She paused. “Then I found I was in the family way. Mr. Trefusis arranged to send me away to have the baby. I was a Catholic so he found this Catholic home for unmarried mothers run by nuns near Coventry and sent me there. It was awful. Like the workhouse but worse. Like prison, but worse. We were tormented, worked to death, treated like vermin. And as soon as I had the baby it was taken from me. I was given a week to recover and then sent back to work. I never saw my little boy again.”

“But you came back to work for the Trefusis family?”

“I had nowhere else to go,” she replied. “Beside, Mrs. Trefusis was now pregnant. I was offered the post of nursemaid to the child. An offer of appeasement, wouldn’t you say? And so Jonquil became mine. Her parents were often away traveling or in London and I raised her. Such a beautiful child.” Her face had become soft and wistful and I could see for a moment that she might have been a pretty young girl once. Then the look was gone in a flash. “Then she went away to school, and she changed. She became reckless, daring, foolhardy and to be honest ruthless. I did not like what I was seeing and I told her so. That was when she told me I was a servant and thus not entitled to an opinion. And I realized the truth. She didn’t care about me at all.”

“So your thoughts turned to Colin?”

“They were never far from him, but it occurred to me that Mrs. Trefusis had not been able to produce an heir. If I introduced Mr. Trefusis to his son, and he saw what a fine boy he was, maybe he might adopt him and make him the heir. So I brought Colin here, hoping for a fortuitous meeting. But before I could set one up, he was dead.”

“An accident, though?”

“Was it?” Her voice was hard now. “I learned later that Jonquil knew Colin couldn’t swim. And she always did have a sneaky side to her nature. I had caught her once before reading my diary. Had I expressed any of my thoughts for her to read? Quite possibly. I had nobody else to discuss things with. And she saw Colin as a rival, to be snuffed out.”

“Why did you wait so long to kill her?” I asked, before I realized I should have stayed silent.

She glanced across at me, as if she hadn’t even realized I was there. “Old Harry told you, didn’t he? I knew he could never stay silent. Stupid old fool. I was sure nobody had seen, but he was always skulking around in the woods. I threatened him and I thought that had done the trick. But apparently not.”

“So you killed him too?” the inspector asked.