The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  She went to inspect the cot. Its mattress was still made up with sheets, and a knitted blanket had been stretched smooth and tight at one end. It was dusty now, sad. Sadie ran her hand lightly over the iron rail and there came a faint jingling. One of the four brass knobs wobbled unevenly at the top of its post. This was where Theo Edevane had been put to bed on the night of the party. Nanny Bruen had been asleep on the single bed against the far wall, tucked beneath the slanting roof, and outside, on the lawn by the lake, hundreds of people had been ushering in Midsummer.

  Sadie glanced at the smaller side window through which the single witness in the case claimed to have seen a slender woman. The party guest said that it was around midnight, but she must have been mistaken. Either she’d imagined the whole thing—and according to Clive she’d still been drunk the next morning—or else it had been a different window, a different room. It was possible she’d glimpsed Eleanor in the nursery, checking on Theo as was her habit, but if that were the case she’d been wrong about the time, for Eleanor had left the room at eleven o’clock, stopping on the stairs to give instructions to a housemaid. And witnesses had seen Eleanor by the boathouse where the gondolas were docked just before midnight.

  A round clock with a stark white face loomed down from on high, its hands marking some long-ago quarter past three, and five Winnie the Pooh prints stepped along the wall. Those walls had seen everything, but the room wasn’t talking. Sadie glanced at the doorway and a ghostly imprint of the night’s events played out before her. At some point after midnight, Anthony Edevane had come through from the hall, crossing the room to stand above the cot, just as Sadie was doing now. What happened next? she wondered. Did he take the little boy from the nursery, or did it happen right here? Did Theo wake up? Did he recognise his father and smile or coo, or did he grasp somehow that there was something different about this visit, something terrible? Did he struggle or cry? And what happened afterwards? When did Eleanor learn what her husband had done?

  Something on the floor beneath the cot caught Sadie’s eye, a tiny, shiny something, lying on the rug in a patch of morning sunlight. She bent to retrieve it; a round silver button with a plump cupid on it. She was turning it over in her fingertips when something moved against her leg. She jumped, her heart racing, before she realised it was only her phone, vibrating in her pocket. Relief turned quickly to exasperation when she saw Nancy Bailey’s number again. With a frown, Sadie hit “cancel’, turned off the vibrate function, and pocketed both the phone and the button. She glanced around the room but the spell was broken now. She could no longer picture Anthony creeping across the floor towards the cot, or hear the noise of the party outside. It was just a lonely old room and here she was wasting time with lost buttons and morbid imaginings.

  * * *

  Eleanor Edevane’s bedroom was dim and the air smelled stale, of sorrow and neglect. Thick velvet curtains were drawn against all four windows and the first thing Sadie did was drag them open, coughing as plumes of dust detached and dispersed. She opened the stiff sash windows as high as they would go, and paused for a second to admire the view down to the lake. The sun was bright now, and the ducks were busy. A faint twittering sound caught her attention and she glanced above her. Tucked beneath the shelter of the eaves she spotted the hint of a nest.

  As a current of cool, clean air breezed through the open window, she felt a wave of motivation and determined to ride it. She noted the roll-top writing bureau against the far wall, exactly where Alice had said it would be. It was Eleanor who had started Sadie down this road; Eleanor with whom she’d originally felt a connection, sparked by the ivy-rimmed letter; and it was Eleanor who was going to help her prove what happened to baby Theo. Remembering Alice’s instructions, Sadie felt beneath the desk chair, patting the tatty upholstery on the underside of the cushioned seat, running her fingertips along each wooden edge. Finally, where the right back leg joined the seat, her fingers met a pair of tiny keys hanging on a hook. Bingo.

  Once unlocked, the bureau’s wooden cover rolled back cleanly to reveal a neat desk with a leather jotter and pen-holder laid out on the writing surface. A series of journals lined the shelves at the back and a quick peek inside the first revealed them as the triplicate volumes Alice had said Eleanor used for correspondence. Her gaze ran greedily along the spines. There was nothing to suggest they were in chronological order, but a glance at the tidy, uncluttered desk suggested it was likely. The family had left Loeanneth at the end of 1933, which meant, presumably, that the last book covered the months leading up to Midsummer that year. Sadie slid it from the shelf and, sure enough, the first page was a letter dated January 1933, addressed in beautiful handwriting to someone called Dr Steinbach. She sat on the floor with her back propped against the side of the bed and started to read.

  It was the first in what proved to be series of letters to a series of doctors, each outlining Anthony’s symptoms and asking for help in polite sentences that didn’t quite manage to conceal her desperation. Eleanor’s descriptions of his plight were poignant, the eager young man whose life’s promise had been stripped from him by his service to his country, who’d tried over the course of years since his return to recover and regain his past abilities. Sadie was moved, but there was no time now to lament the horrors of war. There was only one horror she was interested in proving today, and to that end she had to stay focused on her search for references to Anthony’s potential for violence, his condition leading up to 23 June.

  If there was something guarded about the letters Eleanor wrote to the doctors in London, those to Daffyd Llewellyn—and there were lots of them—were far more personal in tone. They still addressed Anthony’s medical condition—Sadie had forgotten that Llewellyn trained as a physician before throwing it all in to become a writer—but, freed from having to couch her descriptions in terms that upheld her husband’s dignity and privacy in the eyes of a distant medical practitioner, Eleanor was able to describe his condition and her despair honestly: I fear sometimes that he will never be free, that this search of mine has all been in vain . . . I would give up anything to make him well, but how can I help when he has lost the will to help himself? There were some lines in particular that persuaded Sadie she was on the right path: It happened again the other night. He woke with a howl, shouting again about the dog and the baby, insisting that they must get out now, and I had to hold him down with all my might to prevent him charging from the room. The poor love, when he gets like that, thrashing and shaking, he doesn’t even realise that it’s me . . . He’s so remorseful in the morning. I find myself lying to him sometimes, pretending that I injured myself rushing about. I know your feelings on such matters, and I agree, in principle, that honesty with sensitivity is the best approach, but it would do him such great harm to know the truth. He would never knowingly hurt a fly. I couldn’t bear to see him shamed so . . . Now you must not worry! I would never have told you if I’d thought it would cause you to suffer so dreadfully. I assure you I’m all right. Physical wounds heal; damage to one’s spirit is so much worse . . . I made Anthony a promise and promises must be kept. You’re the one who taught me that . . .

  As she read, it became clear to Sadie that Llewellyn was also privy to Eleanor’s affair with Benjamin Munro. My friend, as you insist on quaintly (coyly!) calling him, is well . . . Of course I am racked with guilt. It is very kind of you to point out differences between my mother and me, but beneath your generous words, I know our actions are not so dissimilar . . . In my own defence, if I might be allowed to make one, I love him, differently to Anthony of course, but I know now it is possible for the human heart to love in two places . . . And then, in the final letter: You are quite right, Anthony must never know. Far more than a setback, it would destroy him . . .

  The last letter was dated April 1933 and the book contained no others. Sadie remembered that Daffyd Llewellyn’s habit was to live at Loeanneth through the summer months, which explained why there’d b
een no further written correspondence between them. She glanced again at the line, You are quite right, Anthony must never know . . . it would destroy him. It wasn’t exactly proof, but it was interesting. Judging by Eleanor’s response, Llewellyn had been very worried about how Anthony might react if he learned of the affair. Sadie wondered whether his anxieties had even contributed to the depression that led him to suicide. She wasn’t an expert, but it didn’t seem impossible. It certainly helped to explain the timing, which still niggled in the back corner of her brain.

  Sadie brightened. Alice had said her mother stored the letters she received in the drawers on either side of her desk. With any luck, those from Daffyd Llewellyn would be there. She could see exactly what he’d feared—and how much—written in his own words. Sadie unlocked both drawers. Hundreds of envelopes, raggedy where they’d been opened, had been bound into groups and tied with coloured ribbon. All were addressed to Mrs A. Edevane, some typed officially, others handwritten. Sadie riffled through, bundle by bundle, hunting for those from Daffyd Llewellyn.

  She was still empty-handed when she came across a batch, unusual for the top envelope having neither an address nor a stamp on it. Perplexed, Sadie scanned through the rest. There were one or two that had arrived officially through the post, but the rest were as blank as the first. And then it dawned on her. The soft red ribbon, the faint powdery hint of perfume. They were love letters.

  Not strictly what she’d set out to find, but Sadie was overcome with a frisson of curiosity. Besides, there was a chance Eleanor had shared with her lover the fears she harboured about Anthony’s condition. She pulled at the red ribbon, so eager to open the bundle that she sent them scattering to the floor around her. She was cursing herself for having got them out of order when something caught her eye. Something that didn’t belong in this bundle at all.

  She recognised the stationery at once, the woven pattern of deep green ivy tendrils snaking around the margins, the handwriting, the pen: it was a perfect match. This was the first half of the letter she’d found when she was exploring the boathouse, the letter Eleanor had written to Anthony when he was away at war. Sadie’s heart was thumping even as she smoothed out the sheet of paper. Later, it would seem to her as if she’d experienced a presentiment of what she was about to discover, because as she started to read, a missing piece of the puzzle, a clue she hadn’t even realised she was looking for, fell right into her lap.

  “Sadie?”

  She looked up with a start. It was Clive, standing in the doorway, a leather-bound notebook in his hand, an enlivened expression on his face.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said.

  “Here I am,” she parroted, her mind still racing with the implications of what she’d just uncovered.

  “I think I’ve got it,” he said excitedly, walking as quickly as his old legs would allow him to sit on the edge of the bed near Sadie. “In Anthony’s journal from 1933. Alice was right, he was a prolific diarist. There’s one for each year, filled mostly with observations of the natural world and memory exercises. I recognised them from my early days with the police, back when I was trying to teach myself to remember every detail from a crime scene. But there were diary entries, too, in the form of letters to a fellow called Howard. A friend, I gather, who’d been killed in the first war. That’s where I found it. In June 1933, Anthony seems to enter a new dark patch. He tells his mate he’d felt himself declining over the past year, that something had changed, he just hadn’t known what it was, and that the birth of his son hadn’t made things better. In fact, when I looked over old entries, he mentioned a few times that the sound of the little fellow crying brought back memories of an experience he calls ‘the incident’, something that happened during the war. In his last entry before Midsummer, he writes that his eldest daughter, Deborah, had come to see him, and that she’d told him something that changed everything, explaining his feeling of something amiss and ‘shattering the illusion’ of his perfect life.”

  “The affair,” Sadie said, thinking of Daffyd Llewellyn’s concerns.

  “It has to be.”

  Anthony had learned of the affair just before Midsummer. It was enough, surely, to tip him over the edge. Daffyd Llewellyn had certainly been worried about that. Now, though, in light of what she’d just read, Sadie wondered if that was all he’d discovered.

  “How about you?” Clive nodded at the envelopes still scattered over the carpet. “Anything of interest?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well?”

  She filled him in quickly on the partial letter she’d found at the boathouse, the letter from Eleanor to Anthony, written when he was away at the war and she was alone at home, pregnant with Alice and wondering how she was going to manage without him.

  “And?” Clive urged.

  “I just found the other half, the first half. Here, amongst Eleanor’s other correspondence.”

  “Is that it?” He nodded at the leaf of paper in Sadie’s hand. “May I?”

  She passed it to Clive, who skimmed the contents, his eyebrows lifting. “Goodness.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s passionate.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it isn’t addressed to Anthony at all. It says, Dearest Ben.”

  “That’s right,” Sadie said. “And it’s dated May 1932. Which means the unborn baby she’s writing about isn’t Alice. It’s Theo.”

  “But that means . . .”

  “Exactly. Theo Edevane wasn’t Anthony’s son. He was Ben’s.”

  Twenty-nine

  Cornwall, 1932

  Eleanor hadn’t meant to fall pregnant, not to Ben, but she didn’t regret it for a second. She’d known almost as soon as it happened. Ten years had passed since she’d fallen with Clementine, but she hadn’t forgotten. She’d felt immediate and immense love for the little person growing inside her. Anthony had sometimes shown her the view through his microscope, so she knew about cells and building blocks and the fabric of life. Her love for the baby was cellular. They were one and the same and she couldn’t imagine life without the tiny being.

  So intense, so personal was her love, that it was easy to forget the baby had a father, that she hadn’t somehow brought him into being by strength of will alone—particularly when the promised child was so small, so safely tucked away. He remained her secret (she was sure the baby was a boy), and Eleanor was good at keeping secrets. She’d had a lot of practice. She’d kept Anthony’s secret for years, and her own since meeting Ben.

  Ben. In the beginning, Eleanor had told herself he was simply an addiction. Once, when she was a little girl, Eleanor’s father had given her a kite, a special kite shipped all the way from the Far East, and he’d taught her to fly it. Eleanor had loved that kite with a passion, the tremendous coloured tails, the strength of the quivering strings in her hands, the strange and wonderful writing on the kite’s side that was more like an illustration than a language.

  Together she and her father had scoured the fields of Loeanneth, looking for the best place to launch the kite, the finest winds to fly it. Eleanor became obsessed. She kept flight notes in a book, she drew copious diagrams and plans for design adjustments, and she found herself waking suddenly in the night, sitting up in bed going through the motions of letting out the anchor system, her hands winding the reel of a ghost kite as if she were still out in the field.

  “You’ve developed an addiction,” Nanny Bruen had said with a look of stern distaste, before taking the kite from the nursery and hiding it. “An addiction is a devil, and the devil goes away when he finds the door shut firm against him.”

  Eleanor had developed an addiction to Ben, or so she told herself, but now she was an adult, in charge of her own destiny. There was no Nanny Bruen to burn the kite and shut the door and so she was free to walk right through.

  * * *

  “I was just about
to light the fire,” he’d said, the day she came upon him in the caravan. “Would you like to come inside and wait for the storm to pass?”

  It was still pouring with rain and without the hunt for Edwina to fuel her, Eleanor realised how cold she was, how drenched. She could see beyond him into a small sitting room that seemed suddenly the height of comfort and warmth. Behind her, the rain was pounding and Edwina, solid at her feet, had clearly made up her mind to stay. Eleanor couldn’t see that she had much choice in the matter. She thanked him, took a breath, and went inside.

  The man followed, closing the door behind him, and immediately the noise of teeming rain reduced. He handed her a towel and then busied himself lighting a fire in a small cast-iron stove in the middle of the caravan. Eleanor took the opportunity as she patted her hair dry to look around.

  The caravan was comfortable, but not plush. Just enough had been done to make it homely. On the windowsill, she noticed, were more of those delicate paper cranes she’d seen him folding on the train.

  “Please, sit down,” he said. “I’ll have this lit in a moment. It’s a little temperamental but we’ve been on good terms lately.”

  Eleanor pushed aside a whisper of misgiving. She was aware that his bed, the place he slept, was visible behind the drawn curtain at the other end of the caravan. She averted her gaze, laid the towel across a cane chair and sat. Rain fell softly now and it occurred to her, not for the first time, that it was one of the best sounds she knew. To be inside, with the hope of soon being warm and dry, while rain fell outside, was a splendid, simple joy.

  Flames leapt and the fire began to crackle and he stood up. He tossed a spent match into the fire and closed the grate. “I do know you,” he said. “The train, the full train from London to Cornwall some months ago. You were in my carriage.”

  “As I remember it, you were in mine.”

  He smiled and her heart gave a dangerous, unexpected flutter. “I can’t argue with that. I was lucky to get a ticket at all.” He dusted soot from his hands onto his trousers. “I remembered you as soon as we parted at the post office. I went back, but you’d already left.”