A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,56
windblown-looking hair. It was a girlish gesture, oddly incongruous in a woman who so plainly was no longer a girl. She had paper-fine skin and delicate features, but the ageing process was not dealing with her kindly.
She was lined and, although thin, her flesh lacked resiliency, as if she had lost too much weight too quickly. Bones jutted from her cheeks and wrists.
"You know," she said suddenly, "when Paul died, it wasn't this bad. I can't come to grips with what's happened to me over William."
"The suddenness," Lynley offered. "The shock."
She nodded. "Perhaps you're right. My husband Paul was ill for several years. I had time to prepare myself. And Bridie, of course, was too young to understand. But William..." She made an effort at control, fixing her eyes on the wall, sitting up tall. "William was such a presence in our lives, such a strength. I think we both started to depend on him and then he was gone. But it's selfish of me to be reacting like this. How can I be so awful when there's Bobba to consider?"
"Roberta?"
She glanced at him, then away. "She always came here with William."
"What was she like?"
"Very quiet. Very nice. Not an attractive girl. Heavy, you know. But she was always very good to Bridie."
"Her weight caused a problem between Richard Gibson and his uncle, though, didn't it?"
Olivia's brow furrowed. "A problem? How do you mean?"
"Their argument over it. At the Dove and Whistle. Will you tell us about it?"
"Oh that. Stepha must have told you. But that has nothing to do with William's death."
This as she saw Sergeant Havers write a few lines in her notebook.
"One can never be sure. Will you tell us about it?"
A hand fluttered up as if in protest but resettled in her lap. "Richard hadn't been back from the fens for long. He ran into us at the Dove and Whistle. There were words. Silly. Over in a minute. That's all." She smiled vaguely.
"What sort of words?"
"It really had nothing to do with Roberta initially. We were all sitting together at a table and William, I'm afraid, made a comment about Hannah. The barmaid. Have you seen her?"
"Last night."
"Then you know she looks...different. William didn't at all approve of her, nor of the way her father deals with her. You know - as if he's just amused by it all. So William said something about it. Something like, "Why her dad lets her walk about looking like a tart is a mystery to me.' That sort of thing. Nothing really serious. Richard was just a bit in his cups.
He'd a terrible set of scratches on his face, so I think he'd been at it with his wife as well. His mood was foul. He said something about not being such a fool as to judge by appearances, that - as I recall - an angel could be wearing a streetwalker's guise and the sweetest blonde-headed little face could hide a whore."
"And William took that to mean what?"
She produced a tired smile. "As a reference to Gillian, his older daughter. Rather immediately, I'm afraid. He demanded to know what Richard meant by his remark. Richard and Gilly had been great friends, you see. I think - to avoid having to explain - Richard sidetracked onto Roberta."
"How?"
"As an example of not judging by appearances. Of course, it went on from there. Richard demanded to know why Roberta had been allowed to get into such an unattractive state. In turn, William demanded to know what he had meant by his insinuation about Gilly. Richard demanded that William answer. William demanded that Richard answer. You know the sort of thing."
"And then?"
She laughed. It was a tittering sound, like that of a trapped bird. "I thought they might fight. Richard said no child of his would ever be allowed to eat her way into an early grave and that William ought to be ashamed of the job he'd done as a father. William became so angry that he said something about Richard being ashamed of the job he was doing as a husband. He made a...well, a bit of a crude reference to Madeline going unsatisfied - she's Richard's wife, have you met her? - and frankly just when I thought Richard might truly hit his uncle, instead he just laughed. He said something about being a fool to waste his time worrying about Roberta and left us."