‘I cannot tell you that. It isn’t widely known, believe me. Who is the father?’
Annabelle’s head came up sharply. ‘You don’t know?’ She laughed, a bitter gasp of sound. ‘My dear cousin Elliott, of course.’
‘You were lovers?’ She hid it well, but I could sense the shock in Lady Radcliffe, a surprise as great as my own.
‘Lovers? Him? No. He gave me wine until I was drunk and then he… I rather liked him before, we used to flirt, so I didn’t mind. He didn’t force me, you know. But afterwards, I realised he didn’t care about me. When I found out about the baby he told Papa that he was so sorry and I had egged him on to drink and kissed him and he couldn’t help himself.’
‘That is appalling,’ Lady Radcliffe said. ‘Why did your parents not insist you marry?’
‘Because Papa said he had other plans for dear Elliott and anyway, I said if they tried to make me marry him I’d scream all the way to the altar.’
I must have moved because Sir William put his hand on mine and squeezed, just for a second. At my feet the clerk was writing furiously in some kind of shorthand. Focus, I told myself.
‘Tell me about Doctor Talbot,’ Lady Radcliffe’s voice was firm but sympathetic. She was a good interrogator, I realised, admiring the way she kept the pace up, sweeping Annabelle along. ‘You loved him, didn’t you? He was very kind, I imagine.’
‘He said it would be all right, he made it all right. After Elliott… I thought he cared.’
‘I am sure he did. You were his patient, after all.’
‘I thought he loved me,’ Annabelle spat out and stood, pushing at the tea table so it shook, rattling the cups. ‘And all the time he was a disgusting… disgusting pervert. And he’d touched me. I felt so dirty.’
Elliott had as good as raped her but it was Talbot, who had only touched her as a doctor must, who was the pervert. I told myself it was how she had been brought up, that she was not to blame for her prejudices. Then I remembered that she had killed the man.
‘Dreadful,’ James’s mother said. ‘How did you find out about him?’
Annabelle was pacing up and down, actually wringing her hands. ‘I overheard Papa talking to Mama that morning, early, about two o’clock. I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to talk to someone, wanted my baby, wanted Philip, but Mama said I had to forget everything, not talk about it, pretend none of it had happened. I got up to go down to the kitchen for some hot milk and I heard them in their bedchamber. Papa had just come in and he left the door ajar.’
‘Take your time, dear,’ Lady Radcliffe said. I heard a soft sigh of gratitude from the clerk, trying to keep up with the torrent of words.
‘He was angry. A clerk in Mr Salmond’s office was supposed to give him some information but he’d been to his lodgings and the man had hanged himself. Papa was furious, said he had invested a lot of time and money in the man and that he was a wretched molly and sodomite and… and Mama was shocked and said, did he know who his associates were and was there any danger he would have talked to them?’
‘You knew what he meant?’ Lady Radcliffe asked and this time there was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before.
‘One of my friends – her brother had to go away because he’d been caught at some awful place where men like that go. Penelope told me about it. I didn’t believe her at first, it sounded so sordid, but then she showed me a book she’d found in his room…’
‘What else did your father say?’ The older woman was steering her expertly, I thought.
‘That this man’s lover was Philip. My Philip. And that he wouldn’t dare say anything because Papa would make such a scandal that he would lose all his patients and have to flee abroad. And I went back to my room and was sick.’
‘And then?’ Expressions of sympathy were obviously beyond Lady Radcliffe, but Annabelle didn’t seem to notice.
‘I waited until my maid came to wake me up and I pretended I had a headache and wanted to stay in bed. Mama came, but I suppose I didn’t look well… Anyway, she told everyone not to disturb me, so I waited until they were having breakfast then I crept out and through the window into the back garden and out to the mews and I found a hackney carriage and it took me to Philip’s house.’
‘You knocked on the front door?’ Lady Radcliffe asked. Clever, I thought, she is checking the story.
‘I saw the light was on in his consulting room, so I went to the side and he let me in. He was angry with me for coming so I told him what Papa had said and he… He cried.’
Oh hell. The poor man learned that his lover had killed himself, not with compassion from a friend, but brutally from this girl. I had thought that at least Talbot died without knowing that.
‘And I... I pleaded with him to say to wasn’t true, but he pushed me away and I knew it was and then…’ For a moment I thought Annabelle wasn’t going to be able to continue. But she said, all of a rush, ‘I don’t remember very much. One moment he was standing there and his face was all blubbery and ugly and then he was on the rug and there was blood and a mess and I was holding a poker.’
She trailed back to the tea table and I held my breath, ready to jump up, but all she did was stare at Lady Radcliffe. ‘I don’t understand why I was holding a poker.’
‘I believe you must have hit him with it, Annabelle,’ Lady Radcliffe said.
‘I killed him?’ I expected tears, a collapse, the realisation of what she had done. Then Annabelle Reece laughed. ‘Good. I am glad.’
I struggled for understanding, not to be as much of a bigot as her society had made her. She’s in shock, I told myself. She was seduced, betrayed, forced into hiding, made to give away her baby and then had to confront the knowledge that the man she loved was something she had been taught was repellent.