The Confession - Charles Todd [55]
“It’s useless to deny it. He knew you. On the wall of his room in Thetford he had a photograph of you taken from a newspaper or magazine.”
“I don’t recall that my photograph was ever in a newspaper.”
“You were admiring an orchid.”
Anger flared in her eyes. “That was taken by chance. I didn’t pose for it.”
“Yet you have an orchid for your door knocker.”
“The owner of the prizewinning orchid—the one I was admiring—sent it to me after seeing the photograph.”
“I’ve been looking into Willet’s death, and I went to Thetford to the Laughton house, where he was a footman. Did you find that position for him? I can’t think of anyone else who might have had the connections or the interest in helping the man.”
His intuition had been right.
“That’s none of your affair,” she snapped.
“And when he was here in London in May, seeing the specialist, did he come and tell you that he was a dying man?”
She blinked, unable to prevent the spontaneous reaction.
“What was your interest in him? Was it a love affair—”
She cut him off, her voice sharp. “Yes, all right. I lent him books. He saw me reading one day, and he asked where I’d got the book.”
“Where was this? And when?”
“In 1913, I think. I’d taken one of the boats and rowed down to a little inlet where I could tie up and read. He came up the river, and I nearly frightened him to death, he said. I was asleep in the bottom of the boat, and he thought I was ill. I found that amusing. We talked for a little, and then I gave him the book. It was a novel by an American writer. He seemed pleased. We met several more times, and he would return whatever book I’d let him borrow and tell me what he thought of it. For a young man educated in the village school, he was remarkably clever. I asked what he wished to do with his life, and he told me he wanted to find a position somewhere. I don’t think he had the vaguest idea of what was required to be a footman. Still, he took care over how he dressed and how he spoke. So I told him that I’d write to the Laughtons. I’d known Rose Laughton in school and I was certain the family would be kind, whether they took him on or not. Still, I thought it best to present myself as Mrs. Russell when I wrote to ask if they were in need of a footman.” She smiled at the memory. “As it happened the last one had died of complications from the measles he’d caught from the Laughton children. I had to swear—as Mrs. Russell, you understand—that Ben had had all the childhood diseases. I didn’t know whether he’d had them or not. In any event, they offered him the position. I gave him several books as a going-away gift. I knew he couldn’t afford to buy them.”
Which explained the volumes packed away in his boxes when Willet went off to war.
“And so he lived happily ever after as a footman.”
“Of course not. There was the war. It changed everything for all of us.”
“Did you write to him when he was in Thetford? Or when he was in France?”
“I did not. He was my good deed. That was all. I hadn’t taken his soul into my keeping.”
“When did you see him again?”
“Ah. After the war. Immediately after, in fact. He was just coming out of Victoria Station, and he recognized me at once. I didn’t know him. He’d grown, filled out. A man, not a boy in his father’s skiff. He even sported a mustache. I took him to a shop for tea, and he told me he wanted to be a writer. And so I gave him fifty pounds and told him to send me a copy of his first publication. He did. A slim volume of his war memoirs. It was not terribly successful, as far as I know. But he was extraordinarily proud of it. The next one was so much better. I was proud of him, then.” She turned to stare out the window for a moment. Then she asked, “Did he kill himself ? Because of the disease? Or was it for some other reason?”
“The truth is, he was murdered.”
“Ben Willet?” She faced him now, horror in her eyes. “No. There must be some mistake.”
“I can show you a photograph of the body, if you like.”
She shuddered. “No. Please, no.”
“When did you last hear from him?”
She was still trying to come to terms