The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  “Well, I think it’s tremendous what you’re doing, helping her put the whole affair to rest. And what a coup! Solving a crime that’s remained a mystery for seventy years. That must feel terrific.”

  Sadie smiled. It was a coup. It did feel terrific.

  “And jolly decent of the Met to give you more time off to tie up the loose ends.”

  Her cheeks were instantly scarlet; Bertie, by comparison, was a picture of innocence, reaching down to stroke Ramsay’s neck. Whether he was in earnest or his appearance of ease masked an unspoken question, Sadie wasn’t sure. Either way she could’ve just lied, but in that moment she didn’t have the spirit for it. Truthfully, she was tired of pretending, especially with Bertie, who was her whole family, the only person in the world with whom she could be completely herself. “Actually, Granddad, I’ve had a spot of trouble at work.”

  Bertie didn’t skip a beat. “Have you now, love? Want to tell me about it?”

  And so Sadie found herself explaining about the Bailey case. Her strong feeling that Maggie had met with foul play, her refusal to follow the advice of her superior officers, and her ultimate decision to go outside the force and speak to Derek Maitland. “It’s the number-one rule: don’t talk to journalists.”

  “But you’re an excellent detective. You must’ve felt you had a good reason to break the rules.”

  His faith in her judgement was touching. “I thought I did. I was convinced my instincts were right and it seemed like the only way to keep attention focused on the case.”

  “So you acted in good faith, even if you went about it the wrong way. Surely that counts for something?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I’d be in trouble enough if I’d been right, but I wasn’t. I made a bad call, the case got under my skin, and now there’s an inquiry.”

  Oh, love.” His smile was full of sympathy. “For what it’s worth, I’d back your instincts any day.”

  “Thanks, Granddad.”

  “What about Donald? Does he know? What does he say?”

  “He was the one who suggested I take leave. A pre-emptive strike, so to speak. That way if they find out it was me, I can argue I’d already removed myself from action.”

  “Will that help?”

  “I’ve never known Ashford to err on the side of leniency. I’ll be suspended at the very least. If he’s had a bad day, stood down.”

  Bertie shook his head. “It doesn’t seem right. Is there anything you can do?”

  “The best plan I’ve been able to come up with, aside from lying low and avoiding Nancy Bailey, is to keep my fingers crossed.”

  He held up a hand, his old fingers plaited. “Then I’ll add mine. And in the meantime, you’ve got the solution to the Lake House mystery to prove.”

  “Exactly.” Sadie felt a spike of excitement as she anticipated the following day. She was silently congratulating herself on finally having told Bertie the truth, when he scratched his head and said, “I wonder what it was about the Bailey case.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why do you think this particular case got under your skin?”

  “Mothers and children,” she said with a shrug. “They’re always the difficult ones for me.”

  “But you’ve had similar cases in the past. Why this one? Why now?”

  Sadie was on the verge of saying she didn’t know, passing it off as one of those inexplicable things, when the first letter from Charlotte Sutherland flashed into her mind. In that moment, an urgent swell of something awfully like grief rose up within her, a wave she’d been holding at bay for fourteen years threatened to crash. “There was a letter,” she said quickly. “A few months ago. The baby, she’s fourteen now, she wrote to me.”

  Bertie’s eyes widened behind his glasses. He said only, “Esther?”

  The name, spoken like that, was an arrow. The one rule Sadie had broken, naming her baby when she saw that little star-shaped hand appear above the yellow-and-white blanket.

  “Esther wrote to you?”

  Twice now, Sadie thought, but didn’t say. “A couple of weeks after I started working the Bailey case. I don’t know how she got my address; I guess they keep records of names and give them out if people ask, and it isn’t so hard to find a private address if you know where to look.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me a bit about herself. Her nice family, nice school, her list of lovely interests. And she said she wants to meet me.”

  “Esther wants to meet you?”

  “Her name’s not Esther. It’s Charlotte. Charlotte Sutherland.”

  Bertie leaned back against his chair, a faint, dazed smile on his face. “Her name is Charlotte, and you’re going to meet her.”

  “No.” Sadie shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

  “But Sadie, love.”

  “I can’t, Granddad. I’ve decided.”

  “But—”

  “I gave her away. What will she think of me?”

  “You were little more than a child yourself.”

  Sadie was still shaking her head, the action involuntary. She shivered, despite the balmy night. “She’ll think I abandoned her.”

  “You agonised over what was best for her.”

  “She won’t see it that way. She’ll hate me.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “Look at me—” No spouse, few friends, even her houseplant was dying from neglect. She’d sacrificed everything in her life to her job, and even that was looking tenuous. She was bound to be a disappointment. “I’m no kind of a parent.”

  “I don’t think she’s looking for someone to tie her shoelaces. By the sounds of things she’s done very well in that department. She only wants to know who her biological mother is.”

  “You and I both know biology is no guarantee of fellow feeling. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a person is to gain a new set of parents. Look at the way you and Ruth stepped in for me.”

  Now Bertie shook his head, but not sadly. He was frustrated with her, Sadie could tell, but there wasn’t anything she could do to change that. It wasn’t his decision to make, it was hers and she’d made it. For better or for worse.

  For better. She exhaled determinedly. “Ruth used to say that if you did the right thing and you’d do it again, the only thing left to do was to move forward.”

  Bertie’s eyes turned moist behind his glasses. “She was always wise.”

  “And she was usually right. That’s what I’ve done, Granddad, followed Ruth’s advice. For fourteen years I’ve moved forward and I haven’t looked back, and everything’s been fine. All this trouble started because of the letter. It brought the past back into my life.”

  “That’s not what Ruth meant, Sadie, love. She wanted you to move forward without regrets, not to deny the past entirely.”

  “I’m not denying it, I’m just not thinking about it. I made the choice I made and there’s nothing to be gained by digging it all up again.”

  “But isn’t that what you’re talking about doing for the Edevane family?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” And it was. She couldn’t find the words to explain how, not then and there; she just knew it. She was irritated by Bertie’s opposition but she didn’t want to argue with him. She softened her voice and said, “Listen, I have to duck inside and make a couple of phone calls before it gets too late. How about I put the kettle on and bring us up a fresh pot to share?”

  * * *

  Despite the soporific roll of the sea, Sadie couldn’t sleep that night. She’d managed finally to put Charlotte Sutherland, Esther, out of mind, but her attention had shifted to the Edevanes and Loeanneth. She tossed and turned as visions of Midsummer 1933 filled her thoughts. Eleanor checking on baby Theo before returning to her
guests, paddleboats and gondolas drifting up the stream towards the boathouse, the great bonfire raging on its island in the middle of the lake.

  It was still dark when she gave up on sleep altogether and slipped on her running gear. The dogs woke excitedly as she passed through the kitchen, hurrying to fall into step beside her as she set off. It was too dark to attempt a path through the woods, so she contented herself with the headland, going over all the things she needed to do when she got to Loeanneth. She was back at Bertie’s and toasting her third round of bread when the first light of dawn began to tiptoe across the benchtop. Sadie left a note for Bertie under the kettle, loaded the car with her files, a torch and a Thermos of tea, and hushed the dogs to stay.

  The horizon was golden as she drove east. The sea glimmered as if someone had sprinkled it with iron filings and Sadie wound down the window to enjoy the crisp, briny breeze on her face. It was going to be a warm, clear day for the festival and she was glad for Bertie. Glad, too, that she’d escaped before he woke, thereby dodging a rehash of their conversation from the previous night. It wasn’t that she regretted telling him about the letter, only that she didn’t want to discuss it further. He was disappointed, she knew, by her decision not to meet Charlotte Sutherland, convinced that she was wilfully misinterpreting Ruth’s advice, but it was a situation he couldn’t possibly understand. She would find the words to explain it to him, what it was to give up a child, how keenly she’d had to struggle to move beyond the fact that there was someone out there, her own flesh and blood, whom she could never know, but at the moment, with everything else going on, it was just too complicated.

  Sadie reached the leaning signpost, its white paint peeling after years of bracing wind, and turned left. The road that led away from the coast was narrow, long clumps of grass encroaching on the faded tarmac, and it became thinner still as it snaked into the woods. Dawn hadn’t breached the canopy yet, and Sadie had to switch on the car’s headlights to make her way through the trees. She drove slowly, scouring the overgrown verge for the entrance to Loeanneth. According to Alice Edevane’s instructions, the wrought-iron gates would be difficult to spot. They were tucked back from the road, she’d said, and the elaborate, woven design was such that even during the family’s heyday, they’d been threatened with consumption by the ivy tendrils that reached out from the trees to climb and cling.

  Sure enough, Sadie almost missed them. It was only as her headlights glanced off the edge of a tarnished post that she realised this was it. She reversed quickly, pulled off the road, leapt from the car and fiddled with the keys Alice had given her, looking for the one marked Gate. Her fingers were clumsy with excitement and it took a few attempts to slot the key into the latch. Finally, though, she managed. The gate was rusty and stiff, but Sadie had always been able to find unexpected physical strength when sufficiently motivated. She forced the pair of gates open, wide enough, just, to drive her car through.

  She’d never approached the house from this direction, and was struck, when she finally emerged through the thick woods, by how emphatically hidden it was from the rest of the world, tucked within its own valley, the house and inner gardens concealed by a protective planting of elms. She followed the driveway across a stone bridge and parked her car beneath the boughs of an enormous tree in a gravelled area colonised by wily tussocks of grass. The sun was still rising as she hitched up the old gate and entered the garden.

  “You’re early,” she called, when she saw the old man sitting on the rim of the big old urn.

  Clive waved. “I’ve been waiting for this for seventy years. I wasn’t about to wait a minute longer than I had to.”

  Sadie had called him the night before and brought him up to speed on her meeting with Alice. He’d listened, shocked when he learned their new theory that Theo Edevane had been killed by his father. “I was sure the boy had been taken,” he’d said when Sadie had finished. “All this time I held out hope that I could still find him.” There’d been a tremble in his voice, and Sadie could tell just how much he’d personally invested in the case. She knew the feeling. “We still have a job to do,” she’d said. “We owe it to the little boy to learn exactly what happened that night.” She’d told him then about the key and Alice’s invitation to search the house. “I called her just before I spoke to you last night and mentioned your ongoing interest. I told her how invaluable you’ve been so far.”

  Now they stood together beneath the portico as Sadie struggled with the front door. For one heartstopping instant it seemed as if the lock were stuck and the key wasn’t going to turn, but then there came the welcome click of the mechanism giving way. Moments later, Sadie and Clive stepped across the threshold, into the entrance hall of the Lake House.

  The room smelled musty, and the air was cooler than Sadie had expected. The front door was still wide open and when she glanced over her shoulder the waking world outside seemed brighter than it had before. She could see all the way along the overgrown path to where the surface of the lake was sparkling with the first rays of morning sun.

  “It’s like time stood still,” said Clive softly. “The house hasn’t changed since we were here all those years ago.” He craned to take in every angle and added, “Except for the spiders. They’re new.” He met her gaze. “So now, where would you like to start?”

  Sadie matched his slightly reverent tone. There was something about a house left sealed for so long that invited such theatre. “Alice thought it most likely that we’d find what we’re looking for in Anthony’s study or Eleanor’s writing bureau.”

  “And what is it exactly that we’re looking for?”

  “Anything detailing Anthony’s condition, particularly in the weeks leading up to Midsummer 1933. Letters, diaries—a signed confession would be ideal.”

  Clive grinned as she continued,

  “We’ll get more done if we split up. How about you take the study, I’ll take the desk, and we reconvene to compare notes in a couple of hours?”

  Sadie was aware of Clive’s silence as they climbed the staircase side by side, the way he glanced about him, his deep sigh as they paused on the first-floor landing. She could only imagine what it must be like for him to be back inside the house after so many decades. Seventy years in which the Edevane case had remained alive for him, in which he’d never given up hope of solving the crime. She wondered if he’d thought back over the initial investigation overnight, and whether pieces of the puzzle, previously innocuous, had slotted into place.

  “I thought of nothing else,” he said when she asked him. “I was on my way to bed when you rang, but there was no chance of sleeping afterwards. I kept thinking about the way he stuck close to her during the interviews. At the time I presumed it was so he could protect her, so she wouldn’t fall apart in the aftermath of the boy’s disappearance. But it occurs to me now there was something almost unnatural about their closeness. Almost as if he were standing guard, making sure she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, reveal what he had done.”

  Sadie was about to answer when her phone rang in the pocket of her jeans. Clive signalled that he was going to head on up to Anthony’s study and she nodded, pulling out her mobile. Her heart sank when she recognised Nancy Bailey’s phone number on the screen. Sadie considered herself something of an expert at breaking up and had thought “Goodbye and take care of yourself’ was clear enough: a discreet, even gentle, way of letting the other woman down. Evidently it was going to require a more explicit approach. But not now. She muted the phone and shoved it back into her pocket. She would deal with Nancy Bailey another day.

  Eleanor’s bedroom was along the corridor, only two doors away, but Sadie didn’t move. Her gaze was drawn instead to the faded red carpet runner, rotting in patches, which stretched up a further flight of stairs. There was something else she needed to do first. She climbed a floor higher and then followed the hallway to its end. It had become warmer as she rose and the air was stuffier.
The walls were still hung with framed pictures commemorating generations of deShiel family members, and behind each partially opened door, the rooms were furnished, right down to the small decorative items on bedside tables: lamps, books, comb-andmirror sets. It was eerie and she was overcome by a strong, though completely irrational, sense that she needed to walk without making a sound. The contrary part of her coughed, just to shatter the pervasive silence.

  At the end of the hallway, the nursery door was closed. Sadie stopped when she reached it. She had envisaged this moment many times over the past fortnight, but now that she was actually standing on the threshold of Theo’s nursery, the whole thing felt more real than she’d imagined it would. She didn’t usually hold with rituals and superstitions, but Sadie made a point of picturing Theo Edevane, the wide-eyed, round-cheeked baby from the newspaper photos, reminding herself that the room she was about to enter was sacred.

  She opened the door quietly and stepped inside. The room was stuffy, and although the once-white curtains were drawn they were grey now, and moth-eaten, and light spilled through them unhindered. It was smaller than she’d imagined. The quaint cast-iron cot in the middle of the nursery was a stark reminder of how young and vulnerable Theo Edevane had been in 1933. It stood on a round woven rug, and beyond it, by the window, was an armchair covered in chintz that must once have been a bright and cheerful yellow but had faded and thinned to a sad, nondescript beige. Little wonder, after decades of dust and insects and summer sun stealing in. The shelf of vintage wooden toys, the rocking horse beneath the window, the ancient baby bath in the corner: all were familiar from the newspaper photographs, and Sadie experienced a slightly jarring sensation of distant recognition, as if it were a room she’d dreamed about, or one she remembered vaguely from her own childhood.