The Secret by the Lake (26 page)

She paused to cough, and it was a terrible fit, the worst so far. As soon as she could draw breath she wiped her lips with her handkerchief and continued.

‘So many footsteps. Firstly it was Beinon and my husband clearing up the room, up and down they went and we could hear their voices, just the murmur of them, and then the undertakers came and we could hear them clomping up the stairs in their boots, and then we heard the sound of them coming down again, with the body.’

She closed her eyes, and I heard the noises with her, the undertakers carrying Caroline down the stairs, her shoulders and feet bumping against the wall and her mother sitting here with Mrs Croucher, knowing what was happening, seeing it all in her mind’s eye, her elder daughter wrapped in a shroud being manhandled down the narrow staircase.

‘It must have been awful,’ I said.

‘And I looked at Cora’s hands and they were bleeding. She’d made her own hands bleed. And I asked her to stop hurting herself and she looked at me as if she did not understand. She just stared at me as if she couldn’t even see me. Her eyes were open but she, Cora, wasn’t behind them any more. The woman I’d known, my neighbour, was gone. It was the start of her breakdown.’

‘Grief does terrible things to people.’

‘It wasn’t because of the grief.’ Mrs Croucher paused, hesitating. ‘At least, not only because of that. It was because of what Caroline had done to Jean Aldridge three days earlier.’

‘What had she done?’ I asked, although I thought I knew the answer already.

‘She pushed her into the lake,’ said Mrs Croucher. ‘She murdered her. Mrs Pettigrew, the vicar’s wife, was walking back from the asylum. She saw it all.’

Mrs Croucher’s hands settled on her lap. They picked at the hem of her housecoat. Her chest gurgled and wheezed.

‘If that’s what happened, why wasn’t Caroline arrested?’ I asked.

‘We kept the whole business to ourselves,’ she said. ‘Nobody outside the village knew. We kept it from the children. If the police had been involved, Caroline would have been tried for murder and she’d have hung – and imagine the shame that would have brought to Blackwater. And what would it have done to poor Cora and Beinon, to little Julia? Nobody wanted that. The village committee decided to put Caroline in the asylum. She could stay there for the rest of her life, out of the way.’

‘But she didn’t go to the asylum?’

‘No. She had a fever so they brought her home.’

‘To die?’

‘Yes. They brought her home to die. And it was all too much for Cora, one thing after the other – a murder and then a death – it was too much. She was sitting there, where you’re sitting, and we could hear the footsteps on the stairs when they came to collect the body. We heard the undertakers struggling down the stairs. And oh, dear God, when you were away, all through the night all I could hear was the bumping and the banging, the footsteps – and all I could think of was Cora’s face that night. It took me back there. It took me right back.’

Our elderly neighbour covered her face with her hands and wept. I put my arm around her. I felt the old skin and bones tremble beneath my touch. I felt the rattle in her chest.

WHEN THE DOCTOR
came, I left Mrs Croucher with him and went back into Reservoir Cottage. I opened the curtains and turned off the lights, checked that the door to the empty bedroom was still locked then woke Julia, who was still drifting in her narcotic slumber.

I explained what had happened to her as gently as I could and then comforted her when, woozy and slow, she struggled to understand why her daughter would wish to drug her. I ran a bath and helped her into the water. While she soaked and warmed her aching bones, I took a bucket of bleach and a scrubbing brush into the empty bedroom.

‘This is the end of it,’ I said, not so much addressing Caroline as the bedroom, its walls, the hideous, glued-on paper. ‘I’ve had enough of all of it.’

And I had. I was tired, I was sad and I was angry: with Vivi, with Caroline and with myself. Nobody, I thought, came out of the story I had just heard in a good light. I set to cleaning the writing off the walls with a vigour I hadn’t felt before. ‘“I hate Jean Aldridge”,’ I muttered bitterly. ‘Couldn’t you at least have come up with something a bit more original, Caroline? Hmm?’ And then I remembered that these words had been scrawled by a murderer, a teenage killer – a seventeen year old with a heart as black as sin. I shuddered. I could not bear to touch the letters, but kept the brush between my fingers and the wall.

Caroline must have written the words before she drowned Jean Aldridge. The writing was evidence of the hatred in her head. The killing was not a spur-of-the-moment crime, not something that happened in a flash of anger. Caroline had wished Jean dead. And of course this was what Dr Croucher hadn’t wanted Cora or Julia to see; this was what he wanted to protect them from. This was why he and Beinon Cummings had glued paper over the walls of Caroline’s bedroom immediately after her death, while little Julia was still on holiday. This explained everything.

I worked furiously and heard Julia release the water from the bath at the same time as I heard a car engine draw up outside. I crossed to the window and looked out. The local doctor’s car was still parked outside Mrs Croucher’s cottage and a second vehicle had pulled up behind. Painted on to the side of the vehicle were the words:
Mendip House Sales
.

A lanky, balding man climbed out of the driver’s side and picked up a briefcase from the footwell. With him was a younger man, with a camera and a tripod. I was paralysed, torn between a desire to keep them out of the house, and an equally strong impulse to beg them to do whatever they could to sell the property as fast as possible. Both men looked up at the same moment and saw me standing at the window. I stepped back at once into the shadows, but it was too late: they knew I was there.

‘Oh, bloody hell!’ I said. I looked at the wall, the half-bleached writing. It would have to wait.

Julia was still in the bathroom. I locked the door to the empty bedroom, ran downstairs and met the men at the door with an approximation of a smile.

‘We’ve come to take measurements and photographs,’ the estate agent explained unnecessarily. He was dapper in a well-cut suit, shiny shoes, a fashionable, bootstring tie. His assistant was a shorter, stouter young man with soft, wavy hair and a rosy complexion.

‘I’m afraid now is not a good time,’ I said.

‘We made the appointment with Mrs Laurent.’

‘You’ll have to come a different day.’

Julia hobbled down the stairs behind me, damp-haired, bleary-eyed and bath-soft, wearing a peach-silk dressing gown tied at the waist and a pair of Viviane’s black rubber plimsolls. She was moving painfully slowly with her stick.

‘Who is it?’ she asked, peering over my shoulder. ‘Oh, Mr Hardcastle! I thought you were coming on Thursday?’

‘This is Thursday.’

Julia looked at me, confused.

‘You’ve been asleep a long time,’ I said gently.

She turned to the men again. ‘I’m not feeling well and the place is a mess. Could you come back another day?’

‘It’s such good weather for photographs,’ the assistant said, ‘and the forecast isn’t good for the next few days. Could we at least do the outside shots?’

Julia’s hand was on my shoulder. She gave a little squeeze and whispered to me, ‘Would you mind terribly showing them round, dear?’

‘Of course not,’ I said. My teeth were gritted.

I put on my coat and trailed back out into the cold again. I showed the estate agents the outside of the cottage, the front garden, tidy now, and the small garage, the coal-bunker, the wood-store, the long, narrow back garden and the brick shed. The agent stood with his hand shielding his eyes staring at the lake, and the lake, placid, pale, gave nothing of its nature away.

‘You can’t put a price on a view like this,’ he said. ‘People will pay good money for this kind of view. Take a photograph of the lake, Bob.’ He looked considerably more cheerful than he had done earlier. Then, while his assistant set up the tripod, he turned to the shed.

‘Mrs Laurent never mentioned this. It’s a good-size outbuilding, solid. People like this kind of thing.’ He tugged at the door. ‘Can you open it?’

‘We can’t find the key.’

‘It’s a good selling-point, but not in its present condition. You’ll need to clean it out and reinstate the window. Can you do that?’

‘Yes, we can sort that out.’

‘Good, good.’ The estate agent rubbed his hands together. ‘Things are looking up. We could market this cottage as being ideal for the small businessman, the entrepreneur. The new houses in Bishop Sutton have tiny gardens, no outbuildings. They can’t compete with this. Take a picture of the shed next, Bob,’ he said.

THE MEN WORKED
quickly and had finished within the half-hour. Bob wound the film out of the camera and tucked the roll into his pocket. Mr Hardcastle shook my hand and made me promise to call as soon as the interior was ready to be photographed. As they were reversing their car out of the lane, an ambulance came bumping down in the other direction. It stopped outside Mrs Croucher’s cottage. I called to Julia and we went outside to see the old lady being carried from her home into the ambulance, swaddled from her feet to her chin in blankets, and with an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. The young doctor was with her.

‘How is she?’ Julia asked.

‘It’s pneumonia,’ the doctor said, ‘and she’s dehydrated. We need to get her into hospital as quickly as possible.’

‘Oh, you poor dear,’ Julia said. She leaned over the stretcher and laid her hand gently on Mrs Croucher’s forehead. ‘Now you’re not to worry, Olive. We’ll let your husband know where you are and we’ll keep an eye on the cottage for you. You concentrate on getting better.’

Mrs Croucher looked back at her with such tenderness. Julia smiled. ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ she promised. ‘You’ll see.’

Mrs Croucher closed her eyes and the ambulancemen placed her stretcher inside the vehicle. We watched the ambulance reverse carefully out of the lane, then Julia wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. ‘I do hope she’ll be all right,’ she said.

We went back into the cottage. Julia sat at the kitchen table.

‘Would you like something to eat?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I could keep anything down. I feel awfully sick. What a dreadful day this is turning into.’

‘Would you like to lie down, dear? Shall I bring your pillows and blankets down and make you a bed on the sofa?’

‘I’ve been lying down for too long. Thursday? It’s Thursday already? I missed Wednesday altogether. I slept through it. Dear God.’

She was trying to make light of what had happened, but neither of us smiled.

‘I sat with Mrs Croucher this morning while we waited for the doctor,’ I said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘She was in a bad way. She … she told me about Caroline,’ I said.

Julia looked up sharply. ‘What about her?’

‘That she killed Mrs Aldridge.’

‘Oh.’

We were silent for a moment. Only the clock ticked. Julia was gazing out of the window. Her cheeks were deeply flushed. I thought: There, it is out in the open at last.

I took a deep breath. I said: ‘Now I understand why everything is as it is. I understand why you didn’t want Vivi to go to the village school. I understand why Mr Aldridge hates the Cummings family and why you didn’t want to talk to Daniel. I understand why he wouldn’t say anything to me about his mother’s death, why he always shied away from the subject. I can understand his reticence – it was out of consideration for you. But why didn’t you tell me, Julia? Didn’t you trust me?’

Julia sighed. ‘Oh Amy, darling, it was nothing to do with trust. Why would I tell you something like that? I don’t like to talk about it – I don’t like even to think about it. I wish my mother had never brought me in on the secret.’ She reached over for my hand. ‘It was thirty years ago, a generation ago. I was a child when it happened. Most people my age don’t know; the doctor and the vicar – those who did know – kept it quiet. It’s only the old ones who remember. And now Mrs Pettigrew is gone, my mother and father are gone, Sir George and Lady Debeger are gone. In another decade, almost everyone who knew about it will be dead and it will be over, forgotten. Nobody at all will know that Caroline Cummings was a murderer. The less we talk about it, the less we remember, the sooner it will be finished with. The important thing – the main thing, Amy – is that Viviane doesn’t find out about this. She must never know. She mustn’t.’

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘You won’t say anything?’

‘Oh Julia, no, of course I won’t. I’ll never breathe a word of it.’

I left her downstairs and went back up to the empty bedroom. I rolled up my sleeves and set to work, scrubbing away at the awful writing. I’d barely been at it for ten minutes when I was interrupted, once again, by a hammering at the front door. I looked down, and saw the vicar with a thickset man I did not recognize.

Oh for goodness’ sake, I thought, what now?

I threw the brush into the bucket, went downstairs and opened the door.

‘Yes,’ I said brightly. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Hello, Amy,’ said the vicar. ‘How are you?’ He smiled a wide smile and he rubbed his hands together. A gust of wind lifted a strand of hair from the top of his head and then laid it down again.

He is one of those who knows, I thought. His wife witnessed the murder. Every time he passes this cottage, every time he speaks to me, he must be remembering what happened.

‘Who is it?’ Julia called from the back room.

‘Nobody,’ I called back.

I could not bring myself to smile at the vicar. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m rather busy,’ I said. I indicated my apron, my tied-back hair, the tiny scraps of paper stuck to my stockings and forearms.

‘It seems we came along at just the right moment,’ said the vicar. ‘I understand that you two ladies need help with the decorating.’