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It’s just that if you look at how the story starts, you come to different conclusions. Or maybe you just hold off from conclusions. Are you going to take notes, Mister Castor?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’
‘Or a recording?’
‘No.’
‘Good. I’d like it best if all this stayed off the record. Use the information, by all means, but don’t use my words. And if by any chance you’ve lied to me and you belong to my own and Mister Sumner’s profession, I’ll deny any words you put into my mouth and collaterally sue your ass into a sling.
‘Agreed.’
‘Okay.’ He settled down in his chair, as if he was hunkering down for what he knew was going to be a long haul. ‘First off, you ought to know that Myriam Seaforth – as she was then – was almost certainly abused by her father and one or more of her brothers. I can’t prove it, but it’s the damn truth all the same. It happened to her sister Ruth, and it happened to her. ’Course, all the Seaforth men are dead now, so there’s nobody left to give me the lie anyway, but people around here take reputation pretty seriously.
‘How can you be so sure she was abused?’ Juliet threw in. There was a stillness about her now – an intensity of attention that was almost intimidating. She’s got this thing about battered women: a kind of razor-edged sentimentality.
‘How can I be sure?’ Mallisham echoed her. ‘Well, let’s say I know people at the county hospital over in Sprott, and I know people in the sheriff’s office.
‘You mean,’ Juliet said, with dangerous calm, ‘that you knew these girls were being hurt, and you did nothing to stop it.’
‘No,’ Mallisham said, neither angry nor defensive. ‘I knew later on – after they were all grown up – that someone had hurt them back when they were small. Don’t be so quick to judge, missy. I wouldn’t have sat by if blowing the whistle would have done any good. But like I said, the Seaforth line’s dead now.
