A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,63
didn't bother with a divorce." Russell Mowrey smiled up at her from the photograph Tessa had given them. He was a nice-looking man in a three-piece suit, wife on his arm. Easter Sunday. Havers put it in the manila folder and gave herself back to the passing scenery. "At least we know why Gillian left."
"Because of the father's religion?"
"That's the way I see it," Havers replied. "Obviously, a combination of that and the second baby. There she'd been, for eight years the centre of her father's life - Mum doesn't appear to have counted for much - when all of a sudden a new baby arrives. It's supposed to be Mummy's, but Dad doesn't trust Mummy to do right by her children, so he takes this one over as well. Mummy leaves and Gillian follows."
"Not exactly, Havers. She waited eight years to go wherever she went."
"Well, you can't expect her to have run off when she was eight years old! She bided her time, probably hating little Roberta every second for stealing her dad."
"That doesn't make sense. First you say that Gillian left because she couldn't abide her father's religious fanaticism. Then you say she left because she'd lost his love to Roberta. Now what is it? She either loves him and wants to be his favourite again, or she can't abide his religious devotion and feels she has to escape. You can't have it both ways."
"It's not black and white!" Havers protested loudly. "These things never are!"
Lynley glanced at her, amazed by the affront in her voice. Her stubby features looked like paste. "Barbara - "
"I'm sorry! Dammit! I'm doing it all over again! Why do I bother? I'm no good at this. I always do it. I never - "
"Barbara," he interrupted firmly.
She stared straight ahead. "Yes, sir?"
"We're discussing the case, not arguing before a bar of justice. It's fine to have an opinion. I want you to, in fact. I've always found it extremely helpful to talk a case over with someone." But it was more than that, really. It was arguing, laughing, hearing the sweet voice say
Oh, you think you're right, Tommy, but I shall prove you wrong! He felt loneliness settle on him like a cold, wet shroud.
Havers moved restlessly in her seat. With no music playing, the tension was screaming to be heard.
"I don't know what it is," she said at last. "I get into the fray and forget what I'm doing."
"I understand." He let the matter drop, his eyes following the meandering pattern that the stone walls made on the hillside across the dale from the road on which they travelled.
He thought about Tessa. He knew that he was trying to understand her and that he was ill-equipped to do so. Nothing in his life of Cornwall and Howenstow, of Oxford and Belgravia, even of Scotland Yard, explained the paucity of experience of life on a remote farm that would drive a girl of sixteen to believe that her only future lay in immediate marriage. And yet surely that was the foundation of what had happened. No romantic interpretation of the facts at hand - no reflections upon Heathcliff, no matter how apt - could hide the real explanation. The drudgery and sheer ennui of those weeks when she had been forced to stay home and help out had made an otherwise simple Yorkshire farmer look arresting by comparison. Thus, she merely moved from one trap into another. Married at sixteen, a mother before her seventeenth birthday.
Wouldn't any woman have wanted to escape such a life? Yet, if that was the case, why marry again in such a hurry?
Havers broke into his thoughts. An underlying note of urgency in her voice made Lynley glance at her curiously. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She swallowed noisily.
"What I can't see is the...Tessa's shrine. The woman walks out on him - not that she didn't appear to have every right to - and he sets up a virtual Taj Mahal of photographs in a corner of the sitting room."
It suddenly dawned on Lynley. "How do we know William set up the shrine?"
Havers came to her own quick terms with the knowledge. "Either of the girls could have done it," she responded.
"Who do you imagine?"
"It had to be Gillian."
"As a bit of revenge? A little daily reminder to William that Mummy'd run off? A little knife inserted between the ribs since he'd started to favour Roberta?"