Part 4 — On Her Wedding Night, the Widowed Woman Was Accused of Murder by Her Husband’s Brother, and Then a Strange Fear Appeared on His Face

Hargreaves opened the door as though the house still belonged to him.

Edward Belmont stood behind him. My father had always had the ability to meet even the most terrible news with a calm face. That day too he wore gloves, and one drop of rain glittered on his beard.

“Mariana,” he said. “You are here.”

There was no relief in his voice. Only irritation.

Adrien stepped in front.

“Have you come to speak about my brother’s death?”

“I have come to offer my condolences.”

“You should have offered condolences when he was alive.”

My father narrowed his eyes.

Captain Haley unfolded the warrant.

“Edward Belmont, you must remain in this house until the questioning is finished.”

“By what right?”

“By the right that the accounts issued in your name and the missing letter are already the subject of an investigation.”

My father looked toward me.

“Did you tell them something?”

“I told them the truth.”

“You have no idea what the truth is.”

“Then why are you afraid of it?”

That question fell into the room like a heavy object.

Hargreaves stepped back, but the captain seized him by the shoulder.

“You will come with us too.”

“Me?” Hargreaves laughed. “I am only the steward.”

Adrien placed a stack of accounts on the table.

“You stole twenty-eight thousand pounds from my brother’s estate. And my father took this money out through your hands.”

For the first time my father lost his color.

“This is forged.”

“No,” I said. “The forged thing is the letter you stole from my room.”

He looked sharply at me.

“What are you saying?”

“On the wedding night I was writing to Father. I was asking you not to force Robert to demand money anymore. The letter was no longer there in the morning.”

Adrien took the small brass key from his pocket.

“We found the letter in a drawer beneath the study floor. The lock opens with this key.”

My father took a step back.

“All of this is fabricated.”

The captain shook his head.

“Your fingerprints are on the letter. Besides, Doctor Prentice admitted that you threatened him.”

Prentice said quietly:

“He told me that if I wrote the cause of death as poison, he would have my daughter lose her position. I was afraid.”

I walked toward him.

“You were afraid, but you still came to say it.”

“Too late, madam.”

“But you came.”

My father’s hands were tied behind his back. Hargreaves was taken away too.

“Mariana!” he shouted. “I am your father.”

His voice could be heard in the corridor for a long time.

I did not follow them.

That same evening Adrien summoned me to a small room. Robert’s last note lay on the table.

“If anything happens to me, tell Mariana that her marriage was not a transaction. For the first time in my life I did something right.”

Adrien pushed the letter toward me.

“All this time I thought you had killed my brother.”

“And now?”

“Now I think that he saved you, while I understood far too late whom I should have been protecting.”

I fell silent. We could not erase Robert’s death. Nor could we erase those eleven weeks during which we barely knew each other. But his last choice was real.

My father’s trial took place six weeks later. His property was sold to pay the debts. Hargreaves confessed everything and received his punishment. Adrien did not demand a single penny from me, nor did he ever say that I owed it to remain in this house.

One morning he simply asked me:

“Do you want to stay here?”

Snow could be seen through the window.

“No.”

“Then where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere my name will not be the settlement of someone’s account.”

I rented a small house in London. Three days a week I taught children to write, and on two days I helped widowed women prepare documents. For the first time I received my own income and did not hide money to pay someone else’s debt.

Adrien visited me sometimes. He knocked twice at the door and always waited until I opened it myself.

“How are you today?” he would ask.

“Today I belong to myself.”

“That is a good answer.”

Months passed.

One evening I received a letter from my father. It was short.

“You can get everything back if you say that you were mistaken. I am still your father.”

I did not burn the letter in the fireplace. I simply folded it and kept it in an empty drawer.

I did not send a reply.

One day my little pupil, Alice, brought me a drawing. She was drawing a house, and in front stood a woman holding a small silver-colored dot in her hand.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Not a key,” she told me. “It is a needle. So that the house will not lose you again.”

I laughed. Sincerely, for the first time.

That night I took my mother’s glove from the cupboard. The ivory fabric was folded, and near the wrist the small silver needle was still standing there. On the wedding day I thought it fastened fate.

Now I knew that no one fastens fate.

A person only chooses themselves.

I took the needle out of the glove and placed it in a small wooden box beside the window. Outside, the first snow was falling. The flakes settled on the streetlamp as though the sky were carefully sewing something.

I opened the window.

Cold air came in.

And for the first time since the night when I became the widow of a strange man, I no longer felt that I had been thrown out of someone else’s life.

I had my own life.

And I had locked the door from the inside.