*
Colin was kind enough to drive us to the airport. The moon was rising when we left MacLaren Hall and it was nearing midnight by the time we landed in London. Bobby’s ring was tucked safely into a deep pocket in my jacket, and we flew in silence for a time, sorting through the bundle of papers that Andrew had given to us. The missing pages from the photograph album were there, folded with care so as not to damage any of the pictures. The photos were of Bobby, and all but five had been taken atop Pouter’s Hill. The rest showed him with his Hurricane and his fellow airmen at Biggin Hill. The bundle contained some handwritten notes as well, the kind that would have fit easily into Archy Gorman’s “postbox” at the Flamborough. Bill picked one up, but I stopped him before he opened it, murmuring, “These aren’t for us to read.”
It was Bill who found the pictures I’d been searching for. Cut from a larger photograph, the two small heart shapes bore two familiar faces. Dimity’s dark hair was swept back and up off her face, held in place with a ribbon that might have been pale blue. Bobby was smiling his warm, engaging smile, and wings gleamed on the collar of his uniform shirt. As I fitted them into the locket, I said, “Remember the marking on the blue box? The W for Westwood was really an M for MacLaren.”
“You read it upside down,” Bill said with a wry smile. He held up a page from the album and pointed to one of the captions. “Did you notice this? Their first date. Just over a month before Bobby’s plane went down. He must have proposed right after they met.”
“My dad proposed to my mom on their second date,” I said, “and she accepted on their third. Things happened faster in those days. I guess they had to.” Gathering the pages together, I laid them flat on the seat across the aisle. “When we get to the cottage, we’ll put them back where they belong. We’ll put back the picture my mother gave me, too.” I put the folded notes into a pile, tied the ribbon around them, and put them in my carry-on bag.
Bill gazed pensively out of the window at the star-filled sky. “Poor Andrew,” he said. “Barricading himself in his mansion on the hill, all alone with his anger and his grief.”
“And his love,” I said, “his terrible love for his brother. That was at the root of everything that followed.”
“Mmm.” Bill nodded absently, and when he looked at me, his eyes were troubled. “Did Dimity really believe she’d killed Bobby?”
I switched off the overhead light and looked past him at the stars. “You were right when you said that it had to be something pretty drastic to cause her this much grief. Dimity must have convinced herself—with Andrew’s help—that Bobby had died because of her cowardice, and she never forgave herself.”
“Cowardice?” Bill said in surprise. “What cowardice?”
“She chickened out of the engagement, Bill. It’s my guess that she didn’t want to end up like the women at Starling House, married one minute and widowed the next, so she tried to play it safe. She was so afraid of things ending that she never let them begin.”
Bill shook his head. “I hate to think of her that way, leading a life filled with secret misery.”
“I don’t think there’s any way around it.” I put a hand on the ring in my pocket. “If Dimity had let herself off the hook for a minute, Bobby’s spirit would have touched her, his ring would have gotten to her, somehow, and she would’ve known that everything was all right.”
“As it was…”
“Bobby never stood a chance. Dimity’s guilt blocked him like a brick wall. She never talked or wrote about him, she only went back to the Flamborough once, and she rarely went back to the cottage. She probably wore the locket to remind herself of the pain she’d caused him. We’ll never know for sure if Bobby ‘visited’ her the way he ‘visited’ Andrew, but even if he tried—”
“She’d have misinterpreted his message,” Bill said. “She’d have filtered it through her guilt, the way Andrew filtered it through his anger.”
“And twisted its meaning as badly as he did.”
Bill stroked his beard, then asked doubtfully, “Then guilt can be stronger than love?”
“I didn’t say that.” I let go of Bobby’s ring and took Bill’s hand. “Oh, Bill, haven’t you figured anything out? You’re just too sane, I guess. It might help if you were a bit more neurotic.”
“I’ll work on it,” he said, “but in the meantime, I’ll defer to an expert.” He made a half bow in my direction.
I ducked my head sheepishly. “Yeah, so I have been sort of… crazed. So was Dimity. So was Andrew, for that matter. Grief can make you believe things that never happened and forget things that you know for sure.”