“I asked him to leave,” she said, stepping through an ornate doorway into a small but beautiful little sitting room adorned with antique dressers and racehorse paintings. “I couldn’t have him here in this house with me. Not after the things the police found on his computer. I’d shared a bed with that man for over fifty years, but not for another night. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you,” I said. Since entering the house I had found myself feeling more and more like the teenager who snuck onto the property as a dare with her boyfriend. I clutched hold of my bag and stared at the beautiful antiques like a child in a posh department store. I certainly didn’t want to spill anything.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing to a floral sofa with mahogany legs.
“Thank you for letting me come inside. I didn’t expect you to.”
She laughed as she settled into a red velvet armchair across from the sofa. “I bet you didn’t.” Her make-up was perfectly applied, with pink lipstick and a little rouge on her wrinkled skin. She sat with her legs crossed, and cut the figure of a woman holding everything together. “I wanted to meet you. I’ve wanted to meet you ever since my husband was arrested. I feel somewhat responsible, you see. Though I had no idea about the lengths of my husband’s… obsession, I did have a suspicion that I constantly ignored.” She moved her hand in a vague, swatting motion. “I never knew for certain, and I never knew what was wrong, but I always suspected that my husband had a dark side. This may sound extremely trifling after what you’ve been through, but you have no idea how much pressure I have been under to maintain certain standards throughout my marriage. Divorce was not an option for me fifty years ago. So even when I realised I’d married a dud, there was no going back.”
“But if you thought he was a monster—”
“What is a monster?” she asked. “Is it a scary ghoul hiding behind the bedroom door? Is it some sort of beast with sharp fangs? No. Those things don’t exist. Monsters are men and women just like us, and they have the ability to hide their true face. No, I didn’t think I’d married a monster, I thought I’d married a homosexual. I never caught Edward looking at children in that way, I only knew that he wasn’t particularly interested in me. We managed to continue the family line, but that was about it.”
“And your kids?”
She shuffled uncomfortably and removed her glasses like she was stalling for time. “I’ve broached the subject with them. Neither remember him doing… anything.” She closed her eyes and I realised that she had removed her glasses in an attempt to distract me from the fact that she was trying not to cry.
“If you didn’t know, it isn’t your fault,” I said.
The duchess leaned back into the chair and let out a soft laugh. “And is that what the newspapers say about you? Oh, the mother is always at fault. So is the wife, really. Women are supposed to control men, isn’t that how it goes? What’s that saying again: ‘Behind every great man is a great woman’. We’re supposed to be the ones holding them up, or holding them back. Forget having our own lives. Forget our own careers and loves and losses. We’re the matriarchs.” She narrowed her eyes and clenched her hands as she said the word ‘matriarchs’. Her body slumped forward, suddenly appearing exhausted. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think James ever touched your boy. He hasn’t been particularly active for the last decade, riddled with gout and in remission from bowel cancer. My husband has not been a well man. If he ever has abused children—and I’m not certain that he has—then I would say it happened long ago. Long before your boy went missing.” She had crumpled into herself, leaning over like a wizened old crone. The woman had aged a decade just speaking to me.
“Thank you for your time.” I stood and collected my bag. For a brief moment I hesitated, searching for some words of comfort. I grasped at nothing.
The duchess did not watch as I turned around and left her crumpled up on the antique armchair in the middle of that vast, stately house.
*
Since meeting the duchess, there have been times when I see the shape of her body wilted forwards on that armchair in my dreams. She haunted me. After the investigation settled down, the Duchess of Hardwick would die less than three years after I met her on that mild October day. I attended her funeral, accompanied by Aiden. It was a quiet affair with a surprisingly small number of attendees. They talked about her strength as a mother and a wife, and how efficiently she had run the day-to-day workings of Wetherington House.
Her children decided to sell the house and the last I heard it was to be converted into a museum, with many of the antiques auctioned off at Wetherby’s.
Her husband outlived her.