The Secrets of Winter

by Nicola Upson

  ‘Thank you,’ Penrose said gratefully. ‘Will you see what you can do now? And I’ll come down to the village with you and have a look at the museum.’

  As they left the servants’ hall together, Penrose couldn’t help but feel guilty at how distressed the housekeeper seemed by her husband’s offer to risk a sea crossing. God forbid that anything should happen to them, he thought; the last thing the Mount needed today was another tragedy, especially one brought about by his own recklessness. He accepted the long oilskin jacket and boots that one of the footmen found for him, and was glad of their protection as he followed Pendean down the winding cobbled paths to the village. The wind caught at their heels and the early brightness of the day had long since disappeared, replaced by a light but insidious rain. He turned to look back at the castle, and offered a silent prayer of thanks that at least Richard Hartley’s body was no longer exposed to the elements.

  The snow was entirely gone from the lower parts of the village. Even though the tide was on the wane, the water levels in the harbour were still high, and Penrose could tell from the seaweed and other debris along the front that the sea, at its worst, must have pounded against the most exposed line of houses, all of which now had boards and sandbags across their doors and windows. He parted company with Pendean by the graveyard, and crossed the narrow road to the museum on the corner. The ground floor was in darkness, so he knocked hard on the door and waited. When there was no answer, he went round to the side of the building to look for another, more private entrance, but there were only two sets of windows, which showed him nothing but a counter and a variety of packed display cases. Disappointed, he returned to the front door and tried again.

  ‘No luck?’ Pendean called, coming out of the Change House.

  ‘No, she’s obviously not at home. How about you?’

  ‘Trannack’s up for it, as long as you’re happy to wait for low tide, and he says he’ll get John Mathews to come as well – he’s our postman, and he’s seen a fair few rough crossings in his time, so you’ll be in safe hands.’ He looked with concern at the museum, and knocked on the door himself. ‘The chaps in the Change House say they haven’t seen Emily all day. I hope she’s all right.’

  ‘Does she live alone?’

  ‘Yes, since her husband died.’

  ‘And she couldn’t have gone away for Christmas?’

  ‘Not unless it was a last-minute thing. Her son’s up country in Plymouth now, and she’s supposed to be coming to us later. It was her first Christmas on her own, so Nora asked her over for supper. I think she’d have let us know if her plans had changed.’ He rattled the door, but it was firmly locked.

  ‘Do you want to force it?’ Penrose asked.

  ‘No need. Nora keeps a spare on her castle keys. I’ll ask her to nip down if she’s free.’

  He went back to the Change House to use the house telephone and Penrose walked over to the causeway, trying to assess how difficult the task ahead would be. The sea swelled and churned against the harbour wall, its surge still strong even at a fraction of its power, and he hoped that he hadn’t made the wrong decision.

  6

  So this was how easily it happened, Nora thought, as her husband rang off and the line went dead. One slip, followed by another and then another, until someone noticed the inconsistencies and your life unravelled in front of you. She had lied to the guests on Christmas Eve about Emily’s absence from the museum, and then to the policeman about her time in the church, and now he would be waiting for her in the harbour because Tom was so hell-bent on doing the right thing. Ironic, she thought, that her husband’s simple wish to help should have sealed her fate.

  Her fear dogged her progress down the Mount like a physical disability, making her footsteps heavy and slow, clutching at her heart until she found it hard to breathe. There was something malignant in the wind today, something in the fury of it that frightened and tormented her, perhaps because it reminded her of those last, terrible breaths that had taken Emily from the world; she heard them still in the wind’s persistent moaning, until it felt as if her friend would never let her rest. Above her, the branches of the ancient pine trees creaked and strained under the pressure, threatening to snap at any moment, and she knew exactly how that felt.

  And there they were, below her in the harbour, waiting by Emily’s door. Her stomach tightened and she stopped in her tracks, wondering which of the two men she feared more. For a moment she was tempted to turn back, to make an excuse about her work and try to delay the inevitable, but that was all she would gain by prevarication – a few more hours of this desolate, insidious fear, and she honestly didn’t know how much longer she could stand it. It would almost be a relief to stop the charade now, no matter what the consequences.

  She pressed on, arriving flustered and out of breath. ‘Don’t look so worried, love,’ Tom said when he saw her. ‘I was wondering if Emily went over yesterday and got caught on the mainland. That would make sense, I suppose, but it’s best to be on the safe side.’ He squeezed her shoulder and she had to turn away, caught on the other side by the policeman’s sympathetic smile; he was obviously touched by her apparent concern for her friend, and she wanted to scream at him not to be so kind, when kindness was the last thing she deserved. He moved away from the door to let her unlock it, but Nora hesitated and handed the keys to her husband. The wind rushed in ahead of them, as if determined to get to the truth, and the rustle of dried seaweed across Emily’s carefully swept floor was the only sound that broke the silence.

  ‘Emily?’ Tom called as he walked over to the counter. ‘Emily, are you here? It’s Tom, we’ve just come to see if you’re all right.’ She waited for him to stop in horror, to turn and look back at her with shame or disgust, but his behaviour was so natural that she caught herself waiting for Emily to reply. He rummaged in a drawer for some matches and passed them to her. ‘Light the lamps, love, or Mr Penrose won’t be able to read anything.’ She did as he asked, and a warm glow filled the room. ‘Those albums are here, next to the postcards,’ he added, pointing them out to Penrose. ‘Take whatever you think might help.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Nora braced herself to join the two men at the counter, standing where she had stood during that fateful conversation. She looked round, then closed her eyes, convinced that her mind was playing tricks on her, showing her what she dearly wished to see rather than the reality of her terrible deed; so seductive was the illusion that she had to will herself to look again, but still there was nothing there. Emily’s body, the dust sheet and the boxes, the blood that had spread in pools and rivulets across the floor – it was all gone.

  ‘Emily?’ Tom called again.

  ‘She must be here somewhere,’ Nora insisted, a note of panic in her voice. She stared round, utterly bewildered. ‘Where is she, Tom? Why isn’t she here?’ The only response to her question was a loud, indignant mewing as a tiny black-and-white cat appeared from a back room and began to rub round each of their legs in turn. ‘Oh God, I forgot about Charlie,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t been fed.’

  ‘I must have been right, then,’ Tom said. ‘She’ll have gone to Marazion and been stranded by the tides.’

  ‘But she can’t have done.’

  Her voice began to rise hysterically. Penrose found her a stool, but she waved it away. ‘No, I’ll be all right in a second. It’s just the day, and everything that’s happened. I’ve got to feed Charlie, though. Emily would never forgive me for letting him go hungry.’

  She made to go upstairs, but her husband put his hand on her arm. ‘Let me go, love,’ he said. ‘You stay here with Mr Penrose. Show him Emily’s albums.’

  She watched him walk through the workroom and draw back the curtain that covered the staircase. He hesitated, glancing back at her and quickly pulling the curtain across again, but she had already seen her friend’s body lying at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Don’t go any further, Mr Pendean,’ Penrose ordered. ‘Come back and lo
ok after your wife.’

  He tried to hold her back, but Nora forced her way past him. ‘I need to look at her,’ she cried. ‘Please let me look at her.’ If she hadn’t known better, she would have said that Emily had fallen down the stairs. She stood over her body, looking at the awkward, crumpled way she was positioned, and it seemed so obvious that she wondered if Emily had still been alive when she left her after all? Then she remembered the blood, so much blood, and that terrible, stertorous breathing.

  ‘She must have fallen,’ Tom said, and Nora wanted to tell him to stop, to give her time to think, but he ploughed relentlessly on. ‘Look, her shoelace is undone. What a bloody awful thing to happen. I’m so sorry, love. I know how close you were. Come here.’

  He put his arm round her and led her gently away.

  ‘Do you live nearby?’ Penrose asked.

  ‘Yes, just behind the harbour.’

  ‘Then take Mrs Pendean home and stay with her. I’ll ask Miss St Aubyn to send someone to check on her.’

  Tom nodded. ‘What about the causeway?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now. I’m sure the three of us can manage if necessary.’

  ‘All right, but be sharp about the timing or you’ll never make it across.’

  He turned back to Nora and held her close, and she clung to him as the only thing that made sense. ‘Come on, love – let’s go home. You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  She wondered if he would ever know how true his words were. ‘What about Charlie?’ she said, suddenly remembering the cat. ‘We can’t just leave him, Tom.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He scooped the cat up and gave him to her to hold. ‘You were a good friend, Nora,’ he said. ‘Emily was lucky to have you.’

  7

  As Tom Pendean led his wife from the building, Penrose watched them go, trying to make sense of what was happening on the island and what his priorities should be. He locked the museum and went straight to the Change House to call the castle and speak to Hilaria. She took the news calmly, but he could hear the strain in her voice, and he knew that these tragedies would take their toll once the anaesthetising practicalities were dealt with.

  Deep in thought, he returned to Emily Soper’s body, conscious of having a limited amount of time before low tide offered the only opportunity to access the mainland. The bizarre surroundings of the scene struck him anew as he entered the room, even though this time he was prepared for them. Mrs Soper had obviously been a talented taxidermist in her own right, as well as a collector: a workbench was covered in the tools of the trade, and the gimlet eye of a jay in full flight stared across at him – a work in progress, now garishly lifelike by comparison with its creator.

  He went back to the foot of the stairs and crouched down by the dead woman. Her dull eyes looked past him as if hoping for someone more important to enter the room, and her hair was matted with viscous, sticky blood – although there was very little on the floor beneath her head. Curious, he fetched one of the lamps from the museum and placed it on the step beside her body, then gently lifted Mrs Soper’s head and examined the wound on her temple. The laceration was ragged and deep, and as he peered more closely in the fitful light, he could see tiny fragments of something – most probably wood or paint – embedded in the skin. He considered the significance of what his eyes were telling him, keeping an open mind to other possible explanations until an expert opinion was available, but one thing now seemed certain: however Emily Soper had died, it wasn’t from an accidental fall down these bare stone steps; a fatal blow to the head was far more likely. He lifted her arms, one after the other, pulling her sleeves back to examine the skin; there was no sign of bruising from an attempt to defend herself, suggesting that the attack had taken her completely by surprise, but that was the only blessing he could find. Her skin was grey and cold to the touch, with rigor well developed, and had he been forced to hazard a guess at the time of death, he would have put it at several hours before Richard Hartley.

  Penrose stood up and looked round for a possible murder weapon, but there was nothing immediately obvious in this bizarre collection of dead animals and Victorian mourning dolls, all waiting to be repaired, and neither could he find anything remotely out of place in either of the upstairs rooms. The museum might hold more possibilities, but he was wasting time with uneducated guesses when everything he needed to know for the time being had already been established: there were two suspicious deaths on the island, not one. It was reasonable to suppose that they might be connected, but for the life of him he couldn’t see how.

  He knelt quietly again by Mrs Soper’s body, as if respect could help him to find an answer to his questions, but it only served to deepen his sadness. It never ceased to amaze him, this indefinable but crippling sense of rage that he was capable of feeling for a stranger – shamefully more powerful than the emotions which underpinned many of his longstanding friendships – but he clung to it as the essence of who he was, and he knew that if it ever let him down, it would be time to concede defeat.

  When he was ready to leave, he blew out the lamp and went back to the museum to collect the photograph albums from the counter where he had left them. The smell that he had noticed there before and thought nothing of now seemed more significant – a faint but unmistakable odour of disinfectant. The floor had obviously been recently washed, and he knelt down to look for any evidence that might have been missed; the cleaning was a reasonably thorough job, but he knew how difficult it was to eradicate everything and his patience was soon rewarded by a spatter of blood on the wall, and other marks on the floor leading through to the back room. No doubt a proper forensic examination would reveal more, but Penrose was satisfied for now that regardless of where Mrs Soper had been found, the attack had taken place here, at the counter.

  Looking round the museum again, he noticed that one of the cases was open. It was devoted to a collection of sweetheart jewellery, sent home from South Africa by migrant Cornish miners, but some of the contents were missing from the neatly labelled shelves and the detail struck him as odd. His first thought was of Gerald Lancaster, but he doubted very much that petty theft was at the root of either death. Still brooding on what might link the two victims, Penrose pulled the blinds and locked the door, then hurried back up to the castle.

  He was shown to the study, where Hilaria sat staring out of the window. ‘Emily Soper lived on this island her whole life,’ she said sadly, without any other greeting. ‘She was a nice woman – a decent woman. She shouldn’t have died alone.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s more to it than that,’ Penrose said. He could see by the shock on his friend’s face that she had understood his meaning immediately, but he outlined everything carefully to avoid any misunderstandings.

  ‘Please tell me that the deaths are connected, at least,’ Hilaria said. ‘I don’t think I could bear the idea of harbouring two murderers under this roof.’

  ‘You mustn’t—’

  ‘Don’t tell me not to blame myself, Archie. You know me better than that. Have you got any idea what is going on here?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’m going over to the mainland now with the men that Tom Pendean recommended. I hope to have some answers for you when I get back.’

  ‘Will you do something for me while you’re there?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and handed it to him. ‘This is the address we have for Emily’s son, Jonathan. Can you arrange for someone to go and break the news? He should know what’s happened as soon as possible. I’d hate him to read about it in the newspapers, and we shouldn’t forget that we have a journalist in our midst.’

  ‘I’ll make sure it’s done.’

  ‘When will you be back?’ The question was business-like enough, but there was a deep anxiety in Hilaria’s voice and he knew that she was at a loss to know how to keep everyone safe. ‘And what can we do to make sure that nothing else happens while you’re gone? Should I warn t
he islanders?’

  ‘No, not yet. At the moment, everyone thinks that Mrs Soper’s death is a tragic coincidence, and I’d rather it stayed that way for now. If people start to panic, it might trigger an extreme reaction from the killer, and that’s the last thing we’re in a position to deal with. I’d much rather wait until we can get reinforcements onto the island.’ She nodded reluctantly, and Penrose prayed that he wasn’t being reckless by keeping people in the dark about the extent of the violence. ‘I won’t be gone long,’ he promised. ‘I’ll make sure to be back before the tide turns again, and by then we’ll have people doing all they can up country to get to the bottom of this.’

  He must have sounded convincing because Hilaria seemed reassured, and that in itself felt like a betrayal, when in reality he couldn’t remember ever feeling so helpless. ‘Are those albums from the museum?’ she asked, nodding to the pile he had put down on the desk.

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d ask Josephine and Marta to look through them to see if there’s anything interesting about Richard Hartley. Unless you’d rather do it?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, by all means hand them over. Everybody’s getting more restless by the minute, so I’m sure they’d appreciate a mission.’

  ‘Is everyone still in Chevy Chase?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve cancelled lunch by mutual agreement, but we’ll have a cold table later. Until then, what would you like me to do with everyone?’

  ‘The important thing is for no one to be on their own, guest or staff member. None of you must take any risks. Lancaster is to stay under lock and key, and be vigilant about Mrs Hartley, too, just in case she’s in danger because of something she knows about her husband. I was hoping to speak to her before going over to the mainland, but that was before we found Mrs Soper and there isn’t time now. Will you make sure that there are plenty of staff around Marlene while I’m gone?’