The Lake House

by Kate Morton

  Ben’s hand was on her shoulder. “I love you, Eleanor.”

  She closed her eyes, her forehead on the hard, cold wood of the door. He wanted her to say it back to him, she knew, but to do so would be fatal.

  With a slight nod of acknowledgement, she turned the tricky latch and crept out into the empty hallway. With the fireworks still sounding over the lake, red, blue, green light spilling through the windows and across the carpet, she readied herself to enter the nursery.

  * * *

  Theo woke suddenly. It was dark and his nanny was snoring heavily on the cot bed in the nook. A dull thump sounded, and a wash of green light spilled through the sheer curtains. There was other noise, too, happy noise, lots of people, far away, outside. But something else had woken him. He sucked his thumb, listening, concentrating, and then he smiled.

  He knew before she reached his cot that it was Mummy. She picked him up and Theo nestled his head in beneath her chin. There was a spot where it fitted just right. She was cooing in his ear and his left hand wound its way up to stroke her face. He sighed contentedly. Theo loved his mummy more than anyone else in the world. His sisters were more fun, and his father could lift him higher, but there was something about the way his mummy smelled and the sound of her voice and the way her fingers stroked his face so gently.

  There was another noise then, and Theo lifted his head. Someone else was in the room with them. His eyes were adjusting now to the dark and he could see a man behind his mother. The man came closer and smiled and Theo saw it was the man from the garden, Ben. Theo liked Ben a lot. He made things out of paper, animals and other shapes, and told stories that ended in tickles.

  His mummy was whispering softly in his ear, but Theo wasn’t listening. He was busy playing peek-a-boo over her shoulder, trying to get Ben’s attention. Mummy was holding him more tightly than usual and he wriggled to break free. She brushed a series of kisses on his cheek, but Theo pulled away. He was trying to make Ben smile. He didn’t want to cuddle, he wanted to play. When the other man reached to stroke his cheek, a giggle burst out around Theo’s thumb.

  Shhh, whispered Mummy, shhh. There was something different about her voice and Theo wasn’t sure he liked it. He stared at her face but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was pointing to something beneath the cot. Theo watched as Ben knelt down and then stood again, a bag over his shoulder. It wasn’t a bag Theo recognised so he gave it no more thought.

  Ben came closer then and lifted his hand to touch Mummy’s cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his palm. I love you, too, she said. Theo looked between their faces. They were both standing very still, neither saying a word, and he tried to guess what would happen next. When Mummy handed him to Ben, Theo was surprised but not unhappy.

  “It’s time,” she whispered, and Theo glanced at the big clock on the wall. He wasn’t sure what time was, but he knew it came from there.

  They left the nursery and Theo wondered where they were going. It was not normal to leave the nursery at night. He sucked his thumb and watched and waited to see. There was a door in the hallway, he’d never noticed it before, but now his mother held it open. Ben stopped and leaned close to Mummy, he was whispering in her ear but Theo couldn’t hear the words. He made a whispering sound himself, wisha, wisha, wisha, and smiled with satisfaction. And then Ben carried him on and the door closed softly behind them.

  It was dark. Ben turned on a torch and started walking downstairs. Theo looked around for Mummy. He couldn’t see her. Maybe she was hiding? Was this a game? He watched hopefully over Ben’s shoulder, waiting for her to jump out and smile and say, Peek-a-boo! But she didn’t. Again and again, she didn’t.

  Theo’s bottom lip trembled and he thought about crying, but Ben was talking to him, and his voice made Theo feel safe and warm. There was a rightness to it, the same way Theo’s head fitted perfectly in the space beneath his mother’s chin, the way his sister Clemmie’s skin smelled just like his own. Theo yawned. He was tired. He lifted Puppy and tucked him on Ben’s shoulder and then pressed his face against him. He slid his thumb into his mouth and closed his eyes and listened.

  And Theo was content. He knew Ben’s voice the way he knew his family, in that special way, knowledge that was as old as the world itself.

  Thirty-three

  Cornwall, 2003

  It was pitch-black, except for the luminous white beams of their flashlights sweeping the ground a few metres ahead. Peter wasn’t precisely sure why they were here, now, in the woods outside Loeanneth, rather than in the village enjoying the Solstice Festival. He’d rather fancied a bowl of fish stew followed by a cup of local mead, but Alice had been as stubborn as she was mysterious. “Granted, it’s not ideal to go while it’s dark,” she’d said, “but it needs to be done and I have to do it.” Which begged the question as to why they hadn’t got in and done it earlier in the day like they’d planned. “I wasn’t about to undertake it with the detective and her grandfather around. It’s private.”

  The answer rang true, in part, Alice being one of the most private people Peter knew. He’d have wondered why she’d asked him along, except that the list of things she’d had him acquire for the excursion, “the supplies’ as she insisted on calling them, suggested clearly enough he’d been brought along for brawn. He’d managed to get everything she’d asked for. Not easy at such short notice, but Peter was good at his job and hadn’t wanted to let her down.

  The task was plainly very important to Alice, as evidenced by her late-night call to his home on Friday, when she’d announced that she’d thought about it and would be accompanying him to Cornwall after all. She’d sounded unusually excited, garrulous even, and it had crossed Peter’s mind that she’d been liberal with the G & Ts after he left. “I’ve no intention of taking over,” she’d said, before advising him she’d be ready and waiting for collection at five the next morning. “Best to get a jump start on the traffic, wouldn’t you agree?” He’d said he did, and was about to hang up when she added, “And Peter?”

  “Yes, Alice?”

  “Do you think you could lay your hands on a shovel and a pair of good-quality gardening gloves? There’s something I’d very much like to do while we’re there.”

  All the way from London she’d sat beside him, a fixed expression on her face, a distracted air about her, uttering a determined “not necessary’ to every suggestion he made that they stop for air, food, water, or just to stretch their legs. She wasn’t in the mood for chatting, which suited Peter. He’d simply turned up the volume of his audio book and tuned in to the next instalment of Great Expectations. He’d been so busy over the past fortnight that he hadn’t had time to finish the novel, but figured the long drive would be the perfect opportunity to do so. As they neared the village, he suggested they go straight to the hotel to check in, but Alice answered sharply. “No. Unthinkable. We must go straight to Loeanneth.”

  That’s when she’d told him about the key she wanted him to fetch for her. “There’s a drying room upstairs,” she’d said, “and in the floor beneath the rack there’s a loose board. You’ll know it because it has a whorl that looks uncannily like a moose’s head. Inside the cavity you’ll find a small leather pouch. There’s a key inside the pouch. It’s mine and I’ve been missing it for a very long time.”

  “Got it,” he’d said. “Loose floorboard, moose-head whorl, small leather pouch.”

  Her determination had still been in evidence when they joined the others for the picnic at lunchtime. She’d had him cart the equipment with them, eager to head into the woods the moment they’d finished, but then Sadie Sparrow’s grandfather, Bertie, had offered to show her around the festival and she’d accepted without a moment’s hesitation. Peter would have been completely flummoxed, except that over the course of the morning he’d glimpsed something he thought might explain her change of heart. He couldn’t be certain, but he had a feeling Alic
e had warmed to Bertie. She’d listened to him intently when he spoke, laughing at his jokes, and nodding keenly at his stories. It was decidedly un-Alice-like behaviour; she wasn’t usually one for forming quick, close bonds, or any bonds at all, really.

  Whatever the case, they’d gone back to the village, checked in to the hotel, and Alice had enjoyed a tour around the festival. Peter, meanwhile, had made his apologies and ducked out on his own. There’d been something playing on his mind all afternoon, a small personal niggle, and he’d wanted to stop by the library to check it out. But now, here they were, in the dark of night, following the same path they’d taken earlier, around the lake and down towards the boathouse. When they reached the stream, Alice didn’t stop, urging him on instead towards the woods. Peter was wary, wondering whether it was reprehensible to bring an octogenarian into the woods at night, but Alice told him not to worry. “I know these woods like the back of my hand,” she said. “A person never forgets the landscape of their childhood.”

  * * *

  Not for the first time, Alice thanked God Peter wasn’t a talker. She didn’t want to speak or explain or entertain. She wanted only to walk and to remember the last time she’d followed this path through the woods. A night-bird soared above them in the darkness and the sounds came back to her of that night, almost seventy years ago, when she’d crept out here to bury it: the horse whinnying, the lapping of the lake, the warblers in flight.

  She stumbled and Peter caught her arm. “Are you all right?” he said.

  He was a good boy. He’d asked very few questions. Done everything she’d asked. “Not much further,” she said.

  They walked on in mutual silence, through the nettles, across the clearing where the tunnel trapdoor was hidden, and past the trout pond. Alice felt a strange elation to be back at Loeanneth, to be here in the woods tonight. It was just as she’d imagined as she sat in her library back in London the night before, listening to the clock tick on the mantelpiece, as her flame of longing for the place become a blaze of yearning and she put her call through to Peter. It wasn’t that she felt young again, certainly not; rather that for the first time in seven decades she’d given herself permission to remember being that young girl. That frightened, love-struck, silly young girl.

  At last they reached the spot that Alice had chosen back then, the place to which her guilt had been anchored all this time. “We can stop now,” she said.

  A smell came to her, of wood mouse and mushrooms, and the wash of memory was so strong she had to steady herself against Peter’s arm.

  “I wonder whether you might do a bit of digging for me,” she said. “Real digging, I mean, with dirt, as opposed to the other sort.”

  Bless him, he didn’t query her, merely took the shovel from the sack he was carrying, donned the pair of gardener’s gloves, and started digging where she pointed.

  Alice angled the torch to illuminate a circle for him to work within. She held her breath, remembering that night, the rain that had fallen, the muddy hem of her nightdress sticking to her boots. She’d never worn it again. She’d balled it up as soon as she got back to the house and burned it when she had the chance.

  She’d made herself walk across the fields despite the rain. She could have used the tunnel. It wouldn’t have been easy to go alone, not with the funny latch, but she’d have managed. But she hadn’t wanted to go anywhere that Ben had gone. She’d been so sure he was the one who took Theo, so caught up in her own theory. Petrified that someone else would put two and two together and discover the part she’d played.

  “Alice,” said Peter, “can you swing the light around a bit?”

  “Sorry.” She’d let it drift with her thoughts and corrected it.

  There was a clunk as the shovel hit something solid.

  He was down on all fours now, extracting the parcel from inside the hole. Unwrapping and removing what remained of the cloth bag she’d put it in.

  “It’s a box,” he said, looking up at her, his eyes wide with surprise. “A metal box.”

  “It is.”

  He stood, sweeping dirt off the top with his gloved hands. “Do you want me to open it?”

  “No. We’ll take it back to the car with us.”

  “But—”

  Her heart had begun to trip along when she saw it, but she managed to make her voice sound calm. “There’s no need to open it now. I know precisely what we’ll find inside.”

  * * *

  Sadie pushed her way through the busy crowds at the Solstice Festival. The four streets that met to form the village square were lined with stalls selling corn on the cob, and clothing, and handmade pork pies and pasties. Flames leapt from upturned barrels, and out on the harbour a floating pontoon was loaded with fireworks, waiting to be lit at midnight. Alice and Peter were staying at the hotel on the corner of the High Street, the white-rendered number with the hanging baskets of flowers along its wall and the snooty owner, but getting through the crowds was taking longer than Sadie had imagined. She just hoped they were there and not out amongst the revellers. She was desperate to tell them what she’d learned about Theo’s death, for Alice to know that Anthony was in the clear.

  Her phone was ringing; she could feel the vibration against her leg. She extricated it from her pocket, just as a kid with an enormous stick of fairy floss elbowed past her. Sadie looked at the screen and saw it was the Met. “Hello?”

  “Sparrow.”

  “Donald?”

  “Well, you’ve certainly managed to stir up a hornets’ nest this time.”

  Sadie stopped still. Her pulse had started to race. “What happened? Have they talked to the husband, to Steve?”

  “He’s here now, in custody. Confessed to the whole thing.”

  “What? Hang on, let me go somewhere quieter.” It was more easily said than done, but Sadie managed to find a nook along the stone harbour wall where she could tuck herself away from the crowds. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Ashford brought in the new wife first. Got DI Heather to sit in and ask the questions, how things were going with Caitlyn, that sort of thing, all nice and friendly, and then they moved on to whether she had any other children, whether she wanted more. Turns out she can’t have kids of her own.”

  Sadie pressed her other hand against her ear. “What’s that?”

  “She and the husband tried for a baby for over a year before seeing a doctor for tests.”

  It was just as they’d hypothesised over lunch at Loeanneth, the same scenario Alice had described from her earlier Diggory Brent book, the story she’d said her sister had told her years before. “So he went and got one for her?”

  “That’s about the sum of it. He said his wife had been devastated by the news of her infertility. She’d always wanted a baby, wanted a little girl more than anything in the world. The failure to fall pregnant was devastating, and all those fertility drugs messed her up even more. She was suicidal, he said, and he wanted to make her happy.”

  “By finding her a daughter,” Sadie said. “The perfect solution, but for the pesky fact that Caitlyn already had a mother.”

  “He broke down under questioning. Told us what he’d done, where we’d find her body. Fishing holiday, my foot! We’ve got divers out there now. He was your typical first-timer, crying, saying he wasn’t a bad person, he didn’t want this to happen, he didn’t mean for it to go so far.”

  Sadie pressed her lips together grimly. “He should have thought of that before he sat Maggie down and made her write that note, before he killed her.” She was seething. The way he’d picked at that polystyrene cup during his interview, the performance he’d given of the loving father, the put-upon ex-spouse, concerned and confused and willing to do whatever was necessary to find the irresponsible runaway, when all the while he knew precisely where she was. What he’d done to her.

  Maggie must have known wh
at was coming. At some point in their final confrontation she must’ve figured it out. It was him, she’d scribbled desperately. It was him. The use of past tense had never been so chilling. Nor so brave. The one small mercy was that Caitlyn, to all appearances, hadn’t seen what happened to her mum. “Did he say what he did with his daughter while he was dealing with Maggie?”

  “Put Dora the Explorer on. The little girl didn’t budge.”

  And knowing Caitlyn was still in the flat would’ve ensured Maggie didn’t make a scene, careful to shield her daughter from what she’d realised was about to happen. For the second time that evening, Sadie had cause to reflect on the lengths to which a parent would go to protect the child they loved.

  Donald’s voice turned sheepish. “Look, Sparrow—”

  “He left his daughter alone in that flat for a week.”

  “Says he thought the grandmother was due to visit—that the little girl would be found much sooner; he was about to call it in himself, he said—”

  “Nancy Bailey will have to be told.”

  “They’ve already sent a liaison officer.”

  “She was right all along.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her daughter didn’t walk out. Maggie never would’ve done that. Just like Nancy said.” She’d been murdered. And they’d almost let her ex-husband get away with it. Sadie felt relieved and vindicated, but sickened, too, and saddened, because it meant that Nancy’s daughter wasn’t coming home. “What will happen to Caitlyn?”

  “Child protection are looking after her now.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nancy adores the girl,” said Sadie. “She used to care for her when Maggie was working. She’s got a room set up for Caitlyn already. The child should be with family.”

  “I’ll make a note.”

  “We need to do more than make a note, Donald. We owe it to the little girl. We failed her once. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”