The Crooked House (13 page)

‘Your
battery. It’s dead.’

She was fairly sure Simon didn’t recognise her: he showed no sign of it. His face was inches from hers as she rolled her window down but he seemed to have trouble with eye contact, blinking, turning his head from side to side. She remembered what Gina had said about medication.

‘In town for the barge match?’

‘A wedding,’ she said, and Chatwin’s blinking increased.

‘I’ll jump-start you,’ he said. Abruptly his head was withdrawn.

She climbed out and he stepped back from her hurriedly, indicating the van. ‘This is me,’ he said, ‘I’ve got leads.’ He opened the rear doors and was inside before she could answer. She climbed back into Paul’s car slowly, released the bonnet and stayed in the driver’s seat in silence as he brought his van round to the front and took his time connecting the leads.

How could he not know her? It seemed impossible. But there was the medication. And he might have been the first
man she’d kissed, but – and oddly she hadn’t thought this before she came back – she would probably have been one of many to him. She felt nauseous.

His head emerged from around the bonnet, pale. ‘I’ll start up,’ he called, staying back. ‘Give it a minute then you try.’

It occurred to her as she looked at the rusted bonnet of his van that his would be the vehicle you’d expect to break down, not Paul’s. Why would Paul’s battery be flat? She turned the key, and to her disproportionate relief the engine fired.

Chatwin reappeared at the window, still standing back, as if it was he who didn’t want to be recognised. ‘Don’t use it much?’ he said. ‘The car? Can happen.’

She nodded, feeling the comforting throb of the engine, readying herself to thank him, preparing for questions, introductions. But he was gone, the bonnet down, the door slammed and the van already in reverse.

The wedding rehearsal seemed to be winding down: voices echoed cheerfully off the little church’s steeply pitched wood and plaster ceiling. Roger Carter was laughing again at the centre of the little knot of them at the font and Morgan, wearing a pale shining dress and taller than all the rest in her high heels, had a hand resting on her father’s shoulder. Alison stood in the doorway.

The flowers were done. The tall blue spikes of delphiniums along the pews, electric in the dim plain church. Cathy Watts would have done them, that diminished figure all swathed in her son’s sweater. There had been no sign of her when Alison pulled up at the church.

She had driven slowly back through the village, wanting to give the engine time to recharge the battery. She came past the row of houses where she’d seen Gina and slowed further. The row where Kyra Price had lived. Her mother had been called Susan: the name came to Alison as she lifted her foot
from the accelerator to give herself time to look. She willed the girl to have lived.

A small white car was parked outside the house. Peering, slowed almost to a stop, Alison saw boxes on the car’s back seat and then the house’s door opened. A woman in a nurse’s tunic, black tights in the heat, was coming through the door. She carried a bag, strapped in dayglo nylon – but Alison had to get her eyes back on the road.

Safely beyond the parked cars she had glanced in the rear-view mirror and seen the district nurse straightening from depositing her bag and standing, looking in her direction. Alison had driven on.

She stood in the church doorway now, looking in, and wondered if Kyra Price could have been ill all this time. She had always thought with leukaemia – children anyway – either you died quickly or you survived. Kyra Price had had big dark eyes, she remembered that much about her, without hair and eyebrows they had seemed huge, that time Esme had seen her, climbing out of the taxi. She would have been eleven or twelve. Old enough to know what dying was.

She must have let in a draught because by the font Morgan in pale silk, mid-laugh, turned her head a little towards the door, and then they had all turned to look at her.

Paul started towards her straight away. His face bent to her neck he said softly, against her skin, ‘We’re going back to their place for dinner. I hope that’s all right.’

There wasn’t really an answer she could give.
No.
He raised his head, and she just smiled.

The Laurels’ broad drive held three cars – a sleek, dark, overpowered one, a convertible and a jaunty yellow Italian number; of course they’d need one each, the Carters, she thought, and no trouble with their batteries – and two trucks, one belonging to a catering company, the other the marquee people. At the
church Paul’s car had started without a problem and she hadn’t said anything to him about what had happened before, only holding her breath as he turned the key.

The Carters all seemed in a state of high excitement in the wake of the rehearsal, and the doctor was flushed with particular triumph, in spite of how much it was all supposed to be costing him. Alison noticed that in any situation he and Morgan gravitated towards each other, conspirators. Of all of them Christian was the calm one, remaining pale and faintly amused. To her surprise Alison found herself fascinated by him, the way his eyes rested cool and thoughtful on Morgan. There was a dining room and Lucy Carter led them to a big table with a high shine on it, laid very formally.

The dinner had obviously been part of the deal with the catering company because a waitress appeared and Lucy Carter sat down with them straight away, next to Paul. Morgan was on his other side. Alison was seated between Roger Carter and Christian. She couldn’t imagine what she would say to them. She closed her eyes for an involuntary second as she sat, behind her eyelids seeing the tide coming in and the big boats gathering out in the estuary, the crooked house in the dark. When this was over she would never come back. She would never see any of it again.

Even before the first course – something mounded under cream sauce – was set down Roger Carter was talking about Stephen Bray, loudly, as if addressing all of them at once.

‘Of course, he was an alcoholic, and he probably had un-diagnosed Asperger’s. The Watts woman looked after him, but she didn’t get any thanks for it.’ He prodded his food. Alison looked down at the white thing on her plate: it was hard, under blue cheese sauce. She lifted her knife and fork but hesitated, without appetite.

‘There seem to be plenty of alcoholics around here,’ said Paul, and Morgan laughed, lifting her glass to her lips and
looking at him over it. Alison put a slice of the thing on her plate in her mouth. It was pear, hard and tasteless under the sauce: she wished she could spit it out.

‘Was he your patient?’ Christian’s voice was mild and uninflected, but Carter looked up from his plate frowning.

‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘You know the surgery’s fifteen miles away, Christian. I wouldn’t want this lot on my books.’

Lucy Carter was on her feet. ‘There’s something – I must just …’ but she didn’t finish her sentence. Creating a diversion, was Alison’s impression. She disappeared towards the kitchen.

‘Where was he found, exactly?’ said Christian. He had pushed his plate away. Alison laid her fork down.

‘Quite odd, that, actually,’ said Carter, putting a big piece of pear into his mouth, chewing. ‘Mulville’s Hard’s not on the way anywhere. Out past … well … out that way.’ He gestured with his knife. He meant past the crooked house.

‘How would he have got there?’ Paul asked the question. He was eating with a fixed expression of distaste.

‘He’d have walked, of course. Across the marsh, most probably.’ Carter’s plate was clean. ‘From that old wreck he lives on. Lived on.’

‘There’s a footpath, too,’ said Morgan, her eyes merry. ‘From the village, the other way. Past the new houses.’ Where Alison had run. ‘Or along the sea wall. I mean, if we’re talking murder.’ They all looked at her and then the waitress was back, circling the table for the plates, disapproving. Lucy Carter came in behind her and sat back down.

‘Murder?’ she said, brightly.

‘The old drunk,’ said Morgan, rolling her eyes.

‘He spoke to me in the pub,’ said Paul thoughtfully. ‘The night we got here.’

‘You said,’ said Carter. ‘I don’t suppose you got into a fight with him, did you?’ And laughed, leaning back in his chair,
looking for the next course. ‘No, seriously. It’s happened a dozen times before, Stephen Bray face down in the mud. No one’s even slightly surprised.’

‘What was he talking to you about?’ said Morgan, leaning into Paul. Her nails were long and silvery on her glass, she glittered.

‘Oh, guess,’ said Paul, and he drained his glass. ‘Ancient history. The murders, what else. It’s a pity nothing else has happened since, couldn’t you have given them a new scandal, Morgan?’

Alison watched Morgan. She leaned back in her chair, hard and beautiful in her shining silk. Christian was watching her, too. ‘The murders didn’t really surprise you either, did they, Daddy?’ she said, and her father blinked, a little bleary suddenly, Alison saw.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘What’s the expression? A car crash. An accident waiting to happen. It didn’t come out of the blue.’

And Alison thought of the kids throwing breeze blocks from the motorway bridge, of Sarah Rutherford clearing up the mess, and from there to the photographs still in their envelope under the car’s passenger seat.

‘I saw him getting into a fight outside the pub, though.’ Morgan was almost gleeful. ‘The man. John Grace.’

The waitress was back, with some chicken and pale potatoes. She began to move around the table.

Carter shifted in his chair, uneasy, but then Alison saw he couldn’t resist. She hated him. ‘Well that was a sad story,’ he began, steepling his fingers, pompous. ‘Young man, whose child died in a fire. They’d had some dealings, I believe. Grace had done some work on his house before the accident and the young man – Frank Marshall – decided he might have had something to do with the fire. They ended up rolling around in the mud one evening, both drunk, Marshall wanting to kill him, or vice versa, God knows.’ Morgan had an expression of sleepy satisfaction as her father spoke.

‘The
young man had a criminal record,’ added Carter, dismissively. ‘Ended up killing himself, I believe.’ He peered at his plate. ‘Anyway, what’s this?’

‘Chicken Véronique,’ said his wife, pale as the plate.

Alison thought of something. She needed to change the subject. ‘That power station,’ she said, and all at once everyone was looking at her. ‘Does it still run? Is there a cancer risk?’ Although Kyra Price was the only one she had ever known, she imagined others, hidden behind their front doors, in bed. Attended by the district nurse. ‘Leukaemia?’

‘They decommissioned it,’ said Lucy Carter. ‘Didn’t they, darling?’

‘They did do some kind of, ah, risk assessment,’ said Carter, frowning at his wife. ‘But they found no evidence of any effect at all, as a matter of fact. Did all sorts of tests. Analysed the oyster beds, even.’ And laughed heartily. ‘Heresy!’

‘You didn’t notice any … greater incidence? Among your patients?’ Alison’s voice was steady and quiet: they were all still looking at her, taking her for some green zealot, perhaps. She took a drink, to cover an inappropriate desire to laugh, or shout.

‘I have cancer patients, of course,’ he said, dismissive. ‘In the usual proportions.’

‘He’s about to retire,’ said Lucy Carter, bright-eyed.

Roger Carter chewed. ‘This is good,’ he said, unconvincingly. Alison watched him, saw him grow uneasy again under her gaze, but didn’t drop it.

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, ah, Alison,’ he said, irritable at last. ‘But this is a perfectly normal village. A happy place.’

Clearing his throat, Christian raised his glass. ‘A happy place,’ he said, and one after the other they followed suit, sheepish, until it came to Morgan. She sounded jubilant.

‘A happy place,’ she said, and drank.

That
night an ancient alarm sounded, an iron clapper mounted high somewhere and hammering so hard it rattled her teeth as she lay in bed.

Blindly she sat up in the dark, felt her head swim. Paul lay on the bed, just beginning to stir.

Lights went on outside and she groped for her glasses. What was she wearing? The dark-red silk thing. Beside her Paul flung out an arm and she started up.

When they had come up to bed the gun had been sitting there, wrapped in its dirty old serge on top of a shirt in his suitcase quite openly. More than openly, it was as if she was being shown it, because the suitcase was open on the bed.

‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing, although she recognised it straight away. Her head was thick from the wine, and from the Carters’ dining room.

Paul picked it up, weighing it, the cross-hatched grip sitting comfortably in his palm. ‘This?’ he asked.

She nodded, dumb.

He sighed. ‘Oh, superstition,’ he said, looking down. ‘Lucky
charm, or something. It was given to me by old Saunders.’ It sat there, dangerous. She didn’t like the idea of Paul being Saunders’ friend, it ranged him against her, somehow, the world of men whose job is being clever. ‘Second World War, used by the Germans in France.’ He held it out. ‘You want to hold it?’ She’d stepped back so hurriedly she had to steady herself, and he set it down. He put a hand in the small of her back, pulling her to him, her hips squared below his.

‘That dinner was an ordeal,’ he said lightly. She felt him press against her. ‘Christ. Poor woman.’

He meant Lucy.

Had any of them been sober by the time they were herded back into the Carters’ big sitting room, with its baronial fireplace? Roger Carter had stood at the mantelpiece while Lucy pressed brandy on them.

Paul hadn’t seemed drunk at all, even though she had tasted the alcohol on his mouth, later.

‘Of course, women like that,’ Lucy Carter had said, handing a glass to Christian, careless, the liquid slopping inside it. ‘What do they expect? Basically just animals. Men, I mean. If you deceive men.’ She was flushed, unable or unwilling to compose a full sentence. ‘How do you think a man will behave? It’s …’ She stumbled over the word. ‘Programming. Evolutionary.’ Christian’s expression was stony.

‘Really, darling,’ said Roger Carter, feebly. ‘That’s rather an old-fashioned view.’

The uncomfortable silence barely lasted a second, and then from her perch on the arm of a sofa, long legs extended in front of her, Morgan spoke.

‘Alison.’ Her voice was warm, golden. Alison held her breath. Morgan tilted her head and her hair swung. ‘So. Where are you from, exactly?’ Poised.

Alison felt Paul shift closer. Terror moved inside her. ‘Alison’s from Cornwall,’ Paul said, before she could answer.

‘Parents?’
said Morgan, looking up at Alison. Her intentions seemed purely malicious and Alison felt panic spin, out of her grasp.

‘My dad’s dead,’ she said, meeting Morgan’s eye, trying to be methodical. Morgan tilted her head, waiting for elaboration. She’s distracting them, her mother’s pissed, she’s embarrassed. She’s being a lawyer, creating a diversion. ‘Heart attack at the wheel,’ Alison said. ‘Car crash.’

Morgan didn’t look embarrassed. Her smile was light, she was all glossy-haired composure. Alison made herself speak again.

‘My mother’s still down there.’ Polly, nothing like a mother.
Sorry
, she said in her head. ‘In Cornwall. I talked to her on the phone today.’ She felt Paul stiffen, but he didn’t turn to question her. Her brain scrambled its emergency responses,
what if, what if
.

What if it goes further? Paul will want to meet her.

‘I swear I heard them, you know,’ said Lucy Carter, unstoppable, holding a glass out to her. ‘The shots, so loud.’ Mechanically, Alison took the glass and Lucy threw up her hands, miming. ‘Boom.’

There was an intake of breath from someone. Lucy looked around at her audience glassily. ‘We were out on the patio, weren’t we? Brandy on the terrace. It was such a cold night.’ Vague, her eyes settled on Morgan, who looked up at the ceiling as though counting in her head. ‘You remember, darling?’ Her gaze shifted. ‘Paul?’

‘You were here when it happened?’ said Alison quickly. Halfway through the sentence she heard her voice rise, trying to sound merely interested.

At her side Paul nodded, absently, watching Lucy. ‘I don’t remember hearing the shots,’ he said, thoughtful.

Lucy looked back at Morgan. ‘Not Daddy, of course.’ At the word on his wife’s lips,
Daddy
, Alison had to turn away. ‘There
was a baby somewhere with a cold or something, and the mother called in the middle of the night. I tried to put her off but Roger had to do his duty. Freezing. A freezing night for June. I went out on to the patio and I heard it.’

Alison thought, I’m going to have to do something. There was no route out of this that she could see. If they asked her one more question … In the darkness beyond the wide expanse of glass she saw the patio, the ghost-white shape of the half-erected marquee beyond it, and she imagined Lucy Carter standing there with her glass in her hand, listening.

Carter shook his head gently. ‘It was Mrs Jonas,’ he said. ‘Actually the child had pneumonia, it turned out. So just as well.’

Morgan shifted. Now, thought Alison. Before she looks at me.

‘Did they never suspect anyone else?’ she said, and Morgan stilled. ‘I mean, apart from the father?’ Christian was looking at her too, his face weary at last. ‘It seems to happen all the time.’ In spite of herself, she pursued it. ‘Fathers killing their children. It seems too easy. For the police, I mean.’ Her lips felt numb. ‘You hope they do their job properly.’ And then she took a drink from the glass Lucy Carter had given her. ‘That’s all.’

Fire.

Did she smell smoke?

In the dark bedroom now, from below them in the hotel Alison heard thumping, voices. Already half out of bed, blindly she put out a hand to Paul. Someone rapped on their door and abruptly he was upright.

‘It’s the fire alarm,’ she said, in the middle of the room.

‘Christ,’ he said, and was out of bed reaching for his clothes. The corridor was bright, no smoke, but there was a whiff of something acrid on the air. Alison’s feet were bare, she felt half naked in the slip, she should have stopped to put
something, anything, over the top but it was too late to go back now. Paul was ahead of her on the stairs. Below them she saw Jan in the hall, her stiff hair disordered from sleep, in a dressing gown and slippers. Holding open the door she turned to look up at them, her face crumpled with tiredness and temper. Feet stood on the gravel beyond her.

Behind her on the stairs someone cleared his throat. It was Christian, in dark pyjamas. She turned and saw him look down the dark silk that slid against her skin. He smiled, wearily knowing.

They’d given him a lift to the hotel when finally, just before midnight, their conversation had drawn to a close. She knew she should never have asked the question, not even to create a diversion. But once it was out there, she had wanted to know. To know the other side of Sarah Rutherford’s carefully guarded responses.

Roger Carter had sighed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time, now. They seemed to be talking to an awful lot of people.’ Morgan moved to his side, setting her drink on the mantelpiece. She could be his young wife, a big handsome blond pair.

‘Ghastly,’ said Lucy Carter, sitting forward on the big plush sofa, her hands thin on her glass.

‘The boy,’ said Morgan, ignoring her.

‘Boy?’ Her father looked at her, bemused.

‘Well, young man, maybe,’ Morgan amplified. ‘Bit older than me? The one who was found on the marsh almost frozen to death the next morning.’

Alison’s heart thumped, fast and loud. What boy? she thought, and those two in their boat came to mind, heading out into the estuary. Brown-skinned Danny and his sad brother Martin.

‘Oh, yes.’ Carter looked thoughtful. ‘Hypothermia, he did nearly die, yes, but it was nowhere near the Grace house. Accident-prone. Simon Chatwin.’ He shook his head, glanced
back at Alison. ‘The police spoke to him, I believe. They spoke to all sorts of people.’

It hit her like a thump between the shoulder blades. Accident-prone. Simon Chatwin’s windsurfer drifting abandoned past the barge’s bulk. Alison turned her face just slightly so Carter’s look fell past her. She stared at the wall, at decanters on the sideboard, anywhere so as not to meet a human eye. She and Simon Chatwin had both been out on the cold marsh after the gunshots, separated by what distance? Chatwin lying unconscious. How? Why?

She said nothing: someone else would have to speak, she didn’t trust herself even to look.

‘It could have been him, though, couldn’t it, Morgan?’ Lucy Carter sat up, excitable. Her daughter regarded her levelly.

‘Do you even know who we’re talking about, Mother?’ she said. ‘As far as I remember Simon Chatwin barely has the energy to roll a cigarette. And what about your theories about husbands being animals?’ Her mother subsided.

At the door, saying goodbye, Morgan had pressed her cheek against Alison’s too long. ‘Let’s get together tomorrow,’ she said. Alison had pulled back, dumbly. Paul’s eyes on her.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Lovely.’

‘Just us girls,’ said Morgan. ‘I’ll show you the dress.’

In the car Alison had held her breath, waiting for the ignition to fire. Paul was looking at her as he turned the key, he didn’t know, of course, and Alison felt the questions start up again. Why had the battery been dead?

She didn’t know enough about cars. Chatwin had an explanation, something about it having been sitting idle, but he’d been uncertain too, hadn’t he? She thought of his dull eyes, the sandy stubble with grey in it, already. How old could he be? Once he’d been golden, once he’d leaned down to kiss her smelling of cigarettes, the sun shining in his eyes, his hands warm. Pity for him softened her.

The
ignition fired, she breathed, and Paul reached for his seat belt. ‘Morgan’s lovely,’ he said. ‘Go tomorrow. Give her a chance.’ Behind them Christian had looked out of the window.

‘Of course,’ she had said.

Fire.

As they came through the hotel’s front door to join the others on the gravel, Alison groped to find Paul’s hand. He looked down at her, amused. ‘I
can
smell smoke,’ she said.

‘Cigarette smoke, maybe,’ he said, but he squeezed her hand briefly. Alison raised her head to locate the smell. Something – a bonfire, someone’s barbecue – but not a real fire. The hotel stood behind them, solid and empty and safe. In the small group of guests and staff Alison felt a movement, a head turning to watch her, and she looked away. Paul’s little car was visible across the gravel in the dark.

They’d all fallen silent by the time they pulled in from the Carters’ that evening and she’d let Paul and Christian climb out while she stayed sitting there, alone inside the car.

Not quite alone. The photographs had been there all along, beneath the passenger seat. Not for one moment since she had pulled that top print out and thrust it away again had she forgotten them; they lay like a stain, a shadow. Alison had leaned, fingers creeping between the footwell carpet and the seat, feeling for the envelope. There: the flap of paper.

‘Darling?’ Paul was back, his head inside. Turning to smile awkwardly over her shoulder she felt something else, a slippery fabric thing, pulled at it.

‘My scarf,’ she said, straightening. Frowning. There all the time, as if it had worked its way under the seat to wait until she needed it, the cover story for her hand reaching for the envelope. Gratefully, she held it to her cheek for a quick embarrassed second.

‘Told
you it’d turn up,’ he said, and held out his hand.

They had said goodnight to Christian on the stairs and Alison had felt it start up then, the flutter of anticipation, or fear. But he had been gentle, this time. He had seemed tired, at first, folding the gun back up in its serge: she had waited. Before Paul had she been so acquiescent? She didn’t think so. She had been the one impatient, the one to experiment, to insist. She had never wanted to submit, to surrender. He lulled her, he quieted her. She wanted to be quieted.

He’d laid her back on the bed, gently, and set to work, crouched over her. She remembered thinking, while she still had control, What do you want? – and then thinking, It doesn’t matter. He’d gone on, stroking her, soothing her, until she forgot the gun wrapped in its dirty cloth, forgot Morgan, his mouth on her softest places until she came and then slid away from him, into the blissful deep, and slept. She didn’t know what he did then, if he stayed awake, if he watched her.

A fire engine had arrived, blocking the drive with its bulk and three, four, five men climbed out and stood about. Cautiously Alison looked at their faces, and knew none of them. The first one took off his helmet, and Jan went over to them. Alison tiptoed, trying to hear. Jan pointed back towards the building and Alison heard ‘Kitchen’. Jan and the lead fireman, his helmet still on, went inside.

It was five, ten long minutes later that they re-emerged. ‘False alarm,’ said Jan, to a ripple of tired assent from the staff. At the sound Alison quickly examined them. A thickset man she thought was the chef; the foreign waitress; a bony, pimpled boy, barely out of teenage years; a woman approaching middle-age. Their faces blank with sleeplessness. She slowed, looked closer – but Paul’s hand was on her elbow. ‘Back to bed,’ he said. The older woman’s tired face followed her, imprinted on her retina, a look she couldn’t dodge.

On the stairs she detected something in him, impatience or
short temper, his head down as he climbed beside her. She should have slept, slept long, not waking until nine or ten, missing breakfast, she should have woken to find him smiling down at her. That was what should have happened, only now they were awake, examining each other in the weird early hours, under artificial light. Their sleep had been disrupted, that was all. She was safe. Safe with Paul.

Back in bed at last Alison dreamed of fire.