Miss Armstrong stopped crying abruptly and stared at me, eyes full of rebuke. ‘Whatever do you mean by that?’
‘You said yourself you hardly knew them,’ I pointed out. ‘They might have been wretched people.’
Chilton let out a caustic little laugh.
‘Why, Mrs Marston seemed the nicest lady in the world,’ said Miss Armstrong reproachfully.
‘Seeming is different to being,’ I said. ‘Best not to mourn people whose sins we don’t know.’
Miss Armstrong looked at me as if I were the coldest, hardest woman in the world. Which I very well may be. But I should have known better than to reveal it. Nothing is more suspicious than an unfeeling woman.
I stood and went to examine the selection of books. Miss Armstrong held my handkerchief out to me to return it, but I waved it away. ‘Keep it,’ I said, ‘I have loads.’
Chilton and Miss Armstrong busied themselves reading, though the air felt as if they absorbed nothing, just stared at the words on the page, waiting for me to leave so they could discuss my outburst. I should have been more careful but at this point I had no idea Chilton had seen me with Finbarr, let alone that he knew Agatha was hiding in the vicinity. Chilton was keen to keep it that way.
Finally, I settled on a Willy novel that had been all the rage when I was a girl, the first of the Claudine books. The edition was in its original French and the effort of translating it would make it all the more diverting. I said a curt goodbye to Chilton and Miss Armstrong.
When I emerged from the library, Mrs Leech looked up from her station behind the front desk. ‘Mrs O’Dea,’ she said, ‘a little boy just came by with a note.’
I snatched it from her fingers, perhaps a little too eagerly. I worried it would be addressed using my first name but the writing on the envelope – bold male handwriting – said Miss O’Dea. If Mrs Leech registered the ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Mrs’， her face did not betray it. I felt a flush across my neck. It was worth whatever risk I’d taken, to use my real last name, so I could open this envelope and read what it said on the coarse piece of paper, butcher’s wrapper.
Dearest Nan,
Meet me at ten tonight just outside the front door. If I am not precisely on time, trust I’ll be there and don’t go any further than just past the front door. It’s not safe for ladies after dark.
I floated upstairs and waited obediently for night to fall.
Meanwhile, inside the library, Chilton asked Miss Armstrong if he could see my handkerchief. She handed it over as if eager to be rid of it.
‘Rather a nice handkerchief,’ he mused aloud, ‘for anyone to have loads of.’
‘I don’t see how she can be so cruel,’ Miss Armstrong said fiercely. ‘I don’t know about you, Mr Chilton, but I was raised not to speak ill of the dead.’
Chilton nodded sadly, as if in agreement, though he had seen enough of the world to know some of the dead earned ill speaking of. He didn’t hold it against me. Much later he would tell me he did wonder why my handkerchief was monogrammed with a large cursive N when my name was purported to be Genevieve O’Dea.
The brave or complacent guests remaining at the Bellefort Hotel were exhausted by the hot waters, the spa treatments and the recent tragedy. By the time I came downstairs, nobody was afoot. Even Mrs Leech had left her post. The grandfather clock having finished its ten chimes, everything was quiet the way only a winter night can be, not even birds or bugs rustling. I had bundled into my lace-up boots and woollen coat, mittens and a woollen hat and scarf. I stepped outside, careful to open and close the door soundlessly. It was a well-kept hotel and the door had been recently oiled. It would remain unlocked, I knew. There was so little crime in the English countryside, back then, between the wars. No doubt that was part of the reason so many of us expected a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened to the Marstons. Not to mention one thousand men to spare searching for a missing lady novelist.