From his own lips, Caleb Crowther had proudly related all this to his daughter, actually boasting of adultery against her mother, Agnes; treachery, fraud and, most damning of all, the heinous deed of murder. Word by word, he had shattered every illusion that his daughter held of him. He also admitted with great relish how he had set Martha against her own husband, Silas. ‘You’re a dim-witted fool!’ he had laughed. There had been so much more that he had told the gullible creature. Things that had cut her to the heart. Awful, soul-destroying things that she would not forget in the whole of her lifetime. Things that she could never bring herself to reveal, not to any living person. And certainly not to Emma. Especially not to Emma.

Rocking thoughtfully in her chair, Nelly reflected on Martha’s state of mind when she had related the things her father had confessed to her. The ordeal was written in every line of that woman’s face, thought Nelly now, as she realized how the dreadful experience appeared to have changed Martha somehow; made her softer and more understanding of others. Oh, but wouldn’t it change anybody? First, to be taken hostage by your own father, and trussed up at gunpoint. Then, to be an unwilling and horrified confessor to his many sins. And finally, to witness the murder of her own mother before her disbelieving eyes, before her father turned the gun on his own miserable person.

Nelly visibly shivered. What a monster was Caleb Crowther. Why, in the name of all that was decent, could he not have spared his daughter such punishment? Dear God. It didn’t bear thinking about. Suddenly Nelly brought the rocking-chair to a halt. There was something not quite right. Something with regard to Martha, and the telling of what had taken place in that room. Some furtive and secret look in Martha’s brown speckly eyes. Something that had suggested to Nelly at the time that Martha was not revealing the full truth of what had been done, or said, in the final, desperate moments of her parents’ lives.

Nelly began her rocking again; slow, methodical movements that seemed to suit her deep, thoughtful mood. ‘You were keeping sommat back, Martha, my gal!’ she muttered. ‘What were it, eh? What could be so fearful that yer chose ter keep it in yer own broken heart? Surely to God… it couldn’t be more terrible than the things yer disclosed to us all, could it? COULD IT?’

Distressed by her own imaginings, Nelly thrust the puzzling matter of Martha from her mind. Her thoughts flew to other, happier events. Like Marlow’s pride and Emma’s great joy at having found Molly and her brood. Now they not only had the daughter lost to them many years ago, but they had also been blessed with two adorable granddaughters, and a lovable, rascally grandson, whose crippled leg would receive the very best medical attention that money could buy.