The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  Sadie didn’t cry over her work, not ever, despite the sad and awful things she saw, but she’d run hard that night, thudding along the pavements of Islington, through Highgate, across the darkened heath, shuffling pieces of the puzzle until they blurred into a furious fug. Sadie had trained herself not to get hung up on the emotive, human parts of crime-solving. Her job was to unravel puzzles; the people involved were important only insofar as their characters could be usefully applied to that end, determining matters of motive and confirming or collapsing alibis. But that little girl with her rumpled nightie, her bird’s-nest hair, and those frightened eyes as she called for her mother, kept getting in the way.

  Hell, she was still getting in the way. Sadie blinked the image out of her mind, angry with herself for having let her thoughts drift again to that bloody flat. The case was closed. She focused on the harbour instead, the fishing boats coming back to roost, the gulls circling above them, swooping and soaring.

  It was the parallels between the cases, of course: mothers and their children, the removal of one from the other. The photograph of Eleanor Edevane, her face hollowed by loss, by fear when faced with separation from her son, poked at Sadie’s soft spot. It exposed the same weakness that had allowed the Bailey case to weasel its way beneath her skin, that had kept her awake at night, convinced that Maggie Bailey couldn’t have done it, walked out like that, left a child of two alone in a locked flat with no guarantee she’d be found in time.

  “Don’t mean to disappoint you, Sparrow,” Donald had said, “but it happens more than you’d like to think. Not everyone’s cut out to be a mother.”

  Sadie hadn’t disagreed. She knew he was right, she knew it better than anyone. It was the manner in which Maggie appeared to have left her daughter, the carelessness, that didn’t compute. “Not like that,” she’d insisted. “Maggie might not have been able to stick it out as the child’s mother, but she wouldn’t have risked her daughter suffering. She’d have called someone, made some sort of arrangement.”

  And Sadie had been right, in a way. It turned out Maggie had made arrangements. She’d walked out of Caitlyn’s life on a Thursday, the same day the little girl’s father always called to collect her for his weekend custody visit. Only that week he’d been out of town on a fishing trip in Lyme Regis. “I told her,” he’d said, cradling his cheap takeaway cup in the interview room at the Met. “I made her write it down on a piece of paper so she wouldn’t forget. I hardly ever go away, but my brother gave me a charter trip for my birthday. I wrote it down for her.” The man had been beside himself, worrying away small pieces of polystyrene as he spoke. “If I’d only known, if she’d only said. When I think what might have happened . . .”

  He’d given them information that painted a very different picture of Maggie to the one her mother, Nancy Bailey, had supplied. Not a surprise. It was maternal instinct, Sadie supposed, to paint the best possible portrait of one’s child. Still, in this case it had been particularly unhelpful. It was a pity Sadie hadn’t met the father, Steve, first, before she bought Nancy’s story, lock, stock and barrel. “You know the problem?” Donald had said helpfully when all was done and dusted. “You and the grandmother, the pair of you got too chummy. Rookie mistake.” Of all the comments he’d made, that one had stung the most. Loss of objectivity, the intrusion of emotion into the realm of the rational—they were among the worst criticisms you could level at a detective.

  Especially a detective for whom the accusation rang true. Don’t even think about making contact with the grandmother. Donald was right. Sadie had liked Nancy, all the more because she’d said the things Sadie wanted to hear. That Maggie was a responsible, caring mother who’d have sooner died than left her child unattended, that the police were wrong, that they ought to be looking for evidence of foul play. “Why would she lie?” Sadie had demanded of Donald. “What’s in it for her?” He’d only shaken his head and smiled with fond sympathy. “It’s her daughter, you goose. What else is she going to say?”

  Sadie had been cautioned against making any further attempts to visit Caitlyn after Steve filed his complaint, but she’d seen the little girl once again, just after the case was officially closed. Caitlyn had been walking between her father and his wife, Gemma, holding their hands as they left the Met, a kind-looking couple with neat haircuts and nice clothes. Someone had brushed out the tangles and put plaits in Caitlyn’s hair, and as Sadie watched, Gemma stopped to listen to something the little girl said before swinging her up onto her hip, making her laugh in the process.

  It was only a brief glimpse, from a distance, but it was enough to know that things had turned out all right. The other woman in her silk wrap dress, with her kind face and tender gestures, was just what Caitlyn needed. Sadie could tell just by looking at her that Gemma was the sort of person who’d always know just what to say and do, who’d know exactly who Dora the Explorer was, and have the lyrics to any number of soothing lullabies at the ready. Evidently Donald had thought so too. “Best thing the mother could’ve done for her,” he’d said later in the Fox and Hounds. “Blind Freddy can see the kid’s better off with her dad and that wife of his.” And children deserved that, didn’t they, the best possible chance to thrive? God knew there were enough pitfalls out there waiting to trip them up.

  Sadie’s thoughts went to the letter she’d dropped in the postbox. It would have reached the girl by now. Good thing she’d printed her return address nice and clearly on the back of the envelope. No doubt they taught that sort of thing in the fancy school she went to. Charlotte Sutherland. It was a good name, Sadie had decided; not the name Sadie had given her, but a lovely name all the same. It was rich-sounding, educated and successful. The name of someone who enjoyed hockey and horses and never bit her tongue for fear of sounding stupid. All the things Sadie had wanted and wished for when she handed the tiny girl over to the nurse and watched through glazed eyes as she was carried away to a better future.

  A jolting noise behind her and Sadie jumped. A stiff sash window was being jiggled and lifted in spurts. The lace curtain was drawn aside and a woman with a green plastic watering can appeared in its place, a distinctly proprietorial tilt to her nose as she glared down at the seat (hotel guests only!), and more specifically at Sadie on it.

  The dogs had finished their exploring and were sitting, ears cocked, watching Sadie earnestly for a sign that it was time to go. As the hotelier began pouring water into the hanging basket directly above her, Sadie gave them a nod. Ash and Ramsay paced ahead towards Bertie’s place, while Sadie followed, trying to ignore the backlit shadow child who’d fallen into step behind her.

  * * *

  “Solved it yet?” Bertie called as Sadie and the dogs clattered through the front door.

  She found him in the courtyard beyond the kitchen, pruning shears in hand, a small pile of weeds and trimmings on the bricks beside him. “Almost,” she said, dropping her backpack onto the slatted garden table. “Just the small matters of who, how and why.”

  “Small matters indeed.”

  Sadie leaned against the rock border wall that stopped the garden from sliding down the steep hill into the sea. She took in a deep breath and released it steadily; it was the sort of thing you had to do when confronted with a view like that. The spill of wind-silvered grass, white sand tucked into a cove between two headlands, the vast silken sea unfurling from azure to ink. Picture perfect. Just the kind of view sunburned holiday-makers posted back home to make their friends and family jealous. She wondered if she ought to buy a postcard for Donald.

  “You can smell the tide rising, can’t you?” Bertie said.

  “And here I was blaming the dogs.”

  Bertie laughed and made a judicious snip to the stem of a small flowering tree.

  Sadie sat on the seat beside him, propping her feet on the steel rim of a watering can. Her grandfather had green fingers, no doubt about that. Aside from the small paved squ
are in the centre of the garden, the rest was given over to flowers and foliage that tumbled together like sea foam.

  Amid the ordered disorder, a cluster of small blue flowers with yellow starlike centres caught her eye. “Chatham Island forget-me-nots,” she said, remembering suddenly the garden he and Ruth had created in the courtyard behind their place in London. “I always liked them.” He’d kept them in terracotta pots back then, hung on the brick walls; amazing what he’d been able to do with nine square metres and an hour of full sun each day. She’d used to sit with him and Ruth in the evenings after the shop was closed; not at first, but later, when she’d been there a few months and the due date was drawing near. Ruth with her steaming cup of Earl Grey and her kind eyes, her infinite goodness: Whatever you decide, Sadie, love, we’ll support you.

  Sadie was surprised by a fresh surge of grief. Shocking the way it could creep up on her even now, a year later. How deeply she missed her grandmother; what she’d have given to have her here today, warm and familiar, seemingly eternal. No, not here. To have Ruth back and for Bertie never to have left their London home. It seemed like all the important decisions had been made in that small, walled garden with its pots and hanging baskets, so different from this open, sunlit place. She felt a deep, sudden resistance to change well up inside her, a childish swirl of petulant rage she swallowed like a bitter pill. “Must be nice to have more garden room,” she said with brittle brightness.

  Bertie smiled at her in agreement, and then gestured towards a tatty folder of papers beneath two used teacups with what looked like sludgy grass clippings in the bottom. “You just missed Louise. Those are for you. Not much help with the case, but she thought you might like to see them anyway.”

  Louise. Sadie bristled before reminding herself that the other woman was a perfectly genial human being who had just done her a favour. She glanced through the pile. They were newspapers of a sort, amateurish, each a single sheet with a masthead reading The Loeanneth Gazette, written in Old English font and embellished with a pen-and-ink sketch of the house and its lake. The pages were blotched and discoloured, and a couple of silverfish made bids for freedom as she turned them. The paper smelled of mildew and neglect; the headlines, however, still sparked with life, trumpeting such news as: new arrival: baby boy at last!; interview with mr llewellyn, author extraordinaire!; rare sighting: short-tailed blue spotted in loeanneth garden! Each article was accompanied by an illustration credited to Clementine, Deborah or Alice Edevane, but the by-lines belonged without exception to Alice.

  Sadie’s gaze lingered on the name and she experienced the same tightening knot of connection she felt each time one of the a-l-i-c-e engravings revealed itself at Loeanneth. “Where did they come from?” she asked.

  “One of Louise’s patients at the hospital had an aunt who was a housemaid at the lake house. She stopped working for the Edevanes back in the thirties when the family left Cornwall but these must’ve got mixed up with her other possessions. There was a printing press in the schoolroom, apparently, up in the attic near the maids’ accommodation. The children of the house used to play with it.”

  “Listen to this . . .” Sadie held the paper out of the glare and read aloud: “interview with a gross deporter: the accused speaks! Today we publish an exclusive interview with Clementine Edevane, who stands accused by The Mother of ‘gross deportment’ after a recent incident in which she offended Nanny Rose. ‘But she did look fat,’ the accused was heard to shout from behind the gaol of her closed bedroom door. ‘I was only being truthful!’ Truth or travesty? You, dear reader, be the judge. Story by Alice Edevane, investigative reporter.”

  “Alice Edevane,” Bertie said. “She’s the one who owns the house.”

  Sadie nodded. “Also known as A.C. Edevane, crime writer extraordinaire. I wish she’d write back to my letters.”

  “It hasn’t been a week yet.”

  “So?” said Sadie, who didn’t count patience among her virtues. “Four perfectly good days of postal service.”

  “Your faith in the Royal Mail is touching.”

  To be honest, Sadie had presumed Alice Edevane would be thrilled to hear from her. A bona fide police detective willing to reopen, if only unofficially, the case of her brother’s disappearance? She’d expected to hear back by return post. Even if, as Bertie said, the postal service were was less than perfect, she should have heard by now.

  “People can be funny about the past,” said Bertie, running his fingers lightly along a fine stem. “Especially after something painful.”

  His tone remained even, his focus on the tree didn’t falter, yet within his words Sadie felt the heat of an unasked question. He couldn’t possibly know about Charlotte Sutherland and the letter that had brought the whole awful business back into the present. A gull cawed, slicing through the sky above them, and for a split second Sadie considered telling him about the girl with the clear, confident handwriting and clever turn of phrase.

  But it would be a stupid thing to do, especially when she’d just got rid of the letter. He’d want to talk things over and there’d be no forgetting the whole thing then, and so, instead, she said, “The newspaper report finally arrived,” pulling her research from the backpack, making a small stack on her lap of library books, archive folders and the writing pad she’d picked up at WHSmith. “There were some photos I hadn’t seen, but nothing particularly useful.”

  She thought she heard him sigh, sensing perhaps the unspoken confidence, and was beset by a sudden sliver of awareness that he was the only person in the world she loved, that if she lost him she’d be all alone. “So,” he said, knowing better than to push, “we’re pretty sure he was taken, but we’re no closer to knowing how or by whom.”

  “Right.”

  “Any theories as to why?”

  “Well, I think we can rule out opportunistic predators. There was a party going on, and the house is well off the beaten track. Not the sort of place a person just happens upon.”

  “Unless they’re chasing a dog, of course.”

  Sadie returned his smile. “Which leaves two possibilities. He was taken because someone wanted money, or because they wanted a child for themselves.”

  “But there was no ransom note?”

  “Not according to Pickering, but police don’t always make these things public. It’s on the list for Clive Robinson.”

  “You’ve heard from him?”

  “No, but he was due back yesterday, so fingers crossed.”

  Bertie pruned another stem from his tree. “Let’s say it wasn’t about money.”

  “Then it was about the boy. And this boy in particular. It doesn’t make sense that someone who simply wanted a child would choose the son of a wealthy, upper-class family with all possible resources at their fingertips to find him.”

  “It would seem a foolish choice,” Bertie agreed. “There must’ve been easier pickings.”

  “Which means whoever took Theo Edevane wanted him because of who he was. But why?” Sadie jittered her pen on the writing pad. It was cheap paper, thin to the point of near-translucence, and sunlight picked out the imprints from the last letter she’d written. She sighed. “It’s no use. Until I get more information—hear back from Alice Edevane, speak to Clive Robinson, get a better feel for the people involved and find out who had means, motive and opportunity—it’s all just guesswork.”

  There was a new sense of frustration in her voice and Bertie noticed. “You’re really intent on solving it, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t like loose ends.”

  “It’s been a long time. Most of the people who might have missed that little boy are long gone.”

  “That’s not the point. He was taken; it isn’t right; his family deserve to know what happened to him. Here . . .” She held out the newspaper. “Look at his mother, look at her face. She created him, named him, loved him. He was her child and she li
ved the whole rest of her life without him, never knowing what happened; what he grew up to be, whether he was happy Never being certain if he was alive or dead.”

  Bertie hardly glanced at the paper, fixing Sadie instead with a look of kind perplexity. “Sadie, love—”

  “It’s a puzzle,” she went on quickly, aware that she was sounding strident but unable to rein it in. “You know me, you know I can’t let them go unsolved. How on earth was a child removed from a house filled with people? There’s something I’m not seeing. Doors, windows, a ladder like in the Lindbergh kidnapping?”

  “Sadie, this holiday of yours—”

  Ash barked suddenly and both dogs scrambled to their feet, racing to the rock wall on the side of the garden that bordered the lane.

  Sadie heard it too, then, a small motorbike approaching the cottage and stopping. There was a squeak and a soft thud as the letterbox on the front door opened and a clutch of letters dropped through onto the mat. “Post,” she said.

  “I’ll go.” Bertie set down his pruning shears and dusted his hands on his gardening apron. He gave Sadie a light, thoughtful frown before ducking his head and disappearing through the door into the kitchen.

  Sadie waited until he was gone before letting her smile collapse. Her face ached. It was getting harder to hold off Bertie’s questions. She hated lying to him, it made fools of both of them, but she couldn’t bear for him to know she’d messed up so prodigiously at work. What she’d done, going to the press, was embarrassing, shameful even. Worse, he’d be bound to ask why she’d behaved so wildly out of character. Which brought them back to Charlotte Sutherland and her letter. She couldn’t tell him about that. She didn’t think she’d be able to stand seeing his kind face contorting in sympathy as he listened. She had a terrible fear that to speak about it would make it real somehow and she’d be back there, trapped inside the body of her panicked, powerless younger self, cowering before the giant wave that was coming for her. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She refused to be.