Free The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson Page A

but it died soon after she brought it back.’
    â€˜That must have solved a few problems,’ Josephine said cynically. ‘How did the child die?’
    â€˜Natural causes, I think, although there were rumours later when the whole thing came out.’
    â€˜Still, it must have taken the pressure off Corder to get her to the altar.’
    â€˜You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it didn’t. Nobody else was going to touch Maria by then, so he was her family’s last hope.’ She drained her cup, and Josephine poured more tea. ‘Stephen sees his fair share of modern-day Marias, you know, and nothing’s really changed. The shame for the Martens in a village like this must have been unbearable.’
    Josephine couldn’t help thinking that things must have been blacker still for Maria. ‘Did she actually want to marry him, I wonder?’
    Hilary gave a sympathetic smile. ‘I shouldn’t think anybody stopped to ask. A woman in Maria’s position doesn’t have many options. Anyway, after a few more false promises, Corder finally agreed to take her to Ipswich and marry her there. He turned up at the Martens’ cottage one morning with some men’s clothes for Maria so that nobody would recognise her, and they went separately to the Red Barn.’ Hilary paused, then finished dramatically in a hushed tone of which Hester would have been proud: ‘Maria was never seen alive again.’ Josephine tried not to look disappointed. She was pleased to hear a story that belonged to a village she was getting to know, but she still didn’t quite understand why it had become so legendary. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Hilary said, ‘but it gets much more interesting once Maria is dead.’
    â€˜Go on.’
    â€˜William came back to the village a few days later, claiming some sort of delay with the marriage licence. He told Maria’s family that she was staying in Ipswich until it could be sorted out, then spun a load of other reasons why they hadn’t heard from her.’
    â€˜Such as?’
    â€˜Oh, she was too busy to write or had hurt her hand. That sort of thing.’
    â€˜Were they particularly stupid?’ Josephine asked.
    â€˜I think it was more a case of life being easier with Maria out of the village. They chose not to ask too many questions, and whatever they really thought, William was confident enough to stay in Polstead until the harvest was in. Then he left as well.’
    â€˜Thinking he’d got away with it, I suppose.’
    â€˜For a while, yes – until they found Maria’s body, buried in the barn. She’d been there for nearly a year.’
    â€˜Is it true that her mother told them where to look?’
    â€˜Her stepmother. Maria’s mother died when she was a little girl and her father remarried. It came to her in a dream, apparently.’
    â€˜I bet it did,’ Josephine said, beginning to see why the story was so popular.
    â€˜It’s funny, isn’t it? Nobody questioned that at the time. They tracked Corder down to London, and do you know what he’d done?’
    It was a rhetorical question, but Josephine took a guess. ‘Killed someone else?’
    â€˜No, quite the contrary. He’d advertised for a wife, married one of the respondents and started running a girls’ school.’
    â€˜Good God!’
    â€˜Quite. Can you believe the nerve of the man?’ Hilary cut another large slice of cake for each of them. ‘It’s not bad, this, is it? I must tell Stephen to thank whoever it was so we get another one. Anyway, the police brought Corder back here to attend the inquest. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall that night.’
    â€˜If Maria had been in the earth for a year, there were probably plenty of those already,’ Josephine said. ‘Did he confess?’
    â€˜Not until the eve of his execution. He put up his own