Mrs Reynolds did not hesitate. “Thomas Wilson is a good man. Hardworking, honest. His wife is the same. They had some trouble, years ago. Their eldest daughter, Sally, was got with child when she was seventeen. The father could not be made to answer for it.”
Elizabeth waited.
“Mr Darcy handled it,” Mrs Reynolds said. “Our Mr Darcy. He gave the Wilsons a better farm, found a decent young man willing to marry Sally and raise the child as his own. A farrier’s son from Lambton, Joseph Cooper, who had always been sweet on Sally and did not hold another man’s actions against her. Mr Darcy settled money on the child, and Sally married Cooper within the month, and the child was born respectable.” She paused. “Mr Darcy had been master of Pemberley only a few months then.”
“The father of Sally’s child,” Elizabeth said. “It was George Wickham.” She did not phrase it as a question, and Mrs Reynolds did not ask how she knew.
“Yes. It was George Wickham.” Mrs Reynolds said the name flatly. “He was the old master’s godson, and he had been given every advantage a young man could ask for, and he repaid it by preying on a girl who could not defend herself.”
“Did the old Mr Darcy know? Before he died?”
Mrs Reynolds was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Mr Wilson told me something once, years after. He said he had gone to the old master about Sally. That he had spoken to him directly, told him everything. Just before he died.”
Elizabeth’s hands were still in her lap. She made them stay that way.
“Mr Wilson said the master believed him at once. Said he went white as chalk, asked Mr Wilson to tell him everything, everydetail. When Mr Wilson had finished, the master thanked him and said it would be dealt with. He summoned Mr Wickham home, spoke to him privately in his study, dined with him. They were all smiles and I thought, Wickham must have agreed to do the right thing. But then the next morning, the master was dead, and Wickham went away without marrying Sally. The physician said it was Mr Darcy’s heart, and Mr Wilson said to me once that he felt guilt, that perhaps the strain of learning his godson would behave so badly brought it on.”
Elizabeth sat with this. She had the thread now. It was real, it was solid, it connected to a living man who could confirm it.
“I should like to visit the Wilsons,” she said. “With Mr Darcy. I should like to meet them.”
Mrs Reynolds nodded. Then she said, quietly, “I have been carrying this feeling for six years, Mrs Darcy. That something was not right about the master’s death. If you find what you are looking for, I hope you will tell me. I should dearly like to set it down.”
“When I can,” Elizabeth said. “I promise. When I can.”
She told Kitty that evening, in her parlour, with the door locked.
“Sally Wilson had a child,” Elizabeth said. “Wickham’s child. Darcy handled it after his father died. Found her a husband, settled money, gave the family a better farm. But the important thing is this: Mr Wilson went to George Darcy and told him about Wickham and Sally. George summoned Wickham to Pemberley, spoke to him. Mrs Reynolds thought that because they were smiling, seemed amiable, Wickham must have agreed to do the right thing. But by morning, George was dead.”
Kitty was staring at her. “You have this from Mrs Reynolds.”
“From Mrs Reynolds, who had it from Mr Wilson himself. A living witness, Kitty. Not a ghost. A man who went to the old master and told him the truth, and who has spent six years wondering whether it killed him.”
“It did kill him. Just not the way Mr Wilson thinks.”
“No. But the point is that Mr Wilson can testify that George Darcy knew about Wickham’s character while he was still alive. That George was angry enough to confront him. That is motive, Kitty. Wickham had every reason to want George dead before he could act on what he knew. Mr Wilson can say all of this to Lord Matlock, or to a magistrate, or to anyone who asks, because he was there. Mrs Reynolds can corroborate it.”
Kitty drew a breath. “This is the first real evidence you’ve had, that doesn’t come from a ghost.”
“Yes.”
Kitty looked at her, and Elizabeth could see the calculations running behind her eyes: the same fierce, practical intelligencethat had been holding Elizabeth back for weeks, now turning toward a different question. Not whether to act, but how.
“You’re going to visit the Wilsons.”
“Tomorrow. With Darcy. I shall ask him to take me, and see if I can lead the conversation to what I want him to know. He has spent six years believing his father died blind to Wickham’s true nature. Learning that George saw the truth at the end, that he tried to act on it; that will shift how Darcy understands his own father.”
“And it will make him ask questions.”
“Yes.”
“The right questions.”
“I hope so.”
Kitty was quiet. Then she said, “You’re not going to tell him about the murder.”
“No. I’m going to provide the facts and let him reach his own conclusions. If Darcy looks at the timing, if he sees that his father confronted Wickham the evening before he died, he may begin to wonder whether his father’s death was what the physician said it was. And if he reaches that conclusion himself, from evidence, from the living world, then I haven’t revealed the ghosts, and the suspicion comes from a place that can be acted on.”
