The Ashwick constabulary occupied a narrow, soot-stained building on Market Lane, squeezed between a chandler's shop and a solicitor's office, as though the law had been inserted into the village as an afterthought. Elena had passed it a hundred times without giving it a second glance. It was the kind of building that seemed to apologize for its own existence, its windows small and grudging, its door painted a shade of brown that aspired to be respectable and achieved only the dismal. Today, however, she approached it with the deliberate, measured steps of a woman who had an appointment with destiny.
She had dressed with the same meticulous care she applied to every public appearance: a gown of deep blue wool, a jacket with silver buttons, a hat with a small, tasteful veil. She looked like a woman of substance, a woman who had nothing to hide. The veil was a masterstroke, she thought. It softened her features without obscuring them, lending her an air of melancholy dignity that was exactly appropriate for a widow of three weeks.
A young constable with a prominent Adam's apple and the beginnings of a mustache greeted her at the front desk. She gave her name and asked for Inspector Holt, and the constable's eyes widened slightly, as though she had asked for something dangerous.
"Inspector Holt is in her office, ma'am," he said. "I will see if she is available. May I ask the nature of your business?"
"I have information," Elena said, "that may be relevant to one of her investigations."
The constable disappeared through a door at the back of the room, and Elena was left alone in the small, grim waiting area. The walls were painted a shade of green that had probably been intended to be soothing but had faded over the years to the color of old moss. A bench of hard, unyielding wood stood against one wall, and a single window looked out onto the gray, slushy street. She did not sit. She stood very still, her hands folded before her, her face composed, and she waited.
The constable returned a few minutes later, looking slightly flustered. "Inspector Holt will see you now, ma'am. If you will follow me."
He led her through the door and down a narrow corridor to a room at the back of the building. The inspector's office was small and spartan, furnished with a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet that had seen better days. The walls were bare except for a map of Valdoria and a single photograph of a severe-looking woman who might have been the inspector's mother. The window looked out onto a brick wall, and the light that filtered through was gray and cheerless.
Inspector Cordelia Holt sat behind the desk, her iron-gray hair pulled back in its usual severe knot, her winter-sea eyes fixed on Elena with an expression that was not quite hostile and not quite welcoming. She was wearing the same dark gray overcoat she had worn to the funeral, as though she had not taken it off in the intervening weeks.
"Mrs. Voss," she said, gesturing to the empty chair. "This is an unexpected visit. Please, sit."
Elena sat, arranging her skirts with the automatic grace of long practice. "Thank you for seeing me, Inspector. I know you must be very busy."
"Busy enough," Cordelia Holt said. "But I am always happy to speak with a member of the public who wishes to assist in an investigation. You mentioned that you had information?"
"I do." Elena paused, composing her words with the care of a woman arranging flowers. "At my husband's funeral, you showed me a photograph of a young woman. Lise Markham. You asked me if I had ever seen her, and I told you that I had not. That was the truth. But since then, I have learned something that may be relevant to your inquiry."
The inspector's expression did not change, but there was a subtle shift in her posture, a tightening of attention. "Please, go on."
"After my husband's death, I found a journal among his personal effects. A private journal, which he kept in his study. I was not aware of its existence while he was alive." Elena reached into her reticule and withdrew the leather-bound book. She had debated with herself whether to bring it, whether to reveal its existence at all. But she had decided that the best defense was a partial truth, a truth that would make her seem cooperative and transparent while concealing the darker secrets that lay beneath. "I believe it contains information that may shed light on Miss Markham's disappearance."
She placed the journal on the desk between them. The inspector looked at it for a long moment, her face unreadable, and then she reached out and picked it up. She opened it at random, her eyes moving across the pages with the swift, methodical attention of a woman who had spent decades reading documents that people did not want her to read.
"This is your husband's handwriting?" she asked.
"I believe so."
"And you have read it?"
"I have." Elena allowed her voice to tremble slightly, a carefully calibrated note of distress. "I read it after his death. I was looking for... I do not know what I was looking for. Some explanation, perhaps. Some understanding of the man I had been married to for seven years. What I found was—" She broke off, pressing her handkerchief to her lips.
"What you found was evidence that your husband had been involved with a missing woman," the inspector said, and her voice was not unkind. "Evidence that he had threatened her. That he had, in his own words, found a way to silence her."
"Yes," Elena whispered. "I did not know. I swear to you, Inspector, I did not know any of this while he was alive."
Cordelia Holt closed the journal and set it on the desk before her. She was looking at Elena with an expression that was difficult to read, a mixture of sympathy and calculation and something else, something that might have been suspicion. "Why have you brought this to me, Mrs. Voss? Most people in your position would have destroyed it. They would have wanted to protect their husband's reputation, their own standing in the community."
Elena met the inspector's eyes without flinching. "Because I believe in justice," she said. "My husband was a judge. He spent his life upholding the law, or pretending to. If he did something wrong, if he harmed that young woman, then his reputation deserves to be destroyed. And because—" She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer, more vulnerable. "Because I know what it is to be a woman alone in the world, Inspector. I know what it is to be powerless, to be dismissed, to be treated as though your voice does not matter. I do not know what happened to Lise Markham. But I know that she deserves to be found. She deserves to have someone speak for her."
The silence that followed was long and heavy. The inspector sat very still, her winter-sea eyes fixed on Elena's face, and Elena sat equally still, her expression open and earnest and utterly sincere. She had rehearsed this speech a dozen times in the privacy of her room, and she delivered it now with the conviction of a woman who believed every word. The trick, she had learned, was to tell the truth as much as possible. The truth about her marriage, about her powerlessness, about her sympathy for Lise Markham. Everything except the one truth that mattered.
"You are an unusual woman, Mrs. Voss," the inspector said at last.
"I have been told that before."
"I am sure you have." Cordelia Holt leaned back in her chair, her fingers steepled before her. "I will be honest with you, since you have been honest with me. Your husband's death has raised certain questions. Not enough to warrant a formal investigation, not yet. But questions. The speed of his decline, the unusual symptoms, the fact that the doctors could not agree on a diagnosis. I have spoken to Dr. Carrow, and he admitted, under some pressure, that he was baffled by the case."
Elena felt her blood go cold, but her face remained composed. "I was baffled as well, Inspector. I watched my husband fade away, day by day, and no one could tell me why. It was the most terrible experience of my life."
"I am sure it was." The inspector's voice was dry, uninflected. "And now you have brought me this journal, which provides a possible motive for someone to wish your husband harm. If Lise Markham had family, if she had a friend who knew what he had done to her, that person might have sought revenge."
Elena felt a flicker of something that was almost relief. The inspector was looking in the wrong direction. She was thinking of Lise Markham's family, Lise Markham's friends. She was not thinking of the quiet, grieving widow who sat before her, the woman who had been wronged by the same man in a different way.
"That is a terrible thought," Elena said. "But I suppose it is possible."
"More than possible." The inspector leaned forward, her eyes sharp and bright. "Tell me, Mrs. Voss, did your husband have any enemies? Anyone who might have wished him ill?"
Elena considered the question carefully. "He was a judge," she said. "He sent men to prison. He ruled against powerful interests. I am sure there were many who resented him. But I do not know of anyone specific. He did not discuss his work with me."
"And in his personal life? Were there any tensions, any conflicts?"
Elena hesitated. This was the dangerous ground, the territory she had known she would have to navigate. "My husband and I," she said slowly, "were not close. I do not know if you are aware of this, but our marriage was not a happy one. He was a difficult man, cold and distant and often dismissive. I believe—" She paused, letting her voice catch. "I believe he may have had other women. I found things, after his death, that suggested as much. But I did not know about them while he was alive. Or perhaps I chose not to know."
The inspector nodded, her expression unreadable. "I see. And the artist, Camille Delacourt? Were you aware of her connection to your husband?"
Elena felt the chill deepen, spreading through her limbs like the cold from a winter window. "I knew that she was painting my portrait," she said carefully. "I had commissioned it myself. But I did not know that she and my husband were—" She broke off, pressing her handkerchief to her lips again. "I did not know until after he died."
"How did you find out?"
"She came to my house. The night before my husband died, actually. She was in a state of considerable distress. Her mother was dying, and she had nowhere else to go. She spoke to me of my husband in a way that made their relationship clear." Elena paused, and then she added, with a carefully calibrated note of bitterness, "It seems I was the last to know."
The inspector was silent for a long moment. She was looking at Elena with an expression that was impossible to read, her eyes moving across Elena's face as though she were studying a map for hidden landmarks. "You must have been very angry," she said at last.
"Angry?" Elena considered the word. "Yes, I suppose I was angry. But I was also exhausted. I had spent weeks nursing a dying man, watching him suffer, and then to learn, at the very end, that he had betrayed me—" She shook her head. "It was too much to feel. I simply felt nothing."
"Nothing," the inspector repeated. "That is a curious word."
"Is it? I think it is a very common feeling among women who have been treated as I was treated. We are expected to feel everything, to feel it passionately and visibly and on demand. But sometimes, Inspector, the only way to survive is to feel nothing at all."
Cordelia Holt looked at her for a long, searching moment. And then, slowly, she nodded. "I understand," she said. "I understand more than you might think."
There was a silence between them, a silence that was not hostile but not entirely comfortable either. Elena felt the balance of the conversation shifting, the weight of suspicion moving away from her and toward the unknown figure of Lise Markham's avenger. But she did not allow herself to feel relief. Relief was a luxury she could not afford. The inspector was still watching her, still calculating, still piecing together the fragments of the puzzle.
"I have taken enough of your time," Elena said, rising from her chair. "I hope the journal will be of use to you. And I hope you find Lise Markham. Whatever my husband did, she deserves to be found."
"Thank you, Mrs. Voss." The inspector rose as well, and there was something in her posture, a formality, a respect, that had not been there before. "You have been most helpful. More helpful than I expected."
Elena inclined her head, accepting the compliment with the modesty that was expected of her. "I am only doing what I believe is right."
She left the constabulary and walked out into the cold, gray afternoon. The streets of Ashwick were busy with the usual commerce of the day, farmers and merchants and housewives going about their business, and Elena moved through them like a ghost, her mind elsewhere. She had done what she had come to do. She had presented herself as an ally, a cooperative witness, a woman with nothing to hide. She had deflected the inspector's suspicions, or so she hoped, toward the shadowy figure of Lise Markham's avenger.
But as she walked home through the slushy streets, she could not shake the feeling that something had been left unresolved. The inspector had looked at her with those winter-sea eyes, and there had been something in that gaze, something that was not quite satisfied, not quite convinced. Cordelia Holt was a woman who noticed things, who remembered things, who put pieces together in ways that other people did not. And she would continue to investigate, to ask questions, to dig deeper into the secrets of Ashwick Hall.
Elena reached the gates of the estate and paused, looking up at the cold, gray facade of the house. It was beautiful, in its way, but it was not a home. It had never been a home. It was a monument to a marriage that had been a prison, a mausoleum for a man who had been a monster. And now, it was hers. All of it, hers. The money, the land, the freedom. Everything she had ever wanted.
And yet, standing at the gate in the cold winter afternoon, she felt nothing. The vacancy was still there, the hollow space at the center of her chest. She had killed for this freedom, and now that she had it, she did not know what to do with it.
She pushed open the gate and walked up the gravel drive, her boots crunching on the frozen stones. Mrs. Alden met her at the door, her face pale and anxious.
"There is a letter for you, ma'am," she said, holding out a silver salver. "It arrived an hour ago. The boy said it was urgent."
Elena took the letter. The paper was thick and cream-colored, and the handwriting was one she had come to know well: the flowing, feminine script of Camille Delacourt.
She opened it and read:
Dear Elena,
My mother is dead. She passed this morning, just before dawn. I am alone now, truly alone, and I do not know what to do. I keep thinking about our conversation in the kitchen, the night I came to you in my desperation. You said that I had you now, if I wanted you. I am asking you, Elena, if you meant it. I am asking you to come to me. I need a friend. I need someone who understands. Please come.
Yours in grief, Camille
Elena stared at the letter for a long time. The words blurred and steadied, blurred and steadied, and she felt the two Elenas warring within her for what felt like the hundredth time. The cold, detached Elena saw an opportunity: Camille was vulnerable, isolated, in need of comfort. It would be so easy to administer the hellebore, to cloud her mind, to silence the suspicions that she harbored. The other Elena, the Elena who had held Camille's hand in the kitchen, who had felt a ghost stir within her, saw something else entirely: a woman in pain, reaching out for connection, offering a friendship that was as unexpected as it was sincere.
She folded the letter and slipped it into her reticule. She did not yet know which Elena would answer the call. But she knew that she would answer it. She had to. There was too much between them now, too many secrets and too many lies and too many truths that had not yet been spoken.
"Mrs. Alden," she said, "have the carriage brought around. I am going to the moor."
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