She coughed, and then finally spoke, in a low, sighing voice. ‘Yes. Yes, it was.’
Joseph brought his hands up to his mouth, his expression horrified. I could see the thought had come to him, as it had to Barak, that here was a clear motive for Elizabeth to kill her cousin. I continued quickly. ‘When I visited your uncle Edwin I noticed a bad odour coming from that well, and remembered Joseph telling me Ralph’s body had a terrible smell on it when it was laid out at the coroner’s. Elizabeth, when the steward Needler went to fetch up your cousin’s body he must have seen what was down there, yet he said nothing and the family sealed off the well.’ I paused, but though tears trickled down Elizabeth’s cheeks her stare remained dull and hopeless. I went on.
‘That must have been because the discovery of the boy down there would have resulted in a separate investigation. Needler said nothing in order to protect someone else. Who was it, Elizabeth?’
‘Speak, girl, for Jesu’s sake.’ Barak said with sudden anger. ‘You are putting your uncle through the torments of the damned.’
‘You return to Judge Forbizer in three days.’ I said quietly. ‘If he cannot be satisfied, if you still do not speak, you will be crushed.’
She looked at me, her eyes empty. ‘Let the crushing come. You cannot help me, sir. No one can. You must not try, it is no use. I am damned.’ She continued, with a dreadful calmness. ‘Once I believed in God, God who took care of all his creatures and showed man how he should live well and be saved by study of the Bible. The Bible the king gave to the people. I believed God helped us through the fallen world.’
‘So should we all, Elizabeth,’ Joseph said, clutching his hands together. ‘So must we all.’ She gave him a look I realized was pity, wincing as salt tears flowed onto her cut lip.
‘What about the justice of this world?’ Barak asked. ‘What about punishment for murderers?’
She only glanced at him; his words did not stir her this time. ‘I told you what was down there would shake your faith,’ she told me. She paused, then let out a long, groaning breath. ‘First Mother died, so painfully, from the great lump in her chest that wasted her to nothing. Then Father died too.’ She coughed again. I offered her a bowl of water but she waved it away, looking at me fixedly.
‘I sought consolation in books of prayer, sir. I entreated God to help me understand, but I seemed to be praying into a great dark silence. Then I was told our house was lost, our house where I grew up and was happy. I thought I would go to Uncle Joseph’s in the country, but he said I must go to Uncle Edwin’s.’
‘It was for your good, Elizabeth,’ Joseph said desperately. ‘We thought it best for your prospects.’
‘Grandam and Uncle Edwin did not want me, I knew that. They thought with my rough ways I might spoil their turning their three children into gentlefolk. But they did not know how cruel they were. They did not know how Ralph would torture any animal he could lay hands on, exploring all the different ways to inflict pain. Sabine and Avice brought him my poor Grizzy.’
‘Sabine and Avice!’ Joseph’s voice was incredulous.
‘Ralph got them to bring him animals - they thought what he did amusing, though they didn’t like getting blood or fur on their clean clothes. They were glad to have me to tease and torment, to relieve their boredom. They always used to say how bored with their lives they were.’
‘What about your uncle Edwin?’ I asked. ‘Your grandmother? You could have appealed to them.’
‘Grandam knew, but she turned her blind eyes from it. She kept everything from Uncle Edwin, what his children really were. He cared only that they should make the best show they could as young gentlefolk.’
I passed a hand across my brow. ‘It sounds like madness, a madness the three of them infected each other with. Then you came—’
‘I did not know about Ralph at first. I thought he was different from his sisters; he was not fine manners one minute and cruelty the next, in the beginning he was friendly in a rough boy’s way. I look like him, you know. Maybe God has chosen me to suffer for all their sins - do you think so?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is you that are choosing to suffer now.’
She shook her head. ‘Ralph took me for a walk and showed me a fox he had caught in a trap and left until it was weakened. He had come with a needle to put its eyes out. I freed it and told him it was a wicked thing he did. That turned him against me. After that he joined with his sisters in finding ways to torment me.’