The lawyer nodded his head slowly and an anxious expression coloured his features. Perhaps he had come to realize that there was nothing to be gained by dissembling any further. He opened his arms a little and used the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to remove a fleck of tobacco from between his front teeth before replacing the pipe in his mouth. A cloud of grey smoke camouflaged his face for a moment. “Ask your question, Miss Caine,” he said in a resigned tone. “I cannot guarantee that I will answer. You must understand that I am forced to maintain a degree of confidentiality towards my clients.” He sighed a little and seemed to relent. “But please ask. If I can answer, then I promise I will.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Westerley,” I said. “The children’s parents. Where are they?”
He nodded and turned away. I had the distinct impression that he was not surprised by what I had asked, that he had been expecting this very question.
“You’ve been in this village for several weeks now,” he stated in a flat tone.
“That’s correct.”
“Then it strikes me as rather curious that you need to ask me that question at all. I’ve lived in Gaudlin all my life, you see, and have always found the gossips here to be first-rate. I’d trust them to get information to a recipient quicker than the Royal Mail.”
“I’ve brought up the matter of Isabella and Eustace’s parents with several people, in fact,” I told him. “But each time I do I am met with hostility and a refusal to answer. I say ‘the Westerleys’ and everyone changes the subject. Suddenly we’re on to discussing the weather or the price of grain or whether or not Mr. Disraeli has any chance of becoming Prime Minister. Everyone from the girl in the café to the vicar in the church gives me the same answer.”
“Which is?”
“Ask Mr. Raisin.”
He laughed. “And so here you are.”
“Yes. Here I am. Asking Mr. Raisin.”
He exhaled loudly and stood up, walking over to the window and looking out on to the back courtyard where, I could see, the leaves of a wild maple tree were turning to flame-red in a corner. There were some very fine rose bushes lined up along one side and I wondered whether it was he or Mr. Cratchett who tended to them. I decided not to interrupt his thoughts, however; at that moment I believed that he was deciding whether or not to tell me the truth, and if I rushed him in his decision, then I would discover nothing. Finally, after a lengthy pause, he turned round with such a serious expression on his face that I felt what it must be like to be an accused person in this office and to have that countenance turned upon me.
“What I am prepared to tell you, Miss Caine,” he began, “is a matter of public record so there can be no question of confidence-breaking. In all honesty, I am surprised that you do not know it already for it was a matter of some scandal in the newspapers a little over a year ago.”
I frowned. The truth was, for all my fine talk, I never looked at the newspapers. I kept up with a few bits of politics, of course. I could name the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. I knew a little about the war in Prussia and the assassination attempt in Kiev, for these were subjects that had been discussed in the teachers’ room at St. Elizabeth’s. But other than this, I suppose I was rather ignorant of contemporary news stories.
“The children’s parents,” he began. “Well, I suppose I should start with Mr. Westerley. I knew him since he was a boy, you see. We were schooled together. We were like brothers growing up. My mother died when I was just a child so my father brought me up alone. And as he worked exclusively for old Mr. Westerley, James and I were thrown into each other’s company from an early age.”
“Your story is similar to my own,” I told him. “My mother died when I was nine.”
He nodded and I could see that he warmed to me a little then. “Well then you know something of what it is like to grow up with just your father’s company. Anyway, James was a mischievous boy but he grew into an exceptionally kind-hearted and thoughtful young man, well read, popular in the village. His father, old Mr. Westerley, was something of a tartar but there’s nothing wrong with that. When one has money and responsibilities, one cannot go around being friendly to everyone. He had plans for James to marry a girl from Ipswich, the daughter of a local landowner there, but that wasn’t to be. These weren’t feudal times, after all. James wasn’t going to be told whom he might and might not marry. In the end, of course, he didn’t even marry an Englishwoman.”
“Isabella mentioned that to me,” I told him. “She said her mother was Spanish.”
“Yes, that’s right. James went to Madrid for six months—this must be fourteen years ago now, I suppose—and he fell in love with a girl he met over there. She wasn’t anybody, of course. Her family had nothing. There had been a scandal of some sort, it’s rather indelicate to talk of, but James didn’t care about her family’s past. He wanted Santina, that was the girl’s name, and it seemed as if she wanted him too. Anyway, the point is that he came back to Norfolk with this girl and brought her to see his father. Needless to say there was a great commotion, the old man said that they could not marry, but the deed had already been done. The ring was on the girl’s finger. Awfully upsetting for everyone, of course, but old Mr. Westerley, tough as he was, decided not to break with his son over it and, in time, forgave him and showed a certain amount of courtesy towards his daughter-in-law.”
“There was no estrangement then?” I asked.
“There was,” he conceded. “But only for a brief period. Everyone was reconciled once tempers abated. Truthfully, Santina made a genuine effort with everyone. She treated old Mr. Westerley with great respect; she made friends with the villagers. She contributed to life here. For those first few years there was really nothing too extraordinary about their situation at all. Despite being a foreigner, she grew to be accepted by everyone and all was well.”
I nodded, thinking about this. A stranger, a foreigner, in a place like this. Set up in the big house. I imagined things couldn’t have been easy for the new Mrs. Westerley.
“You make it sound like a perfect idyll,” I said. “Why do I feel you’re about to destroy it?”
“You’re quite perceptive, Miss Caine. A year or so later, Mr. Westerley passed away and James inherited everything. Santina was with child at the time and when she gave birth a few months later to a little girl, Isabella, everything changed. It was an extraordinary thing. I remember seeing her at Gaudlin a few days before the child was born and then when Isabella was a week old, and I swear that it was like looking at a different woman.”
“In what way?” I asked, sitting forward.
He frowned and considered it; I could see that these were memories that caused him great distress and that he wanted to be precise with his words. “My wife purchased a gift to welcome the child into the world,” he said, sitting down again and looking directly at me, his face etched with pain. “A small toy. Nothing out of the ordinary. We went over to Gaudlin to see the Westerleys and when we got there, Santina was in her bedroom, indisposed, and James went upstairs to fetch her, leaving my wife and me alone with the child. Charlotte went next door to the powder room and, a moment later, Isabella woke and, hungry I expect, started to cry. You must understand, Miss Caine, that I have children of my own. I am accustomed to dealing with infants and pride myself on the fact that, unlike most of my gender, I am quite happy to soothe a crying baby. The child was distraught and so naturally I reached down to pick her up. The moment I did so, the moment I lifted her, Santina appeared in the doorway and, seeing what I was doing, began to scream. Fearful, it was! A sound unlike any that I had ever heard before. I didn’t know what was wrong and simply stood there, rooted to the spot, shocked. Even Isabella stopped crying, so loud and appalling was the sound issuing from her mother’s mouth. In a moment, James was in the room, looking back and forth between us, wondering what on earth was going on, and I replaced Isabella in her cradle and left, making my way to the front of the house, where Charlotte discovered me a few
moments later and we called for Heckling to bring our carriage round. The whole thing had been terribly disconcerting. I had done something to upset Santina—but what? I couldn’t make sense of it.”
I stared at him. “And all you did was pick the child up?” I asked.
“I swear, that was all.”
“So why was she so upset?”
Mr. Raisin laughed bitterly. “Upset? She wasn’t upset, Miss Caine. She was demented. She lost all control of herself. A few minutes later James came out and he was equally flustered. He apologized and I apologized and, fools that we were, we kept on insisting that it was our own fault until I suggested that Charlotte and I should really be getting along and he waved us off. My wife and I made our way home, terribly upset by the whole business, but I tried to put the entire thing out of my mind.”
I thought about this. “Mrs. Westerley and you,” I said after a moment, “had you been friends before this? You say that Mr. Westerley and you had grown up almost as brothers. Was she jealous of your attachment perhaps?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “Charlotte and I had been very welcoming to Santina when she first arrived in England and she had told me on more than one occasion how grateful she was to me for that. I always thought we rather liked each other, if I’m honest. We certainly had never exchanged a cross word, nor had there ever been an uncomfortable moment between us until then.”
He took his pipe out of his mouth now and settled it on the table next to him. I could see a slight shake in his hands, a nervousness at the recounting of this story, and a moment later he stood up and walked over to the right-hand side of the room where a small cabinet of drinks stood. “It’s early, I know,” he said, pouring himself a whisky. “But I feel I need this. I haven’t talked about these matters in a long time.”
“It’s quite all right,” I said.
“Would you like one?”
I shook my head and he nodded, set the decanter back and took a sip from his glass. “After that,” he continued, “everything at Gaudlin Hall changed. Santina became a different woman entirely. She could not bear to be away from her daughter for even a minute; she did not trust anyone else to take care of her. Naturally, James wanted to employ a nanny, for that was the way things had always been done in the Westerley family, but Santina would hear none of it. She said she would take care of the child herself.”
“But it’s quite natural, surely,” I said, speaking in my ignorance of things I did not fully understand. “She was devoted to her daughter. She is to be admired for such dedication.”
“No, that’s not it, Miss Caine,” he said, shaking his head. “I have seen devotion. My own wife is utterly devoted to our children. Most women I know are. Most men too, even though they try to hide it under bluster and bluff. But this was not devotion. This was something obsessive. She simply would not allow anyone else to be near Isabella. To touch her, to hold her. To take care of her. Not even James. Once, on a night when I confess we might have imbibed too much of this good Scotch whisky, my friend confided in me that—excuse me, Miss Caine, but I must speak plain if I am to speak true—that they no longer shared a marital bed.”
I looked away and felt a sudden distress that I had come to Mr. Raisin’s office at all. What business was any of this of mine? Why did I feel I had the right to know the workings of a marriage whose participants I had never even met? I felt an urge to get up, to leave, to run away. I didn’t want to know anything more. But, like Pandora opening her box to let loose all the evil in the world, I had asked Mr. Raisin where the children’s parents were, and this was what he was now doing; the box could not be sealed again until the answer was delivered.
“Do you wish for me to stop, Miss Caine?” he asked. “You look distressed.”
“Please go on,” I said, swallowing, anxious for where this story might lead. “Tell me what else you know.”
“Naturally, relations between the couple became strained,” he continued. “So you can imagine my surprise when, a few years later, Santina found herself with child once again. With Eustace. James confided in me that there had been a brief rapprochement, that he had demanded his rights as a husband, and the result was the second child. This time, things went much the same way. If anything, they were worse. Her obsession with her children became almost pathological. She stayed with them twenty-four hours a day and woe betide anyone who tried to step between them. She was quite ill, of course. There was something not right, I believe, in her head. She needed medical attention. Perhaps it was something from her own childhood that haunted her and damaged her, I don’t know. I mentioned about the scurrilous rumours I heard but there is no way of knowing whether there is anything in them.”
“A scandal, you said,” I replied. “What kind of scandal?”
“Really, Miss Caine. It’s quite wicked. I don’t believe we should discuss it.”
“I should like to know.”
He stared at me and for a moment I thought I could see tears in his eyes. “James spoke of it to me once,” he said finally in a quiet voice. “He told me what Santina had told him. Or rather he hinted at it. I think even he could not find the words to describe such cruel and depraved behaviour.”
“You’ll have to speak more plainly, Mr. Raisin.”
“Santina’s father and uncle,” he said, clearing his throat. “They were base fellows. It seems that they behaved … how shall I put this … in a deeply inappropriate manner towards her when she was a child. They took the most despicable liberties. Not just criminal ones but ones that run counter to the law of nature. Must I be clearer, Miss Caine, or do you understand me?”
I nodded, feeling the gorge rise inside me. “I understand you perfectly, sir,” I said, surprised that my voice did not waver. “The poor girl must have suffered terribly.”
“It’s hard to imagine it,” he replied. “To think that a father could do such a thing. And an uncle. I don’t understand it, that’s the truth of it. Are we all animals under the skin, Miss Caine? Do we mask our baser instincts with fine words and clothes and decent behaviour? They say that if we were to give way to our true desires we would, all of us, set upon each other with a lust for blood that has no equal in history.”
What Mr. Raisin described might have been outside the experience of most young women of my age but of course I knew only too well a little about such behaviour from the events that had taken place at St. Elizabeth’s the previous year. My young friend, Mr. Covan, had been given responsibility for the middle girls, who were aged around ten years old. One of those girls, a quiet, pretty little thing whose name I shall not record, went from being a well-behaved student to a troublemaker over the course of a few months and no one could get to the bottom of it. She grew quite violent in class one day and attempted to assault Mr. Covan. The girl had to be restrained and was in danger of expulsion, only she revealed a set of circumstances to Mrs. Farnsworth after much questioning which led to the police being called and Mr. Covan being escorted from the grounds that very day. A trial was avoided when the young man took his own life, but it was a shocking episode, one which caused great distress to all the teachers and particular upset to me, who had nurtured affectionate feelings towards him and who felt betrayed and frightened by the revelation of his true nature. But of course this was as naught compared to the harm inflicted on the girl herself, who, by the time I left the school, had still not returned to her old self but seemed intent on causing as much chaos around her as possible.
“I find human nature to be a very disturbing thing,” I told Mr. Raisin. “People can be capable of the most despicable cruelties. If Mrs. Westerley suffered at the hands of her own family, perhaps it was only natural that she wanted to keep her children close to her. That she did not want anyone to harm them.”
“I can understand her desire to protect them, Miss Caine,” he replied. “But damn it all, she would barely let their own father lift them or play with them, let alone anyone else. It was a situation that could
not be allowed to continue. And yet it did. It continued for several years and we all simply grew accustomed to the fact that there was a madwoman living at Gaudlin Hall. We became complacent, I suppose. We thought that it was not our problem. James and Santina’s relationship became utterly fraught and he aged before my eyes. The poor man didn’t know how to fix things. It might have gone on interminably but matters came to a head some eighteen months ago when a regrettable incident took place. Santina was in a park with Isabella and Eustace and, when she had her back turned for only a moment, another lady invited them both to join her own two children in a game of chase. For a few seconds, they were lost to Santina and she went … well, I have used the word ‘mad’ already but really, Miss Caine, that is the only way to explain it. She lost her reason entirely.”
I sat there, wide-eyed. “What did she do?” I asked.
“She lifted part of a fallen branch off the ground. A heavy, substantial piece of wood. And she beat the woman. She beat this good woman badly. She might have killed her had others not intervened. It was a terrible thing. A truly terrible thing.” He had grown quite pale by now. “The police were called, of course, but somehow James managed to prevent her from being charged. You’ll find, Miss Caine, that in a place like this, money and position can buy you a lot of favours. The truth is that it would have been better for all had she been arrested and imprisoned that day. If she had, then the rest might never have happened.” He ran a hand across his eyes and sighed, taking another drink from his glass, a longer draught this time. “I’m afraid my story becomes rather distressing from here on, Miss Caine. I shall have to ask you to prepare yourself.”
“It’s already distressing,” I said. “I can scarcely imagine worse.”
He laughed bitterly. “Try,” he replied. “Whatever deal James made with the constabulary, whatever conversation he had with his wife in the wake of this attack, it must have lifted the veil of so many years from his eyes because he could see at last how unhealthy the attachment between Santina and her children had grown. How love had been stretched beyond its natural boundary to a place where it had been transformed into obsession and cruelty. You’ve seen Isabella’s curious nature, after all. The maturity combined with childishness. That has its roots in her intimate relationship with her mother. Anyway, James insisted that a new relationship needed to be established. That Santina could not spend all her time with the children. That they needed other influences. And so, over her objections, he hired a governess. The first governess. Miss Tomlin. A nice girl. A little older than you, rather pretty in her way. We all liked her. She spoke French fluently but nobody minded that. I saw her occasionally in the village with the children and I took to playing a ridiculous game with myself: where was Santina? For if I looked around I knew that I would be able to discover her somewhere, hiding, watching, fretting. But still I thought that this was healthier than what had gone before. I felt that she was learning to loosen the cord that connected her to Isabella and Eustace. And I genuinely believed—I genuinely believed this, Miss Caine—that this would be for the best in the long run. After all, one day the children would grow up, would marry, and would move away from Gaudlin Hall. And Santina would need to be ready for that. But of course I was entirely wrong, for she simply could not live with the idea that her children were in the care of another. That, for a few hours of each day, they were, to her way of thinking, in danger.