The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (17 page)

‘Thanks, missus.’ He climbed back into his cab, and Mrs Hale turned to the woman and said, ‘Lizzie! I thought you weren’t ever going to come.’

‘Some people have things to do,’ said the woman coldly, and I breathed in with the full knowledge that
this
was her. This was the girl who’d signed her name as Robert Carver’s wife.

As I hovered, Johnny said, ‘Yeah, well, tomorrow with the rent, all right?’

I turned to him, as both Mrs Hale and her sister saw us beside them on the pavement. Johnny was already backing away, heading up the steps towards the house.

‘All right,’ I called after him. ‘I promise.’

‘Rosie!’ said Mrs Hale. ‘Let me introduce you. This is my sister … and … oh, Lizzie, this is one of our employees.’

Lizzie looked at me as if I’d crawled out from under a stone. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Well, if you don’t mind, Madeleine, I’d better get inside and see to Father. Heaven knows you’ve probably been leaving him to stew the entire morning.’

She hobbled towards the house, leaning heavily on her stick. Mrs Hale watched her go with a stricken look and
said, ‘Sorry, Rosie. My sister’s not been … very well. It affects her mood. I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?’

‘Did she … ?’ I began, and Mrs Hale paused in her scurrying up the path. I wanted to ask about Lizzie and Robert, but I didn’t know how to put my question without seeming horribly rude and nosy. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, and watched my boss follow her sister up the steps, attempting to lend her an arm and being shaken off irritably.

I turned back to the house. Johnny had disappeared inside, leaving the front door swinging wide open. I was about to follow him when I happened to glance over into the basement area and saw Dockie hunched on the steps, wrapped in his coat, looking up at the porticoed entrance and muttering to himself.

‘Dockie!’ I called, my heart sinking a little as he turned his head and saw me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Rosie. My dear, dear Rosie.’ He staggered to his feet and climbed the few steps back to ground level. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’

He came towards me and clasped my hands in his own, too quickly for me to escape, although I noticed belatedly that the grime around the nails was gone, and they were clipped clean and short. The nasty smell that had been surrounding him had also more or less lifted. ‘I owe you everything,’ he murmured, dropping his head, and I thought for one awful second he might be about to kiss my finger, as if I were the Pope.

‘Oh no,’ I said, horribly embarrassed. ‘Please don’t. It was nothing.’

He continued to grip my hands. ‘You have brought me
back to life,’ he said. ‘I arrived here with nothing. You contrived for me a room, and made me food, and bought for me the symbols of a civilized human being. Soap. Clean clothes. I am indebted, my dear. Indebted.’

I understood from this that he had not yet noticed my purloined shoes still in his room. I really had to pick them up before he saw that he might not owe me exactly everything. ‘It’s the least anyone would do,’ I muttered, noticing he had yet to tidy up his shaggy beard, although it did seem to bristle with a cleanliness that I hadn’t noticed the day before.

‘Certainly it is not.’ He stood up straighter and tapped his head. ‘Your care, dear Rosie, has brought back clarity.’

‘It has?’ I wondered whether he’d drunk any of the tonic wine I’d provided. He certainly seemed in much more buoyant spirits than yesterday.

‘I woke in the night, you see, with a moment of absolute remembrance.’ He gestured to the house. ‘I dashed outside, and stood looking up, just as we are doing now, and I remembered it all, Rosie. I remembered it all.’

‘Oh, good.’ I wondered when I could politely leave him to it. I glanced around, looking for an escape route, and saw, in the distance, the unmistakable, long-legged gait of Star, making her way up the hill towards us. She hadn’t seen us yet, and as I watched her a confused tumble of emotions jostled for the upper floor of my mind.

‘I remembered Castaway House, and its significance,’ Dockie was saying, and I turned reluctantly away from Star. ‘You see, my dear, I realized that this place holds the key.’

‘Okay.’ I wondered if I’d missed something. ‘The key to what?’

He tapped his chest. ‘The key to myself.’

I heard Star’s footsteps approaching up the pavement, and, distracted by the sound of them, it took me several seconds to understand what Dockie was saying. When I did, I wished I’d paid him more attention. ‘What? Do you mean your memory came back? From all those years ago?’

He nodded, his eyes gleaming. ‘Last night, I found the newspaper clippings, and the world was unlocked. They were in my boot. Can you believe that? In my left boot.’

I could quite certainly believe it. ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, his enthusiasm buoying me up, because surely this was more important than Harry’s insults or Star’s oddness.

‘I knew everything. Who I was, why I was here, and what Castaway House meant to me.’ He shrugged. ‘It was just a flash though. For a brilliant, electric moment, I understood it all. And then, almost as suddenly, it was gone.’

The footsteps paused, and I knew Star was arriving.

‘What? You mean … ?’

‘But I knew it then. And if I knew it then, it will come again.’

‘Your memory went? You can’t remember any more?’ I said to Dockie. Behind me, I sensed Star hovering on the walkway, the magnet of her drawing me into her orbit. I tried to ignore her. ‘What about the newspaper clippings?’

‘Ah.’ He held up a finger. ‘I put them in a safe place. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember where that safe place is. But I shall find them again, never you worry.’

‘No, Dockie. No. We must find them. This is … this is terrible.’

‘Absolutely not.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I do not want an artificial aid. I want to remember properly, truly. This is why I have been sitting where you found me, waiting for the knowledge to strike inside me again.’

The idea of this seemed so desperately sad I hardly knew what to say, although Dockie seemed enraptured. He looked back up at the house again, and jumped when Star said, ‘Sorry, can I just get past?’

He stared at her, his face bulging with shock, and I turned. She was closer than I’d realized, and she smelled of something sweet: honeycomb, perhaps. I nodded at her politely and said, ‘I didn’t notice you there.’

She smiled at me. ‘That’s all right. I’ll leave you both to it.’

Dockie was making a sort of gurgling noise in his throat, and looking at Star with wild, mad eyes. ‘Clara,’ he whispered. ‘Clara.’

‘Eh?’ Star took a pace backwards.

Dockie gripped my arm. ‘I …’ he began, and his beard quavered. ‘I must …’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I must think. I must think about Clara.’ He was panting hard, as if he’d been running. ‘Come with me, Rosie. Come and listen to me. Help me make sense of it all.’

‘All … all right.’ I glanced quickly at Star, who had her hands on her hips and a fascinated look on her face. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Anywhere.’ He peered up at the house and then let go of my arm. He walked down the steps on to the pavement. ‘Into town. Not here. I must make sense of the thing in my head. You will help me, won’t you, my dear?’

‘Of course. I …’ I looked again at Star.

‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You carry on.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to let you know how much I’m looking forward to your party on Thursday.’

Her face slackened. ‘Uh?’

‘Yes, thanks for the invitation, seeing as we’re friends and all that.’

‘Rosie …’ She pulled a face. ‘Listen, can we talk?’

I knew I ought to go with Dockie, I knew I ought not to give in to her, just as I always gave in, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Wait for me,’ I called to him. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

He waved and turned so his back was against the stone wall that bordered the front garden of the house. Star was leaning against the railings that bordered the basement steps, and I followed her. ‘Well?’

She shrugged. ‘Y’know, I thought you might not like it. The party, I mean.’

I looked at her, took her in properly, the force of her presence over me now. ‘If you’ve got some … problem with me, just tell me, okay? But I can’t bear all this push-and-pull stuff. I’m not cut out for it.’

‘I don’t mean to be push and pull.’ She put out a hand and touched my shoulder, as she’d done yesterday in the hallway. ‘You’re my friend.’

‘Then why didn’t you invite me to the party? Are you embarrassed of me, is that what it is? Do you think I’ll show you up in front of all your friends?’

‘No,’ she said with a pout, but so vehemently I felt there was some truth there. ‘Of course not.’

‘I suppose I’m far too square for you.’ I shrugged. ‘Well,
Johnny doesn’t think so, and he’s invited me, so I’m coming anyway.’

‘You’re not square.’ She let go of my shoulder and held on to the spikes of the basement railings. ‘I mean, you are a bit, but that doesn’t matter. I like it. I’m glad you’re coming. Honestly.’

I put my hand around the spike beside hers. ‘Is this anything to do with Gill?’

Her lashes closed once. ‘Gill was just a stupid cow.’

‘Well, I’m not her, okay? I mean, whatever sort of row you had … You can trust me.’

Star shook her head. ‘You don’t understand.’ She stole a glance at me. ‘I didn’t want it to spoil things. The party – I didn’t want it to spoil our friendship.’

I frowned at her; I had no idea if she was telling the truth or just saying it to get round me, just as she always did. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course it won’t. How could it?’

‘I don’t know.’ She inched a little finger over to mine. ‘I’m glad you’ll be there.’

I linked our fingers on the warm metal of the railings, the black paint flaking under my grip. A shiver ran along my arm. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Star looked over to where Dockie was still leaning against the wall, gesticulating to himself. ‘He’s a madman,’ she said. ‘Don’t go anywhere near him.’

‘He’s not.’ I peeled myself away from the railings. ‘He’s just a poor lost soul.’

Star frowned. ‘Are you okay? You look as if you’ve been crying.’

I shrugged. ‘Time of the month.’ She still looked concerned.
‘It wasn’t over your party, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s not the event of my life.’

She grinned. ‘No. All right. Me and my ego.’ She took a step towards the path. ‘But listen, there is something funny about that chap.’

I lowered my voice. ‘He’s had a brain injury.’

She shrugged. ‘Either he’s completely mad or he’s one of those prophets – you know, dressed in rags and performing miracles – and we all ignore him until it’s too late.’

I snorted and started to head towards Dockie. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’

I was almost out of reach when she grabbed my arm and whirled me back to face her. Her breath still had that sweet smell to it, and she looked down at me and said in a whisper, ‘He is, or otherwise how on earth did he know my real name?’

‘What?’

She winked at me and then, on an impulse it seemed she could not control, reached forwards and touched my cheek. She traced my jawbone with a finger and then snatched her hand back, her eyes darting up at the house.

‘Bye,’ she whispered, and was gone, up the stairs to the main entrance and in through the front door.

My face tingled where she’d touched it. ‘Clara …’ I murmured to myself.

Dockie had moved to the pillars in front of the Bella Vista. Dr Feathers was sitting in the same chair in the window, with Lizzie opposite him. She was talking rapidly, but he appeared not to be listening. I raised my hand and he dazedly lifted his own hand in return.

‘Clara,’ Dockie murmured when he saw me, tugging at his beard. ‘Who is Clara?’

Surely its being Star’s real name was just a crazy coincidence. I remembered that Ted the foreman had mentioned a similar name … but I must have got that wrong. I wished I’d been listening more carefully now.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Maybe if we try hard enough, we can get back that memory of yours.’

He nodded at me and smiled, and we matched pace with each other as we walked down the hill towards town. I still glowed with the memory of Star’s touch, and the way she’d looked as she’d caressed my face, her pupils flaring black, almost eclipsing the violet of her eyes.

After my trip into the slums in the erroneous pursuit of Mrs Bray there followed several days of rain, and I spent the time either skulking in the library or staring at the screen in darkened rooms at the town’s various picture houses. Luckily, I had not seen my hostess once, and now that the weather had suddenly turned fine again, I received a message in the afternoon, delivered by Scone, that I was to meet Alec ‘in front of our beach hut’. When I questioned Scone further on where this might be, I was told that Mr Bray had assured him that Mr Carver would be able to find it without too much difficulty, being a ‘clever sort’.

That was why five o’clock found me stumping along the beach, sand burrowing into my shoes, peering at each hut in turn at the holidaymakers slouched there in various states, from fully clothed to semi-naked. The sky was puffy with clouds, although that hadn’t stopped the London weekend hordes descending on Helmstone in their thousands. I tripped over feet and parasols, begged apologies, sweltering in my clothes yet feeling that familiar tug on my chest all the same, and I was thoroughly red-faced and annoyed by the time I heard a voice call, ‘Robert!’

I turned. Alec was waving at me from further along the beach, where a larger line of chalets clung to the edges of
the sand. A decked area was laid out in front, and outside one of them, its doors open to the sea, sat Alec on a wicker chair, a low table beside him upon which stood an ice bucket and two glasses. On the other side of the table, thoroughly filling out another wicker chair, was a fat young man.

I slunk through sand towards them and breathed heavily. ‘What an awful day,’ I said. ‘Give me overcast and dull any time.’

Alec shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘Honestly, Robert, anyone would think you were a hundred and three. Here, come and say hello. Bump, this is my cousin, Robert Carver. Robert, my old school coeval, Hugh Mason-Chambers.’

The fat man leaned forwards and enveloped my hand in two plump sweaty ones. ‘How d’you do, Carver? Just call me Bump. Glad to meet you at last; Alec says you’ve been a real help with the old Hall of Fame.’

‘Not … not really,’ I said. ‘Just lent an artistic eye, I suppose.’

‘Heard the tableaux were your idea. Jolly good one.’ He twisted in his chair. ‘Sampson!’

From nowhere appeared a man with sleek hair and an athletic build, a champagne flute in his hand. In one move he lifted the bottle from the bucket, poured a glass of fizzing liquid and handed it to me.

We toasted the Hall of Fame’s success. Sampson disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived.

‘Damn good, ain’t he, my Jew?’ said Bump proudly, as if speaking of a grandchild. He bent out of his chair, holding his glass to where I stood awkwardly on the sand. ‘Anyhow, to future riches!’

‘I certainly hope so,’ muttered Alec, and then, recovering his usual cheerful demeanour, added, ‘I mean, with Robert on board, it’s practically guaranteed.’

I shifted under the weight of this extra responsibility. ‘When are you hoping to open?’

‘Not long now,’ said Bump airily. ‘Always a hiccup, isn’t there, Bray?’

‘Teething problems,’ said Alec. ‘Of course, it’s all
her
fault. If she’d helped us, as she was supposed to, we wouldn’t be behind at all.’

A short silence followed. Bump turned his champagne flute round by the stem and studied the bubbles. I looked out to sea.

Finally Bump coughed and said, ‘Coming out on the razz tonight, Carver?’ I turned towards him and he winked heavily. ‘Bray and I are painting the town red.’

‘But it’s the Featherses’ soirée,’ I said. ‘Or have you turned it down?’

Alec closed his eyes. ‘Bugger. Completely slipped my mind.’ He opened them again and winked at Bump. ‘Robert wouldn’t have forgotten. He’s taken a fancy to one of the Feathers girls. How is all that going, then? Does she defy her pure and innocent appearance?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, attempting to sound shocked. Bump and Alec roared with laughter.

‘Don’t tell me,’ hooted Bump. ‘You go to the pictures and spend the entire night with your hand creeping up her arm, and by the time you get anywhere interesting she does a sort of wriggle and you’re back to square one.’

This was not exactly the truth, but I was certainly not about to tell him that after my and Lizzie’s secret kiss
beside Rudolph Valentino, and our eventual red-faced conversation afterwards, pretending that nothing had ever happened,
she
had been the one inching closer to me at the cinema. Strangely enough, for some reason I had found myself actually watching the films, and had been almost annoyed that Lizzie’s fingers were fluttering inside my palm.

I had by now taken a thorough dislike to Bump, and so I merely drank my champagne as if the idea of discussing a lady’s behaviour was far beneath my dignity. I cast about for a new topic of conversation. ‘Is the chalet yours?’ I said to Alec, who was busy winking and smirking at Bump.

‘Er … rented.’ He burped and put his hand over his mouth, a second too late. ‘Clara usually moons about in here, flicking paint on her dreadful canvases, but when she heard Bump was coming down she took off.’

‘Can’t stand me,’ said Bump, attempting to look rueful. ‘No doubt I’m a bad influence.’

‘You do your best,’ said Alec, and they smirked again.

‘She paints?’ I said, squinting at the grey interior of the hut, trying to see canvases. ‘I didn’t know she painted.’

‘If you can call it that.’ He made a humphing sound. ‘I call it daubing.’

‘No harm in having a little hobby.’ Bump nodded. ‘For the ladies. Men, though. Let me tell you, I’ve met a number of male artists. Bunch of pansies, the lot of them.’

Alec coughed and glanced at me. ‘Of course, Robert’s an artist.’

Bump glanced at me with distaste. ‘Yes. I’d forgotten that.’

I put my glass down on the table. ‘Thank you for the
champagne,’ I said, and then, to Alec, ‘I must get back and change for dinner.’

Alec groaned as if the effort of even thinking about dinner at the Featherses’ was too much for him. ‘What time do we have to be there?’

‘Seven, for eight,’ I said.

He wrinkled his nose. ‘I’ll be there at five to.’

‘Blow them out,’ roared Bump. ‘They sound like a lot of bloody bores anyway.’

I left them as Bump called for Sampson to pour more champagne, and wound my way back up the hill. I sincerely hoped I’d never have to meet Alec’s business partner again: he was just the sort of boy I’d hated at school, always trying to screw one’s head into the ground during rugby, flicking one’s backside with a wet flannel in the changing rooms, the kind who thought knowledge and learning were seditious weapons best avoided at all costs.

A couple of hours later I left Castaway, alone. The evening air held a pleasant little breeze, and I ran up the steps of the Featherses’ house wishing I’d had further to walk to get there. The parlourmaid Doris, dressed in black for the occasion, opened the door and led me into the hallway. It was much narrower than Castaway’s, although every time I had been here I had had the sense of life spilling over itself behind the closed doorways.

In fact, as I stood in the hallway a door there burst open and a young boy I had never seen before ran towards me, brandishing a wooden sword, a sticky ring of something round his mouth. ‘Ngah,’ he snarled at me. ‘You go away now.’

Doris groaned. A buxom woman in a starched uniform leaned over the upstairs railing and said, ‘You little devil! I’m going to smack you so hard, you won’t see next week!’

The child looked momentarily distressed and then turned tail and ran towards the servants’ stairs at the end of the hallway.

‘You wait there!’ we heard, as the nanny ran down. ‘I’ll skin the hide off him,’ she muttered at us, before making away after the boy.

‘Sorry about that, sir.’ Doris headed for the staircase and I followed her. ‘If you’d like to come this way. Some of them are already here, you know. Arrived too early,’ she added with a sneer.

From the basement, I heard a distant squawk.

‘Was that the youngest Feathers I saw?’ I asked.

‘Master Anthony. Runs Nanny Woods ragged, poor thing.’ This last was said with some malicious amusement in her voice, and I suspected the two did not get on.

The first time I had visited Lizzie at home, I had been struck by how the Featherses’ house was a perfect reverse copy of my cousin’s, only smaller. Now I had got to know it a little better, I almost preferred it. The drawing room here, at the top of the first flight of stairs, had a permanently opened door – unlike at Castaway, where Mrs Bray had claimed it for her own – and Doris led me inside.

A few people were dotted about the drawing room, murmuring politely to one another. A gramophone player in the corner cranked out an inoffensive tune. I looked round for Lizzie, but saw only Dr Feathers, who approached with his arms drawn wide as if to embrace me.

‘Mr Carver! How good of you to be so punctual. A highly underrated virtue, if I may say so myself. Elizabeth and the other girls will be down shortly; there have been tears today because I am only permitting Lizzie to stay for the dinner. Girls, Mr Carver, cause one nothing but trouble. Tamsin! Tamsin! Mr Carver is here.’

I shook Mrs Feathers’ ghost-like hand. She was a pale, faded woman – if one were asked to describe her as a colour, she would have been beige. I had wondered before how on earth she could put up with Dr Feathers’ monologues without wanting to strike him on the head with the poker. However, I had come to realize immediately that had she ever had any life in her the good doctor had long ago bled it dry.

‘Wonderful to see you again, Mr Carver,’ she said in a voice like autumn leaves. ‘Lizzie says such nice things about you.’

‘Yes. Good of you to take her on,’ said Feathers. ‘She was moping about the house like a lost soul for months after the Frederick Sponder episode.’

‘Honestly, Father!’ said a sharp voice behind him. He turned and Maddie stood there, her brows knotted. ‘You … you can’t …’ However, here her nerve failed her and she trailed off before turning and stomping across the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Feathers weakly, as I wondered of what exactly the Frederick Sponder episode had consisted. ‘I don’t know what’s got into her recently.’

‘She’s fifteen,’ muttered Dr Feathers. ‘That’s explanation enough.’

And then Lizzie was in the room, her hair arranged in a complicated sort of chignon, and her eyes flashed when
she saw me, and I was utterly relieved that we were over that awkward kiss a week ago. ‘Good evening, Robert,’ she said demurely, and I sensed the snare of her gaze even as I looked away.

‘Ah! You’re here! Good. Now, Lizzie, I want you to circulate. Talk to our guests. Don’t stick to Mr Carver like a stray puppy all night. Get you a drink, Carver? You look like a Scotch man to me.’ Before I could refute that, he was waving a tumbler of the hideous stuff over towards me.

Lizzie bent her head towards me. ‘Must go,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry. Doctor’s orders.’

‘It’s fine,’ I whispered back. ‘I’ve plenty to amuse myself with here.’

I walked to the floor-length window, from where I could see mist wreathing the waves. The guests were, I imagined, the great and good of Helmstone: the promised mayor, a few town councillors, probably a headmaster or two, plus the inevitable spare women. There was a clump of them by the other window, wreathed in flowers and perfume; I observed that they seemed rather jolly to be spinsters, and were knocking back their sundowners with gossipy abandon. I smiled genially to hide my disapproval at the sight of them larking about.

I had a sudden thought of Mother and Father in the dining room with the oilcloth on the table and the doily dead centre, the mantelpiece with the jade figurine that Mother had been given on her seventeenth birthday. We weren’t a noisy household; even as a child I’d been tamed and quietened, but I felt all the same that they might be missing my presence, for without me all they had in common
was their deepest, most heartfelt desire not ever to make a fuss. I presumed this was because of all the fuss that had occurred when they’d eloped together twenty years ago. They’d been retreating from it ever since.

‘How d’you like the parents’ collection, then?’

I turned, startled. Madeleine Feathers was standing next to me, her hands behind her back, rather in the manner of her father, nodding at the wall of paintings that I had been unconsciously staring at.

‘Oh. Yes. Very – um – very … I’m sorry, I hadn’t even paid them any attention.’

Maddie laughed. ‘Come and have a look. Do you think this is proper hostess behaviour? Mother says if I’m good I may even be allowed to stay to dinner next time.’

‘You’re doing a marvellous job,’ I said, and allowed her to lead me over to the wall. I had been in the drawing room a few times since my arrival next door, and yet I had always felt rather constrained from looking round the room. I took the opportunity to have a good peruse now I was here in company. There were various portraits of, I assumed, the Feathers brood, framed in the usual velvet, including one of Lizzie and Maddie as young girls, holding white feathers in their palms, which struck me as almost grisly in its mawkish symbolism. There were others, possibly of deceased household pets, and one, at the edge, that seemed not to fit at all.