The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

Author:Kate Morton [Morton, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2018-09-12T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As he strolled back through the village, along the quiet road with its ragged verge, Leonard pondered Lucy Radcliffe. He was confident that he had never met a woman – another person – quite like her. It was clear that she was very bright. Age had not dimmed her fascination for all areas of intellectual enquiry; her interests were wide and varied; her ability to retain and process complex information evidently remarkable. She had been wry, too, and self-critical. He had liked her.

He had also felt sorry for her. He had asked, as he was packing up to leave, about her school, and a look of deep regret had come upon her face. ‘I had such high hopes, Mr Gilbert, but it was too soon. I knew that compromise would be necessary; that in order to attract sufficient students I would have to concede to certain parental expectations. I had thought I would be able to honour my promise to shape the girls into “young ladies” whilst also instilling in them a love of learning.’ She had smiled. ‘I don’t think I flatter myself that there were some whom I started along a road they might otherwise not have found. But there was rather more singing and sewing than I’d envisaged.’

As she spoke about the school and its students, it had occurred to Leonard that the house bore very little sign of them. All indication that schoolgirls had once filed through the halls en route to class had been erased, and one would be hard pressed to imagine Birchwood Manor anything other than a nineteenth-century artist’s country home. In fact, with all of Radcliffe’s furnishings and fittings still in place, entering the house felt to Leonard like stepping back in time.

When he’d said as much to Lucy, she mused in reply, ‘A logical impossibility, of course, time travel: how can one ever be in two places “at the same time”? The phrase itself is a paradox. In this universe, at any rate …’ Not wanting to be drawn into another scientific debate, Leonard had asked how long the school had been closed. ‘Oh, decades now. It died with the Queen, in 1901. There was an accident, a most unfortunate event, a couple of years before. A young girl drowned in the river during a school picnic, and one by one the other students were withdrawn. With no new enrolments to take their place, well … one had little choice but to accept the reality. The death of a student is never good for business.’

Lucy had a frankness that appealed to Leonard. She was forthcoming and interesting, and yet, as he reflected on the conversation, he had a distinct feeling that she’d shared nothing more with him than she’d intended. There was only one moment in their interview when he’d sensed that the mask had slipped. Something niggled at Leonard in the way she had described the events of 1862. It struck him now that she’d sounded almost guilty when she spoke of Frances Brown’s death and her brother’s consequent decline.

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