A Christmas Hope (12 page)

“What?” he demanded.

She should trust him. She had asked for his help without offering any reward to him for his trouble, only perhaps discomfort, even danger.

“I think Alphonsine herself is not entirely happy with the prospect of marrying Ernest Halversgate,” she answered. “But I don’t know the reason. Possibly she has learned something that her parents don’t know, but she might not be able to prove it … Or maybe she heard it in confidence and cannot repeat it without betraying whoever it is that told her.”

Squeaky shook his head. “Comes of having nothing else to worry about,” he observed.

“What does?” She was confused.

“Gentry,” he replied patiently. “Makes life a whole lot more complicated than it has to be. Don’t just marry someone you want to marry, follow all these complicated rules—it’s like learning the steps of a dance. Never go to anything in a straight line, stop and twirl and twiddle all over the place before you finally get where you’re trying to go, when a plain man would’ve simply taken a couple of strides, following his nose. Still, got to have something to do with your time, I s’pose.”

“It’s not to do with time, Squeaky,” she said. “It’s to do with separating the best people from the second best.”

“Best?” he retorted indignantly. “In whose eyes?”

“Their own, of course. Do you think they even know
there is anybody else?” She smiled as she said it, but there was a hard, sad honesty underneath the humor.

He stared at her. “You’re an odd one, Mrs. B. Lot more to you than meets the eye, an’ that’s the truth.”

“I think I had better see Alphonsine again,” she said. “What will you do?”

“Balance the bleedin’ books,” Squeaky said tartly. “Then maybe I’ll go and look some more for Tregarron.” Suddenly he was deeply serious. “If I find him, do you think I should tell him to get the hell out of England? They’ll hang him, you know.”

“Yes, of course I do.” She heard her own voice tight and hard in her throat. “I don’t know the answer. If he goes, he’ll never face trial, so in other people’s eyes he’ll always be guilty. It’ll mean he can’t ever come home again. That would matter more to him than to some men.”

Squeaky raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve read some of his poetry,” she said abruptly. “And that’s another thing. His life as a poet, and his reputation, matter to him.”

“Well. If I tell ’im to stay, you’d better be right,” he said grimly. “There isn’t going to be no second shots at it!”

“I know. If you do find him, speak to him honestly.” She took a deep breath. “And we should face the possibility that he really did kill her, even if he didn’t mean to.”

He grunted. “Judge ain’t going to make no distinction,” he pointed out. “If he were Cecil Crostwick, for instance, the judge might say it was all an unfortunate accident, and we’ll treat it like a brawl that went wrong. But the powers that be’ll make damn sure with Dai Tregarron that they swing him by the neck. He in’t one of
them
. In fact, he’s rather gone out of his way, one time and another, to make a point of that.”

“I know. You might remind him of that, too, if you do find him.”

Squeaky shrugged and picked up the teapot to see if there was anything left in it. He put it down again, disappointed. “Not much chance of it. If he’s any sense, he’ll be in Timbuktu by now.” He frowned. “I s’pose I get to go back out again!”

“We also need to find a connection between Briggs and Foxley or Crostwick,” she pointed out.

He glared at her and sighed heavily, but stood up again and pulled his coat back onto his shoulders.

Again it required a little engineering and quite a lot of duplicity from Claudine to arrange to meet with Alphonsine alone.

She regretted it, but time was short. If Claudine was right about the boys being guilty, then Alphonsine might suffer dearly in the years to come through her marriage to Ernest. And Dai Tregarron might pay with his life.

Was she fueled by a need for justice, righteous indignation, or just plain, ordinary anger? She did not yet have an answer for that question.

The place she expected to encounter Alphonsine was an exhibition of archaeological pieces recently found in Asia Minor. She was beginning to think all her elaborate plotting was for nothing when she finally saw the young woman standing alone in front of a display of glass jewelry, seeming to be deep in thought.

Claudine knew she was intruding. It made her hesitate a moment and then carry on regardless. An afternoon’s unwelcome clumsiness was little enough compared
with the misery that would follow if she was right, and did nothing.

“How pleasant to see you, Miss Gifford,” Claudine said warmly, even though she kept her voice low. “This display gives one a whole new perception of the period, doesn’t it?”

Alphonsine was startled, and she did not have the presence of mind to keep her dismay from her face.

Claudine decided for complete candor, then. “I am aware that I am interrupting you when you would prefer to be alone,” she admitted. “If the matter could have waited, I assure you, I would have left you in peace. My interest in history is not so obsessive as to compel me to share it with someone. I am much more concerned with the recent past, and the near future.”

Alphonsine scrambled to be courteous. “I don’t think I understand you, Mrs. Burroughs. But it is most pleasant to see you. If I looked otherwise, it was merely because I was startled out of my reverie.”

“You are very generous,” Claudine responded. “But I can see that you are troubled and wish to be left in peace. Unfortunately, time and events will not wait for us.”

Alphonsine pretended for a moment that she did not understand. Then, meeting Claudine’s eyes, she knew that the struggle was destined to fail.

“Earlier you seemed confident that Mr. Halversgate did not have anything to do with the death of Winnie Briggs. That it was simply a case of being at the wrong place at the crucial time,” Claudine began.

“Yes, yes, that’s quite right,” Alphonsine agreed quickly. “He tried to help, but as we all know, it was too late by then.” She looked away.

Claudine thought of the lies Alphonsine had purportedly connived at in order to spend more time with Ernest.

“You care for him very much …,” she said aloud.

Alphonsine looked confused. For a moment her face betrayed the absurdity of the idea, then she masked it quickly.

“Of course,” she replied.

“No one has been very clear as to how it began,” Claudine went on. She kept her voice low and quite casual, as if she were actually discussing the old, rather dented beads in front of them, which might have been worn by a woman three thousand years ago, under a hot Middle Eastern sun. And here were they, two English
women with fair skins wrapped up against the English winter, staring at them and talking about anger, fear, and murder.

“How little changes,” she said aloud.

Alphonsine turned toward her, the question in her face.

“The necklace,” Claudine replied, glancing at the beads. “I wonder what she was like, the woman who wore those. Who gave them to her? More important, I wonder if he loved her.” Claudine voiced her thoughts. She had never been beautiful—she had known that from the start—but she would like to have been loved, above all things. She would have to settle for being liked, perhaps for being trusted, respected. Best of all would have been to have had the courage to stand up for herself and fight for what she believed in.

Alphonsine was looking at the beads again. “I wonder if she was happy.”

Claudine heard the pain in her voice—or perhaps “wistfulness” would be a more accurate word—and knew with sudden clarity that Alphonsine’s stolen time was not spent with Ernest Halversgate. She was reveling in her freedom, while she still had it. Maybe she had come here to be alone, to indulge in her dreams while
she could, before they were marred by an inner sense of having betrayed herself.

Claudine tried to put her own feelings aside. “There are many kinds of happiness, some of them within our reach, regardless of circumstances,” she said. “How much of the truth do you know of that evening, Alphonsine? Was it really Dai Tregarron who beat Winnie Briggs? Or was it a more general fight that simply got out of hand?”

Alphonsine looked away. “Why do you think I know?”

“Because of what you have already told me,” Claudine replied. “You are afraid that if Ernest Halversgate is called to testify, he will say something that shouldn’t be said. I don’t know whether that is because he will tell some truth that is inconsistent with what has been told to the police, or if you are afraid that he will lie, and very possibly be caught in that lie, becoming a suspect himself.” She saw the fear crystallize in Alphonsine’s eyes. “Or else that he will not be caught,” she added, “but will cause the blame to fall on someone else, and in so doing see an innocent man hanged, and the rest of your own lives are then destroyed from within. And they will be. Never doubt that.”

Alphonsine’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“You have the chance to act now,” Claudine said gently. “Perhaps you are wise enough to imagine what the future will be, whereas the young men concerned are not. They are afraid. That is easy to understand. So are you. It is there, very easy to read in your eyes. If they have neither the courage nor the honor to act for themselves, then you must do it for Tregarron. If you don’t, and he is hanged wrongly, do you not think you will be haunted by his face and theirs, and imagine a rope around your own neck every time you lie alone in the dark, for the rest of your life?”

Alphonsine said nothing for a long time. Then at last she spoke.

“It was all fairly good-natured to begin with,” she said quietly. “Then they got a bit insistent, demanding that Winnie … do more and more. She refused. It got a bit rough. I don’t remember who it was. There’s no good pushing me because I didn’t see. She slapped him. He lost his temper. Then it got really rough. Someone hit her, and she fell against Ernest. I saw that.”

“They were all on the terrace?” Claudine interrupted, trying to visualize it in her mind.

“Yes. Tregarron was a bit apart from the others, a bit farther away. They were moving about, pushing and shoving, you know?”

“I can picture it. Then what happened?”

“Ernest … Ernest was angry. I think someone must’ve broken a glass and spilled their drink over him.”

“You smelled it … afterward?” Claudine interrupted quickly.

Alphonsine turned away again. “Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I … I didn’t see clearly. There was more pushing and a few blows. Someone shoved Winnie very hard, and she fell down completely. She was angry then, and when she got up she lashed back at someone. I only saw her arm swing. And there was blood. I mean, I don’t know who she struck. But whoever it was, he struck back very hard. That was when I saw Dai Tregarron lunge forward at him and punch him, but he missed his face and caught his shoulder. The two of them fought, just a few blows. Tregarron staggered against the pillar. I think it was then that they realized Winnie was on the ground, and she wasn’t moving.”

“Who had hit her, Alphonsine?”

“I don’t know. Except it wasn’t Mr. Tregarron. Then he was bent over trying to get his breath, leaning against the pillar, when he saw she was on the ground, just lying there. He tried to help her. That was when you came in.”

Claudine stared at her, stunned, her mind racing.

“I swear, that is the truth,” Alphonsine said urgently.

“Part of it, anyway,” Claudine agreed. “You don’t know who it was who hit Winnie Briggs hard enough to kill her, when she fell and her head struck the ground. But you do know it wasn’t Dai Tregarron. You know that if they catch him they will try him for murder, and if they find him guilty—and without your story there is no reason why they wouldn’t—then they will hang him?”

Alphonsine gulped air and nearly choked. “Yes …” It was a whisper. “But I can’t prove it, and they will only say that I’m lying. I—I can’t prove it … I really can’t!”

“You were there!” Claudine protested.

Alphonsine stared at her. Claudine thought back to the night: the terrace, Winnie lying on the stones, her face white, not moving. She remembered Dai Tregarron’s black head bent as he tried to revive her, and Cecil Crostwick, Creighton Foxley, and Ernest Halversgate
standing pale and shivering nearby. She did not remember seeing Alphonsine anywhere.

And yet Alphonsine had just described the incident in some detail, exactly as if she had seen it: confusion, anger, stupidity, and a fatal mistake.

“Where were you?” Claudine asked quietly.

“I … I was in the morning room. It looks out onto the terrace.”

“I see. Thank you.” Claudine smiled. “I’m sorry to have been so persistent.”

Alphonsine relaxed a little and looked away. “It’s all right. I understand.”

Claudine took her leave and caught a hansom toward her home again. She relaxed against the cushion, tired and relieved, thinking over what Alphonsine had said. Her testimony, however reluctantly given, would show Tregarron’s innocence. Should she have asked the girl what she had been doing in the morning room, or was that irrelevant? Speaking to someone? Avoiding someone! Staring out of the window at the terrace? And why had she been so slow to come forward? Because it implicated Halversgate; that was the obvious answer. Then Claudine had a cold thought: perhaps because it was less than the whole truth, after all?