A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,106
father before. Poor William simply sat there, astonished.
He didn't seem to know how to handle it."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing that helped particularly, as I recall. I went to Gilly's room, but she wouldn't let me in. She'd only scream that she wouldn't read the Bible any longer and that no one could make her. Then she threw things at the door. I...I went back down to William." She looked at Lynley with an expression that combined both perplexity and admiration as she went on. "You know, William never scolded her. That wasn't his way. But he later took the keys from all the doors. He said if the house had burned down that night and he hadn't been able to get to Gilly because she'd locked her door, he would never have forgiven himself."
"Did they go back to reading the Bible after that?"
She shook her head. "He never asked Gilly to read the Bible after that."
"Did he read it with you?"
"No. Just alone."
A girl had come to the door as they spoke, a piece of bread in her hand and a thin line of jam traced across her upper lip. She was small like her mother but with her father's dark hair and intelligent eyes. She watched them curiously.
"Mummy," she called. Her voice was sweet and clear. "Is anything wrong? Is it Daddy?"
"No, darling," Tessa called back hastily. "I'll be in in a moment." She turned to Lynley.
"How well did you know Richard Gibson?" he asked her.
"William's nephew? As well as anyone could have known Richard, I suppose. He was a quiet boy but immensely likable, with a wonderful sense of humour, as I recall. Gilly quite adored him. Why do you ask?"
"Because William left the farm to him, not to Roberta."
Her brow furrowed. "But why not to Gilly?"
"Gillian ran away from home when she was sixteen, Mrs. Mowrey. No one ever heard from her again."
Tessa drew in a breath. It was sharp and quick, like the reaction to an unexpected blow.
Her eyes fixed themselves on Lynley.
"No," she said. It was not so much denial as disbelief.
He continued. "Richard had been gone for a time as well. To the fens. There's a chance that Gillian followed him there and then perhaps went on to London."
"But why? Whatever happened? What could have happened?"
He considered how much to tell her. "I've got the impression," he said, spacing the words delicately, "that she was involved with Richard somehow."
"And William found out? If that's the case, he would have torn Richard limb from limb."
"Suppose he did find out and Richard knew what his reaction would be. Would that be enough for Richard to leave the village?"
"I should think so. But it doesn't explain why William left the farm to him and not to Roberta, does it?"
"It was apparently a bargain he'd struck with Gibson. Roberta would continue to live there for her lifetime with Richard and his family, but the land would go to the Gibsons."
"But certainly Roberta would marry someday. It hardly seems fair. Surely William would have wanted the land to remain in the immediate family, to be passed on to his grandchildren, if not to Gilly's children, then to Roberta's."
Even as she spoke, Lynley realised what a vast chasm the nineteen years of her absence had caused. She knew nothing of Roberta, nothing of the girl's hidden storehouse of food, nothing of her vacant, rocking catatonia. Roberta was just a name to her mother, a name who would marry, have children, grow old. She was not at all real. She did not actually exist.
"Did you never think about them?" he asked her. She looked down at her feet, employing in the act an intensity that suggested all of her concentration was centered on the smooth, rusty suede of her shoes. When she didn't reply, he persisted. "Did you never wonder how they were, Mrs. Mowrey? Did you never imagine what they looked like or how they'd grown up?"
She shook her head once, sharply. And when she answered him at last, in a voice so controlled that it spoke volumes on the emotion she had spent on the subject, she kept her eyes on the minster in the distance. "I couldn't let myself do that, Inspector. I knew they were safe. I knew they were well. So I let them die. I had to if I wanted to survive. Can you understand?"
A few days ago he would have said no. And that would have been the truth of the matter.