*
Later, she goes down to the kitchen to see Sophie Bell. The housekeeper is inconsolable, sitting vast and trembling at the table with the tea leaves turned to bitter mush in the pot, and flies settling unnoticed on the rim of the milk jug.
‘Why would anyone kill her? Why would anyone do that to our Cat? And her just a slip of a thing, no real trouble to anybody …’ she mumbles on and on, hardly seeming to notice Hester, who stands at her shoulder for a while, awkward and silent. When she turns to go she notices the bucket of water in the corner, with the stained cloth still soaking in it. Her stomach gives a nasty jerk, filling her throat with bile again. Without a thought she kneels down, wrings the cloth out and flings it into the stove. The iron door clatters shut behind it, and Hester rises, half afraid to turn back to Mrs Bell. But Sophie still stares straight ahead and has noticed nothing. Hester washes her own hands again and again, but like Lady Macbeth, she is sure a taint is left. For days, the smell of blood clings to the inside of her nose.
The chief constable’s own bloodhounds, Puncher and Hodd, soon find the scene of the murder. A place near a stream where the grass has been crushed by footsteps and the dry summer flowers have shed feathery seeds onto a patch of spilt blood where insects circle and settle to feast. There sits Cat’s bag, with all her meagre possessions inside, and her day dress, tucked to one side of it. All this Hester learns at the inquest, which is opened at the parish council house in Thatcham by the coroner for western Berkshire, Mr James Angus Sedgecroft. Mrs Bell sits beside her, eyes shining in a face ablaze with hatred, trained constantly on Robin Durrant. The murder weapon isn’t found, but the nearby stream contains many large and jagged flints, and it is assumed that one of these was used to beat the girl’s skull in, and was then cast back into the stream to conceal the evidence. Only Professor Palmer, a special medical advisor to the Home Office sent down by Scotland Yard to examine the body and assist Superintendent Holt with the case, remains unconvinced by this explanation. He makes special note of the fury of the attack, and the way it focused on the girl’s face, as if to wipe out her very existence. He found fragments of glass in some of Cat Morley’s deep wounds, for which no explanation could be found. When Hester hears this she turns as cold as ice, right through to her core. She thinks of the smashed binoculars, and once she has thought of them, she cannot stop thinking of them. Albert’s binoculars. The ones he was never without.
That evening, Hester takes the leather bag from the library and walks it all the way to The Bluecoat School. She can think of nowhere else that might be safer, less likely to be searched. Because Professor Palmer has a sharp eye and a puzzled, suspicious expression, and when he came to The Rectory to question the household, she caught those sharp eyes of his roaming the corners of the room. Hunting, hunting. When she spoke to him, her own words rang with dishonesty even when she spoke the truth. Because she was full of lies, full of deception. She felt it oozing from her every pore. The bag cannot stay in the house, and it is too big to put into the stove, to burn as she had the towel. Besides, the binoculars would not burn. There is no way to destroy them. And Hester also feels that she shouldn’t destroy any of it. Just in case … in case some situation arose – something she has not thought of, since her thoughts are so mixed and bewildered – and the contents of the bag were needed. The Bluecoat School is never locked, and as she walks to her customary position at the head of the class the loose floor-boards shift and rock beneath her feet, and she falls to her knees, scrabbling at them with her fingernails, weeping with relief as this hiding place presents itself to her.
The inquest lasts three days, and through it all Robin Durrant says nothing. George speaks to the coroner and jury and tells them how Cat had been planning to run away with him, and how she had loved him, and how whatever the reason she had been in the meadows that morning, it had not been to keep a lover’s tryst with Robin Durrant, as the police were suggesting. He is adamant about this, he insists it; but only Hester knows that he is right and not merely blinded by love. She stares at him as he stands and weeps, unashamedly and uncontrollably, and she feels her heart breaking for him. The words hover in her mouth, but will not be spoken. I know why she was there! I know what Robin Durrant was doing! But she cannot speak. She cannot speak to anybody. As surely as if a spell has been cast to hold her tongue, it stays still and silent in her mouth. Numb and deadened, like the rest of her. He is handsome, this man of Cat’s. He looks strong and honest. He speaks about Cat with such passion and love that Hester feels a stab of misplaced envy. What a joy it must have been, to plan an elopement with a man like George Hobson. But Cat’s plans had been interrupted. Horribly, irreversibly interrupted. She must be furious, Hester thinks. She shuts her eyes, gripped by the thought. Wherever Cat is now, she must be furious.