Chapter 5: The Girl in the Winter Garden
The sitting room had grown quieter since Garrett stepped into the corridor to make the call.
Margaret sat in the chair nearest the door.
Phillip was reviewing his notes at the writing desk.
The two security staff stood near the windows, close enough to be useful, far enough to give the conversation room.
Julian waited.
Nora turned the locket over in her palm, the way someone handles an object they have carried so long it has become part of the weight of ordinary days.
"My mother worked here," she said.
"Her name was Ruth Bennett.
She was a seamstress.
She came to Alderwyn twice a year to maintain the household linens, the curtain work, the formal tablecloths.
She'd been doing it since before I was born."
Julian searched his memory.
The name surfaced faintly, the way a face does when you've seen it only in passing.
"I remember someone coming with fabric samples.
I was young."
"I came with her sometimes, during school holidays.
Your mother would let me sit in the winter garden while Ruth worked.
She'd bring me a glass of warm milk and a book and she'd sit with me for a little while before she went back to whatever she had to do." Nora looked up.
"She never treated me like I was in the way.
I was six years old and she treated me like I was worth sitting with."
Julian said nothing.
"One afternoon she brought the locket out to the garden.
She put it around my neck and she said, 'This suits you better than it suits me today.' I thought she was playing.
I tried to give it back before I left and she closed my hand around it." Nora paused.
"She said, 'Keep it safe for me, Nora.
You're better at keeping things safe than you know.'"
"She knew," Margaret said from her chair.
"She already knew, by then.
She was frightened."
"She came to our flat two days later," Nora continued.
"It was late.
My mother answered the door and I heard them talking in the kitchen for a long time.
When Helena left, my mother was crying.
She wouldn't tell me why." Nora's voice stayed steady, but only just.
"Three days after that, Helena d13d.
And my mother never went back to Alderwyn.
She told the agency she was unwell.
She never explained it to me.
Not properly.
Not until she was d13d herself."
"When did your mother pass?" Julian asked.
"Four years ago.
She left me a letter.
She told me what Helena had said that night in our kitchen.
That she had evidence of something serious.
That she had given the locket to me because she trusted me, even at six, and because she needed the memory card to be somewhere no one would think to look." Nora looked at him directly.
"She said that if anything happened to her, the locket would find its way back to the right person eventually.
She said she believed that."
Julian stood very still.
"My mother kept the secret for fourteen years after Helena d13d," Nora said.
"She was frightened the whole time.
She thought if she said nothing, we'd be safe.
And then she got sick, and she realized she couldn't take it with her." A breath.
"She made me promise to do something with it.
She didn't tell me what.
She said I'd know."
"So you came here tonight as a maid," Julian said.
"I applied for a temporary position three weeks ago.
I needed to get inside the house.
I needed to see whether the locket still meant anything to anyone." She met his eyes.
"I didn't expect Camille."
"No one expects Camille until it's too late," Margaret said, with a dryness that surprised the room into a brief, strange quiet.
Julian moved to the window.
The grounds below were lit by the exterior lamps, the gravel drive empty now except for two police vehicles that had arrived without sirens.
Garrett had been efficient.
"She planned the whole evening," Julian said.
Not a question.
"Camille.
She knew you were here.
She knew about the locket."
"She must have known about the locket for some time," Phillip said from the desk, without looking up.
"The question is who told her."
The answer was already in the room with all of them.
Malcolm.
Camille had been chosen, Julian understood now, with the same care Malcolm applied to everything.
She was Prescott money and Prescott connections, which meant she was leverage and insulation in one elegant package.
The engagement had been Malcolm's suggestion, two years ago, framed as a natural progression.
Julian had believed it was his own idea within six months.
That was how Malcolm worked.
He never pushed.
He simply arranged the furniture until you sat where he needed you to sit.
A knock at the door.
Garrett opened it.
A uniformed officer stood in the corridor.
Behind him, Julian could see two plainclothes detectives.
"Mr.
Hawthorne," the officer said.
"We've secured the subject.
He's asked for his attorney."
"He has that right," Phillip said, already standing.
Julian turned from the window.
He looked at Nora, then at Margaret, then at the closed laptop on the desk.
"Is there anything else on that card?" he asked Garrett.
"Ten more files," Garrett said.
"I haven't opened them."
"Save them." Julian looked at the detectives.
"Everything on that card goes to your forensic team tonight.
Chain of custody from this moment."
The lead detective nodded.
"We'll need statements from everyone in this room."
"You'll have them." Julian picked up his jacket from the arm of the chair where he'd left it.
He looked at Nora.
His jacket was still around her shoulders.
He hadn't asked for it back.
He wasn't going to.
"Are you all right?"
Nora touched the welt on her cheek.
The bl00d had dried.
The doctor had come and gone during the ballroom chaos, leaving a small dressing near her hairline.
"I've been carrying this for four years," she said.
"I think I'm better than all right."
Julian almost said something.
He stopped himself.
May you like
There would be time for the rest of it later.
Right now, Malcolm Hawthorne was in the next room, and the law had finally arrived.
