The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  So why was she acting like it? Sadie frowned. That’s exactly what she was doing, wasn’t it? Letting Donald call all the shots while she languished indefinitely in limbo, waiting to be invited back to a job at which she excelled. At which she’d worked damn hard to succeed. She’d faced down countless adversities to rise in the ranks; why was she behaving so meekly now, hiding out beside the flat summery sea behind a case with a trail that had gone cold seventy years before?

  On a whim, Sadie took her mobile from her pocket. She jostled it lightly back and forth between her hands for a few seconds, and then, with a decisive sigh, went over to the furthermost point of the garden. She climbed up onto the rock wall and leaned as far as she could away from the house until a single bar of connectivity showed up on her screen. She dialled Donald’s number and waited, muttering beneath her breath, “Come on, come on . . .”

  The phone went straight to voicemail and Sadie cursed into the breeze. Rather than hang up and try again, she listened to Donald’s curt message and then left her own. “Yeah, Donald, look, it’s Sadie. Just to let you know, I’m coming up to London. I’ve sorted things my end and I’m ready to get back to work, Monday week. It’d be great to catch up beforehand. You know, show you my holiday snaps . . .” The small joke fell flat even to her own ears, and she pressed on. “Anyway, let me know when and where suits. Sometime next week?” She left it at that, statement as question; it made it seem like she was giving him a choice. And then she ended the call.

  There. Sadie heaved a purposeful sigh. It was done. Now, when Bertie asked her about her plans she’d be able to give him some proper answers: after a short, pleasant trip to Cornwall, she’d be returning to London next week.

  She tucked the phone back into her pocket and returned to her seat near Bertie’s tree, waiting for the onset of welcome peace of mind. But her mind was far from peaceful. Now that she’d done it, her thoughts comprised a list of things she should have done differently. She should have been more specific as to place and time. She should have been gentler, more apologetic, made it seem like it was his idea.

  Sadie remembered now his threat to go to Ashford if she didn’t follow his instructions to the letter. Donald was her partner, though; he was a reasonable man. He’d had her best interests at heart when he forced her to take leave and she’d learned her lesson, she wouldn’t be leaking to journalists in the future; but the Bailey case was closed now, it had all but disappeared from the papers, no real harm had been done. (So long as she didn’t take Nancy Bailey into account. Sadie winced as she pictured the look on the woman’s face when she’d told her the investigation was over. “But I thought you believed me, that my girl never would’ve left like that. I thought you were going to find her?”)

  Pushing Nancy Bailey from her mind (Don’t even think about making contact with the grandmother), Sadie told herself she’d done the right thing and concentrated on believing it.

  The new map of the Loeanneth estate was still on her lap and she forced her attention back to it, a resolute attempt at diversion. It was much older than the one Alastair had given her earlier—1664, according to the title at the top—drawn back when the Lake House had still been a smaller adjunct to the large manor on the property. Despite some antiquated spelling and a font that rendered certain words illegible, the layout was nonetheless instantly recognisable to Sadie, who’d spent the past week studying the floorplan in the hope she could somehow intuit the path taken by Theo’s abductor that night. The rooms and spaces were all where they should be.

  Except . . . Sadie looked more closely.

  She took the original map out of her folder and laid the two side by side to compare.

  There was a variation in this floorplan after all. A little room or cavity, right near the nursery, that wasn’t marked on the more recent map.

  But what was it? A cupboard? Did they have built-in cupboards in the sixteenth century? Sadie suspected not. And even if they did, why include this one in the floorplan and not others?

  Sadie tapped her lips thoughtfully. She looked from Bertie’s tree, to the dogs settled now at the base of the rock wall, and finally out to sea. Her gaze settled on the dark blip of a ship balanced on the horizon.

  And then, the vague flicker of a light bulb.

  Sadie riffled through her papers until she found the notes she’d made from “Chapter eight: The deShiels of Havelyn.”

  There it was: the house was built during the reign of Henry VIII by a long-ago seafaring deShiel who’d purloined gold from Spain. There was another name for people like that.

  Connections were flaring in Sadie’s mind like ancient warning beacons, each causing the next to catch alight: a possible deShiel pirate . . . Louise’s talk of smugglers . . . of tunnels dug into the Cornish coastline . . . the tunnel in Eleanor’s Magic Doorway with its real-world counterpart . . . the pillar and ring Sadie had seen with her own eyes . . .

  “Something for you,” said Bertie, back from collecting the post and holding out a small envelope.

  She took it wordlessly, so distracted by the theory forming in her mind that she hardly registered the name printed neatly on the top left-hand corner.

  “It’s from the police officer,” Bertie urged. “Clive Robinson from Polperro. Aren’t you going to . . . ?” He faltered. “What is it, what did I miss? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Sadie might not have seen a ghost, but she had a feeling she’d just glimpsed a shadow. “This room,” she said, as Bertie came to peer over her shoulder. “This tiny alcove—I think I might have found the escape route.”

  Twelve

  London, 2003

  This particular corner of South Kensington was thick with ghosts, which was why the Edevane sisters had chosen it in the first place. They took tea at the V&A every year on the anniversary of Eleanor’s death, but they met at the Natural History Museum first. Their father had donated his entire collection to the museum in his will, and it seemed to Alice there was more of his spirit in this building than lingered anywhere else.

  It made sense to remember their parents formally on the same day. Theirs had been the sort of love story romance writers trumpeted and real people envied, two beautiful young strangers who’d met by chance, loved at first sight, before being separated, tested and strengthened by the First World War. Alice and her sisters had accepted the relationship unquestioningly as children, growing to adulthood in the embrace of Eleanor and Anthony’s devotion. But it was the sort of love that rendered all other people outsiders. Except for a small, stable circle of friends, they socialised rarely and reluctantly, and in retrospect it was their very isolation that added an extra layer of magic and wonder to the annual Midsummer party. When Eleanor had died suddenly like that, unexpectedly, and so soon after her husband, people had shaken their heads at the tragedy before assuring the sisters that, “Of course, they belonged together, the two of them.” Those same smarmy people had gone on behind the sisters’ backs, in whispers laced with implication: “It’s like she couldn’t bear to be parted from him.”

  Alice got to the museum first, just as she always did. It was part of their habit; a tacit agreement allowing Alice to feel punctual and Deborah bustling. She settled herself on a bench in the Central Hall and reached into her bag, stroking the smooth, worn leather of her notebook before taking it out and laying it on her lap. This was not unusual; ordinarily Alice enjoyed nothing more than watching people and she’d learned over time that what was considered nosy under usual circumstances passed for distracted, even charming, when done with pen and paper in hand. Today, though, she had no intention of taking notes. She was far too preoccupied with her own plight to bother with strangers.

  She opened the notebook and eyeballed the letter she’d filed inside. She didn’t reread it, there was no need. It was the second she’d received, similar in content to the first. The detective had pressed again for an interview but been delib
erately vague as to her current knowledge of the Edevane case (as she called it). A wise move and precisely what Alice would have written for Diggory Brent had he developed a fierce interest in an unsolved crime while holidaying in Cornwall. Any detective worth her salt knew that providing only the barest scaffolding left the biggest hole into which an unsuspecting witness might fall. Unfortunately for Sadie Sparrow, Alice wasn’t unsuspecting and had no intention of being tricked into revealing anything she didn’t want to. Deborah, on the other hand . . .

  Alice closed the book and used it to fan her cheeks. She’d been lying in bed the night before, wondering how best to handle the situation, weighing up the odds this Sparrow person would discover anything important, reassuring herself that it had all taken place so long ago that there could be nothing left to find, when it struck her that Deborah might also have received a letter. An invisible blade of panic had sliced cold through her at the realisation.

  She’d considered the possibility from all angles before deciding that Deborah, innocent of all wrongdoing, would have got in touch immediately had she been contacted. With Tom’s political legacy to safeguard, she’d have been horrified to think of some eager young stranger raking through the family’s coals and keen to enlist Alice’s help. It wasn’t until this morning, as the taxi wended its way through St John’s Wood, that it occurred to Alice that Deborah might be waiting to discuss the matter in person. That with Eleanor’s anniversary meeting so conveniently near, she might simply have tucked the letter in her handbag and was preparing herself even now to broach the subject.

  Alice exhaled bracingly and looked again towards the entrance. There was no sign of Deborah yet, but a hapless man in black jeans was creating something of a fuss by the doors. Alice had noticed him when she arrived. He’d been holding the hand of a small girl in a bright pink singlet and denim dungarees. The girl had been pointing and jumping, the man—her father, Alice supposed—trying to temper her enthusiasm while he reached to retrieve something (a water bottle, perhaps? Children these days always seemed in need of rehydration) from the small backpack he was carrying.

  The man was in quite a state now, hands flapping at a security guard, and the little girl was no longer with him. The searing panic of a parent who’d lost a child; Alice could spot it from a mile away. Her gaze drifted beyond the enormous Diplodocus skeleton to the grand stone stairwell at the end of the cavernous room. The little girl had been pointing that way when Alice saw her, she’d had a ball clasped in her other hand, the sort that fired when shaken, as if made from electricity, and there’d been an unmistakable glint of determination in her eyes. Sure enough, the child was standing now at the top of the stairs, cheek resting on the cool, flat stone of the balustrade, lining the ball up in front of her face, readying to let it roll.

  Elementary, my dear Watson. Alice tried to enjoy the familiar comfort of being correct. She’d always had a good memory—more than that, an ability to draw conclusions based on available evidence. It was a skill she credited her father with honing. He’d played games with them when they were young, possessing an insatiable appetite for the sort of play other adults found tiresome. He’d taken them with him on his nature rambles, letting them carry this tool or that, the coveted butterfly net if they were lucky, stopping every so often to crouch at their eye level and point out a scene. “Paint a picture in your mind,” he would say, “but don’t just see the tree. Notice the lichen on its trunk, the holes made by the woodpecker, the thinner leaves where the sun doesn’t reach.” Later, sometimes days later, when it was least expected, he’d say, “Alice! The tree in the wood, ten things.” And then he’d close his eyes and count on his fingers as she conjured the scene for him, memory by memory.

  Even now, echoes of the thrill of being the one to make him smile stirred her. He’d been a terrific smiler, one of those people whose whole face was captive to his mood; so different from Eleanor, whose fine breeding had made her straitlaced and wary. One of the great mysteries of Alice’s childhood was how Eleanor of the fairy tales, that adventurous sprite of a girl, could possibly have grown into such a stern, predictable adult. The hovering presence of Mother was an enduring childhood memory, watching and waiting for one of them to step out of line so she could seize the opportunity, send them away and have Anthony for herself. It had taken Alice years to understand that her mother was envious of them, of the close relationship they shared with their father, of how much he loved them.

  “Yes, but it’s rather more complex than that,” Deborah had said when they’d spoken of it. Alice had pushed her as to how, and after choosing her words carefully, Deborah had said, “I think she was envious of him, too, in a way. Do you remember during the war, when we were little, how different she was, how fun and playful? How it used to feel as if she were one of us, rather than a proper grown-up like Grandmother or Nanny Bruen?” Alice had nodded uncertainly as Deborah’s words stirred faraway memories of hide-and-seek and enchanted stories. “But then Daddy came home and we adored him, and she sort of lost us. Everything changed. She changed after that, became a different, stricter person. She couldn’t—” Deborah had stopped abruptly then, as if thinking better of whatever it was she’d been about to say. “Well,” she’d continued with a wave of the hand. “There wasn’t room for both of them to be the favourite, was there?”

  A familiar figure by the door caught Alice’s eye. Deborah, her arm linked through James’s for support. As they reached the hall, Deborah laughed at something her young driver said. She patted his hand fondly and bade him farewell. Alice exhaled. Her sister didn’t look like someone who’d received a grenade in the post.

  Deborah remained where she was for a moment after James left, the general fluster of other people’s meetings and greetings swirling around her. She was practised, as were all politician’s wives, at maintaining a pleasant visage, but Alice had always been able to see beneath the mask, a slight tightening about the mouth, the habit brought with her from childhood of pressing her fingertips together in agitation. Neither was in evidence this morning. Alice felt her tension recede, but didn’t glance away. One rarely took the time to look closely at those one knew well. Deborah was still tall and poised, even as she approached ninety, still elegant, wearing the same satin dresses she’d worn throughout the 1930s, cinched at the waist and with dainty pearl buttons climbing from belt to lace collar. She was like one of Daddy’s butterflies, caught at the peak of her beauty and frozen in time, eternally feminine. Quite the opposite of Alice in her trousers and mannish brogues.

  Alice stood and waved, catching her sister’s attention. Deborah was walking with a cane today so Alice knew her leg was troubling her. She knew, too, that when she enquired after her health, Deborah would smile and claim she’d never felt better. It was unthinkable that any of the Edevane girls might admit to weakness, pain or regret. Emotional fortitude was part of Eleanor’s legacy, along with prompt letter-writing and a contempt for sloppy grammar.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Deborah, arriving at the bench. “My morning’s been quite mad. I haven’t kept you long?”

  “Not at all, I had my notebook with me.”

  “Have you been in to see the collection?”

  Alice said that she had not, and they went in mutual silence to deposit Deborah’s summer coat at the cloakroom. An outside observer might have described their greeting as cool, but there was nothing of Deborah’s current emotional condition to be read there. They never kissed hello when they met, neither did they hug. Alice deplored the modern trend for crying and sharing, and she and Deborah were united in their disdain for giddy emotional displays.

  “Well, you two must be sisters,” the young cloakroom attendant sang with a broad smile.

  “Yes,” Deborah said, before Alice could respond from habit, too wryly, “Must we?”

  It was true they looked more alike in old age than they had at any other time in their lives, but then all old people looked al
ike to the young. The fading of hair, eyes, skin and lips, the loss of individual details as a person’s real face retreated behind the mask of lines. They weren’t alike really. Deborah was still beautiful—that is, she still wore the remnants of beauty—just as she’d always been. The summer she became engaged to Tom, the last summer at Loeanneth, there’d been an article in The Times naming her the prettiest young lady of the season. Alice and Clemmie had been merciless in their teasing, but only for sport. The article told them nothing they hadn’t already known. In every group of sisters there was one who outshone the others. Alice had written that line in a book, her eighth, Death Shall Call. She’d given the observation to Diggory Brent, who had an uncanny knack for seeing the world very much as Alice did. He was a man, though, and therefore able to think such thoughts without seeming bitter or unkind.

  No, Alice decided, as Deborah laughed gaily at something the attendant had said, her sister hadn’t received a letter from Sadie Sparrow. Alice’s relief was tempered by her awareness that it was only a matter of time. That unless she found a way to satisfy the detective’s curiosity, Deborah would almost certainly be brought in. Happily, Alice knew a thing or two about redirection. She just needed to be calm and methodical, more so than she had been to this point. Alice wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking when she’d told Peter the first letter had come to the wrong address, that she knew nothing about the missing child. She hadn’t been thinking, she’d been panicking. She intended to do less of that.