The Lake House (28 page)

* * *

Alice had been walking faster than she'd meant to and an ache was tightening her chest. A stitch, she told herself, certainly not a heart attack. She reached a seat and sank onto it. She decided she would stay a moment and catch her breath. The breeze was light on her skin, and warm. In front of her was a bridle path and beyond it a playground where children were scaling colourful plastic equipment, chasing one another while their nannies, girls with ponytails, wearing jeans and T-shirts, chatted beneath a tree. Adjacent to the playground was a sand-covered enclosure where mounted officers from the Knightsbridge barracks were training. It struck Alice that this was very near the spot she'd sat with Clemmie that day in 1938. It was true what people said, that when one became old (and how sneakily that happened, how sly time was) memories of the long-ago past, repressed for decades, were suddenly bright and clear. A prim little girl had been taking riding lessons, round and round the sand in circles. Alice and Clemmie had been lounging on a picnic blanket discussing Clemmie's intention to begin flying lessons. It was before the war started, and life in London for the daughters of well-to-do families was much as it always had been, but there was talk everywhere if you knew where to listen. Alice had always known where to listen. So, it seemed, did Clemmie.

Seventeen by now, she had flatly refused to participate in the Season and only narrowly been stopped at the docks after selling a number of family heirlooms so she might travel to Spain and fight with the Republicans in the civil war. Alice, impressed by her sister's grit, had nonetheless been glad to see her dragged back home. This time, however, seeing Clemmie's doggedness, the fierce enthusiasm with which she brandished the newspaper advertisement for the flying school, Alice had promised to do whatever was necessary to help convince their parents to agree. The day was warm and they'd finished their lunch and a pleasant lull had settled over them, due in part to the recent accord they'd reached. Alice was leaning back on her elbows, eyes closed behind her sunglasses, when Clemmie said, apropos of nothing, “He's still alive, you know.”

It turned out she hadn't given up hope, after all.

* * *

Now, Alice looked for the precise place they'd been sitting. It had been near a garden bed, she remembered, and between two enormous roots of a chestnut tree. There hadn't been a playground then and the nannies, in long dresses and cloth hats, had gathered by the Serpentine, holding the hands of their small charges, pushing the littlest in large black perambulators. By Christmas that year, the grass would be gone, making way for trenches built in preparation for future air raids; that day with Clemmie, though, the war with all its terror and death was still ahead of them. The world was in one piece and the sun still shone.

“He's still alive, you know.”

Five years had passed, but Alice knew at once whom Clemmie meant. It was the first time Alice had heard her sister speak of Theo since he disappeared and she felt the burden of confidante heavily. Adding weight to the responsibility was her certainty that Clemmie was wrong. Stalling, she said, “How do you know?”

“I just do. It's a feeling.”

The girl on the horse was trotting now, and the horse shook its mane so that it glistened proudly.

Clemmie said, “There was no ransom note.”

“So?”

“Well, don't you see? If there was no ransom note, whoever took him did so because they wanted him.”

Alice didn't reply. How was she to let her sister down gently while leaving no doubt? How was she to do so without confessing too much?

Clemmie's face, meanwhile, had become animated. She was talking quickly, as if she'd been waiting five years to speak and now that she'd started there must be no hesitation. “I think it was a man,” she was saying, “a father without a child, who was visiting Cornwall and happened to see our Theo and fell madly in love with him. That man had a wife, you see, a kind lady who dearly wanted children but had been unable to have them. I can picture them, Alice, the husband and his young wife. Well-off, but not stiff or pompous, in love with one another and the imagined children they intend to have. I can see them getting sadder as the years pass, and the woman fails to fall pregnant, and the realisation slowly dawns that they might never hear little footsteps in the hall or laughter from the nursery. A pall settles over the house, and all music and happiness and light leave their lives, until one day, Alice, one day when the man is away from London on business, or meeting an associate—” she waved a hand, “it doesn't matter why—he comes near Loeanneth, and he sees Theo, and he knows this is the very child to bring joy back to his wife's soul.”

The trotting horse had whinnied right then and Alice saw Loeanneth in her mind, the surrounding fields of farmland, the neighbouring horses for whom they'd used to sneak Cook's apples. Clemmie's story was full of holes, of course, not least because nobody stumbled unwittingly on Loeanneth; it was also inspired, at least in part, by Deborah's troubles. (“Five years and still no baby,” the whispers skated off the walls at society gatherings.) A memory came of nightingales by the lake on the cusp of dawn and she shivered violently, despite the sun's strength on her skin. Clemmie didn't notice.

“You see, don't you, Alice? It wasn't the right thing to do, and it brought misery to our family, but it was understandable. Theo would have proven irresistible. Do you remember the way he used to wave his arms when he was happy, like he was trying to take off?” She smiled. “And he was so
wanted
. He's growing up surrounded by love, Alice, happy. He was young when he went, he'll have forgotten us, forgotten that he was ever part of us, even if we could never forget him. I can live with my own grief when I think of him happy.”

There'd been nothing Alice could say to that. She was the writer in the family, but Clemmie had a gift for seeing the world through a different lens. If she were honest, Alice had always been in awe, even a little jealous of her sister's imagination, as if her own claims to creativity, her stories, the product of so much effort and error, were rendered lesser beside Clemmie's innate originality. Clemmie's was a naivety of sorts that necessarily cast the other person in the role of realistic brute. Alice didn't want to play that part, and what point was there in arguing? Why destroy the enchanting fantasy her sister had created: a new life for Theo, a loving family? Wasn't it enough that she, Alice, knew the truth?

But Alice, greedy, had wanted to hear more of Clemmie's story. “Where do they live?” she'd asked. “How did Theo turn out?” As Clemmie spun her answers, Alice closed her eyes and listened, envying her sister her innocence and certainty. It was such an alluring way to think, even if misguided. For Theo wasn't living a new life with a loving family in a beautiful home. Clemmie was right that there'd been no ransom note, but wrong about what it meant. Alice knew, though. The lack of ransom note meant that it had all gone terribly wrong and Theo was dead. She knew because it was exactly how she'd planned it.

E
ighteen

The day she came up with it had started like any other. It was 1933, early spring but still cold, and she'd been sitting in the Loeanneth airing cupboard all morning with her feet against the hot-water tank, reading through the collection of newspaper clippings she kept beneath lock and key in the filigree metal box Grandfather Horace had brought back from India and she'd purloined from the attic. She'd found an article about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh boy in America and it had got her thinking about ransoms and notes and how a criminal might best baffle police. She'd realised recently (an awareness that coincided with her new obsession with Agatha Christie) that what her previous story attempts were missing was a puzzle, a complex, knotty twist of events designed to mislead and bewilder readers. Also, a crime. The key to the perfect novel, Alice had decided, was to revolve the story around a crime's solution, all the while tricking the reader by making it seem she was doing one thing when in fact she was merrily doing another. Pressing her woollen-socked toes into the tank's warm cladding, she scribbled and jotted, turning over ideas as to who and why and, most importantly, how.

She was still thinking along these lines after lunch when she rugged up in her mother's old sable coat and sought out Ben in the garden. It was blustery out, but he was by the fishpond where he'd been building the secret garden, the whole thing sheltered within a tall circular hedge. She sat down on the cold marble edge of the pond, digging the heels of her Wellington boots into the mossy surrounds, and experienced a jolt of pleasure when she saw the copy of
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
she'd lent him peeking from his kitbag.

Ben was on the other side of the garden clawing at weeds and hadn't heard her approach, so Alice sat for a moment. His forearms were exposed, perspiration beginning to bead and crumbs of dirt clinging to his damp skin. He flicked longer strands of dark hair from his eyes and finally she could stand it no longer. “I've had a brilliant idea,” she said.

He turned quickly; she'd startled him. “Alice!” Surprise gave way quickly to pleasure. “An idea?”

“I've been working on it all morning and I don't like to boast, but I'm quite sure it's going to be my best yet.”

“Is it?”

“It is.” And then she said the words that later she'd have given anything to take back. “A kidnapping, Ben. I'm going to write a book about a kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping,” he repeated, scratching his head. “Of a child?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Why would someone want to take a child that wasn't theirs?”

“Because the parents are rich, of course!”

He looked at her perplexedly, as if not sure how one thing connected to the other.

“For money.” Alice rolled her eyes playfully. “A ransom.” An edge of sophistication had sharpened her voice, making her sound, to her own ears, very much a woman of the world. As she continued outlining the plan for him, Alice couldn't help but admire the appealing element of danger her story lent to her, an impression that she knew an awful lot about the workings of the criminal mind. “The kidnapper in my story will have fallen on hard times. I'm not sure how exactly, I haven't settled on the details. Perhaps he was cut out of a Will and lost his inheritance, or else he's a scientist and he's made a tremendous discovery but his business partner, the father of the child, has stolen his idea and made loads of money from it and he's bitter and angry. It hardly matters why, only—”

“—he's a poor man.”

“Yes, and he's desperate. He
needs
the money for some reason, perhaps he's got himself into debt, or he wants to marry a young woman from a different sort of background.” Alice felt her cheeks warm, acutely aware she'd skirted very close to describing their own predicament. She went on hastily, picking up the threads of her plot. “Whatever the case, he needs a lot of money quickly and figures this is the way to get it.”

“Not a very likeable chap,” said Ben, shaking clumps of dirt free from the roots of a large weed.

“The villain doesn't need to be likeable. He's not meant to be. He's the villain.”

“People aren't like that, though, are they, all bad or all good?”

“He's not a person, he's a character. They're different things.”

“Well,” Ben shrugged lightly, “you're the writer.”

Alice wrinkled her nose. She'd been on quite a roll but the interruption had made her lose her train of thought. She turned back to her notes, hoping to pick up her place.

“Only,” Ben drove the gardening fork into the dirt and looked around at her, “it occurs to me now, it's one of the things I don't much like about these detective novels of yours.”

“What's that?”

“The broad brushstrokes, the lack of subtlety, the idea that morality is unambiguous. It's not the real world, is it? It's simplistic. Like something from a children's book, a fairy tale.”

Alice had felt his words like a knife. Even now, at the age of eighty-six, making her way past the football fields on Rotten Row, she flinched to recall them. He'd been right, of course, and well ahead of his time. These days
why
trumped
how
every time, but back then Alice had seen no merit in his suggestion that the fascinating subject of why ordinary people might be induced to commit a crime was worth addressing; she'd cared only for tricks and puzzles. A wave of anguish had hit her when he said it, as if it were
her
he was calling simplistic, and not the genre. The day was cold, but with the swell of embarrassment and hurt that enflamed her Alice was steaming. She ignored his critique, moving on crisply with her description of the story. “The kidnapped child will have to die, of course.”

“Will she?”

“He. Better if it's a boy.”

“Is it?”

He'd been amused then, infuriatingly so. Alice refused to return his smile, her voice imperiously patient as she continued. She spoke as if she were explaining things to him that he really ought to know. More excruciating, she behaved as if she were educating him on a topic a man like him couldn't hope to understand. It was awful. She could hear herself play-acting the Little Rich Girl, a role she despised but was powerless to stop. “Boys are more valuable, you see, in a familial sense. Heir to the lands and title and all that.”

“All right, a boy then.” His tone was as easy as ever. Even more infuriating! “But why does the poor lad have to die?”

“Because a murder mystery needs a murder!”

“More of your rules?” He was teasing. He knew he'd hurt her and was trying to make amends. Well, she wasn't going to be so easily won over.

Coldly: “They're not my rules. They're Mr Knox's, published in
Best Detective Stories
.”

“Ah, I see. Well then, that's different.” He took off his gloves, reaching for a paraffin-paper-wrapped sandwich. “And what are some of Mr Knox's other rules?”

“The detective isn't allowed to be helped by an accident or unaccountable intuition.”

“Sounds fair.”

“No twins or doubles unless the reader has been earlier prepared.”

“Far too close to cheating.”

“And there should be no more than one secret room or passage. That one's important for my story.”

“Is it? Why?”

“I'll get to that in good time.” She continued reciting the rules, counting them off on her fingers. “The criminal must be mentioned early in the story; the reader shouldn't be privy to his thoughts; and last but not least, the detective should have a stupid friend, a Watson, who is slightly, but no more than slightly, less intelligent than the average reader.”

Ben paused mid-bite and pointed casually between them. “I'm getting the distinct impression I'm the Watson in this team.”

Alice felt her lips buckle and could resist no longer. He was so handsome, smiling at her like that, and the day was beginning to brighten, the sun peeking through the clouds. It was simply too hard to stay cross with him. She laughed, and as she did his expression changed.

Alice followed his gaze over her shoulder, through the break in the hedge. For one dreadful moment she was convinced she was going to see Nanny Rose behind her. Alice had been watching from the window the other day and had seen the two of them, Ben and the nanny, talking. Things had looked a little cosier than she'd have liked. But it wasn't Nanny Rose at all, just Mother, who'd emerged from the back door and was sitting now on the iron seat, one arm folded across the other, a faint ribbon of smoke rising from the cigarette between her fingers.

“Don't worry,” she said, rolling her eyes and ducking her head back out of view. “She won't bother us—not today. We're not supposed to know she smokes.”

She was trying to sound offhand, but the carefree mood of the past half-hour had gone. Alice and Ben both knew how important it was that they keep their relationship secret, especially from Mother. Eleanor didn't approve of Alice liaising with Ben. There'd been a few general comments over the past few months about choosing one's company carefully, and then the other night a particularly awkward scene in which Mother had called her up to the library after supper. There'd been a strange tension in Eleanor's face, despite her pretence at ease, and Alice had intuited what was coming. Sure enough: “It isn't seemly, Alice, for a girl like you to spend so much time talking with members of staff. I know you don't mean anything by it, but people will get the wrong idea. Your father certainly wouldn't approve. Imagine if he were to look out of his study window and see his daughter consorting with someone so unsuitable, a gardener, for goodness' sake.”

Alice didn't believe for a moment that Daddy would be so small-minded as to disapprove—he didn't care one whit for arbitrary class distinctions—but she didn't say so. She didn't dare. Mother could've had Ben fired in an instant if she decided he was too much trouble.

“Go on,” said Ben, with a wink. “Get out of here. I ought to keep busy, and you've got a masterpiece to write.”

She was touched by his concern, the unspoken care in his voice. “I'm not afraid of getting in trouble, you know.”

“I didn't think you were,” he said. “Not for a moment.” He handed her the Agatha Christie novel. She shivered when their fingertips met. “Let me know when you've worked out more of your story.” He shook his head with mock horror. “Killing little boys. How very grisly.”

* * *

The number 9 bus drove by as Alice waited to cross Kensington Road. It was one of the old Routemasters and had an advertisement for the Kirov corps de ballet's
Swan Lake
on its flank. Alice would have liked to see the production but was afraid she'd left it too late to organise tickets. She didn't go to the ballet unless she could sit close enough to hear the dancers' pointe shoes hitting the stage boards. Excellence was the result of hard work and Alice had no interest in pretending otherwise. She understood illusion was part of performance, that dancers strived for the appearance of ease; she knew, too, that for many in the audience the romance of effortless grace was the point; but it was not so for Alice. She was a great admirer of mental and physical rigour and considered a performance much improved by the sheen of sweat on the leading man's shoulders, the sigh of completion at the end of the ballerina's solo, the blunt thud of toes hitting wood as the dancer spun and smiled. It was just the same as spotting the scaffolding in other writers' books. Awareness of construction didn't diminish her pleasure, only added to it.

Alice was not of a romantic disposition. It was one of the ways in which she'd wilfully distinguished herself from Eleanor, a childhood resolve that had hardened into habit. To wit, her mother's favourite ballet story came from the summer she met their father. “It was 1911, before the war, and the world was still filled with magic.” Eleanor had told it often over the years. “I was staying with my aunt in Mayfair and had met your father earlier that week. He invited me to see the Ballets Russes perform and I said yes without thinking twice, without checking with my mother as it happens. You can imagine, Grandmother deShiel almost disowned me. Oh, but it was worth it. That night! How perfect it was, and how young we were. How impossibly young.” At that she always gave a small smile, acknowledgement that her children would of course never truly accept that their parents had been anything other than as they were now. “Nijinsky in
Le Spectre de la Rose
was like nothing I'd seen before. He danced a fifteen-minute solo and it passed like a dream. He was wearing a silk tricot, palest nude, onto which were pinned dozens of silk Bakst petals, pink and red and purple. The most exotic creature, so
beautiful
, like a shiny, graceful insect on the verge of flight. He leapt as if it cost him no effort, lingering in the air far longer than was possible, and seemed not to touch the stage between times. I believed that night that a man might fly, that anything was possible.”

But no—Alice frowned. She was being unfair. Eleanor might have retained her childhood fluency in the fairy-tale language of fate and superstitions, but her romantic nature wasn't all love affairs and happily-ever-afters; it was a way of looking at the world, an entire moral system all of her own. She possessed an innate sense of justice, a complex system of checks and balances that determined the measure of something she called “rightness.”

This instinct for moral balance had been in evidence during the last conversation they ever had. Eleanor had just returned home after seeing
An Inspector Calls
at the New Theatre and had telephoned Alice at once to declare the evening “uplifting.” (Mother had relaxed a little during the war. All that death and destruction must have made the small, arbitrary rules of society to which she'd long been captive seem far less important.) Alice, who'd seen the play already, had been silent for a moment before replying, “The part where the innocent young girl is mistreated and driven to suicide, or the depiction of the despicable Birling family who couldn't care less about her suffering other than to save their own skins?”