WE WERE IN THE LIBRARY after dinner, Emmeline pacing up and down in front of the fire. Laura sitting on the Chesterfield squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.
‘Her rituals are getting worse,’ I said.
‘She could snap at any moment,’ said Laura nervously.
Emmeline looked over at her sister. ‘Will you stop squeezing that thing, Lolly? You’re making the whole room smell of Shalimar. I can hardly breathe.’
‘What are you all taking about?’
Violet stood in the library doorway.
‘Why, Piff,’ said Emmeline calmly. ‘There you are. We were wondering where you’d got to.’
‘I know you were talking about me,’ said Violet, her gaze darting nervously around the room.
‘Of course we weren’t, darling,’ said Laura quickly. ‘You must stop being so paranoid about things.’
Violet swallowed. ‘I’m not being paranoid. I know what you all did. And now I’ve got proof.’
‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Emmeline.
Violet dug into the pocket of her cardigan and produced a tiny toy soldier. I knew what it was at once: the Major General. I saw Robin on the snow. The Major General next to him. Emmeline picking up the toy. Putting it in her pocket.
‘I found it in your room,’ Violet told Emmeline.
Emmeline’s eyes narrowed. She rested her cigarette in the cut-glass ashtray on the mantelpiece. ‘And what, exactly, were you doing in my room, sneaking about, going through my things without permission?’
‘But this isn’t yours though, is it?’ said Violet. ‘It belonged to Robin. He never went anywhere without the Major General. It means you must have been with him when—’
‘Violet, that’s enough,’ said Emmeline.
I looked over at Laura. She had gone pale.
Violet took a few challenging steps towards Emmeline, her shoulders squared, still clutching the toy. ‘I know why you’re all in here whispering. I know what you did.’ Her lip trembled. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just tell me. I’ve told you: I know.’
‘Know what?’ said Emmeline.
I held my breath.
‘I know one of you shot Robin,’ Violet said to Emmeline, who was turned to the fire. ‘One of you killed him. I know you lied to the police. I even covered for you. But I’m not going to lie any more. I’m going to tell Daddy and the police everything I know. They’ll want to talk to you, and then you’ll have to tell them the truth. Robin deserves it.’
No one spoke. I could hear the fire crackling, the clock ticking. The smoke from Emmeline’s cigarette spiralled upwards to nothing. Lord Claybourne’s father in his gloomy Victorian attire looked down on us from his portrait above the mantelpiece.
Emmeline exhaled deeply then turned to Violet, her features calm and composed. She gave Violet a pitying look. ‘Oh, Piff. You still don’t remember, do you? The real truth is it’s us who have been covering for you.’
Violet blinked, then knitted her eyebrows together. ‘What are you talking about?’
Emmeline smiled sympathetically. ‘Gosh, you really have got yourself into a muddle, haven’t you? I thought as much,’ she added sagely.
Violet opened her mouth then closed it again. I had no idea what was going on, but when I looked to Laura she was nodding, giving Violet that same, awful, sympathetic look.
‘You’ve been in shock,’ Emmeline said. ‘It’s no surprise really, is it? After what happened. You begged me to let you have a go with the gun. Of course we all knew it was an accident but still, it’s upset you terribly.’
The colour drained from Violet’s face. ‘What?’
‘You haven’t been yourself since,’ interjected Laura weakly. ‘Surely you can see that?’
‘You must have thought he was a deer or something,’ said Emmeline. ‘You weren’t wearing your glasses. And I told you you weren’t ready to handle a shotgun.’
I felt a horrible clenching in my stomach.
Violet stared at us.
‘We had to protect you,’ Emmeline continued. ‘Oh, I know you’re far too young to go to prison,’ she said quickly. ‘But you’d be sent to one of those horrendous schools. You know, for wayward children. It would be awful, far worse than Heathcomb. This school, well, you hear about the things that go on in these kinds of places, don’t you? And of course the other girls wouldn’t be from the same background as you. They’d despise you. In fact, I’d be quite worried for your safety.’
Violet was still staring at Emmeline. She opened her mouth. ‘I . . . You . . . Y-you’re lying.’
‘I’m afraid it’s really quite common,’ Emmeline said, reaching for the Freud volume she’d left face down over the sofa arm. ‘It’s our minds, our subconscious, trying to protect us. We repress those memories that are just too horrific for us to recall. A sort of blanking out. I’ve been reading about it for some time now – it happened to Anna O – and of course as soon as I saw the way you were behaving, how you seemed to have absolutely no knowledge at all of what you’d done, I knew that’s what had happened to you. You’d blanked it out. It was lucky, really, that I realised. I was able to think quickly and cover for you. But unfortunately repressed memories can cause all sorts of problems. It’s why you’ve been feeling so unwell, so confused.’
Violet looked from Emmeline to Laura, and then at me. I couldn’t meet her eye.
‘You’re lying,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t go out to the woods that day. I wasn’t even there.’ She turned to me. ‘Tell them, Gilly.’
I bit my lip. My stomach was in pieces and I felt as sick as Violet looked. But if I went against the sisters now I’d be throwing their friendship away. I could be responsible for the breaking off of Emmeline’s engagement, perhaps even for sending Laura to prison. I knew it was too late, now, to turn back. I had to agree with them, stand by them. ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ I said quietly.
Violet stared at me in disbelief.
‘You really don’t remember any of it at all, do you?’ asked Emmeline, her voice soft. ‘Poor Piff. You were in such a state. Don’t you remember how the shot knocked you to the ground? How you dropped the gun? At first we were all far more concerned about you – you’d fallen over in the brambles, you see, but then we went to look to see if you’d got anything . . .’
‘You left him there,’ whispered Violet.
‘We left him there,’ Emmeline corrected her. ‘We had to think quickly. We had to protect you.’ She shook her head. ‘You were numb with shock. We had to carry you back to the house. Don’t you remember that?’
Violet was blinking rapidly. ‘That was another time,’ she said. ‘That was when I hurt my ankle in the woods. I got it caught in a trap. You and Gilly helped me back to the house.’
Emmeline shook her head again. ‘You’re confusing the two events. I wasn’t there that day. Just like I wasn’t in your room last night.’ She turned to me. ‘Tell her, Gillian.’
All three of them were looking at me. I struggled to form my words. ‘Emmeline wasn’t there that day. It was just us. I helped you back to the house.’
Emmeline nodded sadly. ‘You’ve been getting very confused recently, haven’t you? Misplacing things, imagining scenarios that never even happened. And then today, with Siggy . . . We didn’t want to tell you . . . But I’m afraid you killed Robin.’
‘You’re lying,’ Violet whispered, her voice hoarse.
I was hot and dizzy. It all made finally sense. Those horrible things we’d said and done to Violet since the accident. I thought of Emmeline’s words: We must keep Violet unsettled. We absolutely cannot have her voicing her suspicions. We need to make sure she won't be believed.
Emmeline touched Violet lightly on the arm and Violet flinched. ‘I really am sorry, Piff. It’s a terrible thing for you to have to come to terms with, I know. I thought perhaps it was for the best, that you’d managed to blank it out. We would never have even told you if you hadn’t pushed and pushed, and begun making accusations about the rest of us. Because, of course, given that it was you who fired the gun, that just isn’t fair.’
I snuck a glance at Laura. She was sitting, perfectly poised on the Chesterfield, her hands neatly placed in her lap. She caught my eye then looked away.
Violet’s face had gone pink. ‘That’s not how it was,’ she said. ‘It can’t be. I was here, in the house, working on the map of Elvore. I heard a gunshot.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Emmeline. ‘That must have been another time. Really, it’s quite common. You suffered a trauma and now your mind is playing tricks on you.’
Violet took a step back.
‘We were all there,’ said Laura quietly. ‘We would hardly have left you behind, would we? You walked ahead of us with the gun. You were so pleased to be having a go with it.’
Emmeline reached for her cigarette then sat down next to Laura, facing Violet. ‘You were overexcited, of course. I partly blame myself. I should never have let you have the gun.’
Violet had made fists with her hands. ‘It’s not true,’ she whispered.
Emmeline stood again. Taking the fire poker, she casually nudged a log into the middle of the flames. ‘And when we got back to the house, you went straight upstairs to your room. It was clear to me you were completely unable to process what had happened. We didn’t know, then, quite how bad it would be for you, that you would repress the entire memory of the event, but we made the decision not to say anything to you about what had happened. We couldn’t put you through it,’ she said kindly. ‘That’s why I took Robin’s soldier. We had to hide it from you.’ She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire.
‘We knew it would taint your whole future,’ said Laura, her voice faltering slightly.
‘We needed to protect you,’ said Emmeline. ‘We would never have told you what really happened if we hadn’t been so concerned you were going to say something silly to Father or the police, something that could put us all in jeopardy. But you most of all.’
Violet was staring fixedly at a point on the library shelves behind the sofa, her fists still tightly clenched, her shoulders rigid. Suddenly she leaped up, emitting a horrible growl. She grabbed the fire poker from the stand where Emmeline had just replaced it and rushed towards Emmeline. A flash of terror crossed Emmeline’s face as the curved tip of the hot poker came dangerously close to her left cheek. She caught Violet’s arm.
‘I hate you!’ Violet screamed, struggling with Emmeline. ‘You’re liars. I hate you. I hate all of you!’
Violet’s knees buckled. She crumpled, sobbing into Emmeline’s chest. Laura was taking the hot poker from Violet who hardly seemed to notice as it was prised from her hand. Emmeline steadied herself. She put a tentative arm around Violet’s shoulder and patted it awkwardly.
I stood there, my heart pounding, watching Violet cry in her sister’s arms. The fear on Emmeline’s face was gone and she was now soothing Violet, comforting her, murmuring something into her ear.
Violet lifted her head. Her face was puffy and streaked with tears. ‘Is this real?’ she asked. ‘Is any of it real?’