The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (7 page)

I woke to a soft knock, mumbled an answer and then drifted back into the warm smell of fresh toast and the morning light on my face. I had the sense of velvet curtains being drawn back, I heard the slide and clip of them; and as my eyes shifted open I saw a shadow leave the room and close the door behind itself.

Beside me was a tray with buttered toast and a steaming pot of tea. All right, I thought, pulling myself to a seated position, this was all very ostentatious and unnecessary, but it certainly bested having to stumble downstairs for your first cup of the day. I sat up in bed, feeling rather like a roosting crow, in my nest at the top of the house. Perhaps in a moment I would wake up and be back in my tiny bedroom at home, with the noise of the milkman’s dray passing in the yard below and Elsie, my mother’s help, shouting across the wall to the neighbours.

After a while I hauled myself out of bed, and washed and shaved in the bathroom below. Alec had said I might encounter his wife at breakfast. ‘I’m skipping the whole thing at the moment: the sight of her gives me indigestion,’ he’d said last night. She had been absent for dinner as, apparently, was usual at the moment, and it had been a relief to get drunk with Alec and consume Mrs Pennyworth’s excellent saddle of lamb without constraint.

In the hall, the dining-room door stood ajar. I braced myself, took a breath and entered.

It was a large-windowed, high-ceilinged room, with portraits of pastoral scenes hanging from the picture rails. The stench of the cigar Alec had smoked last night was gone, and in the brisk light from the sea the place appeared crisp and clean. There was a starched white cloth on the table, and at one end of it, reading a newspaper and eating a boiled egg, was Mrs Bray.

She was wearing a similar gown to the one she had been wearing yesterday, draped over a sort of Chinese pyjama affair, which most likely were not pyjamas at all. She had also styled her hair and done something to her face, because the sallow demeanour of the day before was gone. A gold locket with some elaborate engraving hung round her neck. She did not bother to glance up when I came in, and continued reading as if I were not there at all.

I was determined not to stoop to her level. ‘Good morning,’ I said, and was rewarded by a murmur from the parlourmaid, Agnes, who was placing cold meats on trivets that stood on the polished sideboard, but a silence from Mrs Bray. The stutter that had been the curse of my school life trampled my tongue for several seconds before I managed to say, ‘Is th-th-th-that coffee fresh?’

Agnes picked up the pot. ‘I’ll be back immediate,’ she said, and left the room, leaving me alone with the witch. Previous trips to Lancaster Gate and various other relatives’ houses had instructed me with the breakfast-room modus operandi, and I sat down as far from Mrs Bray as possible, helping myself to slivers of bacon, a couple of eggs, two plump sausages and a spoonful of mushrooms.

From the hallway, there came the faint sound of crockery smashing and a hurriedly hushed-up commotion. Mrs Bray shook her paper and looked at Scone as he entered, bringing the scent of fresh coffee before him. ‘Everything all right?’

‘A broken teacup, madam.’ He set the coffee and toast on the table.

Mrs Bray pulled a slice of toast from the rack. ‘I suppose that’s the girl again.’

Scone nodded. ‘I shall dock her wages, of course.’

She smeared jam on her toast, the flat of her blade crushing the bread. ‘Just tell her that if she can’t manage to hold a tray properly I’ll boot her all the way down to kitchen maid and she can bother Mrs Pennyworth instead.’

‘Very good, madam.’ He left the room, presumably to give poor Agnes a dressing down on his mistress’s behalf. I wondered what bad luck had led the mite to serve in such a graceless household, but I forbore to comment and instead managed to eat my extremely delicious bacon, which melted under my tongue in a way it never did at home.

After a while, however, I sensed I was being watched, and looked up. Mrs Bray was drinking her coffee, appraising me. ‘I see you’re not on the train back to the hinterland yet,’ she said. Her blood-tinted nails tapped her china cup.

The bacon caught in my throat. I swallowed it with difficulty. ‘My health requires me to stay.’

She rested her elbows on the arms of her chair. ‘Very good. I suppose I should feel guilty now for upsetting the poor invalid.’

I speared a mushroom. ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You didn’t upset me in the slightest.’

She put her head to one side and surveyed me. ‘Perhaps not,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’re so grateful to be in these fabled rooms that you’ll put up with anything.’

I felt myself turning purple but tried to keep my voice low as I said, ‘I never much notice my surroundings, to be honest.’

‘Oh, come on now.’ She leaned her chin on her hand. ‘The first time I saw the inside of Castaway I nearly wet myself. Do you know, Mr Carver, you and I have a lot in common. We’re both outcasts, after all.’

I glared at her. In my lap, my napkin was scrunched in my fist. ‘I don’t believe I’m an outcast,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t presume to speak on your behalf.’

She widened her eyes. ‘But Alec’s told me all about it. How your mother was cut off from the family fortune because she got herself up the duff by a minor official. Still, I’m sure it was a thrilling romance, wasn’t it? And all worth it in the end.’

Irony gleamed coolly in her gaze. I squeezed my fork with my left hand, longing to plunge it into that delicate white forearm which was turned towards me now.

‘She loves goading people,’ Alec had said last night. ‘And she’s bloody good at it. Likes nothing better than to set the cat among the pigeons.’

I forced myself to breathe steadily and, keeping my voice at a calm pitch, said, ‘As thrilling a romance as yours with Alec, no doubt.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we’ve certainly had our thrills all right.’

She stood up, her gown swirling about her, snatched up her newspaper and left the room. I stared at the buttery mushrooms, my heart beating fast, my breath scratchy in
my throat, ashamed but relieved that I had survived the skirmish; and if there were to be more – well then, I would be ready.

Slowly, my heartbeat returned to normal. I ate the rest of my breakfast in peace, looking out of the bay windows at the cobalt-blue sky, and I thought of the sketchbook and pencils in my case. A different maid came back to clear the dishes, and curiosity got the better of me. I said humorously, ‘Cup broken earlier, was it?’

‘Sorry about that, sir. It was the parlourmaid.’

‘Agnes?’ I ventured, and she nodded. ‘A new job for her, isn’t it?’

‘New for all of us,’ said the maid. ‘Since Sally disappeared so sudden the lot of us’ve been moved about. One of those things, sir.’

‘Disappeared?’

The maid nodded. ‘No note or nothing. Just vanished. I mean, it’s not on, is it? Well, she won’t get a reference like that, is what I say.’

She bundled the napkins inside the tablecloth and left the room. I supposed that servants were often prone to disappearing; I certainly would have been unable to stand working in this house for more than five minutes. I went back upstairs to collect the leather bag containing the tools of my hobby, thankfully avoiding Mrs Bray, and thought no more about it.

The sun was rising to a warm pitch by the time I left the house. I walked down the hill to the promenade, turned a sharp right and followed it along, under the cliff towards the pier, slotting my coin into the turnstile and walking along the planks. Below me, a few families were starting to
set up camp on the sand, unpacking their luggage of parasols, blankets and picnics.

I walked to the very end, passing elderly ladies and gentlemen on their morning perambulations. I settled on the furthest view, facing to sea, and took out my book. I had watercolour sketches inside, painted during my year of recuperation: the view over the rooftops from my bedroom window, the brightly coloured barges on the canal. I flipped to a new blank page, possibilities darting about as always, rested it on the rail and, pulling out a ready-sharpened pencil, attempted a rough sketch of gulls bobbing on the waves.

‘Mr Carver!’

The voice in my ear startled me. The pencil scored a thick grey line across a gull’s beak. I growled to myself and looked round for my attacker.

It was the neighbour of yesterday, Dr Feathers. He was leaning over my shoulder in a far too intimate manner, and smiling at me through his beard. ‘I was calling you from the other side of the pier,’ he said. ‘But you were lost in your own world.’

‘I was,’ I said, hoping he would infer from this that I wished to remain lost, but it seemed that Dr Feathers was not attuned to the subtleties of communication. He waggled a finger towards the sea. ‘Sketching the view, eh?’

I realized I would be unable to continue while the doctor was standing behind me, and so I put away my pencil and turned to face him. ‘That’s the idea.’

He stroked his beard as he peered at it. ‘Jolly good,’ he said. ‘No paint, eh? Wish I were a painting man myself. Always fancied a little dabble in
les beaux arts
. What do you
think of the Paris scene? Can’t abide them meself. All those horses without heads and mechanical elephants. No, give me your Monet or Manet or Degas any day. Now, they were geniuses.’

Beyond the doctor, a little further along, I noticed two girls leaning on the rail. One, blonde and pretty, flicked me a blue-eyed glance and then turned back to her friend and giggled. I blushed cadmium red and felt very conscious of how I was standing and the position of each hair upon my head.

‘Tell me, how is Mr Bray at the moment?’

It was just as well, I thought, that I had Dr Feathers to talk to. At least I had a purpose, so to speak, and appeared fully occupied.

‘Um … he’s very well, as far as I know.’

‘Dear Viviane’s passing was a terrible loss.’ The doctor stared mistily out to sea. ‘Insisted on consulting that charlatan from London. A terrible loss.’

‘Alec seems to be coping fairly well,’ I murmured, closing my sketchbook.

The doctor raised his eyebrows, causing his glasses to wobble on his nose. ‘Did you know, Mr Carver, that the month after it became clear Viviane wasn’t going to make it, Mr Bray jumped into marriage with the Tutt girl? Have you read Freud? Quite marvellous, the whole psychology aspect. Know Mrs Bray well, do you?’

‘I only met her yesterday, actually,’ I said, as breezily as I could.

‘Aha,’ he said with a triumphant air I could not quite fathom. ‘Of course, I’ve known Clara Bray since she was a child.’

I frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

The doctor beamed. ‘You didn’t know that she grew up in Helmstone? She was a wild kid, almost feral. I used to see her hanging around outside Castaway, hoping for … well, who knows what?’

‘Oh.’ I wondered why Alec had not told me. ‘I’d heard she was an actress. I thought they’d met in London.’

‘I wouldn’t know about such a thing,’ said the doctor artlessly. ‘All I know is, she left here as dirty little Clare Tutt, voice of a fishwife, and returned as Clara Bray, with a plum in her mouth and her nose in the air. Obviously the servants all despise her;
she’s
below
them
, you see.’

‘She must have had elocution lessons,’ I murmured, and felt oddly guilty for discussing Mrs Bray in this way. After all, she had given me no reason to defend her cause. Yet somehow it did not feel quite right, and so I turned and peered up to where the crenellated roof of Castaway could just be seen poking out from the tip of the cliff, and beside it the Featherses’ slightly narrower one, reducing in size all the way down the hill. Castaway did look rather lonely, I thought, stuck out on the end like that, with an expanse of nothing to its left.

But all I said to Feathers was, ‘It’s quite a marvellous old building, isn’t it?’

‘Too big,’ snapped the doctor. ‘Only families with pretensions would buy it. Of course, that was the Devereaus all over – Viviane’s family. Always banging on about how they could trace their lineage back to the Normans, as if being descended from that rabble was something to be proud of.’

‘She was always rather a Francophile,’ I said, wondering
exactly how much Dr Feathers knew of our family. ‘Alec told me she installed that lovely art nouveau glass over the door.’

‘I’m sure. Viviane was a beauty in her day, of course. I often think if I hadn’t married Mrs Feathers … but there you go, one can’t go about regretting the past, eh? After all, I’m sure the current lady of the house doesn’t.’

I mumbled non-committally and surreptitiously glanced at the girls. They were quite openly staring at us now, as if they were trying to listen in on our conversation.

The doctor turned and saw them. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘Lizzie, Maddie, come here and meet our new neighbour.’

At the realization that these were the doctor’s progeny, my stomach sank a little. The girls walked towards us; and the younger one, who looked about fifteen, with mousy hair spilling out from an untidy bun, darted towards me, while the prettier, blonde one, who was, I thought, about eighteen, hung back, her cheeks blooming vermilion.