Page 23 of The English Wife

George …

Janie tucked her gloved hands into her sleeves and walked briskly towards the fountain at the center of the park. “My knowledge of my brother’s character.”

The branches above them were sere and bare. In the summer, it would be a leafy profusion, a bit of green in the heart of the city, but now the park seemed small and scraggy, the fountain in the middle weathered, the basin cracked and dry.

“Character,” repeated Mr. Burke. “If that’s the only reason you’ve dragged me into the elements, you might have stayed by your warm hearth.”

“Do you doubt my knowledge of my brother?”

“If I had a penny for every time someone told me, ‘Little Johnny’s a good boy. He would never do that’…” Janie winced at Mr. Burke’s falsetto, deliberately grating. Dropping his voice, he said flatly, “Character isn’t written on a man’s face, Miss Van Duyvil. Or a woman’s.”

Without its usual sprays of water, the fountain seemed plain and bare. Even the gilded finials on the lampposts had lost their luster. “You think me deluded.”

Mr. Burke tucked his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. “You’re grieving,” he said gruffly. “It takes people different ways.”

If he had been flippant, if he had twisted words into knots, Janie might have taken her defeat and gone about her business. But his reluctant kindness, the condescension of his kindness, infuriated her. “That,” she said tartly, “is precisely what the constable in Cold Spring said when I told him I had seen Annabelle in the water.” She waited a moment for that to sink in before turning on her heel. “I know perfectly well what I saw and what my brother was. It’s only on the stage, Mr. Burke, that mourning makes men mad.”

She’d expected him to follow her, but he didn’t. Instead, she heard the hollow sound of gloved hands clapping. Slowly, she turned and found Mr. Burke planted where he was, applauding her as he might an act at the circus. “Well played, Miss Van Duyvil. May I say that you’ve missed your calling? You would have been a great success on the stage.”

It wasn’t, Janie suspected, meant as a compliment, but she couldn’t help but be tickled all the same. It was rather refreshing to be treated as a woman of parts, a woman with secrets and mysteries, not just poor Janie, who couldn’t catch or keep.

“It’s not an act, Mr. Burke. I don’t believe my brother killed his wife. If I were to sit back and allow verdict to be passed by the laziness of the police and the rapaciousness of the press, I would be doing him a gross injustice.”

Mr. Burke folded his arms across his chest, but his expression was serious now, his attention caught. “Isn’t this a conversation you should be having with the police?”

“Why? So they can offer me brandy and send me home? They didn’t believe me when … we both know the police follow the press, not the other way around.”

“That’s a great compliment, Miss Van Duyvil.”

“It wasn’t meant as one.” With nothing to lose, it was easy to speak her mind. “With great power comes—”

“—great responsibility,” Mr. Burke finished for her. “You do me too much credit, Miss Van Duyvil. I’m just a hack with ink-stained fingers.”

Sensing weakness, Janie pressed forward. “If The World were to raise doubt as to the commission of the crime, the police would be forced to follow suit.”

“Is that what you want? A goad for the police?”

“Yes,” Janie lied, although she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted. To know that something was being done, that Bay wasn’t being tried solely in the court of rumor. “If there is anything you might have discovered in the course of your investigation that might lead to doubt, that might raise other avenues of inquiry … I’ll pay you.”

Mr. Burke’s expressive features hardened, like ice over stone. “To publish misinformation?”

“No!” Janie was appalled by his misapprehension. “To learn the truth. To discover what really happened. I wouldn’t want to spread a lie.”

Mr. Burke eyed her skeptically, as though she were a piece of dodgy fish at the seaport. “What if the truth is just as unpalatable as the rumor?”

The papers were saying that her brother had killed his wife and himself. “Nothing could be as unpalatable as the rumor,” said Janie firmly.

“Don’t tempt fate, Miss Van Duyvil,” said Mr. Burke grimly. “You might not like what it throws at you.”

Something in his tone made the skin on Janie’s neck prickle. “What is it? What do you know?”

The sun had come out behind a cloud, with the pitiless brightness of January, creating a nimbus around Mr. Burke’s head and throwing his face into darkness. “What would you say if I told you that Annabelle Lacey died in 1891?”

Janie could feel the cold creeping through the wool of her coat. “Are you mocking me, Mr. Burke? Annabelle couldn’t—she wasn’t. I saw her last week.”

The blinding light made rainbows around Mr. Burke’s face. Janie had to squint to see him. “I misspoke. Let me rephrase that. Annabelle Lacey was presumed to have died in 1891.”

Janie shook her head. “You must be mistaken. Or misinformed. Annabelle married my brother in 1894. She held a ball”—her voice caught, but she soldiered on—“she held a ball last week.”