The Widow's Confession Read Free

Edmund Steele
    Edmund left the letter open so that the black ink, glossy in the candlelight, would sink into the paper. Then he got up and walked around the room, not worrying too much about
the creaking boards, for his host was way down the corridor. He had shied away from mentioning Mrs Craven in the letter, though Charles Venning and his wife had encouraged the match. He thought of
his father, as he often did these last months, and wondered if he had disappointed Alban Steele by not being as pure in intention as him. It was in his recent studies that he had sought to close
this gap, and to add some seriousness to a life that had been full of trivialities. He had also wished to examine the darkness which had haunted his father; the shadow which, despite Alban’s
happiness, had yet come over him sometimes.
    ‘Too late, too late,’ Edmund said, under his breath. Amusement and diversion; these were the things that made his life bearable. If his father, a silversmith and an artist in his
way, had bequeathed him something, it was exactness: a precision which had served him well in the building and keeping of his fortune, and was at odds with his otherwise relaxed nature.
    Fretfully, he went over to the window and lifted the drape. Dense, blue-black darkness greeted him: it was perfect night in this seaside town, deeper and darker than any city night. He could not
hear a sound, not even the cry of a gull. He wondered if it was the trees, waving in the growing breeze, that swathed the parsonage in such complete darkness; but after a minute or two he saw there
was a gap in them, a line of sight intermittently blocked by their movement.
    He saw a light.
    He tilted his head and took a step to the right. Across the narrow road at the end of the driveway, someone was standing on the step of one of the cottages. He narrowed his eyes at the pale
column and made out the figure of a woman, holding a candle, shielded from the sea breeze by a glass shade; he caught the glint of it. He raised his hand, but the pale shape showed no sign that she
was aware of his presence. She stayed still, seeming to stare straight ahead. He had no idea what she was looking at; the building he was in was surely cloaked in leaves, a mass of darkness to her
eyes.
    He waved a little more, until he felt foolish, and dropped the drape. He took a turn around the room and closed his letter. Then he could not help himself; he went to the window and looked out
again. But the figure was gone. There was no light behind the shutters of the cottage, no sign that anyone was within.
    He undressed and got into bed. The balminess of the day had quite gone; the bed was cool, and he was aware that his heart was beating hard, and that he wanted to know who had been watching the
parsonage. ‘It is a quaint little place,’ Venning had told him, ‘but do not listen to the local people: they can talk only of wrecks, and they try to scare the ladies, speaking of
sea-monsters and ghosts.’
    Ghosts, thought Edmund. Foolish, so foolish. He closed his eyes and thought of his childhood, imagining that he was in his parents’ cottage again, his mother stirring a pot on the range.
He thought of the London streets, the chaos and energy, the messenger boy running to him, bringing news of the money he had made through no labour of his own. He heard the chink of Mrs
Craven’s wine glass as she set it down on the silver salver bought by her first husband. And at last, as he fell asleep, he saw the pale shape of a woman on a step, and the dark and
glittering sea.

CHAPTER TWO
    The summer of 1851 seems as distant to me now as my childhood. It is as though a different Delphine Beck lived through that time. My cousin Julia and I began the year in
London, but as the world flocked there to visit the Great Exhibition and see its novelties, we knew it was time for us to leave. Just as the world opened up, we went to Broadstairs because it
seemed to be the perfect place to hide.