia she hadn’t thought to tell Archie that Marta was already a widow. Could that be significant? She tried to remember what Marta had actually told her: there was very little to go on – just that the marriage had been unhappy and that her husband had died; at the time, Josephine had assumed she meant during the war but, looking back, she realised that Marta hadn’t actually said that. When had the relationship turned sour, she wondered? She reflected on the letters she had received from Lydia, hoping that some of them might have contained information about Marta’s background, but the facts were remarkable only in their scarcity. Certainly, though, someone who was unhappily married didn’t bother to write stories for her husband and send them to the front; that was an act of love. So what had gone wrong? Unless, of course, those stories had been sent to her husband’s regiment but not actually to her husband.

Josephine sat down, still looking at the widow iris. She was used to working back from an unlikely starting point to see if she could build a plausible chain of events, but no scenario she had considered in her fiction could compete with the story now playing in her mind. Could it be that Marta’s interest in Elliott Vintner was more personal than that of one writer in another? Surely there were too many objections to the idea that Marta had been Vintner’s wife and Arthur’s lover? For a start, she didn’t seem the type to stand by and do nothing about the crime that had been committed: wouldn’t she have created hell about Arthur’s death – if she suspected it wasn’t an accident, that is? But perhaps that was a little naive: 243

Josephine was well aware that the independence she had always enjoyed was still the exception rather than the norm, and things would have been very different for a young married woman twenty years ago; she shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it would have been for someone shackled to a man like Vintner to stand up for herself, let alone for anyone else. If he showed the sort of violence towards his wife that he was clearly capable of, who could say what abuse she had suffered or what sort of fear she lived in; and because she had been unfaithful, society would have been against her, too. Pregnant with another man’s child, she would have been utterly at his mercy and completely alone in the world.

After he died, though, she would no doubt have moved heaven and earth to find her daughter; was that why she was here? Even for Josephine, it was far too much of a coincidence that Marta should happen to turn up in a circle of people who were so connected to the other part of her life – if that’s what it was. Had she moved in on Lydia merely as a way to get to Aubrey, and so to Elspeth? Was it Lydia who was being used after all? She remembered the look of pain in Marta’s eyes the night before when she had believed herself to be unimportant in her lover’s life; that had been genuine, Josephine was sure, but perhaps Marta was dealing with feelings she had not expected to have, feelings which would have complicated things if she had simply been waiting for the right moment to let Aubrey know who she was and to be reintroduced into her daughter’s life. With a start, Josephine realised that Marta and Elspeth had come within a whisker of meeting at the station: was that why Marta had disappeared to find a taxi? If she had recognised Elspeth, she wouldn’t want to be forced into an introduction on a railway platform.

Josephine was so absorbed by the narrative she was creating that it took her a few moments to spot the obvious flaw. She was being ridiculous, of course; if Marta were Elspeth’s mother, she’d be behaving very differently now. She’d seen enough of Marta since Friday night to know if she were grieving for a lost daughter: that wasn’t the sort of thing that could be kept hidden. No, she could just about believe that Marta was capable of keeping her 244

composure while Lydia discussed Arthur’s murder in front of her, but the tragedy of a daughter’s death was not something that could be borne in private. In any case, with Elspeth gone there would be no more need for secrecy.

Nevertheless, there was still something that bothered Josephine about Marta. She might have woven an intricate fantasy around the woman’s past, but she had not imagined the echoes of Vintner’s first novel in her manuscript, nor her strange behaviour just now on the telephone. Things needed to be clarified and there was only one way to do it. She picked up her gloves from the table in the hall and took her coat from its hook, then – without really knowing why – she went back to fetch the flower. As she walked across the cobbled courtyard and out into St Martin’s Lane, she could not quite rid herself of a niggling suspicion that it wasn’t Lydia who was in danger after all.

The five-minute journey back to Scotland Yard seemed one of the longest Penrose had ever taken and he was relieved to be back in its long corridors, surrounded by the familiar police-station smell of disinfectant and typewriter ribbons. As he walked through the building to find Fallowfield, he tried to plan – as far as he could –

the next few hours of the investigation. Exploring Vintner’s background and tracing his son was now a priority, and he needed to bring his sergeant up to date and then talk to Lydia. After that, it was time to call a conference with the whole team to discuss the murders from every angle, review the work done over the weekend and take advantage of all the information that could be gleaned from the Yard’s various expert departments. It was the first duty of any detective in charge of a case to co-ordinate this complex web of knowledge, ensuring that every detail – no matter how insignificant it seemed – was available to everyone. He enjoyed his role tremendously: it gave him the chance to test his own thoughts on the case and to gain a full understanding of other lines of enquiry which might come unexpectedly into play. In other words, it satisfied him that he was in control.

He found Fallowfield in the long, pillared CID office, studying 245

a wall of maps which showed every street in the London area. The Sergeant was talking to Seddon, who listened intently to every word, and – not for the first time – Penrose blessed the day he had been given such a competent second-in-charge. He had always respected the way Fallowfield handled the team, giving them friendly encouragement and guidance without ever losing his authority, and he looked now with admiration at the scene in front of him – a room full of men engaged in the methodical and frequently tedious aspects of police work, but tackling it willingly and with great determination.

As soon as he saw Penrose, Fallowfield got up and made his way over to him through a sea of desks and green filing cabinets. His excitement was obvious. ‘Good timing, Sir. We’ve just got the breakthrough we needed. Constable Seddon’s got through to the number on Aubrey’s desk – the one down south that no one was answering.’

‘And?’ Penrose asked, glancing approvingly at Seddon.

‘The number belongs to a landlady in Brighton, Sir,’ Seddon explained after a nod from Fallowfield. ‘She runs two boarding houses down there which provide digs for theatre people on tour.

Apparently, Bernard Aubrey had been in touch with her recently, asking her to confirm some bookings she had a couple of years ago for the cast of Hay Fever. He sent her a programme to look at to see if she recognised any of the actors – and she did. She telephoned Aubrey on Saturday night and told him.’

The boy’s excitement was infectious. ‘Who was there?’ Penrose asked urgently.

‘It was someone called Rafe Swinburne, Sir. She recognised his face from Aubrey’s programme, but the name confused her. You see, when he was in Hay Feverhe wasn’t listed as Rafe Swinburne.

He was listed as Rafe Vintner.’

‘Rafe Swinburne? You mean we just stood there and watched Vintner’s son walk away?’ Penrose was furious with himself. ‘That wasn’t an overnight bag – he was packing to leave right in front of me.’ He could scarcely countenance the nerve it must have taken for Swinburne to answer his questions with such casual arrogance 246

when he knew how much was at stake, but it fitted the audacity of both murders perfectly. ‘It’s his father’s egotism all over again.

How could I have been so bloody stupid?’

‘To be fair, Sir, you didn’t know what we were looking for then,’

Fallowfield said, but logic only made Penrose’s expression even more thunderous.

‘Put the call out right away,’ he barked at Seddon, whose sense of triumph was fading fast, ‘and get his photograph in the next Gazettealong with a description of the bike. It’s an Ariel Square Four – do you know what that looks like?’ Seddon nodded.

‘Christ, he could be anywhere by now on that thing. There’s no point wasting manpower at the stations. He’s not stupid enough to risk public transport, so I want every available car on the main routes out of the city.’ Seddon hurried off but Penrose called him back. ‘It was good work to keep on that number, Constable,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He turned to Fallowfield. ‘Is Lydia Beaumont still here, Bill?’

‘Yes, Sir. She’s waiting downstairs to see White.’

‘Good.’ Penrose brought him quickly up to date. ‘If Swinburne

– or should I say Vintner – has done a runner, at least she’s safe for now, but I still want to talk to her. Will you tell her I’ll be down in a minute or two and reassure her about Hedley? Then go and see him again – find out what he knows about Swinburne’s background and see if it was Swinburne who put him up to the alibi after all.’ If Vintner did turn out to be their man, he thought, how on earth would Hedley feel when he realised he had shared rooms with Elspeth’s killer? ‘We need to get to the truth about that because at the moment it works for both of them.’

‘Right, Sir. Anything else?’

‘Yes, just a second.’ Penrose picked up the telephone on the nearest desk, but there was no answer from his cousins’ studio. If Marta had arrived and they were deep in conversation, perhaps Josephine would ignore the telephone? ‘I want someone to keep an eye on 66. Get one of the officers at the theatre to pop over the road and make sure everyone’s all right. If Josephine’s there, I want someone on duty outside.’

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‘What shall I tell him to do if she’s not?’

Penrose thought for a second. If Marta hadn’t turned up, might Josephine have gone to look for her? ‘Get Lydia’s address – it’s somewhere off Drury Lane – and send him there instead. Let me know as soon as you find her.’

248

Fifteen

Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow to hold all the traffic that wished to pass through it. Pleased to be on foot, Josephine hurried down the busy thoroughfare, and walked on through the heart of Covent Garden. At the end of the street, she turned right into Drury Lane and was relieved to be within a stone’s throw of her destination; what little sun there had been seemed to have given up on the day before its time, but it was more than the gloomy bank of cloud and encroaching cold that made Josephine quicken her pace still further.

Lydia’s lodgings were on the first floor of one of the artisan dwellings which had replaced the slums at the southern end of the street. Her rooms were instantly recognisable, even from a distance, thanks to a pair of typically flamboyant window boxes that underlined each sash with red and yellow wood and spilled their contents down towards the floor below. Lydia always joked that they were a way of keeping her hand in for the big house in the country when it finally arrived but, in truth, she had a gift for making a home anywhere; despite her mutterings about the impossibil-ity of putting down roots, her digs were always welcoming, elegant and utterly her, and Josephine usually looked forward to spending time there. But not today. As she crossed the road, uneasy about the reception she would get from Marta, she noticed an elderly woman coming out of the house and recognised her as the occupant of the top-floor rooms. They had met once or twice at Lydia’s spur-of-the-moment parties, and now she waved a cheerful greeting.

‘I’ll save you the bother of ringing, dear,’ the woman called, 249

holding the front door open. ‘I hope you’ve got your tin hat with you, though. It didn’t sound like a lazy Sunday afternoon when I went past.’

She was gone before Josephine had a chance to ask her what she meant. Perhaps Lydia had come home earlier than expected and they were ‘sorting through things’ as Marta had put it. If that was the case, it would be tactful to beat a hasty retreat but that didn’t solve the problem of Lydia’s safety and it didn’t answer any of the questions she had for Marta. No, she’d have to brave it, if only briefly.

She had barely climbed half a dozen steps when Marta’s voice rang down to meet her. ‘If you’d been where you were supposed to be all weekend, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you since last night –

where the hell were you? You must have known I’d want to speak to you. And what are you doing here now? I told you never to acknowledge me when I was with Lydia.’

‘Make your mind up – either you want to see me or you don’t.’

The exchange certainly sounded like a lovers’ quarrel but it was a man’s voice, unfamiliar to Josephine and with a petulant quality which she instantly found disagreeable. Could Marta be having an affair? That might explain her moods and the mysterious flower, but Josephine found it hard to reconcile with what she had seen of Marta’s feelings for Lydia. ‘Anyway, your sainted Lydia isn’t here, is she?’ the man continued. ‘I watched her leave. She looks a bit peaky, though – it must be the distress of losing a close friend.’

‘Oh shut up and act your age – this isn’t a game.’ Marta’s words were defiant, but she sounded upset rather than angry. ‘I hate it when you behave like a child. We’ve got to stop what we’re doing

– it just doesn’t make sense and innocent people are getting hurt. I can’t live with it any more – I’ve got to tell Lydia.’

Even as she reached for the door, Josephine knew that the sensible decision would be to turn around and leave, but it was too late: carried forward by her curiosity and her concern for Lydia, she committed herself to the scene before weighing up the consequences. Inside the room, Marta stood next to Lydia’s small piano, 250

talking to a man who reclined on the low divan in front of her. He had his back to Josephine, but she could see his face reflected in a full-length Venetian mirror; he was handsome, although his features were marred by a sulkiness around the mouth which matched his voice, but what struck Josephine most was how unperturbed he seemed. Marta, on the other hand, had clearly been crying, and her tears seemed to bear out the vulnerability hinted at in her exchange with Lydia the night before.

‘Josephine! What are you doing here?’ she asked, her expression suddenly filled with horror.

Josephine ignored the question. ‘What’s going on, Marta? What have you got to tell Lydia? And who’s this?’

Marta hesitated and tried to compose herself, but the fear in her voice made the attempted casualness of her next words sound absurdly false. ‘It’s Rafe Swinburne. He’s from the theatre.’

Josephine recognised the name of Terry’s choice for Bothwell in Queen of Scotsbut, before she could speak, Swinburne leapt to his feet and walked over to her.

‘There’s no need to be so coy, surely,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Stage names are for strangers, and Josephine’s practically a friend of the family.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Rafe Vintner,’ he said. ‘I believe you knew my father.’ He noticed the flower she was holding and turned back to Marta. ‘I left that at stage door for you. I’m quite hurt that you should have given it away already.’

‘You left it? Why?’ Marta looked astonished, and Josephine could see very clearly who was in control of the alliance – whatever the alliance was. She remembered what Archie had said about Vintner’s son, and realised the danger she had put herself in. How could she have been so stupid?

‘I don’t know why I left it, really,’ Vintner was saying. ‘Let’s call it filial affection, shall we?’

‘Rafe, don’t – not in front of . . .’ but Marta was interrupted before she could finish.

‘Oh, the game’s up, Mother,’ Vintner said. ‘It’s a shame, I agree –

my career was going rather well and I really did want that part in Queen of Scots. But it’s time we called it a day. You see, I happen to 251

know that a little bird’s just flown down from Berwick-upon-Tweed to spoil the fun we’ve been having. In fact, she’s probably doing it as we speak. That’s why I’m here now – to tie up a few loose ends.’

Marta looked at her son as though he had gone completely insane, but Josephine was piecing together the most terrible of pictures. When she had considered a connection between Marta and Elliott Vintner, the stumbling block had been Marta’s lack of grief for Elspeth; could the explanation for that really be that she was somehow implicated in her murder? Like most people, Josephine was reluctant to believe that a mother was capable of harming her child, and she stared at the woman she thought she had been getting to know in utter disbelief. What sort of monster would con-spire with one of her children to destroy the other? Marta looked back in desperation, as if pleading with Josephine not to judge her, but suddenly her expression changed to one of pure fear. Turning round, Josephine saw that Rafe Vintner had placed himself in between her and the door. He had removed a scarf from a battered leather holdall and was now carefully unrolling it. Inside was a gun.

‘Don’t Rafe, please!’ Marta cried, but Vintner was already moving back towards Josephine. Before she had a chance to register what was happening, he had grabbed her arm and turned her roughly round and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. The barrel of the gun was pressed hard into the small of her back and, in that moment, she understood what it meant to know true fear.

She had written about it many times and, in the past, had been afraid for others – for Jack, of course, and for her mother as she lay dying – but this blind terror was something altogether different. It was a selfish, humiliating emotion, stronger than anything she had ever known.

‘Don’t you think it’s a little late for such a sudden change of heart, Mother?’ Vintner said, emphasising the last word in a way which scorned the relationship. For a second or two, he removed the gun from Josephine’s back and used its barrel to trace the contours of her face. The steel was cold against her cheek and she tried to fight back the tears of anger and frustration, but in vain.

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Vintner laughed quietly. ‘So this is the great but elusive Josephine Tey,’ he said. ‘You know, Mother, she’s not at all like the woman you described to me at the railway station when you were trying to tell me who to kill. How could you have got it so wrong? Still, there’s always a second chance.’ He turned back to Marta. ‘You believe in second chances, don’t you Mother? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Being a family again after all these years. So don’t go soft on me now – we started this together and we haven’t finished yet.’

This time, the shock served to strengthen Josephine’s resolve rather than destroy it. ‘You told him to kill me?’ she asked, looking incredulously at Marta. ‘Why the hell would you want to do that?’

Marta stayed silent. ‘Perhaps I was being a little disingenuous there,’ Vintner said. ‘It was my idea. After what you did to my father, you surely can’t wonder why Iwould want to kill you?

Mother just offered to help me out. We’ve been estranged for a while, you see, and she was so pleased to see me that I think she’d have agreed to anything.’ Marta opened her mouth to speak but he interrupted her. ‘There’s no need for secrecy now, not with our little friend here,’ he said, gesturing with the gun. ‘And I’m sure Josephine would like to know that you weren’t exactly opposed to the idea of bumping her off.’ He put his mouth closer to Josephine’s ear. ‘In fact, it was her idea to do it in a crowd – she thought it would be a nice tribute to your little crime novel. And she had her own reasons for wanting you dead. It’s a shame you don’t have time to talk to her about them.’

‘But you killed . . .’ Josephine began, but Vintner put his hand quickly over her mouth. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘I see you’re a few steps ahead of us, but all in good time. It’s a shame to rush a good story – you should know that.’ He paused. ‘Where was I? Ah yes –

your murder. You see, Mother was supposed to point you out to me and make herself scarce. The thing is, she was a little bit hasty in getting out of the way. She didn’t wait to meet you properly and confused you with someone else, so she gave me the wrong information. Before you got here just now, she was even blaming Lydia 253

for saying something about a hat.’ He shrugged his shoulders and added sarcastically, ‘A tragedy.’

With a mixture of horror, incredulity and pity, Josephine realised that Marta had no idea who her son had killed at King’s Cross. As if to prove her right, Marta spoke again.

‘You’re frightening me, Rafe. This is not what the plan was.

We’re no nearer to finding your sister now than we were when I agreed to help you, and you promised we’d be a family again. I thought you wanted that as much as I do.’

‘Aren’t I enough for you then?’ Vintner spat the words out, and the bitterness in his voice was almost as palpable to Josephine as the gun which rested in her back. She could not see his face, but she could tell from the growing fear in Marta’s that the agreement which she had believed to exist between them was gradually being exposed as a lie. ‘Do you have to have your bastard daughter to play happy families?’ he continued, and Marta flinched as if the blow had been a physical one. ‘Anyway, if you want to talk about promises, what about your promises to me? Like the one you made to add a little something to Bernard Aubrey’s whisky. Thank God I didn’t trust you to carry that off.’

‘I couldn’t do it – we’d already made one mistake.’ Marta was crying again now. ‘And he didn’t need to die.’

‘Oh he did, you know. He was far too close to the truth about everything, so it’s just as well I made sure, isn’t it? That’s one broken promise. Then there are the promises you made to your husband, of course. You didn’t keep those for very long, did you?’

‘We’ve been through this time and time again. Your father was an evil man.’

‘How the hell would you know? You turned your back on him after five minutes of marriage. He went off to fight for us, to fight for his country – and what do you do? Jump into bed with the gardener. I wasn’t even five years old, for God’s sake – what sort of effect do you think that had on me?’

‘But you didn’t know anything about it. I kept you out of the way.’