Chapter 59

‘What was it?' Doctor Lang asked.

‘It was Bethany's journal,' Poe replied. ‘Alice had kept hold of it all those years. The pages were stiff with age and the ink had faded a little, but it was perfectly readable.'

‘At that point you didn't fully trust Alice, did you?'

‘I still had concerns about her motivation.'

‘Is trusting people a problem for you, Washington? It seems to be a recurring feature in this case.'

‘It does?'

She nodded. ‘You thought the Bishop of Carlisle had ulterior motives for sharing his information on the Children of Job.'

‘Yeah, but—'

‘And you never trusted Linus.'

Poe showed Doctor Lang his oil-stained, scarred hands. ‘With good cause,' he said after a short delay.

‘And yet you trusted the journal's provenance. Why was that?'

‘I didn't trust it. Not immediately.'

‘What changed?'

‘Tilly is an expert in forensic handwriting analysis,' he said. ‘After she'd scanned the journal's contents into her tablet, I dropped off Alice in Penrith then went to police HQ. I handed the journal to Superintendent Nightingale and while I was there I collected some samples of Bethany's schoolwork, so Tilly had some of her writing to compare the journal against. I then went back to the North Lakes Hotel.'

‘The police had kept samples of Bethany's handwriting?'

‘They'd kept everything from the Bowman massacre. Although it wasn't being actively investigated, it was still an open case.'

‘So Tilly matched the handwriting in the journal to Bethany's schoolwork?'

‘She did and it didn't take her long. Even I could see it had been written by the same person.'

‘What did you do then?'

‘We still had some time before meeting with Nathan Rose—'

‘The man who had been on another of Cornelius Green's secret courses?'

‘That's right. Anyway, we had some time, so we spent it reading what Bethany had recorded in her journal.'

‘It was bad?'

Poe nodded slowly. ‘Very.' On the front page she'd written ‘Welcome to my wonderful life', although if Frank Capra had used Bethany Bowman as the inspiration for his film, George Bailey wouldn't have been the only one contemplating suicide that night – the entire cast would have been on that bridge.