A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,62

long. Russell worked two jobs and I've my job at the museum as well. We've been," she blinked back her first tears, "so happy. God, so happy. Until now. You've come for me, haven't you? Or have you brought me word?"

"No one's told you? You haven't read about it?"

"Read about it? Has something...He isn't..." Tessa looked from Lynley to Havers. It was obvious that she saw something in their faces, for her own face flashed fear before she went on.

"The night Russell left, he was terribly angry. I thought that if only I said nothing, did nothing, it would work itself out. He'd come home and - "

Lynley suddenly understood that they were talking about two entirely different things.

"Mrs. Mowrey," he said, "do you not know about your husband?"

Her eyes widened, growing dark with apprehension. "Russell," she whispered. "He left that Saturday the investigator found me. Three weeks ago. He's not been home since."

"Mrs. Mowrey," Lynley said carefully, "William Teys was murdered three weeks ago.

On Saturday night between ten and midnight. Your daughter Roberta was charged with the crime."

If they had thought she might faint, they were wrong. She stared at them without speaking for nearly a minute, then turned back to the window. "Rebecca will be home soon," she said tonelessly. "She comes home for lunch. She'll ask about her father. She does every day. She knows something's wrong, but I've managed to keep most of it from her." A trembling hand touched her cheek. "I know Russell's gone to London. I haven't phoned his family because, of course, I didn't want them to know anything was wrong. But I know he's gone to them in London. I know."

"Do you have a photograph of your husband?" Lynley asked. "His family's London address?"

She swung on him. "He wouldn't!" she cried passionately. "This is a man who has never lifted his hand to strike one of his own children! He was angry - yes, I've said that - but his anger was with me, not with William! He wouldn't have gone, he couldn't have - " She began to cry, horribly, shedding what were probably her first tears in three agonising weeks. Pressing her forehead against the window glass, she wept bitterly, as if she would never be consoled.

Havers got to her feet and left the room. Good God, where is she going? Lynley wondered, half-expecting a repeat of her disappearing act in the pub last night. But she returned moments later with a pitcher of orange juice and a glass.

"Thank you, Barbara," he said.

She nodded, shot him a diffident smile, and poured the woman a glass of the liquid.

Tessa Mowrey took it but rather than drink, she clutched it as if it were a talisman.

"Rebecca mustn't see me like this. I've got to pull myself together. Must be stronger than this."

She saw the glass in her hand, took a sip, and grimaced. "I can't abide tinned orange juice. Why do I have it in the house? Oh, Russell says that it's not that bad. I suppose it isn't, really." When she turned back to Lynley, she looked, he saw, every single day of her forty-three years. "He did not kill William."

"That's what everyone in Keldale says of Roberta."

She flinched. "I don't think of her as my daughter. I'm sorry. I never knew her."

"She's been placed in a mental asylum, Mrs. Mowrey. When William was found, she claimed to have killed him."

"Then if she's admitted to the crime, why have you come to see me? If she says she killed William then certainly Russell..." Her voice drifted off. It was as if she had suddenly heard her own words and realised how eager she was to trade daughter for husband.

He could hardly blame her. Lynley thought of the barn stall, the ornate Bible, the photograph albums, the cool silence of the melancholy house. "Did you never see Gillian again?" he asked abruptly, waiting for a sign, the smallest indication that Tessa knew of Gillian's disappearance. There was none.

"Never."

"She never contacted you in any way?"

"Of course not. Even if she'd wanted to, William wouldn't have allowed it, I'm sure."

Probably not, thought Lynley. But once she ran off, once she cut the ties with her father, why had she not sought her mother then?

"Religious fanatic," Havers declared decisively. She shoved her hair back behind her ears and gave her attention to the photograph she held. "But this one's not half bad. She did okay on her second time round. Too bad she