The Lake House (44 page)

“I'm fine,” said Alice. “Everything's fine.”

Peter was by her side now, asking whether she'd like a glass of water, some fresh air, some lunch, all of which she flapped away with her hand. “Really, Peter, I'm quite well. It's just the surprise of being back here, the memories.” She handed the sketch to him. “Look,” she said, “my little brother. That's Theo.”

“Oh my, what a wonderful drawing. Did you . . . ?”

“Of course not.” She almost laughed. “A family friend, Daffyd Llewellyn, drew it.”

“The writer,” said Peter, as pleased by the news as if he were learning the answer to a long-held question, “Of course. Mr Llewellyn. That makes perfect sense.”

Mention of the writer reminded Sadie that the conversation had shifted course before she'd satisfied herself as to the timing of his suicide. It occurred to her now that he might have felt guilty, not because he harmed Theo, but because he'd failed to stop Anthony. “Was your father close to Daffyd Llewellyn?” she asked.

“They got on very well,” said Alice. “My father regarded him as a member of family, but beyond that they had a great professional respect for each other, both being medical men.”

They had more than that in common, Sadie remembered. Daffyd Llewellyn, like Anthony, had been unable to continue practising medicine after a nervous collapse. “Do you have any idea what brought on Mr Llewellyn's breakdown?”

“I never got the chance to ask him. I've always regretted that—I meant to, he was behaving uncharacteristically before the Midsummer party, but I was focused on other things and left it too long.”

“There was no one else who might have known?”

“Mother, perhaps, but she certainly never said, and the only other person who knew him as a young man was Grandmother. Getting the truth from her would have been a feat; there was no love lost between them. Constance couldn't countenance weakness, and as far as she was concerned Mr Llewellyn was beneath contempt. Her pique when his OBE was announced was prodigious. The rest of us were immensely proud—I only wish he'd lived to accept it himself.”

“He was your mentor,” said Peter gently. “Like Miss Talbot was for me.”

Alice lifted her chin, as if to stave off tears if they so much as dared to threaten. She nodded. “Yes, for a time, until I decided I'd outgrown him. Such hubris! But then, the young are always so eager to shake off the old, aren't they?”

Peter smiled, sadly it seemed to Sadie.

The memory must have triggered something in Alice for she sighed with determination and brought her hands together. “But enough of all that,” she said, turning to Peter with renewed energy. “Today is not for regrets, unless to overcome them. Have you got the supplies?”

He nodded. “I've left them by the front door.”

“Splendid. Now do you think you might find—”

“The floorboard with the moose-head whorl? I'm on it.”

“Excellent.”

Sadie ignored talk of moose heads and took back Eleanor's letter when it was proffered. She couldn't imagine what it would feel like to read a letter like that, written by her own mother. A voice from the long-ago past, reaching into the present to complicate a truth she'd always held dear. It occurred to her that it was a very brave thing to do, to write one's feelings down on paper and give them to another person.

An image of Charlotte Sutherland came to mind. In all her panic at receiving Charlotte's letters, Sadie hadn't stopped for a moment to consider the act of courage involved in writing and sending them. There was something incredibly intimate about the transference of sentiment; and in Charlotte's case, to write not once, but twice, had been to risk rejection a second time. Sadie had all but tripped over herself in her rush to grant that rejection the first time—was Charlotte brave or foolhardy to come back for more? “What I don't understand,” she said, as much to herself as to the others, “is why anyone would keep a letter like this. It's one thing to write it in the heat of the moment, but to keep it forever after . . .” She shook her head. “It's so personal, so
incriminating
.”

A smile appeared on Alice's face and she seemed more herself. “That's a question you only ask because you're not a letter-writer yourself, DC Sparrow. If you were, you'd know that a writer never destroys her work. Even if she fears the power of its contents to implicate her.”

Sadie was wondering about that when there came a call from outside. “Hello? Anybody there?”

It was Bertie's voice. “My grandfather,” she said, surprised. “Excuse me a minute.”

“I've brought lunch,” he said as she reached the front door, holding up a basket loaded with a huge Thermos and bread that smelled fresh from the oven. “I tried to call, but your phone rang out.”

“Oh, bugger, sorry. I had it on silent.”

Bertie nodded understandingly. “You wanted to focus.”

“Something like that.” Sadie took out her phone and checked the screen. There were six missed calls. Two from Bertie, the other four from Nancy.

“What is it? You're frowning.”

“Nothing. Never mind.” She smiled at him, suppressing a growing wave of concern. Nancy was single-minded when it came to her daughter's disappearance, but to make this many calls was unusual. “Come inside and meet everyone.”

“Everyone?”

Sadie explained about the surprise arrivals, glad as she did that they were there. She had a feeling Bertie might otherwise have been angling swiftly to turn lunch conversation to the subject of Charlotte Sutherland or the fallout from the Bailey case, two topics Sadie was eager to avoid.

“Well then, it's a good thing I always cook extra,” he said cheerfully as Sadie led him towards the library.

Alice was standing with her arms crossed, glancing at her watch and drumming her fingertips, and Clive looked relieved that Sadie had returned.

“This is my grandfather, Bertie,” she said. “He's brought lunch.”

“How kind of you,” said Alice, as she came forward to shake his hand. “I'm Alice Edevane.” All hint of nerviness had gone and she was suddenly mistress of the house, exuding the sort of effortless authority Sadie figured they must have taught in wealthy families back then. “What's on the menu?”

“I've made soup,” said Bertie. “And hard-boiled eggs.”

“My favourite.” Alice rewarded him with a short nod of surprised pleasure. “However did you know?”

“All the best people prefer hard-boiled eggs.”

Remarkably, Alice smiled, a genuine show of appreciation that quite transformed her face.

“Granddad's been baking all week for the hospital stall down at the Solstice Festival,” Sadie volunteered, apropos of nothing really.

Alice was nodding approval when Peter returned, a small black pouch in hand.

“Ready when you are,” he said, and then, noticing Bertie, “Oh, hello there.”

Introductions were briefly made, and there was a confused moment during which Alice and Peter debated whether to carry on directly with their planned task or stop first for a bite to eat, before deciding it would be rude to let Bertie's soup get cold.

“Splendid,” said Bertie. “Perhaps you can show us the best place to eat. I wasn't sure how habitable the house would be so I brought a picnic rug.”

“Very sensible,” said Alice. “This is a garden made for picnics. Rather overgrown at present, I'm afraid, but there are some lovely pockets down by the stream and not too far to walk.”

Alice left the room with Peter and Bertie, chatting busily about an enormous sycamore tree in the garden, a wooden glider, and the boathouse beyond. “My sisters and I spent most of our time down there,” Alice was saying, her voice fading as they disappeared down the stone path. “There's a tunnel in the house that leads all the way to the edge of the woods, right near the boathouse. We used to have the most tremendous games of hide-and-seek.”

The morning had taken a strange turn, and as silence fell, Sadie turned to Clive with a slight shrug of bewilderment. “I guess we'll break for lunch?”

He nodded. “Looks that way. I'll walk with you, but I won't be able to stay. My daughter and her family are taking me for an afternoon antiqueing.” He looked less than thrilled by the planned outing and Sadie winced in commiseration. They walked to where the others were waiting, and it was only as they skirted the lake that Sadie realised they were heading in the opposite direction to where the car was parked. Furthermore, it occurred to her, she hadn't seen Clive's car when she arrived that morning. And in any case, the entrance gate had been locked. “Clive,” she said, “how did you get here today?”

“By boat,” he said. “I keep a little dinghy moored with a friend's trawler in the village. It's the easiest way to get between here and there—quicker than driving.”

“A lovely journey, too, I'll bet. Such peaceful countryside.”

He smiled. “Sometimes you can go the whole way without glimpsing another soul.”

Sadie's phone rang then, shattering the peace and quiet, and she pulled it out, grimacing when she glanced at the screen.

“Bad news?”

“It's Nancy Bailey. The case I was telling you about.”

“The little girl's grandmother,” he said. “I remember. I wonder what she wants?”

“I don't know, but she's been calling all day.”

“Must be important for her to keep calling you on a Saturday.”

“Maybe. She's nothing if not dogged.”

“Will you ring her back?”

“I shouldn't really. There's an inquiry, and if the Super finds out I'm still in contact with her, it won't take long for him to put two and two together. Besides, we're busy here.”

Clive was nodding, but Sadie could tell he had reservations.

“You think I should call her?”

“It isn't for me to say, only sometimes when a case gets under your skin, it's because there's something that still needs your attention. Look at me, here, seventy years later.”

The phone rang again, Nancy Bailey's number showed on the screen, and Sadie glanced at Clive. He smiled encouragement and with a deep breath she picked up.

T
hirty-one

Afterwards, Sadie found the others by the stream. The picnic blanket had been spread in the long grass beneath a willow tree, and a small dinghy called
Jenny
bobbed in the gentle current at the end of the boathouse jetty. Peter and Clive were in earnest conversation, and Alice, sitting neatly on an old chair salvaged from somewhere, was laughing at whatever Bertie had just said. Sadie sat on the edge of the blanket and absent-mindedly accepted a mug of soup. Her mind was racing, busily unpacking every piece of evidence she'd worked so hard over the past few weeks to shelve. There was a moment in the working of each case, a tipping point, when one particular clue provided a new lens through which everything else was suddenly rendered clearer, different, connected. What Nancy had just told her changed everything.

“Well?” said Clive. “I couldn't leave until I knew what she said.”

Conversation had stopped and everyone was watching Sadie keenly. It occurred to her that all the people she'd confided in about the Bailey case and her ignominious attachment to it were assembled here on the picnic rug.

“Sadie, love?” Bertie urged gently. “Clive said Nancy Bailey had been trying to get hold of you all day.”

The case was officially closed. She was already in about as much trouble as was possible. She feared she might just burst with the new information if she didn't let it out. Sadie took a deep breath and said, “Nancy told me she'd had a call from the new owners of her daughter's old flat.”

Bertie scratched his head. “The new owners have her phone number?”

“It's a long story.”

“What did they say?”

“They rang to tell her that they'd spotted something written in pen on the Formica edge of the built-in kitchen table. The words read, ‘
It was him
.' They wouldn't have thought much of it, she said, except that Nancy had recently been to see them and Maggie's disappearance was fresh in their minds.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone considered this.

“Who
was he,
and what did he do?” said Peter perplexedly.

Sadie realised Alice's assistant was the only one among them who wasn't familiar with the role she'd played in the Bailey case, her suspicion that there'd been foul play, and quickly brought him up to speed. When she'd finished he said, “Then this ‘him', whoever he was, that's the man you're looking for.”

Sadie noted with vague appreciation that he'd assumed she was right in believing there was more to Maggie's disappearance than met the eye. “I just need to figure out who he is.”

Alice hadn't spoken yet, but now she cleared her throat. “If a woman in trouble says ‘It was him', it's because she thinks people will know who she meant. Did Maggie Bailey have many men in her life?”

Sadie shook her head. “She didn't have many
people
in her life. Just her daughter Caitlyn and Nancy, her mum.”

“What about Caitlyn's father?”

“Well, yes . . .”

“Who now has custody of the little girl?”

“Yes.”

“He's remarried since separating from the child's mother, hasn't he?”

“Two years ago.”

“But they haven't any children of their own?”

“No.” Sadie thought of the time she'd seen Caitlyn at the police station, the way Steve's wife, Gemma, had done the little girl's hair in ribbons, how she was holding her hand and smiling down at her with a warmth that Sadie could feel even from where she stood. “But his new wife seems very fond of Caitlyn.”

Alice was unmoved. “What's the husband like?”

“Steve? Earnest, eager. I don't know him well. He was helpful with our enquiries.”

Clive frowned. “How helpful?”

Sadie reflected on how Steve had led searches for Maggie, arrived at the police station of his own accord to offer information about her character and past, painting police a very clear picture of a flighty, irresponsible woman who liked a good time and was finding the pressure of caring for a child overwhelming. “Very,” she said. “In fact, I would describe him as exceptionally helpful.”

Clive made a soft noise of satisfaction, as if the answer corroborated some deep-held theory of his, and Sadie remembered, suddenly, his comment in relation to the Edevane case, about there being two ways in which the guilty usually behaved. Her skin prickled. There was the first type, he'd said, those who avoided police like the plague, and then there was the second type, the helpful ones, who sought out officers at every opportunity, putting themselves at the centre of the investigation as all the while they nursed their secret guilt.

“But there was a note,” Sadie said quickly, struggling to catch her tumbling thoughts as a terrible new picture began to form. “A note from Maggie, in her own handwriting . . .” Her voice trailed off as she recollected the way Steve had lamented Maggie's carelessness, reproached her for forgetting he was going away that week. He'd said of the changed dates, “I made her write it down,” before switching his words in the next sentence to, “I wrote it down for her.” A small adjustment, but one Sadie had noticed at the time. She'd presumed it a simple slip of the tongue. He was upset and he'd mixed up his words. No big deal. Now, she wondered whether the slip had been rather more Freudian in nature. A gaffe that pointed to another instance in which he
had
forced Maggie to write down the lines he dictated.

“But
murder
?” She was thinking aloud. “Steve?” He'd never been a suspect, not even before they found the note. He'd had an alibi, she remembered, the fishing trip to Lyme Regis. They'd verified the information he'd given them, but only because that was procedure. It had all checked out—the hotel, the time off work, the boat-hire company—and that had been the end of it. Now, though, far from absolving him, it suddenly seemed to Sadie that Steve's absence from London—a trip that took him to a distant part of the country, right when his ex-wife disappeared—presented a perfect opportunity. “But
why
?” Against her own code of practice Sadie couldn't help but puzzle over motive. “He and Maggie were married once. They'd loved each other. They'd had very little to do with one another since their divorce. Why on earth would he suddenly kill her?”

Alice Edevane's crisp voice cut through the tangle of Sadie's thoughts. “One of my earliest Diggory Brent mysteries was based on a story my sister Clemmie told me. We were sitting together in Hyde Park before the Second World War and she told me about a man whose wife so longed for a child that he stole one for her. I never forgot that story. It seemed entirely plausible to me that a couple's desire for a child, and a husband's love for his wife, might lead him to take the most drastic of actions.”

Sadie pictured Gemma's kind, happy face, the way she'd been holding Caitlyn's hand as they left the police station, how naturally she'd swung the little girl onto her hip. Oh, God, Sadie remembered feeling so pleased for Caitlyn when she saw them, relieved that despite the disappearance of her mother, the little girl had landed in a loving home with people who would care for her.

Bertie's voice was gentle. “What are you going to do, Sadie, love?”

Yes, a list of practical tasks. That would help. Far more useful than self-reproach. “I need to re-verify Steve's alibi,” she said, “figure out whether I can place him at Maggie's flat during the period he was supposed to be out of London. I'll need to talk to him again, but it won't be easy, not with the inquiry.”

“Could you call Donald? Get him to ask some questions in your stead?”

Sadie shook her head. “I have to be absolutely certain before I involve him.” She frowned as another thought occurred to her. “I'm going to need to take another look at Maggie's note, too, get forensics to search it for evidence.”

“DNA?”

“That, and signs of duress. We've already had it analysed by handwriting experts who compared it with other examples of Maggie's writing and said there were elements that looked stilted; that it showed the hallmarks of being rushed. It seemed neat enough to me, but they can see all sorts of things that aren't visible to the rest of us. We presumed the haste was due to the enormity of what she was about to do. It made sense.”

The note had been written on an elegant piece of card stock. Maggie had worked at WHSmith, and according to Nancy had acquired a taste for nice stationery. The writing
had
been neat as far as Sadie was concerned, but there'd been a jagged scribble at the top of the card that had given her pause.
She was testing the pen
, Donald had said with a shrug.
I've done it hundreds of times myself
. So had Sadie, and yet somehow it didn't fit. Why, Sadie had wondered, would a person whose belongings and life gave the impression of a fastidious nature, test a pen on the piece of expensive card she intended to use for an important message?

“She wasn't in her right mind,” Donald had said when Sadie raised it. “She was about to walk out on her daughter, she was under pressure, I doubt she was thinking about how pretty the paper looked.” Sadie had bitten her tongue at the time. The letter had been a shock, scuppering her theories and making her seem a crazy fantasist. The last thing she needed was to keep harping on about a bit of ink on a piece of card. Nancy had agreed, though. “Maggie
never
would have done that,” she'd said. “Maggie liked things neat and tidy, ever since she was small she needed things to be just so.”

Suddenly that scribble seemed rather important. What if it were proof that someone else had been there with Maggie? Someone who'd stood over her, perhaps even tested the pen before dictating the message she was to write?

Sadie managed to articulate these thoughts for the others, kneeling as she dug in her pocket for her phone. Thankfully, not remotely legally, she'd snapped a picture of the note before it was officially tagged and filed. Now, she searched through the photo library until she found it, handing over the phone so they could each take their turn.

She stood and began to pace. Could Steve have planned something so terrible, executed a plan so horrific? It was possible she was going mad, clutching at straws, but when she looked at the others, Sadie was reassured. An ex-cop, a crime writer and a PhD researcher. With their combined credentials, they were a crack investigation team, and they all seemed to think there was something in the new theory.

Bertie smiled, his kind, familiar face filled with something rather like pride. “What are you going to do, Sadie, love?” he asked again. “What happens next?”

Whether she was right or wrong, no matter what the consequences for her, if there was even the slightest chance that Steve had stood over Maggie as she wrote that note, if she'd anticipated that things were not going to end well and yet still summoned enough defiance to send a clue to investigators, then Sadie owed it to her to follow up. Or to make sure someone else did. “I think I have to call it in,” she said.

Bertie nodded. “I think you do, too.”

But not to Donald. There was a chance this new lead would go nowhere. She couldn't risk getting him in trouble on her account again. She was going to have to go right to the top, even if it meant revealing herself as the leak. As Bertie and the others packed up the picnic, Sadie dialled the Met and asked to speak to Superintendent Ashford.

* * *

When the others went back to the village that afternoon, Sadie didn't go with them. Clive left in the
Jenny
straight after lunch, having extracted a firm promise from Sadie that she'd let him know as soon as she heard anything back from the Met, and Bertie, who was taking the first shift on the hospital stall, needed to report for duty by three o'clock, when the festival officially opened. He'd tried to entice Sadie with promises of fresh scones and clotted cream, but the thought of being surrounded by good cheer while every nerve in her body was wound tighter than a tick was nauseating.

Alice, however, gave Bertie one of her very rare smiles and said, “I haven't had proper Cornish clotted cream in an age.” She frowned when Peter reminded her delicately about the mysterious task she'd been so intent on since they'd arrived, and then waved a hand declaring that it had waited this long, it would jolly well wait one more day. Besides, it would be better to check in at the hotel before the festival started and the village square became overcrowded. Alice had promised to sign books for their hotelier, a vital step in securing two rooms on festival weekend at such short notice.

So it was that Sadie stood alone, watching as the two cars disappeared down the driveway and were swallowed, one after the other, by the woods. The moment they were gone, she took out her phone. It was becoming a habit. There'd been no missed calls—not a surprise given she'd turned the volume up as high as it would go—and she put it away with a sigh of deep disgruntlement.

Sadie hadn't been completely honest with the others when she'd told them the Met were grateful for the new lead. In truth, Ashford hadn't been remotely pleased to hear from her, and when he heard what she'd had to say he'd been incandescent with rage. Her ear still burned from the blasting she'd received. She couldn't swear that his spittle hadn't travelled down the phone line to scald her. She'd felt her own ire rising in response, but had fought to keep it contained. She'd let him say his piece, and then, as calmly as she could, she'd apologised for her misstep and told him she had new information. He hadn't wanted to hear it, and so, with the sinking stomach of someone gambling with the job she loved, Sadie reminded him she had Derek Maitland's number and it wouldn't look good if it turned out she was right, that a woman had been murdered, and the Met hadn't wanted to know about it.