The Lake House (36 page)

Alice barely blinked, almost as if she'd known what was coming. “You could ask, DC Sparrow, but I'm old and my time is precious. It would be more agreeable to me, and surely more useful to you, if you'd simply cut to the chase and tell me your theory. What do
you
think happened to Theo?”

In ten years working at the Met, Sadie was quite sure she'd never interviewed a subject like Alice Edevane. She tried not to appear flummoxed. “I believe your brother died that night at Loeanneth.”

“As do I.” Alice seemed almost pleased, as if she were conducting an examination and Sadie had given the right answer. “I didn't for a long time, I thought that he'd been kidnapped, but recently I've come to see that I was wrong.”

Sadie steeled herself to continue. “Your father suffered from shell shock after the war.”

Once more, Alice was unflappable. “He did, although, again, I only learned that recently. It was a secret kept very well by my parents. My sister Deborah told me, and she herself only learned about it in 1945.” Alice's long fingers were stroking the velvet piping on the armrest of her chair. “So, DC Sparrow,” she said, “we've established that my father suffered from shell shock, we've agreed that my brother most likely died at Loeanneth. How do you imagine these two things relate?”

Here it was. Sadie held Alice's gaze. “I believe your brother was killed, Ms Edevane, accidentally, by your father.”

“Yes,” said Alice. “I've recently come to believe the same thing.”

“I think he's buried at Loeanneth.”

“It is the scenario that makes most sense.”

Sadie breathed a sigh of relief. It was her experience that people did not usually appreciate the suggestion that their nearest and dearest was capable of committing a major crime. She'd imagined herself having to convince Alice, to gently cajole and explain and take great care not to trample her feelings. This frank agreement was far preferable. “The only problem,” she said, “is that I don't know how to prove it.”

“That, DC Sparrow, is where I might be able to help you.”

Sadie experienced a flutter of tentative excitement. “How?”

“After so much time, I doubt there'll be much in the way of physical ‘clues' remaining, but there are other sources we might turn to. My family are of the type to write things down. I don't know if you're a writer?”

Sadie shook her head.

“No? Well, never mind, it's not your secrets we're hoping to uncover. My father kept a journal that he wrote religiously, and my mother, though not a diary keeper, was a great one for letters. She was one of those children who left little notes for the fairies, terribly charming, and then our father went away to war just after they were married and the habit of letter-writing stuck.”

Sadie remembered the ivy-rimmed love letter she'd found in the boathouse, Eleanor's note to Anthony, written while he was away at war and she was pregnant with Alice. She considered mentioning it now, but her interest, seen through the eyes of their daughter, seemed somehow voyeuristic. Besides, Alice had already moved on.

“There's a study in the attic at Loeanneth, where the family's records dating back generations are kept, and where my father used to do his work; there is also a roll-top writing bureau in my mother's room. That's where I'd start. She was religious about correspondence. She wrote all her letters in triplicate, storing the finished books on the shelves within her bureau, and kept every letter she received in the drawers either side of the desk. They're locked, but you'll find the key on a small hook beneath the bureau chair. I made it my business to know such things as a child. Alas, I never imagined there was anything within my mother's papers that was worth knowing, and I never would have dared breach my father's study. I might have saved us all a lot of bother if I'd taken a peek back then. Never mind. Better late than never. I cannot guarantee you'll find the answers we seek, but I remain optimistic. I heard nothing but praise for your investigative abilities.”

Sadie managed what she hoped was a confident, assuring smile.

“You'll find all manner of things while you're looking. I trust you'll be discreet. We all have secrets we don't want shared, don't we?”

Sadie realised she was being blackmailed. Politely. “You can trust me.”

“I'm a very good judge of character, DC Sparrow, and I believe I can. You have the courage of your convictions. I've always admired that trait in people. I'd like to know exactly what happened that night. I dislike the word ‘closure'; the idea of a finite ending is all well and good in fiction, but a rather infantile expectation in this vast world of ours. Still, I'm sure I don't need to explain how much it means to me that I obtain answers.” Alice reached across and took up a key from the small table beside her. After turning it over a couple of times she handed it to Sadie. “The key to Loeanneth. And you have my permission to search wherever you see fit.”

Sadie took the old key solemnly. “If there's anything at all to find—”

“You'll find it. Yes, excellent. Now, unless there's anything else you need, I think we're done.”

Sadie was keenly aware she'd just been dismissed, yet something had occurred to her while Alice was describing her father's journal keeping and her mother's letters. Alice seemed confident that the necessary evidence to implicate her father in Theo's death would be found therein, but if Sadie would be able to see the connections, surely Eleanor Edevane, who had known about her husband's condition all along, would have seen them too. “Do you think—is it possible your mother knew?”

Alice didn't bat an eyelash. “I think she must have.”

“But—” The implications were astonishing. “Why didn't she tell the police? She stayed married to him. How could she have after what he did?”

“He was unwell; he would never have done such a thing intentionally.”

“But her
child
.”

“My mother had very fixed ideas on morals and justice. She believed that a promise, once made, should be kept. She would have felt that in some way she deserved what had happened, even that she'd brought it upon herself.”

Sadie was missing something. “How on earth did she figure that?”

Alice was sitting tall, and as still as a statue. “There was a man who worked at Loeanneth for a time, a fellow called Munro.”

“Benjamin Munro, yes, I know. You were in love with him.”

The other woman's composure appeared to slip then, ever so slightly. “My, my. You
have
done your homework.”

“Just doing my job.” Sadie winced at the corny line.

“Yes, well, incorrectly in this case.” Alice lifted a shoulder and a sharp bone appeared beneath her ivory silk blouse. “I might have harboured a girlish crush on Ben, but it was nothing more than that. You know what young people are like, so easy with their affections.”

The way she said it, Sadie wondered whether Alice somehow knew about her own teenage infatuation. The boy with the smooth pick-up lines and the shiny car, the smile that had made her weak at the knees. She said, “Benjamin Munro left Loeanneth just before Theo went missing.”

“Yes. His contract expired.”

“He had nothing to do with what happened to Theo.”

“Not in a practical sense, no.”

Sadie was becoming tired of riddles. “Then I'm afraid I can't see why we're talking about him.”

Alice lifted her chin. “You asked why my mother felt responsible for what happened to Theo. A week before Midsummer, my older sister Deborah told my father something that pushed him into a terrible state. I only found out recently myself. It seems that in the time leading up to Midsummer, my mother was engaged in a love affair with Benjamin Munro.”

T
wenty-five

Cornwall, 1931

Eleanor fell in love for the second time when she was thirty-six years old. It wasn't love at first sight, not as it had been with Anthony; she was a different person in 1931 from the girl she'd been twenty years before. But love has many colours, and so it went like this: grey, rainy London, the doctor on Harley Street, tea at Liberty, a sea of black umbrellas, a crowded sooty train station, her dull yellow seat within the clammy carriage.

The whistle blew outside, the train was about to leave, and not a moment too soon. Eleanor was watching through the window, surveying the soot-blackened tracks, and didn't think much of it when the man jumped in at the last minute and took the window seat opposite. She noticed his reflection in the glass—he was young, at least ten years younger than she was; she vaguely registered a pleasant voice as she heard him tell the man next to him that he'd been lucky to get a ticket, it had been handed in at the last minute, and then she paid him no more heed.

The train pulled away from the station in a puff of smoke, and rain started to stream down the glass so that everything outside dissolved. As London gave way to open countryside, Eleanor replayed her meeting with Dr Heimer, wondering whether she'd said too much. The prim little typist in the corner, relaying everything to her machine as Eleanor spoke, had been unsettling enough at the time, but to recall her now was nauseating. Eleanor knew it was important to be honest with the doctors, to tell them exactly what Anthony said and did, yet as she'd framed her descriptions in her mind, as she'd heard the words she spoke, she'd felt the sick weight of having betrayed the husband she'd sworn to protect.

He was so much more than the symptoms that plagued him. She'd wanted to communicate to the doctor how kind he was with the girls, how good-humoured and handsome and eager he'd been when she met him, how unfair it was that the war should be allowed to hollow out a man's core; to rend the tapestry of his life, leaving only the tattered threads of his earlier dreams with which to patch it. But no matter the words she chose, she couldn't make the doctor see how much she loved her husband, couldn't convey that she wanted only to save Anthony as he'd saved her. She'd wanted the doctor to absolve her from her failure, but instead he'd sat solidly behind his grey suit and wire-rimmed spectacles, pen pressed to his lips as he nodded and sighed and jotted occasionally in the margin of his lined pad. Her words beaded as they reached him, sliding off his oiled hair like water from a duck's back, and all the while, in the staid, clinical quiet of the room, the tippity-tap of that machine constantly reproached her.

Eleanor didn't realise she was crying until the man sitting opposite leaned to pass her his handkerchief. She looked up, surprised, and noticed they were now alone in the train carriage, except for an elderly woman sitting on the edge of the bench, closest to the door. Eleanor had been too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice the train making stops along the way.

She took the handkerchief and dabbed beneath her eyes. She was embarrassed—more than that, infuriated—to be this person, a weeping woman eliciting kindness from a stranger. It seemed an intimacy, this acceptance of a young man's handkerchief, and she was painfully aware of the old lady by the door, pretending interest in her knitting while stealing glances over its top. “No,” he said when she tried to give the handkerchief back, “you keep it.” He didn't ask after her troubles and Eleanor didn't volunteer them, he simply smiled politely and went about his business.

His business, she noticed, was the manipulation of a small piece of paper, his fingers working quickly but neatly, performing multiple tucks and folds, making triangles and rectangles, turning the paper over and doing the same again. She realised she was staring and glanced away, but she didn't stop watching, observing instead in the reflection of the train window. He made a final adjustment and then held the paper in one hand, inspecting it from all angles. Eleanor felt unexpectedly pleased. It was a bird, a swan-like figure with pointed wings and a long neck.

The train lumbered on, dragging itself west, and darkness fell outside the window as absolute as a theatre black after a show. Eleanor must have slept deep and long, for the next thing she knew the train had reached the end of the line. The stationmaster was blowing his whistle, ordering disembarkation, and passengers were brushing past the carriage window.

She tried to get her bags down from the racks and when she couldn't reach he helped her. It was that simple. The shopping bag had become stuck on a jagged piece of metal, it was awkward, and she was still disoriented from sleep, weary after a day that had begun before dawn.

“Thank you,” she said. “And for before. I'm afraid I've ruined your handkerchief.”

“Don't mention it,” he said with a smile that brought a shallow dimple to his cheek. “It's yours. As is this.”

Their hands brushed as she took the bag from him and Eleanor met his eyes briefly. He'd felt it too, she could tell by the way he straightened, the brief, bewildered expression on his face. It was electric, a spark of cosmic recognition, as if in that moment time's weave had opened and they'd glimpsed an alternate existence in which they were something more than strangers on a train.

Eleanor forced her thoughts to order. She could see Martin, her driver, on the well-lit platform through the window. He was studying the other passengers, looking for her, ready to take her home.

“Well,” she said, in the same efficient tone she might have used to excuse a new housemaid, “thank you again for your help.” And with a short nod she left the young man in the carriage, lifted her chin, and walked away.

* * *

If she hadn't seen him again their meeting would surely have been forgotten. A chance encounter on a train, a handsome stranger who'd shown her a small kindness. A trivial moment consigned to the recesses of a memory already brimming with others.

But Eleanor did see him again, three months later on an overcast day in June. The morning was unusually warm, the air thick, and Anthony had woken to one of his bad heads. Eleanor had heard him tossing and turning in the pre-dawn, battling the terrible visions that came upon him in the night, and she'd known to expect the worst. She'd also known from experience that the best defence was offence. She'd sent him upstairs immediately after breakfast, prevailed upon him to take two of Dr Gibbons's sleeping tablets, and given firm instructions to the staff that he was busy with an important project and not to be disturbed. Finally, as it was Nanny Rose's day off, she'd gathered the girls and told them to find their shoes; they were going to spend the morning in town.

“Oh no! Why?” That was Alice, always the first and the loudest with complaint. Her reaction could not have been more horrified if Eleanor had suggested they spend a week down the mines.

“Because I have parcels to collect from the post office and I'd appreciate some arms to carry them.”

“Really, Mother, more parcels? You must have bought one of everything in London by now.” Grumble, grumble.

“That's quite enough, Alice. One day, God willing, you'll find yourself in charge of a household and then it will be your decision whether or not to purchase the necessary items to keep it running.”

The look on Alice's face screamed,
Never!
and Eleanor was startled to recognise her own younger self in the stubborn set of her fourteen-year-old daughter's features. The awareness riled her and she drew herself to full height. Her voice was more brittle than she'd intended. “I won't tell you again, Alice. We're going into town, Martin has already been sent to fetch the car, so go at once and find your shoes.”

Alice set her mouth in a haughty line and her eyes glistened with disdain. “Yes, Mother,” she said, enunciating the title as if she couldn't get it off her lips fast enough.

Mother. No one was particularly fond of her. Even Eleanor winced sometimes at the woman's incessant pedantry. She wasn't a bit of fun and could always be counted on to temper a boisterous occasion with a sermon on responsibility or safety. And yet, she was essential. Eleanor would have collapsed under the heartbreaking strain of Anthony's condition, but Mother was always equal to the task. She made sure the girls gave their father space when he needed it and was ever on guard to catch him before he slumped. Mother didn't worry that her children looked upon her as a harridan. Why would she? It was all in the interests of helping them to become their best selves.

Eleanor, in contrast, cared a great deal, lamenting the loss of those distant war years when the girls had curled up on her lap and listened to her stories, when she'd run with them across the estate, exploring and pointing out the magical places of her own childhood. But she'd long since stopped feeling sorry for herself. She'd witnessed other families where life had been made to revolve around the exigencies of an invalid and had come to the firm conclusion that the ancillary damage was simply too great. She didn't want the shadow of Anthony's disappointment and distress to spill across the lives of her growing daughters. If she could just absorb his troubles herself, then the girls would remain unaffected, and one day, when she found the right doctor, when she discovered a cure to restore him, no one would be any the wiser.

In the meantime, Eleanor committed herself to keeping Anthony's condition concealed, just as she'd promised him she would. It was in the service of this promise that she made sure always to place plenty of orders with the department stores in London. She didn't need half the things she bought, but that was beside the point. It was one of the simplest, most believable ways she'd concocted over the years to get the girls out from beneath his feet. Between visits to the beach, or field trips to the meadow, they were made to accompany her into town to collect parcels. For their part, they found it entirely credible (though manifestly irritating) that their mother was a compulsive shopper who wasn't content without the latest frippery from London. And so it was that morning.

“Deborah, Clementine, Alice! Come along! Martin is waiting.”

There was the usual kerfuffle as the girls tore about the house trying to find their shoes. There would have to be a lecture later—young ladies, responsibility, a duty to themselves, that sort of thing. Mother was good at delivering lessons. But then she ought to be; she'd had the perfect example in Constance. Eleanor amazed herself how much the shrew she could sound, how cold and unamused. Their faces when she delivered her stern calls for improvement were studies in boredom and dislike. Worse, except for the merest, occasional flicker of hurt and confusion that crossed Deborah's face—as if she
almost
remembered a time when things had been different—they revealed an utter lack of surprise. This, for Eleanor, was the most terrifying aspect of all. Her daughters had no idea how much she envied them their freedom and cheered their lack of social graces; how like them she'd once been; what great friends they might have become if things were different.

Finally, her daughters arrived at the foot of the stairs, more dishevelled than Eleanor might have hoped, but with a shoe on each foot, which was at least something. Eleanor ushered them outside to where Martin had the car idling, and they all piled into the back. While the girls bickered about who was sitting near the window and whose dress was stuck beneath whose bottom, Eleanor glanced through the window and up to the attic where Anthony was now asleep. If she could just keep the girls out all morning, by afternoon, God willing, he'd be restored and they could salvage part of the day. Sometimes, their best family time came after mornings like these. It was a strange pattern of push and pull, in which the depth of his despair was later matched by the radiant relief of his recovery. They were jewels, those moments, rare but precious reminders of the man he used to be. The man he still was, she corrected herself, deep beneath it all.

The clouds had lifted by the time they reached town. Fishing boats were returning to the harbour and seagulls drifted and cawed above a still, slate sea. Martin slowed when he reached the High Street. “Anywhere in particular you'd like me to set you down, Ma'am?”

“This will be perfect, thank you, Martin.”

He pulled the car over and opened the door, letting them all out.

“Would you prefer me to wait while you do your shopping?”

“No, thank you.” Eleanor smoothed her skirt over her hips as a salty ocean breeze caressed the back of her neck. “I'm sure you have other errands to run for Mrs Stevenson and we'll be a couple of hours yet.”

The driver agreed to return for them at twelve-thirty and the arrangement was met with predictable complaint: “But two whole hours, Mother!” “To collect a few parcels?” “I'm going to
die
from boredom!”

“Boredom is the province of the witless,” she heard herself say. “A state to be pitied.” And then, ignoring all further protestations, “I thought we'd have some morning tea while we're here. You can tell me what you've been learning in your lessons.” Not a lot, was Eleanor's suspicion. Judging by the number of small newspapers in circulation, the tittering of housemaids when they ought to be busy doing other things, the girls were far more focused on the old printing press than they were on their schoolwork. Eleanor had been just the same, of course, but there was no need for her daughters to know that.

Cheered somewhat by the suggestion of cake, if not by talk of lessons, the girls followed Eleanor into the cafe on the promenade where the four of them shared a relatively cheerful time, the only hiccup when Clementine upset a jug of milk, and a bucket and mop had to be called for.

Alas, the geniality could only be stretched so far. The polite conversation and pot of tea had both dried up when Eleanor sneaked a glance at her father's wristwatch and saw there was still over an hour to fill. She settled the account and drew on plan B. She'd come prepared with invented reasons to visit the haberdashery, the milliner and the jeweller, and led the girls along the High Street. By the time she'd finished enquiring about repairs to a clasp on her gold link bracelet, however, they were beside themselves with boredom.