Gibton returned, his hand supporting his wife’s elbow. She was a small, thin woman with a pinched face and eyes like gravestones, looking at the Constable with a dark suspicion that verged on outright hatred. It was hard to believe that she’d once been a beautiful girl. All the grace and loveliness she’d supposedly possessed when she was young had been chiselled away by bitterness.
‘My Lady,’ he said with a small bow.
‘My husband says you need to talk to me,’ she addressed him in a voice as cold as last winter. ‘I assume you have a good reason for this disturbance.’
‘I do.’ Nottingham gave an easy smile. ‘Would you sit down, please? And you, too, my Lord.’
They glanced at each other but did as he asked, arranging their clothes carefully to avoid creases.
‘Now,’ she said through thin, tight lips, ‘what is this?’
‘First, I’d like to remind you that all these questions, all this inconvenience, have a purpose,’ the Constable began, a new fire in his voice. ‘I’m trying to discover who murdered your daughter.’ He paused, watching the couple, hoping for a reaction. But their eyes never left his face, hers burning, his quietly attentive. ‘I’ve been shocked by the way you’ve taken her death so calmly. If my daughter had been killed I’d have done everything in my power to find out who did it.’
‘You’re not us,’ Gibton told him, the haughtiness back in his voice. ‘Don’t presume to try and understand what we feel. Just because we choose not to show it doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. And unless I’m wrong, finding the person who did this to Sarah is your business. As the mayor has reminded us every time we’ve asked, you’re supposed to be good at your job.’
‘He doesn’t look as if he could be good at much,’ Lady Gibton commented, eyeing him up and down with distaste.
Nottingham took a deep breath.
‘Tell me, my Lady, did you know that your daughter was planning on leaving her husband and running away with her lover?’ He let the question hang a moment before plunging on. ‘That’s the same lover she had before she met Mr Godlove, the one you made her give up.’
Laby Gibton stood up and came near. She needed to look up to talk to him.
‘You’re a liar.’ The words hissed from her and he felt spittle warm against his face. She drew an arm back to slap him, but the Constable reached out and took a light hold of her wrist.
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m not lying. I told her husband two days ago and the news almost broke him. There’s one thing I didn’t mention to him, though. Your daughter was pregnant with her lover’s child.’
She tried to move her arm, to bring it round to hit him, but he kept his grip tight on her. Her eyes flamed, and her husband stared at the floor. He had them. Nottingham released her wrist and stepped backwards. ‘But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?’
Neither of them replied, but he could feel the guilt in their silence.
‘I’m sure you really were ill,’ he told her, ‘although I’ll never be able to prove it one way or the other. The timing was fortunate, though, wasn’t it, with the servants dismissed?’
‘You’ve been told before, she never came here,’ Lady Gibton said.
The Constable smiled. ‘I’ve been told many things in the last few weeks. A few of them have even been true. But that wasn’t one of them. Sarah arrived here that Thursday after the servants had gone. You hadn’t been expecting her but it turned out well. There were only the four of you in the house when she gave you her news — you two, your daughter and her maid. I haven’t forgotten about Annie.’
Gibton stood and began to walk out of the room.
‘Are you leaving, my Lord?’ Nottingham asked. ‘I’ve not even sketched an outline yet.’
The baron stopped, then turned. ‘I won’t stay to listen to this,’ he announced.
‘Your wife doesn’t seem to want to leave yet,’ the Constable said. ‘I think it would be better if no one went. After all, so far I’m not sure which of you killed your daughter.’
Twenty-Two
This time Lady Gibton’s open hand came up before he could move and cracked him hard across the cheek. He felt the hot, sharp sting on his flesh.
‘Get out,’ she screamed. Her face had turned wild and feral, and he had to reach out and pin both her arms to stop her hitting him again.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘You’re both going to hear this.’ He waited until the tension in the room dropped slightly.
‘You’d better have extremely good proof that we killed Sarah,’ Gibton said threateningly. ‘She was our daughter. We loved her.’
‘Of course you did. You loved her enough to keep her away from the man she wanted to be with, and sold her so you could have all this.’ He glanced around the room, taking in the portrait and the new furnishings. ‘I’ll tell you one thing I can prove — that the knife which killed Sarah came from here. One of the servants recognized it and said it went missing during those few days you sent them all away.’ He paused again, hoping they would fill the silence. ‘That should be damning enough for any jury, I’m sure you’ll agree. They’d have no choice but to hang you both — unless the mob dragged you out of jail and did it themselves. It’s happened before. In my experience, people hate those who kill their own children.’
He looked from one of them to the other.
‘Hanging can either be fast or slow,’ he continued, his voice low and hypnotic. ‘Did you know that some people going to the gallows pay the hangman to make it quick, so the neck breaks and it’s over?’ As they watched he brought his hands together and made a snapping motion. ‘Like that. The people who die that way are the lucky ones, so it’s said. If no one will do that for you, or the drop isn’t long enough, you choke. It takes up to twenty minutes; I’ve timed it. That’s all those long minutes when the pressure grows on your neck and you feel your life slowly leaving you, and the mob watching everything. I’ll wager you a penny to a guinea that no one would take your money to speed it up. They’d be gathered on Chapeltown Moor for you two. Minor aristocracy, killed your own daughter. It would even be in the London papers. You’d be famous.’
‘You’ve ranted and threatened, but you still haven’t said why we’re supposed to have killed Sarah,’ Lady Gibton said icily. ‘Tell me, Constable, why would we kill our flesh and blood?’
‘Money, plain and simple,’ he replied. ‘If she’d run off with Will Jackson, Godlove would have cut you off. All this would have gone.’ He gestured to take in the house. ‘You’d been waiting all these years until Sarah had grown up and you could arrange a marriage for her that would leave you well off. Now she was going to take everything away from you, and all for something as trivial as love. So you killed her.’
‘Do you really think anyone will believe that?’ she said.
‘I know they will,’ he answered confidently. ‘We have proof of Sarah’s visits to Will Jackson every week. He was selling his business. You’d be surprised what we’ve discovered.’
‘Facts you’ve twisted,’ she sneered.
‘You know, you should have encouraged her with Will,’ he told them. ‘He went on to do very well indeed. And he’s the one she wanted.’
‘Her husband loved her,’ Gibton said.
‘Yes, he did,’ Nottingham agreed sadly. ‘He was besotted with her. It’s just a pity she could never return that. She was a lucky girl in a way, having the love of two men. But there was only one for her.’
‘She was better off with Godlove,’ Lady Gibton said firmly. ‘I told her so.’
‘No, you were better off when she was with Godlove,’ the Constable corrected. ‘She wouldn’t deny her heart, though, would she? She couldn’t give Will up.’ He paused. ‘You know, I should have concluded all this earlier. But I simply couldn’t believe that parents could cold-bloodedly kill their child for money. I refused to think it was possible. I should have known better.’
Gibton pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards the Constable so that both husband and wife now stood close to him.