The Lake House (25 page)

Sadie considered this. “I need to get inside that house.”

“You do.
We
do.” He met her gaze. “Don't think for a second I'm not coming with you.”

“I'll write to her again this afternoon.”

“Yes.” He seemed about to say more.

“What is it?”

Clive straightened both sides of his knitted vest, making a careful effort to avoid eye contact. “Best, of course, to have the owner's permission . . .”

“Yes,” Sadie agreed.

“. . . but there
is
another option. Local man, paid to look in every so often, make sure the vandals and wildlife don't get too cosy.”

“He hasn't been doing much of a job.”

“Be that as it may, the man has a key.”

“Ah.”

“I could put you in touch if you like?”

Sadie took a deep thoughtful breath. She liked all right. But she was going up to London in a few days and she couldn't afford to set a foot wrong if she wanted Donald on side . . . “I'll give it one more try,” she said finally. “See if I can get Alice Edevane's permission.”

“And if you can't . . .”

“Then I know where to find you.”

S
ixteen

Cornwall, 2003

Bertie's place was empty when Sadie arrived home. There was a note on the table advising that her grandfather was out on festival business, and an unwrapped gift beside it, a framed cloth with words embroidered inexpertly in orange thread.
May your past be a pleasant memory, Your future filled with delight and mystery, Your now a glorious moment, That fills your life with deep contentment
. An attached card informed Sadie it was a Celtic blessing made “with love' by Louise for Bertie. She wrinkled her nose and slapped a slice of cheese between two pieces of bread. The thought was nice enough, she supposed, but Sadie could just imagine what Ruth would have said about the message. Her grandmother had always hated that sort of shallow sentiment. As far as Sadie knew, Bertie had, too.

She took her sandwich upstairs and sat on the window seat in her room, notebook balanced against her knees. Clive had baulked at letting her take the Edevane file home but said she was welcome to sit at his table making notes. Naturally, Sadie leapt at the offer and had still been scribbling furiously when a knock came at the door and a stout woman with a surfeit of chins let herself in.

“Sadie—” Clive's voice held a note of panic as it raced the intruder down the hall—“this is my daughter, Bess. Bess, this is Sadie, my . . .”

“Bridge partner.” Sadie moved swiftly to reorder and conceal the file before meeting the other woman with an outstretched hand as she arrived in the kitchen. They exchanged brief, polite how-do-you-dos, during which Bess expressed approval that her father had finally found himself an acceptable hobby, and then Sadie made her excuses and left amid promises to catch up again over the weekend “for another game.”

She planned to do just that. She'd only managed to scratch the surface of the file's contents. There were hundreds of different documents, and with time so limited she'd concentrated on building herself a timeline of the investigation.

Two days after Theo Edevane was declared missing, police had launched the biggest search in Cornwall's history. Hundreds of local people had turned up at daybreak each morning, eager to do their bit, along with a group of men who'd served with Anthony Edevane in his First World War battalion. The coastline was scoured, as were the fields and woods. Police knocked on every door of every house the boy and his abductor might have passed.

Posters displaying Theo's photo were distributed and displayed throughout the county, and in the days after Midsummer the boy's parents made an appeal through the newspapers. The disappearance became a national news item, capturing the popular imagination, and police were inundated with information, some of it given anonymously. Every lead was followed up, no matter how crazy or unlikely it seemed. On 26 June, police discovered the body of Daffyd Llewellyn, but, as Clive had said, despite initial suspicion no connection was ever found between the writer's suicide and the missing child.

The investigation continued throughout July and on the eighth of that month police were brought in from the Met to assist the local force. Sadie could just imagine how that was received. They were followed closely by legendary expoliceman Detective Chief Inspector Keith Tyrell, who was employed as a private detective by a London newspaper. Tyrell left after a week, with nothing new to show for his time in Cornwall; the London police returned home soon after. As autumn stretched towards winter, the search was scaled down, police unable to continue with no results. Despite three months of rigorous investigation, they'd found no further clues and uncovered no other witnesses.

Over the years, police continued to receive occasional tip-offs, all of which were investigated, none of which led to anything concrete. A letter was received by a local newspaper in 1936, purporting to be from Theo's kidnapper, but it proved to be a hoax; in 1938, a psychic in Nottingham declared that the boy's body was buried beneath the concrete foundations of a shed on a local farm, however a search revealed nothing; and in 1939, police were called to a nursing home in Brighton to reinterview Constance deShiel, whose new nurse had become concerned by the old woman's incessant, tearful claims that a little boy, dear to her, had been killed by a family friend. The nurse, who'd grown up in Cornwall and was familiar with the case, connected the dots and telephoned police.

“She gets very upset,” the nurse told investigating officers. “Frets about the boy's loss, talks on and on about the sleeping pills that were used to keep him quiet.” Though initially promising, particularly in light of a missing bottle of sedatives in the Edevane case, the lead ultimately came to nothing. Constance deShiel was unable to provide police with any new, verifiable information and descended under questioning into a rambling narrative about her daughter Eleanor and a stillborn baby. The old woman's long-time doctor, interviewed upon his return from holiday, confirmed she was suffering from the late stages of dementia and the murder claim was only one of a number of topics to which her muddled mind returned. She was just as likely, he said, to tell police her other favoured story, a detailed account of a royal visit she'd never actually made. Which left them precisely where they'd been in late June 1933. Sadie tossed her notebook onto the far end of the window seat. Nowhere.

* * *

Sadie went for a run that evening. It was warm and dry, but the air hummed with the promise of rain. She followed one of the tracks through the woods, the rhythm of her footfalls helping to drive out clamouring thoughts. She'd been studying the case notes like a woman possessed (“
ob
sessed,” said Donald), and her brain ached from the effort.

The sun was low in the sky when she reached the verge bordering Loeanneth, and the long grass of the meadow was deepening from green to mauve. The dogs were in the habit of continuing on to the house and Ash whimpered uncertainly when Sadie stopped. Ramsay, typically aloof, stalked back and forth some metres away. “Not today, I'm afraid, boys,” she said, “It's too late. I don't fancy getting stuck in the woods after dark.”

There was a large smooth stick nearby and she lobbed it into the meadow for them, a consolation prize. They were off like shots, leaping and rumbling. Sadie smiled, watching them wrestle for the stick, then her focus shifted to the distant thicket of yew trees beyond. Light was fading, the hidden crickets on the fringe of the woods had started their evening song, and hundreds of tiny starlings soared above the knotty, darkening copse. Beneath them, hidden within its walls of greenery, the house was hunkering down for another night. Sadie pictured it, the last of the sun's rays glinting off the leadlight, the cool navy spread of the lake out front, the lonely set of the roof.

Blades of grass tickled her legs and she tugged at them absently, unsheathing the stalks one by one. The action, surprisingly satisfying, brought with it the memory of an article in one of the Edevane girls' little newspapers, instructions on how to weave a grass boat. Sadie tried it now, taking two flat strands, folding one over the other to make a sort of braid. Her fingers were clumsy, though, and the schoolyard task too foreign. It had been a long time since Sadie had done anything fiddly or whimsical. She tossed the strands aside.

It struck her that one of the characters in the A.C. Edevane novel she'd finished the night before had mentioned a childhood summer spent weaving boats from long pieces of grass. No great coincidence, of course. It made sense that an author would raid her own life to furnish her characters with thoughts and memories. That's what Clive had meant about reading between the lines of Alice's novels, searching for clues that might shed light on the disappearance of Theo Edevane. He hadn't mentioned finding anything—indeed, he'd confessed to the habit with a wry, self-deprecating smile, as if inviting Sadie to laugh with him at just how desperate he'd become for credible information. Now, though, Sadie wondered. Not about the A.C. Edevane books, so much as whether it was possible Alice knew something important, something she'd kept secret all these years.

Sadie glimpsed another largish stick and picked it up, jabbing it restlessly against the ground. Did that explain why Alice hadn't replied to her letters? Was she guilty? Clive was right; the guilty could generally be divided into two groups: those who were constantly underfoot as they strove to “help' officers with their enquiries, and those who avoided police like the plague. Was Alice one of the latter? Had she seen something that night, and was Clive right when he guessed she'd been returning to the Loeanneth library to report it to police? Perhaps it was Alice who'd told Rose Waters about the tunnel; perhaps she'd even seen the nanny herself that Midsummer's Eve?

Sadie jabbed the stick hard into the dirt. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't enough. Supposing Alice
had
told Rose about the tunnel—it wasn't a sufficient sin, surely, for her to lie, not when a baby was missing, not unless there was some other reason Alice owed Rose Waters her silence. Sadie shook her head, impatient with herself. She was overreaching, trying too hard, and she knew it. This was exactly why she needed to keep running, to shut off whatever habit it was inside her that wouldn't stop assembling theories.

Ash had won the game of tug-o'-war and arrived back at Sadie's feet now, dropping the stick with a proud flourish. He panted imploringly, before nudging it with his nose. “Oh, all right,” she said, tousling his ears. “Once more, and then we have to go.” She hurled the stick, prompting the dogs to bark with pleasure as they raced through the grass.

Truth was, Sadie had gone a bit cold on her Rose Waters theory since leaving Clive's. No matter which way she turned it, kidnapping a child seemed too extreme a reaction for an otherwise sane woman. And by all reports—the file had contained more than one—Rose Waters was sane. She was also described, variously, as “efficient', “attractive' and “vivacious', with an impeccable service record. She'd had only one month off in the ten years since she'd started work with the Edevanes, and then only because she was called away on “a family matter.”

Even if she had been unfairly dismissed, and even if she did desire revenge against her employers, the grievance suffered didn't seem strong enough to fit the crime. Plus, there'd have been enormous practical difficulties in executing the abduction. Could one woman possibly have acted alone? If not, who was her accessory—Daffyd Llewellyn, some other unknown person?—and how was he (or she) induced to assist with such a personal vendetta? No, she was clutching at straws, seeking to draw connections where there were none. Even the motive now seemed weak. There'd been no legitimate ransom request, which rather scotched suggestion, didn't it, that Rose been seeking financial recompense?

Far-off thunder made the air contract and Sadie cast an eye to the horizon. The sun was setting, throwing light onto a heavy band of dark grey clouds out at sea. Rain was coming. She called for the dogs, eager to get going. Her shoelace had come undone and she leaned her foot against a nearby stone to re-tie it. Regardless of who took him and why, the question of what happened to Theo Edevane remained. Presuming he'd survived beyond Midsummer 1933, he must have gone somewhere. Children couldn't be stolen and then absorbed into a new situation without drawing attention. Someone
must
have noticed. There must have been suspicions, especially in a case that had received so much press coverage. The fact that nothing credible had come to police attention over the course of seventy years suggested that Theo had been very well hidden, and the best place to hide a child was in plain sight. By inventing a scenario so believable that no one thought to question it.

Sadie was tightening her other shoelace when something on the stone caught her eye. Time had eaten away at the letters and a fine speckling of lichen grew over them, but the word was still perfectly clear to Sadie, who'd been spotting versions of the same all fortnight.
alice
. Only this one was different from the others; there was more etched beneath it, lower on the stone. She knelt, pulling the grass away as the first fat splotches of rain began to fall. It was another name. Sadie smiled. The engraving read,
alice + ben. always.

* * *

The cottage was still dark and empty when Sadie and the dogs returned, cold, drenched and hungry. Sadie found a dry towel for Ash and Ramsay and then heated up some leftover stew (lentil and love!). She ate hunched over her notes at the table as rain drummed steadily on the roof and the dogs snored with deep contentment at her feet. When she'd all but licked clean a second bowl, Sadie wrote her third letter to Alice Edevane, requesting permission to enter the house. She considered asking outright whether there was a concealed tunnel in the hallway near the nursery on the second floor, but thought better of it. Neither did she mention Rose Waters or the keen interest she had in discussing Clementine Edevane and any information she may have harboured on the case. Sadie said only that she had a theory she was keen to follow up and she'd be much obliged if Alice would get in touch. She'd missed the Saturday collection, but took an umbrella and ducked out in the dark to post the letter anyway. With any luck it would reach Alice on Tuesday; in the meantime, Sadie would be glad to know it was already on its way.

She took the opportunity while she was in the village and had a single flickering bar of mobile reception to hunker down beneath the awning of the general store and check her phone for messages. There was still nothing from Donald and Sadie pondered the fact before choosing not to interpret his silence as reproach, rather as tacit agreement that she should resume work as she'd suggested, after making contact in London next week.

On a whim, before leaving, she put in a call to Clive to ask about the 1939 nursing-home interview with Constance deShiel. Something in the account she'd read was flashing dully on the switchboard of her mind, but she couldn't put her finger on what or why. Clive was pleased to hear from her but disappointed when she posed her question. “Oh, that,” he said. “There was nothing in it. She'd deteriorated terribly by then, poor thing. Awful way to go—spent her days ranting and raving about the past, mixing things up, getting herself upset. No, it's Alice Edevane who holds the key to solving this thing. She's the one we need to talk to.”