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By Root 505 0

that he had died in Wandsworth Prison, and that the book published under the name of Greville Liddicote was in fact written by my mother—as were others that he passed off as his own. I told Dunstan Headley that Liddicote did well out of those books—which is true, he did—and that my mother never saw a penny. I told him it was a woman’s work that set the cat among the pigeons; a woman who wrote stories for her children, to help them to understand the war, and why their father could not hold with such a thing.”

“What made you tell him?”

Alice lifted the teapot lid again and stirred the tea. She did not ask Maisie how she liked her tea but poured milk into each cup, then the tea. She pulled a cosy over the teapot, and leaned back to take up her tea and sip. She kept the cup in her hands.

“All right, you might as well know what I did.” She took another sip, but this time returned the cup to its saucer. She crossed her arms. “Miss Dobbs, I like to think I can tell a lot about people just by watching them.”

“That’s very true.” Maisie crossed her own arms, and smiled. The crossed arms reminded her of a wooden plank pulled across to secure a drawbridge. She knew that while Alice Thurlow had declared that she would tell everything, there could well be details that she would keep locked inside.

“There was something about Dunstan Headley—I mean, there he was, with his son, two men rattling around together and no woman, unless you count the servants. Did you notice that he couldn’t quite meet your eyes? I saw him talk to Dr. Thomas, and to Delphine Lang, so I knew it wasn’t just me—the man really didn’t like women; I reckon he saw us as the root of everything that’s bad in the world.”

Maisie nodded. “So what made you approach him, if you knew he was prejudiced in such a way? Wasn’t that asking for trouble?”

She smiled and shook her head, uncrossing her arms. “I didn’t really care by that time. I came to the college and applied for a job because I wanted to see Liddicote. I wanted to know if he recognized me—which he didn’t—and I wanted to . . . I wanted to make him sorry. He caused my mother great distress, Miss Dobbs. He broke her heart, and she’s a very good woman. She is the most wonderful, darling mother anyone could have, and she had to bring us up alone. After Father was gone, and after Liddicote stole her work—and it was as good as theft—well, if it wasn’t for Aunt Rose, we would have starved. She was an angel, just an angel. So, I wanted to . . . I wanted him to hurt, just like we’ve all been hurt. I am sure it was the deep worry about everything that caused my mother to become so crippled.”

“How do you think you hurt Dr. Liddicote?”

“I told Dunstan Headley everything—everything. I let him know that the book that caused his son to do what he did, and go in front of a firing squad, was written by a woman. I told him Greville Liddicote took the stories and claimed they were his. Then I let the truth do the work for me.”

“What did you think he might do?”

“I thought he might withdraw his money from the college. I thought he would have nothing to do with Liddicote ever again, so the college would fail—and then where would the famous, world-renowned author be? No college, no job, no reputation. No nothing.”

“What happened when you told him?”

“He was so angry, I thought the top of his head would just explode. He was furious, but the part that really must have caught in his craw was the fact that Liddicote had taken a woman’s work to bolster his reputation and his coffers, and Martin Headley paid the price and was labeled a mutineer and a coward. And the cause of all this was a woman who wanted to excuse her coward husband’s absence in a story—well, that’s how he must have seen my father.”

“Then?”

She shrugged. “He went flying off, his coat flapping, with those bits of gray hair at the side of his head spiraling up in the air with the breeze. He went into Liddicote’s office through the French doors—they were open—and I suppose that’s when . . . well, that’s when he killed Liddicote.”

Maisie nodded. “And how do you feel