A Curious Beginning

Finally, we gave up, assembling the papers in a rough chronological order before tying them up again. I poured more of the aguardiente and we drank in silence, as comfortably as brothers in arms, as our thoughts ran ahead.

“It is possible,” Stoker said finally, stretching out his booted legs, “that your father had much to lose by your birth.”

“What do you mean?”

“That letter from your mother to Max. She insists that she does not want money from your father. That means he must have had it to give. And he is refusing, for the sake of his family, to acknowledge your birth. Whatever relationship he enjoyed with your mother, it was finished by the time you were a few months old—possibly because of his engagement to another woman.”

“And Lily was disconsolate.” I picked up the thread of his idea. “She even threatened suicide, albeit obliquely, in her letter. What if she was more explicit in her communications to my father? He had a family to think of, money, reputation. He was at the very least from a wealthy merchant family.”

Stoker shook his head. “I would lay money on aristocracy. Gentry at least.”

“You really think so?”

He curled a handsome lip in scorn. “If there is one thing I can smell, it is the stink of my own kind trying to cover their hypocrisy. Besides, she was a famous beauty, a successful actress, the sort of woman who would not favor a poor nobody with her attentions. No, to attract her notice he would have to be someone with a name, connections.”

“That makes her sound rather mercenary,” I protested.

“Love affairs often are,” he returned easily. “They are an exchange of goods. He brought money to the liaison; she clearly brought beauty.”

“I don’t think so. She mentioned in her letter to the baron that she had loved him, and he her.”

“It is possible. But at the beginning, to be noticed amidst all those other wealthy stage-door Johnnies, he must have had something quite special. Either he was very, very rich, or very, very handsome.”

“And very, very ruthless,” I added. “Imagine, courting Lily Ashbourne, the loveliest actress of her time, and then leaving her so coldly when she got with child. She was clearly devastated.”

Stoker’s voice was thick with constraint. “He might have been as well, you know. If she was correct, then he did love her, at least for a while. Perhaps his family made him marry this other woman.”

“And so he cut off Lily—and his own child—without a word? That does not sound like the action of a feeling man.”

“Sometimes the deeper a man’s feelings, the less able he is to act upon them,” he said hoarsely. “Or speak of them.”

I finished off my share of the aguardiente. “I shall not ask about your devils, Stoker.”

He gave a shrug and poured more of the liquor for himself. “They have been my closest companions for five years now. We’re old friends, the devils and me.”

I looked at the packet of papers still sitting upon my lap. “It looks as if I have devils of my own now.”

“Do you?”

I nodded. “Yes. Because everything in that packet shows that it is entirely possible my father murdered my mother.”

“Veronica—”

“No, hear me out, I beg you. He wanted free of her and of me. She wasn’t going quietly. There were letters to Max—perhaps more than this one. Perhaps she made threats even. She was well-known. The newspapers would have trumpeted this story to the skies if they had got hold of it. We know he had a new wife to shield, a name to protect. We know my mother died very suddenly when she was scarcely twenty. And we know she could not have been a suicide, as she was buried in hallowed ground. Tell me it is not at least possible that my father murdered her.”

Stoker gave me an even stare. “It is possible,” he said finally.

“Could you at least pretend not to agree? I find myself in need of a devil’s advocate.”

He moved as if to touch my hand, then seemed to think better of it. “You have never struck me as the sort of woman to give way in the face of something difficult. Don’t tell me I have misjudged you.”

“Of course not,” I said, squaring my shoulders.

“It is a terrible thing to believe your father capable of such a thing. But there is another fact which points to some difficulty from your father: your aunts were afraid, deeply so, if they changed their names and left Ireland.”

“It explains so much,” I mused. “We moved so many times when I was a child—and never for any good reason that I could discover. I would go off hunting, chasing after my butterflies, and when I came home, the aunts would have us half-packed and that would be the end of it.”

“It must have been difficult to make friends.”

“I wish you and I had met as children,” I told him suddenly.

“I don’t. You would have dragged me behind the nearest hedgerow and had your way with me before I sprouted hairs on my chin.”