“But . . . but not from Maud?” Hal said. “In the diary, it reads as if Maud is her friend?”
“Later, yes. But Maud . . . oh, she was a funny one, right from a little girl. I started cleaning up there when I was fifteen, you know, and she must have been about five or six when I started. And I remember her standing there watching me with her hands on her hips, and I say to her, wanting to make friends, like, ‘I like your dress, Maud, it’s very pretty.’ And she tosses her head, and says, ‘I’d rather be complimented for my mind than my clothes.’ And I couldn’t help it—I just burst out laughing. Mortal offended she was. She didn’t speak to me for weeks after. But when you got to know her, underneath that prickly surface, she was a kind little thing, and fierce when she felt something was wrong. I’d been there a few years when there was trouble over some missing money and Mrs. Warren was interrogating all the staff, and I was the last one to have cleaned the room where it was supposed to have been. And I was all prepared for the sack, but Maud she comes marching into the kitchen, like an avenging angel, ignoring Mrs. Warren telling her to get out, and she says, ‘God damn it, Mrs. Warren, it was Abel took that money and you know it. We all know he steals from Mother’s purse. So leave Lizzie alone.’ And then she stormed out. She couldn’t have been more than ten. But listen to me, rattling on. This isn’t what you want to know.”
“No . . .” Hal said slowly. “No, it’s fine. To be honest . . . my mother never talked about her time here. It’s sort of . . . fascinating to find out all this. I never knew she had a cousin with the same name, let alone about Abel and Ezra and Harding and all the others. I wish she’d told me. I don’t know why she didn’t.”
“I don’t think it was a very happy time for her,” Lizzie said, and the light went out of her kind eyes, her face suddenly sad. “She came here after her parents died, and then it wasn’t more than a few months before she got into trouble—with you, I suppose it must have been. Of course, we didn’t know anything about it at first, at least I didn’t. But by December there was starting to be talk. She’d been sick all through the autumn, and tongues started wagging, and by the time Advent came around, she was beginning to show. She was only a slip of a thing, and for all the baggy clothes she’d begun to wear, you could see something wasn’t right. And she had that look to her—I can’t explain it, but you’ll know it. Something a little bit puffy around the face, a way of holding herself when she thought no one was looking. I’d seen it before, and I knew. I think the only person who didn’t suspect anything was Mrs. Westaway, and when she found out—oh, it was like the plagues of Egypt descended on that house. Doors slamming, and poor little Maggie confined to her room for weeks on end. She couldn’t stand to look at her, Mrs. Westaway said, and there were trays sent up and down, and she was barely allowed out. Maud took her meals up whenever she was allowed, and I used to see her coming back down and it looked as if she’d been crying. We all tiptoed around for weeks in the run-up to Christmas, wondering what was going to happen, and who the father was. Someone at her school, we reckoned, though if she knew, she never did say.”
“But it wasn’t,” Hal broke in urgently. “She did know, and that’s partly why I came here. I was hoping you could help me work it out. It was someone who came to stay at Trepassen House that summer, it must have been in August. A blue-eyed man, or a boy maybe. Do you know who it could be?”
“Came to stay?” Lizzie was frowning. “I don’t know about that. I can’t remember more than two or three times the children had friends to stay. Ezra, he had a school friend back once, I think, though I can’t remember if it was that summer or the summer before. I don’t remember his eyes. And Abel, he had some friends from university who lived in Cornwall and North Devon, sometimes one of them would come for the day, especially when Mrs. Westaway was out. The house was a different place when she wasn’t around. I’m sorry,” she added, seeing Hal’s expression. “I wish I could help you more, but I’d be lying if I said I remembered. And I only came up a couple of times a week, as the children got older. Mrs. Westaway just didn’t have the money for daily help, by then, and I had my own kids anyway.”
“Don’t worry,” Hal said, though she felt her heart deflate like a pricked balloon, a great reservoir of hope that she didn’t know she’d been holding on to leaching away. “Tell me about . . . tell me about what happened after. With the letters.”
“Well. That was the real scandal then. So Maud was invited to interview at an Oxford college in December, and while she was away things got very bad between Mrs. Westaway and your mother. I’m ashamed to say it, but I was glad to get out of the house when I left each day. I’d hear Mrs. Westaway screaming at her, though they were up in the attics, threatening her with all sorts if she didn’t give up the name of the father, and your mother crying and pleading. Once I saw her on the way to the bathroom and she had a black eye and a split lip. I wish now I’d done something but . . .” She trailed off, and Hal saw her blink and rub at the corner of her eye. “Well, Maud came back and it was like she’d seen the light or something. She told me she had an unconditional offer from wherever it was, some women’s college, I think, so that she didn’t need to study anymore, near enough. But she told me not to tell her mother, and in January she got invited back for another interview—or said she did. Afterwards, I wondered if there really was another interview, or if it was just an excuse to get away. And that was when the letters began. Maggie was here, writing to Maud—sometimes in Oxford, and sometimes in Brighton. And Maud was there, writing back, and I felt like a ruddy postman I can tell you, shipping the letters up and down. But by then I was really afraid for your ma, afraid that Mrs. Westaway would go too far, and hit her hard enough to give her a miscarriage or summat. So I was glad to do what I could to help.”
“You don’t know what any of the letters said?” Hal asked. She almost held her breath, waiting for the reply, but Lizzie shook her head.
“No, I didn’t open them. Only one I saw—and that because your ma didn’t have an envelope, and she asked me to put it in one for her. It was the last one.”
“Wh-what did it say?”
Lizzie looked down at her lap, her pink fingers fretting anxiously with the rubber gloves she held there.
“I didn’t read it,” she said at last. “I’m not that sort of person. But it was folded in a way I couldn’t help but see one line, and it stuck in my head in a way I’ve never been able to shake. It said, I’ve told him, Maud. It was worse than I ever imagined. Please, please hurry. I am afraid of what might happen now.”
There was a long silence, Lizzie reliving those memories, Hal turning the words over and over in her mind, feeling the chilly dread within her growing.
“Who—” she said at last, and then stopped.
“Who was the ‘him’ in the letter?” Lizzie asked, and Hal nodded dumbly. Lizzie shrugged, her plump, cheerful face grave and rather sad. “I don’t know. But I always assumed . . .” She bit her lip, and Hal knew what she was about to say, before the words were spoken. “I always assumed she’d told your father about her pregnancy at last, and it was him she was afraid of. I’m sorry, my darling.”