Chapter 11: What He Promised Maud

Kendrick's POV

I looked at the floor because I knew what Maud meant, and Lydia didn't.

I left the estate at noon with one suitcase.

Mrs. Aldercott watched me from the front steps and said nothing.

I took a room over the hardware store in the village.

I lay on the bed with my coat on and stared at the ceiling.

On Thursday evening I went back.

I didn't go to the boathouse.

I walked up the front steps of the house I had run for twelve years.

I passed the stranger who had taken my place at the door.

I opened the study door without knocking.

Mrs. Aldercott sat at her husband's desk with a ledger open.

She looked up and did not seem surprised.

"You've no business here."

"I know what's in the bottom drawer."

The pen in her hand stopped.

I laid the photograph on the green leather.

She looked at it for a long time.

She didn't pick it up, and she didn't speak.

"Mrs. Aldercott," I said. "Does Lydia know?"

"Know what?" she said, almost lightly.

"Anything."

Her eyes came up, and for the first time in twelve years I saw her without her face on.

She looked old and exhausted.

She looked angry.

"Ask Maud," she said. "She's the one who wanted a witness."

I found Maud in the cottage kitchen with the kettle going and a cup already set out for me.

Gwen's door was shut at the end of the hall, and a light was on behind it.

Maud sat down across from me.

"You'd better have it all," she said.

"Tell me."

"Henry and I were together for two years, long before you came to this house," she said.

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