“Why didn’t you like him?” For the first time Vera seemed mildly interested.
“He was creepy,” Sebastian said. “And self-serving. All this work with the archives was about making a name for himself, not raising funds for the library.”
They sat for a moment in silence. They heard the insect buzzing of the central heating system in the background. Joe waited for Vera to comment but again she seemed preoccupied. “Is the only access to the Silence Room through here?” he asked. Again he felt the need to move things on. The library was very warm and he found the dark wood and the high shelves oppressive. It was as if they were imprisoned by all the words.
“Yes,” Cath said. “The doors downstairs are locked from our side when the music exams are taking place.”
“So the murderer must be one of you,” Vera said.
She looked slowly round the table. Joe thought again that it was as if she were playing a parlour game, though there was nothing playful in her expression. Usually at the beginning of an investigation she was full of energy and imagination. Now she only seemed sad. It occurred to Joe that the victim would have been just ten years older than her. Perhaps she’d had a teenage crush on him when he’d led her on the field trip to the Roman wall. Perhaps the earlier flippancy had been her way of hiding her grief. Vera continued to speak.
“You’d better tell me now what happened. As I said before, it’s unnatural having a murderer on the loose. Let’s set the world to rights, eh?”
Nobody spoke.
“Then I’ll tell you a story of my own,” she said. “I’ll make my own confession.” She leaned forward so her elbows were on the table. “I was about twelve,” she said. “An awkward age and I was an awkward child. Not as big as I am now, but lumpy and clumsy with large feet and a talent for speaking out of turn. My mother died when I was very small and I was brought up by my father, Hector. His passion was collecting: birds’ eggs, raptors. Illegal, of course, but he always thought he was above the law. Had a fit when I applied to the police…” Her voice trailed away and she flashed a smile at them. “But that was much later and perhaps Gilbert had something to do with that too.
“Gilbert was kind to me. The first adult to take me seriously. He was a PhD student at the university. A geek, I suppose we’d call him now. Passionate about his history. Alec was quite right about that. He listened to me and asked my opinion, more comfortable with a bright kid than with other grown-ups maybe. He bought me little presents.” She looked at Zoë. “Some things don’t change it seems.”
Vera shifted in her seat. Joe saw that they were all engrossed in her story and that they were all waiting for her to continue.
“These days we’d call it grooming,” she said. “Then we were more innocent. Hector saw nothing wrong with entrusting me to the care of a virtual stranger for days at a time while we scrambled around bits of Roman wall. He couldn’t believe, I suppose, that anyone could find me sexually attractive. And, to be fair, he assumed that other kids would be there too. At first I revelled in it. The attention. Gilbert had a car and, sitting beside him, I felt like a princess. He brought a picnic. Cider. My first taste of alcohol. And the arm around my shoulder, the hand on my knee, what harm could there be in that?”
She came to a stop again.
“He sexually assaulted me.” Her voice was suddenly bright and brittle. “One afternoon in May. Full sunshine and birds singing fit to bust. Skylarks and curlew. We’d climbed on to the moors beyond the wall, to get a proper view of the scale of it, he said. There was nobody about for miles. He spread out a blanket and pulled me down with him. There was a smell of warm grass and sheep shit. I fought back, but he was stronger than me. In the end there was nothing I could do but let him get on with it. Afterwards he cried.” She looked up at them. “I didn’t cry. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.”
For a moment Joe was tempted to reach out and touch her hand, but that of course would have been impossible.
“I never told anyone,” Vera said. “Who would I tell? Hector? A teacher? How could I? I refused to go out with Gilbert again and Hector called me moody and ungrateful. But I should have told. I should have gone to the police. Because the man had committed a crime and the law is all we have to hold things together.”
Vera stood up.
“I don’t believe he’s changed,” she said. “He wasn’t stopped, you see. He got away with it. My responsibility. We’ll find images of children on his computer, no doubt about that.” She turned to Sebastian Charles. “You were right. He was a creepy man.”
She paused for a moment. “So who killed him?” Her voice became gentle; at least, as gentle as a hippo’s could be. “You look like a twelve-year-old, Zoë. Did he try it on with you?”
“No!” The woman was horrified.
“Of course not. It wasn’t a child’s body he wanted as much as a child’s mind. The need to control and to teach.”
Vera turned again, this time to the middle-aged librarian, who was sitting next to her. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
Cath was very upright in her chair. She stared ahead of her. For a moment Ashworth thought she would refuse to speak. But the words came at last, carefully chosen and telling.
“He befriended Evie, my elder daughter. When my husband left last year she was the person most affected by our separation. She’s always been a shy child and she became uncommunicative and withdrawn. Gilbert had been part of our lives since I first took over here. I invited him to family parties and to Sunday lunch. I suppose I felt sorry for him. And I thought it would be good for Evie to have some male influence once Nicholas left. He made history come alive for her with his stories of Roman soldiers and the wild border reivers. On the last day of the October half-term he took her out. Like your father, I assumed other children would be present. That was certainly the impression he gave. Like your father, it never occurred to me that she could come to harm with him.”
“He assaulted her,” Vera said.
“She won’t tell me exactly what happened. He threatened her, I think. Made her promise to keep secrets. But something happened that afternoon. It’s as if she’s frozen, a shell of the child she once was. The innocence sucked out of her. I should be grateful, I suppose, that she’s alive and that he brought her home to me.” Cath looked at Vera. “The only thing she did say was that he cried.”
“So you killed him?”
“I went to the Silence Room to talk to him. I knew he was alone there. Zoë was busy on the phone and didn’t notice that I left the office. I asked him what he’d done to Evie. He put his finger to his lips. ‘I think you of all people should respect the tradition of the Silence Room,’ he said in a pompous whisper, barely loud enough for me to hear. I shouted then: ‘What did you to my child?’” Telling the story, Cath raised her voice so she was shouting again.
She caught her breath for a moment and then she continued: “Gilbert set down his pen. ‘Nothing that she didn’t want me to do,’ he said. ‘And nothing that you’ll be able to prove.’ He was still whispering. Then he started work again. That was when I picked up the book he was reading. That was when I killed him. I left the Silence Room, collected a mug of coffee at the top of the stairs and returned to my office.”
Nobody spoke.
“Oh, pet,” Vera said. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“What would you have done, Vera? Dragged Evie through the courts, forced her to give evidence, to be examined? Don’t you think she’s been through enough?”
“And now?” Vera cried. “What will happen to her now?”
Joe sat as still as the rest of them but thoughts were spinning round his mind. What would he have done? I wouldn’t have let my daughter out with a pervert in the first place. I’ll never leave my wife. But he knew that however hard he tried, he could never protect his children from all the dangers of the world. And that he’d probably have killed the bastard too. He stood up.