Flaxley was a tall, spare woman, her brown hair liberally threaded with gray. The marks of grief were all too evident in her face. She came in and sat down opposite Narraway at his invitation, then folded her hands in her lap and waited for him to speak. Her back was ramrod straight, probably from a lifetime of self-discipline; every emotion within her seemed to have been drained away. She looked exhausted.
Narraway was deeply moved by her loyalty. He wondered for a fleeting moment how many people had inspired such sense of loss, even among their own families.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Flaxley,” he said quietly. He decided to be completely honest with her. “But the more I learn of Mrs. Quixwood, the more determined I am to do what I can to see that the man who attacked her is punished.” He chose very deliberately not to use the word “rape.” There was no need to distress Flaxley further.
He saw the flicker of surprise in her eyes.
“I am certain that if you had any idea how to achieve this,” he went on, “with as little unpleasant speculation as possible, you would already have told Inspector Knox. I have been reading Mrs. Quixwood’s appointment diary, and I feel I know her better than I did before.”
“Her appointment diary,” Flaxley repeated. She did not ask if he believed that Catherine could possibly have had any idea what would happen to her, but it was implicit in the lift of her voice and the contempt in her eyes.
“Do you believe Mrs. Quixwood would have opened the front door to a man she did not both know and trust?” he asked her.
“No, of course—” She stopped. Clearly she had not even considered the matter. “Was her … attacker not a thief?”
“I don’t know what he was, Miss Flaxley, but it’s clear he did not break into the house, which leaves only one other possibility—that she let him in. Indeed, that initially she had no fear of him. Therefore he was someone she already knew, quite well enough not to call a servant to attend her.”
She stared at him, her eyes filling with horror, her hands knotted in her lap so tightly that the knuckles shone white. He noticed with surprise how delicately boned they were. In their own way, they were quite beautiful.
“I will not smear her reputation.” There was anger in her voice, and warning. “But tell me, what can I do to help?”
He admired her for it. He hoped that she would be able to keep that resolve and it pained him that she would probably not.
“Please go through the diary with me and tell me which of her friends she kept company with, and something about each of them. I will call on them in due course, but your insight will be more acute than mine. You knew Mrs. Quixwood, and possibly her true feelings about these people rather than the socially polite face she showed. Also, I have learned to my cost that women can judge one another far more observantly than men can.” He allowed himself a very slight smile.
He saw it echoed in a momentary easing in her expression also.
“Yes, my lord, of course,” she agreed.
IT TOOK NARRAWAY THE next three days to meet with eight of the people mentioned in Catherine’s diaries. He found it difficult, which surprised him. They were all women very like those he had known and mixed with all his adult life, and yet when speaking of Catherine, the artificiality of polite conversation between strangers irritated him.
He began with a cousin of Catherine’s, a dark, rather elegant woman with beautiful hair and a very ordinary face. Her name was Mary Abercrombie.
“Of course we are deeply grieved,” she said earnestly, but without any signs of pain that Narraway could see. “I don’t know what I can tell you; I was very fond of Catherine, of course. We grew up together.” She fidgeted slightly with her skirts. “But as so often happens, when we both married we drifted apart. Our tastes were … different.”
“But you still went to the British Museum together,” he pointed out. “Or was the entry in her diary incorrect?”
Mrs. Abercrombie smiled and looked down at her hands. Narraway had a fleeting and irrelevant thought about how much uglier they were than those of Flaxley.
“It was incorrect?” he prompted.
“Yes … and no,” she equivocated. “We did meet there, and visited a few of