“What about Rosalind-do you think she knows that Lucas isn’t really Lucas?” Neagley asked.
“How can you keep that kind of a secret from someone you’re living with for all that time?” I said.
Sean shot me a sly glance. “Some people are very good at keeping secrets.”
I ignored the jibe and reached for my crutch, struggling to my feet. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”
“How?”
“I’ll ask her,” I said.
Twenty
Frances Neagley drove me over to the Lucases’ house just before three that afternoon and walked slowly beside me across the slippery driveway. She was the one who rang the front doorbell when my courage might otherwise have deserted me.
The timing was deliberate. We knew that Lucas would be at the surplus store taking care of business for another couple of hours, giving us initial time with Rosalind alone. Mind you, there was always the chance she wouldn’t let me through the door to begin with.
It seemed to take a long time for her to answer the summons of the bell. By then I’d got thoroughly cold feet in every sense of the words. I think I was actually shivering when she opened the door and stared blankly at the pair of us. Perhaps that was what made her take pity on me. Her gaze flickered over Neagley, standing close alongside me like she expected me to fall at any moment.
There was a long pause while the three of us stood there immobile. Then Rosalind stepped back and held the door farther open. “You’d best come in and sit before you collapse,” she said, her voice giving no clues on warmth.
“Thank you,” I said, limping past her into the hallway Neagley looked around the interior with professional interest, smiling at Rosalind’s assessing stare.
“This is Frances,” I said by way of introduction. “She very kindly brought me over-there’s no way I can drive yet.”
Rosalind nodded at that, accepting it on one level, questioning it on another. She gestured for us to follow her through into the living room area. I looked round, hopeful, but it was empty
“How’s Ella?” I asked.
A brief smile escaped across the corner of Rosalind’s thin lips. “She’s still very upset, naturally,” she said, “but we’re making progress with her.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs, probably watching a little TV in her room.” Rosalind paused, frowning.
Probably? You mean you dorit know?
“I’d take it as a favor if you didn’t ask to see her, Charlie,” she went on. “I think it might… unsettle her too much.”
Something reached into my chest and squeezed at my heart with very cold fingers. “I understand,” I said, expressionless.
“Thank you,” she said with another small smile. “Can I offer you and your … friend some coffee?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lucas, that would be great,” Neagley said, her voice coolly polite. “You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you, we like to think so,” Rosalind replied, but her eyes had narrowed slightly, as though she was still trying to get a handle on Nea-gley’s exact role.
Rosalind was still frowning as she moved across to fuss with the coffee machine in the kitchen area. I sat, taking the soft leather armchair near the fireplace, so I was sideways on to Rosalind and facing the window, laying the crutch down beside the chair. Neagley remained standing.
“So, I understand Ella’s father has been in touch with you since the accident,” Rosalind said smoothly, making it sound like Simone had died in a car crash. “Would he have anything to do with your visit? Because if you’re here on his behalf, I have to tell you that we don’t feel that young man would make a suitable parent for Ella.” Her voice was prim.
“Matt has been in touch,” I said with classic understatement, “but the main reason we’re here is about your husband.”
“My husband?” Rosalind said. She was measuring coffee grounds into the top of the machine and that might have been why she sounded distracted, but I didn’t think so. Her hand faltered slightly. “What about Greg?”
“You told me you’d been married for fifteen years,” I said, watching her pour in cold water and close the lid. “How long had you actually known him before that?”
She frowned. “A year or so,” she said at last, cautious, as though I was out to trip her but she was unable to see how that answer might do it. “Why?”
“You remember that day at the store when Mr. Vaughan issued his little challenge to me, and afterwards I got that photo message on my phone?”
“Yes, it was an old picture of Greg,” she said. Her shoulders were too tense, I noticed. She saw me watching her and dropped them abruptly. “Funny how people change,” she said, sounding almost breathless. “I almost didn’t recognize him.”
“No, Rosalind,” I said gently, “the reason you didn’t recognize him was because the man in the picture wasn’t your husband.”
She went very still. “So who was it then?”
“Greg Lucas.”
“But-”
“Has your husband ever been violent towards you, Mrs. Lucas?” Nea-gley cut in smoothly.
“What?” Rosalind shook off her confusion and flushed, outraged. “No, of course he hasn’t! What kind of a question is that?”
“Back when he was in the military in England, Greg Lucas was a violent man,” I plowed on, taking up the thread, relentless. “Not just as a part of his career, but in his personal life. He beat his first wife and regularly put her infant daughter-Simone-in the hospital.”
“I–I don’t believe you,” Rosalind said stiffly, but she was white-faced and tense enough to splinter if you’d dropped her.
“No? Well, the facts bear me out,” I said. Neagley opened her shoulder bag-the one with that short-barreled revolver inside-and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork. We’d detoured to get it copied at the Bob Duncan Photoshop on Main Street on the way over. She held the papers up for Rosalind to see and, when the other woman made no move towards her, put them down on the coffee table.
“Eventually,” I went on, “Simone’s mother decided she’d had enough. She got out from under. But Lucas wasn’t giving up that easily. He tracked her down. She’d made a new life for herself, taken up with a new man. A guy called John Ashworth.” I paused, let that one sink in on Rosalind, saw the merest twitch in the muscle of her cheek. “The thing was, he wasn’t really a new man. You see, she’d been having a relationship with him since before Simone was born. We don’t know how long for, but it had to be at least nine months, because John Ashworth-John Simon Ashworth, I should say-not Greg Lucas, was Simone’s real father.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rosalind said, but she had to put a steadying hand out for the kitchen worktop. “Greg passed the DNA test. The police confirmed it-he’s definitely Simone’s father. And Ella’s grandfather.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “But at the time of her conception Greg Lucas was in prison for assault. There’s no possibility of mistake-we’ve checked,” I added, when she opened her mouth to pursue that line. “It’s documented fact.”
Rosalind didn’t speak right away. She moved slowly round from the kitchen, walking like an automaton, her eyes fixed on the paperwork Neagley had placed on the table. Unable to resist its lure any longer, she snatched up the pages and scanned down them quickly, taking it all in. When she’d finished, her hands were shaking.
“What does this mean?” she asked, almost a whisper.