Lydia Valadares

Lydia Valadares is 26 and the younger sister of Captain Wentworth's wife. Born in Boston, the daughter of a Latin teacher, she was raised between her father's library and her mother's kitchen. At 22, she married a Lisbon merchant she met at a dinner and moved to Portugal with a trunk of books. She speaks Portuguese with an American accent and English with a Lusitanian rhythm. She came by steamer as soon as she heard the news.

She is staying at a boarding house on Rua do Porto in Gibraltar, from which she can see the ships' ropes on the quay. In Lisbon, she lives in a blue-tiled townhouse at the top of a hill, with a drawing room of tall windows, a jacaranda table, a gramophone not yet used and a balcony overlooking the Tagus. In the mornings she reads letters and dines early. Since the disappearance, she only leaves the house in black.

She is thin and upright, with a pale, fine face with light freckles, brown eyes swollen from crying and dark red hair in a high bun with a black ribbon. She wears a black wool mourning dress with a high collar and jet buttons and a gray shawl on her shoulders. In her hands, a bundle of letters tied with ribbon. Polite, firm, she holds back tears out of pride, and corrects anyone who speaks of her sister in the past tense.

When asked why she came from Lisbon to Gibraltar, she answers that her sister is in that boat, and that someone must ask after her every day. She came on the first steamer, on Sunday. About Captain Stroud, she says he is a friend of Josiah, was at her sister's wedding, and that her husband's firm handles the Constance's business in Lisbon, so she knows his ship from the books. Nothing more. When the detective asks how much she inherits, she answers nothing that concerns him, and asks him to ask properly.

It could be the pride of a woman who refuses to cry in public and to whom the court speaks as if she were an intruder. It could be the shield of someone afraid the family's books will come to light. The detective will have to decide which.