Lena threw back her head and whooped.
‘Goodness? Goodness?’
‘Goodness,’ said Alec, ‘which could not help but see evil in front of it. Dandy’s goodness meant that she could smell you like a rotting corpse. I don’t expect you to understand. Something as vile as you are can’t hope to recognize it.’
I wished he would stop. Lena was beginning to seethe, visibly, rocking back and forward on her heels. I had no fear that she would overpower Alec and escape but I wanted desperately to talk to her and get some answers before she crawled into her madness and pulled it over herself for good.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked, my voice loud enough to cut through Alec’s hectoring. She rounded on me, but I refused to flinch.
I asked her again.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Are you too “good” even to imagine, then, Mrs Gilver?’
‘Not at all,’ I said, surprising myself with the level drawl I managed to get into my voice. ‘Only I should like to know if my theories are accurate. Why did you do it? Why did you start it?’
‘Because,’ she said, stepping very close to me so that the spittle fell on my face as she spoke. Alec rose and moved towards us, but I put up a hand to stop him.
‘Because,’ she said again, ‘they were mine.’
‘Of course they were yours,’ I whispered, sickened, amazed that I could still be sickened by anything. ‘But why would you want to hurt them?’
‘You stupid woman,’ she said. ‘You stupid, blind pig of a woman. Not the girls. The diamonds. Those diamonds were mine. I loved them and they were nothing to him, just as they should have been nothing to you.’ She rounded on Alec and, unable to meet his eyes, glared at his chest. ‘You and that little tart and all the little tarts you would have bred. It was an outrage to think he could give them to you when they were mine.’
‘So you stole them,’ I said. ‘But -’
‘I didn’t steal them,’ said Lena, suddenly very loud. ‘You can’t steal what is already yours. I simply took them. He would have left them to that little tart along with everything else and I couldn’t stand for that.’
‘But then you went too far,’ I said. ‘You tried to steal them twice and when it seemed as though nothing would ever bring it to light you told Cara to sell them.’
‘She couldn’t have anyway,’ said Daisy. ‘They belonged to her father.’
‘They belonged to me,’ said Lena. ‘They were mine. They have belonged to the ladies of the Duffy family, generation after generation for three hundred years.’
‘Cara was a lady of the Duffy family, you old fool,’ said Daisy.
‘Oh yes,’ screamed Lena. ‘Cara, precious Cara, precious Cara Duffy. Little tart.’
‘And why pick on us?’ Daisy demanded. ‘What have I ever done? What has Silas?’
‘Filth,’ spat Lena. ‘Parading around all that money and underneath, nothing but filth.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Daisy. ‘You’re not even making any sense.’
Lena’s eyes rolled.
‘So you told her to sell them,’ I insisted, laying a hand on Daisy’s shoulder trying to quiet her, trying to keep Lena with us. ‘And then what?’
‘She couldn’t be trusted,’ said Lena. ‘Much better, really. Much neater that way. I had the use of her and then she could go. She was going to get all of it, you know. He just couldn’t see past his precious little darling. He didn’t know her like I did. What a dirty little slut she was. She had to go.’
There was one question I knew I must ask.
‘Could you have done it? Could you have killed your own child in cold blood?’
‘Is it too awful for you to imagine?’ said Lena. ‘With all your goodness. Could I? Of course I could. I’m vile and evil, Mrs Gilver, I’m wicked and mad. So my own child doesn’t matter any more to me than an ant under my shoe. Weren’t you listening?’ Her eyes were glittering with amusement now.
‘But you didn’t get the chance,’ I said, and I saw her face flash with something I did not understand, just for a moment.
‘Of course I had the chance,’ she said. ‘What are you talking about? I made the chance, and I took the chance.’
‘But something went wrong,’ I insisted. Her eyes flashed again.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Something changed your plans. What happened? What did she tell you to make you so angry?’ Lena’s eyes were still huge with fear but her shoulders dropped a little.
‘She told me what she had done. What she was. Who could bear to hear what a stinking, filthy tart she was all along?’
‘But you knew that,’ I said. ‘You said you knew what she was.’ Lena looked away from me and I saw a cold resolve settle into her face. Then she took a huge breath, threw back her head and shrieked.
Still screeching, she took three enormous steps backwards so that all of us were in the sweep of her gaze. There was something ridiculous about the extravagance of the steps, like a second-rate Shakespearean actor of the old school, or like the game I used to play as a child. Giants’ Steps and Babies’ Steps, it was called, and that was what Lena’s giant steps looked like, as unreal and yet as deliberate as that.
‘I killed her,’ she screamed. ‘Do you hear me? I killed her and if I hang it will still be worth it.’ She spoke as though she were Boadicea giving her battle cry, as though she were Joan of Arc declaiming her creed, triumph in her voice and her shoulders thrown back to take the arrows in her breast, but her eyes were the eyes of an animal threshing in a snare as the gamekeeper draws near it. I stepped towards her, staring, peering deep into that animal’s eyes.
‘How could you?’ I said. ‘How could you do that to your own child?’ The fear flared again; I saw it. Something small inside her had leapt up and just managed to see out of her eyes for one second before it fell back down. Then she regarded me with some of the old calmness, and she spoke softly to me, just to me, too soft for the others to hear.
‘You stupid woman,’ she said.
I stared at her, feeling something shift, but it was far too deep to tell what it was, and then she turned on her heels and ran.
Alec took two steps after her, stopped, wheeled back, swayed for a second. We could hear Lena’s footsteps racing away.
‘Go,’ I yelled at him.
He skidded over the ballroom floor and was gone. The ring of his shoes on the bare floor joined the clatter of Lena’s heels and then both became muffled as they reached the top of the stairs and flew down over the felted treads. A scream, then a confusion of thumps and knocks, a shout from Alec, and silence. I knew at once what had happened.
Carefully, I lowered myself beside Daisy and stretched out my throbbing foot before bending over the ropes.
‘I left my candlestick on the stairs,’ I said. Then I looked down and smiled as the tangle under my fingers began to loosen. ‘Typical. Boys are never any good at untying knots.’
‘Hence penknives,’ said Daisy, getting stiffly to her feet and shaking herself free of the coils. ‘Now, put your hands around my neck, darling, and let me help you up.’
We had just begun to limp across what looked like an acre of gleaming floor, her two numbed legs about as useful as my good one, when Alec appeared in the doorway, his face puckered, one of Lena’s shoes dangling from his hand.
‘She tripped,’ he said, walking slowly towards us. ‘I tried to catch her. I almost caught her.’ He looked down at the shoe, regarded it for a long time, then set it carefully on the floor and swung me up into his arms.
‘I can offer you an arm,’ he said to Daisy, but his voice was strained, and even as he spoke he braced his legs – I am no sylph, even had he not been shaking with exhaustion – and so Daisy assured him that she was fine.
At the head of the stairs he turned and began to shuffle down awkwardly sideways, almost pressing me against the banisters.