Page 44 of The Vanished Sister

Mrs. Watson didn’t recall that terrace precisely—sometimes her years at Eastleigh Park felt more like a dream. But now that Mr. Carstairs mentioned it, she did remember that Lord Bancroft had taken a photograph of Lord Ingram on that terrace, and there was also one of the two brothers together, Lord Bancroft’s hand settled gently upon the younger boy’s shoulder.

The terrace at Sans Souci was added in the past few years. Had it been a tribute to Lord Ingram’s childhood home and some of the happiest hours he’d spent there? And how had Mrs. Watson overlooked this detail, which had immediately struck Justina?

“Why was she at Eastleigh Park?”

“She said she wanted to see how you lived. She said she was convinced that you’d also toured Noble House anonymously.”

Mrs. Watson had indeed done that long ago, before Penelope, before she’d even taken up with the late Duke of Wycliffe. And she had been stunned by the grandeur of Noble House and beset with jealousy. She had yearned for a sophisticated, glamorous existence, yearned for freedom and independence away from the isolation of provincial backwaters. Would she still have been equally impetuous in launching herself down the same path had she known that such glamour and sophistication could have been had within fifty miles of her grandfather’s vicarage?

Although what she had truly envied had not been the house or the garden or Justina’s sky-grazing elevation in the world, but that the universe had so favored Justina, without ever requiring her to suffer through the dehumanizing gaze of unspeakable men.

“But she’d never told me that she’d set foot in Eastleigh Park,” continued Everett Carstairs, “or that you’d visited the grounds of our home. I had no idea that she ever thought about you, but she did—and chose not to let me know.”

Those were lies of omission. Could Mrs. Watson still trust what Justina had said aloud? Could she still believe wholeheartedly in How I love you, Jo?

“Anyway, you asked me whether I know why she left. My guess is because she has long been the perfect wife but that has never been what I wanted from her.”

He went on to tell her about his need for a wife who loved him passionately, about Justina’s flight fifteen years ago, and about applying pressure via the presence of Mrs. Albright this time.

Mrs. Watson recoiled. “So there was someone else fifteen years ago?”

“There was never anything between us. She bought a place in the Caribbean, if I’m not mistaken, and emigrated,” said Everett Carstairs, with the bright-eyed earnestness of a man with a clear conscience. “I thought Justina would wait until after the Newells left. Once we had no more guests to worry about, and what with the children all preoccupied with their own lives, we’d have all the time in the world to become reacquainted with each other.”

Mrs. Watson, who had once sold her favors—only to men she liked, but commerce was commerce—ought not to have strong opinions on what consenting adults did in private. All the same, she felt faintly queasy.

“So…it was the timing of her departure that caught you by surprise, not that it happened.”

“Correct.”

Did she believe him? She had no idea. But as Justina was most likely alive and well at the moment, did it matter what games those two played with each other?

Unless he chased Justina down and killed her during the day he was absent from the coast. But for what purpose? As he’d said, Justina was the perfect wife. And if she loved him less passionately than he wanted her to, he’d lived with it all those years, hadn’t he?

A carriage pulled up. He handed her into it. “I wish you a good evening, Mrs. Watson. Justina would be pleased to know all that you’ve done on her behalf.”

Would Justina really? He of all people ought not to speak for her, because hadn’t he said just now that Justina never revealed her true thoughts to others?

But Mrs. Watson could not be angry at this kind lie, if that was what it was. She only sighed and said, “Good evening, Mr. Carstairs.”

At Sans Souci Mrs. Watson found everyone waiting for her, including Inspector MacDonald, who had come to hear her account and had been invited to stay for dinner. Penelope, whom she’d dropped off at the cottage on her way to High Burrow earlier in the evening, hugged her fully, as if they’d been separated for months.

Or as if Mrs. Watson had suffered a traumatic experience in the hour they’d been apart.

Who knows? Maybe she had. The jolt of happiness from the hawker’s news, the rush of excited energy on the railway journey back, the imagined joy at the possibility of a real reconciliation somewhere down the road—all had faded, leaving behind only the same unsettling sensation she’d had on the day she’d departed the house party: that she’d most likely never see Justina again.

“I’m all right,” she murmured to Penelope.

She would need to be, at some point.

Over dinner, for which no one bothered to change, Penelope narrated most of their search for Justina and the encounter with the hawker in Taunton. Mrs. Watson recounted her subsequent conversation with Everett Carstairs. Inspector MacDonald then informed her that the victim had been identified as a Mrs. Whitehill of Shropshire.

Exhaustion rolled over Mrs. Watson. “Poor woman.”

Inspector MacDonald nodded. “Her son is certainly in a state of shock.”

Silence fell at the table. It was beautifully decorated with peach and apricot roses—Lord Ingram and Penelope trying to cheer her up, most likely. But all Mrs. Watson could think was that a young Justina would have loved the flowers and coveted those crackled clear-glass vases with pale-green enameled parrots. She forced herself to swallow a spoonful of trifle—she’d hardly eaten since Mrs. Whitehill of Shropshire had appeared in the waves beneath Sans Souci.

It shouldn’t be, but how strange that the body should have acquired a name and a history entirely distinct from Justina’s.