you quite clearly that I had no knowledge of these people. They belonged to my wife’s family, not mine.”
“I think you do have knowledge, Mr. Lynch. You’re just not willing to share it. I went up to Williamstown, you see.”
The color now drained from his face. “What exactly is it that you want?” he demanded. “Blackmail? Is that it? Because if so you’re going to be sorry you came here.”
“Blackmail? Good heavens, no. I just want the truth, Mr. Lynch, and I want to hear it from your lips.”
“I’ve told you the truth—as much of it as I know.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I spoke with various people in Williamstown and I think I’ve discovered the truth. Shall I share my thoughts with you and you can correct me if I’m wrong?”
He was still scowling horribly. His face now looked even more like that of a bulldog. “Go on, damn you.”
“Such language, Mr. Lynch,” I said. “Very well. When I was in Williamstown I learned of a lovely, vivacious young girl called Lydia Johnson. I learned that she loved to dance and have fun but she was raised by strict Scottish Calvinists who did not allow her normal girlish pleasures. I learned that she was a very bright girl who loved to read and wanted to go to college—Vassar, to be exact. Are you with me so far?”
“Go on,” he growled.
“Her parents might have agreed to a college education but then a terrible tragedy struck. Her parents were both killed when their buggy went off the road. She was left with no one in the world, her only relatives being back in Scotland.” I glanced up at him again. He was sitting as still as a statue, his whiskey glass in one hand.
“That was when you came on the scene, wasn’t it, Mr. Lynch? You were an ambitious man and you summed up the situation correctly and seized the moment. You sensed that she needed to replace that domineering father figure, and you grabbed your chance to get your hands on her fortune and the mill. So you courted her and she agreed to marry you while she was still vulnerable and grieving for her parents. She didn’t love you but she needed someone to take care of her. Am I correct so far?”
“Get on with it,” he snapped.
“But Lydia was a romantic. She longed for balls and parties and you were as strict as her father had been. You had her money but you were a bit of a skinflint, weren’t you? And you were not the romantic husband she had dreamed of. She was ripe to fall in love when you hired a handsome Italian gardener—Antonio, was that his name? She fell madly in love with him. They had a passionate affair and she found herself in a difficult and embarrassing position. She was going to have a child. Am I right in my hunch so far, Mr. Lynch?”
I waited for him to react to this but he sat there as if carved from stone.
“Now, I don’t know if she was just honest by nature or she knew that the darker-skinned baby would never pass as yours or”—I looked at his face and made a stab at the truth—“that you couldn’t father a child of your own?”
He flushed beet-red again.
“Anyway, she told you the truth. You were enraged, but you couldn’t throw her out and risk the scandal, or risk losing her money. She might have run off with Antonio but he died tragically and fortuitously by falling off a bridge. So now she was at your mercy, wasn’t she? You acted the forgiving and magnanimous husband. You would keep her, but you weren’t going to keep the child. She pleaded and at last you cooked up a scheme. You sent her away to the West Coast and when she returned she brought the child of relatives who had conveniently died in China. Is this how it went so far, Mr. Lynch?”
Again he sat staring past me.
“But you never forgave her, did you? You made it clear that you’d hold it over her for the rest of her days and make her life a misery. The birth, plus her grief over the loss of her love, had weakened her. She never regained her strength and she died of a broken heart. And you never forgave Emily either just for being born. You showed her not one ounce of love or affection and turned her out at the