Free Prospero's Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez Page B

other if it loses its sheen. Discord will come between them when they marry. Barren hate. He would know it was spoilt meat he got when he married her, and she would hate him for spoiling her before she had taken her vows.”
    Mumsford felt he could not take much more of this talk of virgin knot, sexual passion, jumping hormones, carnal lust, spoilt meat. It was talk better for the pub among like-minded companions, or in a sleazy motel, perhaps with a prostitute.
He was her father, for God’s sake.
Dr. Gardner had called him stuffy, and perhaps he was. He was not a city man. He did not have city ways. He was raised in the country, in England, where it was improper for a father to speak this way about his daughter. His stomach felt queasy. They were inappropriate, Dr. Gardner’s intimate references to his daughter’s sexuality, not normal for a decent father.
    “So you see, Inspector, that born devil would have destroyed all that if he had succeeded,” Gardner was saying, and in a flash Mumsford saw his mistake. Good detective as he thought he was, he had missed the point of Gardner’s tirade: first, to establish that there had been no assault, but, rather, an attempt to assault, thus leaving no doubt of his daughter’s purity. Then (his real purpose) to lay the foundation that would seal his argument that that very attempt had threatened her future, the plans he had in place for her.
    “A good boy from New England would not marry a slut,” Gardner concluded.
    Yes. Yes, it was clear now. He should have known.
    “A woman who had been broken into. Used. You understand me, Mumsford?”
    He understood him now. He turned to a clean page in his notebook. “I would need to know the beginning,” he said.
    “The beginning?” Gardner’s eyes drifted across to the record player.
    “Can we start from the beginning, sir?” Mumsford asked quietly.
    “The adagio.” Gardner was not listening to him. “Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A.” He was conducting again, lifting his hand when the music arced, lowering it when it descended.
    “Sir?” Mumsford tried to rouse him. It was mournful, the music, though he could barely hear it.
    “She was a piece of virtue,” he said.
    “She?”
    “My wife.” His hand fell to his side. “Faithful to me. Pure as driven snow. She died shortly after Virginia was born. Twelve years we are here.”
    “A long time,” Mumsford said.
    “There is no doubt Virginia . . .”
    “Tell me about her, sir.”
    “No doubt my daughter. Her mother said she was my daughter.” He glanced at Mumsford as if daring him to contradict him.
    Not missing the challenge in the glance, Mumsford said quickly, “Indeed, sir. The commissioner said there is a great resemblance between you two, sir.”
    “A virgin when I married her, Inspector. Never been touched. A piece of virtue.”
    Afraid he was about to launch into another lecture about virginity, Mumsford interrupted him, but not unkindly. “If you don’t mind, sir, could we start at the other beginning, the time immediately before the incident, sir?”
    Gardner rubbed his eyes. The edges of his mouth had hardened, and nothing remained of the slackness that moments ago had caused the skin there to droop so that the lines along his chin had deepened. “They had a cure for the disease when we arrived,” he said abruptly.
    It was not the beginning Mumsford wanted, but it was a beginning closer to the present.
    “The nuns had left,” Gardner said, “but there were still a few patients. The doctor here was old and tired.”
    “Is that why you came, sir?” Mumsford encouraged him.
    “What?” Gardner seemed momentarily perplexed.
    “Why you came, sir?”
    “Yes. It was why I came.”
    “And why you stayed, sir?”
    “Yes, yes. I came for the lepers and I stayed for the ones who were still here.”
    “But I understand, sir, you no longer take care of them.”
    “And your understanding is accurate, Inspector,” he said angrily.
    The glare from