The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  The room was empty, of course.

  I glanced at the wall beside me that partitioned this room from the main hallway. Perhaps it had been someone on the other side: one of Star and Johnny’s drunk partygoers. Maybe this was the remnants of Geoff’s blue pill, crimping my heart. All the same, I remained static, one fist clutching the bed sheets, the other propping myself up in the bed. I had the odd sensation of being in a lukewarm bath and not wanting to disturb the water.

  And then the whistling began.

  It was not like before, a sound heard from beneath floorboards, through walls, the other sides of doors. This time, the whistling was coming from this very room, as if somebody was standing just out of my line of vision.

  My breath stood still in my throat. The usual sounds of the old, creaking house were absent. I could not even hear Mrs Bray breathing next door; I might have been alone, except for the person whistling somewhere between the weak splash of lamplight and the enveloping dark.

  I forced myself out of bed, my feet landing on the rug, and backed myself as I edged, crab-like, against the wall towards the overhead switch. I noticed for the first time the swallowing nature of those floor-to-ceiling curtains, like the suffocating velvet swags of the old photograph, and knew that my tormentor was there.

  I jammed on the switch, and a thin, disappointing overhead light blurred out the shadows. I darted towards the fireplace, snatching up the poker and holding it in front of me. ‘This,’ I said in my sternest voice, brandishing the poker as I inched towards the nearest window. ‘Is. Not. Funny.’

  There was no response. I was aware of two sensations in my body as I pokered the curtains: the dragging, red-raw tiredness of my eyes, and the wide-awake, gibbering fear in my stomach. Above my head, rings rattled on the rail as I thrust them aside and revealed the chilly blank squares of the windowpanes.

  I swallowed on my dry throat, loosened the poker and turned to the other window, jerking the curtains aside as if I were ripping off a sticking plaster. Behind them, the street lamp’s orange beacon flashed down on the spiky fingers of the fence bordering the basement well. Over the other side of the road, the cliff-top railings were dimmed and, beyond, the sea and the sky were an indistinguishable squid-ink black.

  My palms were clammy, my breathing hot and shallow. I rested against the window frame and surveyed my tumultuous progress around the room: the blankets tumbled on to the floor, the lampshade knocked to one side in my haste to switch it on, the curtain hanging at an angle where I’d used the poker to thrust it aside. I realized now what I should really have suspected earlier: that anyone who pays five guineas to not sleep in a flat alone must have a very good reason indeed.

  And then I noticed something that made my blood freeze in my veins.

  The lid to the chest had been flung open.

  Still clutching the poker, I tiptoed towards it and looked down. The photograph was where I’d replaced it, face-down on top of the thick envelope. Nothing had been disturbed, except that the chest was wide open – and it was this, I realized, that had made the loud cracking sound that had sent my pulse rate soaring.

  The lid was on two brass hinges. Its curved innards smiled up at me. I fingered the catch and remembered hooking it over after I’d closed the lid. The chest gaped obscenely, taunting me, telling me it could never have opened by itself.

  The whistling had stopped, at least. I was sweating, although the room was chilly. I turned, moving quickly across the room, and opened the door.

  Mrs Bray had left the three-bar electric fire on, and in the beady glow from its lamps I could see the dim shape of her in the bed, her face a shadow. Now I was nearby I heard her deep, drugged breathing, and knew there’d be no comfort from her. As I sat on the edge of her bed, the whistling came again, and I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes, although the sound seemed to penetrate all the way through to my brain. Now I knew why Mrs Bray drugged herself and, of course, why she refused to sleep alone.

  I thought about leaving right now, with the five pounds and five shillings still on the mantelpiece, but then I saw the small glass bottle on the table beside Mrs Bray’s bed. There was scratchy French writing on the label which I couldn’t read in this light.

  I picked up the bottle and rattled it; there were pills inside. I considered it for a moment and then unscrewed the lid, emptied out a pill and put it in my mouth. I palmed another as a precaution, and then left the bedroom, returning to the upturned sitting room and fetching a tumbler of water from the sink to wash it down. It was enormous and almost gagged me as I swallowed it. My second tablet of the evening; I hoped it was what I thought it was, otherwise I had no idea what was going to happen.

  I switched off the overhead light and climbed back into the bed, still clutching the poker. I slipped the other pill under my pillow, where I could grab it if I needed to. The curtains were still dangling open, but I preferred the sickly street light to the enveloping darkness of before.

  I left the lamp on too as I pulled the covers around me, remaining upright in the bed. ‘I’m waiting,’ I growled, gripping the end of the poker. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Silence greeted me, punctuated by Mrs Bray’s gentle snores from the open doorway. The whistling had ceased too, but I remained as tense as a sniper with a rifle, waiting for my target to appear. Somebody coughed, and I froze, but I realized the sound was coming from the basement below and then, as the tablet began to seize me in its groggy embrace, I was no longer able to distinguish between what was happening in the room or outside it. There was a violent clatter and I stirred, but it was only me releasing my grip on the poker and letting it fall to the floor. I vaguely hoped I would not have to escape, because my limbs were made of lead, and as I descended into the dungeon of assisted sleep the last piece of my coherent mind wondered why Mrs Bray had put a photograph of herself and her husband face-down in a dusty, disused chest, almost as if she didn’t want to be reminded of him at all.

  12

  1924

  The second of August was a swelteringly hot day, the first truly boiling day there had been since my arrival. All morning the housemaids had been sighing as they went about their chores, pushing tendrils of damp hair back under their caps. I had taken my usual morning constitutional and had returned sweltering and red-faced. After lunch I was wary of going down to the beach in this weather, sure my fair skin would burn, and so now I was in the dim cool of Castaway’s first-floor library, attempting to choose a book from the dusty spines lining the shelves, with the thought of settling myself in the shaded arbour at the end of the garden.

  Out of nowhere, there came a tremendous clanging sound from the front door. I went out on to the landing and peered over the banister, watching Scone move ponderously across the hall flagstones and loosen the latch. Faintly, I heard a man’s voice demanding to be let in, and I took the stairs down, arriving in the hallway just as the door swung open. Uncle Edward was on the front doorstep, his salt-and-pepper moustache quivering, red-cheeked and furious.

  ‘A man could die out there!’ he bellowed. ‘It’s hot enough to roast the devil. Robert – you still here? Where’s my son? I need to talk to him.’

  He strode into the house. Scone closed the door behind him with a gentle click. I held out my hand. ‘G-good afternoon, Uncle Edward.’

  ‘Don’t Uncle Edward me.’ He stood in the hallway, sniffing suspiciously. ‘What’s she done to the place, eh? Smells queer. Never used to smell like this. Where’s he got to then, the so-called master of the house?’ He directed this query at Scone, apparently not trusting me to give him a coherent answer.

  Scone murmured, ‘I believe Mr Bray went out some time ago. I’m afraid we don’t know when to expect him back.’

  ‘Typical.’ He held out his arms and allowed the butler to pull off his jacket. Dark blooms of sweat patterned my uncle’s shirt. He loosened his cravat also, and used it to mop his brow. ‘Is she in?’

  ‘Mrs Bray is also out, sir.’ Scone took the items an
d folded them over one arm. ‘But we expect her back before too long.’

  My uncle scowled. I thought it must be hard for him, returning to a house he was no longer in charge of, and so I said, ‘Per-perhaps we could have a drink in the garden while we wait?’

  Uncle Edward narrowed his eyes at me as if suspecting a trick. ‘Drink?’ he said, and then glanced at Scone as if he thought the man incapable of mixing one. ‘All right.’

  Abruptly, he turned on his heel and walked along to the unused morning room that stood to the left of the hallway. I followed him into the little glass-fronted conservatory, and then down the concrete stairs into the garden. As a child, I had been terrified of him, forced to tiptoe round the Lancaster Gate house on the few occasions we visited. He had no idea how to talk to children, and I quickly got the impression that he thought I was an imbecile, stuttering my way into a half-formed reply at his barked-out questions.

  Although I still quavered in his presence, I felt sorry for him now, mired in grief after the death of my aunt. Despite his bluster, there seemed something narrower about him, more shrunken, and as I followed him along the gravel path to the arbour, I realized that I was the taller, and wondered when that reversal had happened.

  ‘This used to be a wonderland,’ he said, gesturing to the fish pond as we passed, although I suspected he was talking about the garden as a whole. ‘Wilderness, it was, before your aunt transformed it. Designed it all herself, y’know. She used to have deckchairs,’ he added savagely, hitching up his trousers and sitting on one of the stone seats.

  There were three benches in the arbour, forming a broken circle. I sat on one of the others. ‘We didn’t know you were coming down,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Alec would have been here, had he known.’

  My uncle waved a dismissive hand. ‘I didn’t know I was coming down until this morning. Thought of telegramming – waste of money. And why warn him? He’ll only run away, the little blighter.’

  This sounded rather ominous. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Uncle Edward sniffed in my direction. ‘There’ll be something wrong if I don’t get hold of the recalcitrant sod. You know your generation’s problem? Too much damn peace. Soft-boiled eggs, the lot of you. What we need is another war; that’d pull everyone’s bootlaces up.’

  I felt horribly tired suddenly, and resisted the urge to stretch out. ‘I don’t think we do,’ I murmured.

  ‘Shame I missed out on the German saga.’ He ran a hand over his moustache. ‘I could have done with running a bayonet through one or two of ’em. How’s your mother?’

  This abrupt conversational switch was typical. I thought back to her last letter, the dull news of people I cared little about, and the comfort in it too, the knowledge that life back home was continuing just as it always had. ‘She’s fine. Well, she has her aches and pains, but …’

  ‘That’s her own silly fault.’ Uncle Edward laid any complaints of my mother’s at the door of her decision to marry my father. ‘And has she been up to any of her witchcraft recently?’

  I frowned, thinking he meant Mother, and then realized who, with a nod of his head towards the house, he was talking about. ‘Oh!’ I said, startled. ‘W-witchcraft? No – at least – um – well, she’s been rather cheerful lately.’

  I meant this. Since our conversation on the gate facing a field of sheep and the afternoon sunshine, Clara had defrosted. I had been careful to keep to myself my revelation; I could just imagine with what scorn she would treat any declaration of love for her, but our tentative comradeship meant that the house in general had a distinct air of relief. Not warmth, exactly; more what one might call a cessation of hostilities.

  ‘Cheerful!’ My uncle worked at the skin round his thumbnail. ‘Yes, she should be cheerful. She’s got her grubby little hands on Castaway. If only your aunt had known to whom she was leaving it, eh?’

  From far away, at the door of the house, I heard the chink of glasses rattling, and sensed that we would not be on our own for much longer. I said quickly, ‘Yes. I heard she knew Aunt Viviane years ago.’

  ‘Too kind-hearted for her own good.’ Uncle Edward gripped the edge of the bench. ‘And she was charming. The Tutt girl. Knew what to say, the right words. All that orphan talk and crocodile tears; all she wanted was to take what wasn’t hers.’

  ‘So what happened exactly?’ I asked in a hushed tone, as the tray rattled closer towards us.

  ‘You don’t know?’ He shrugged irritably. ‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now. You see, there was this silly little parlourmaid who went and killed herself and –’

  The end of his sentence was cut short by a trilling voice. ‘Father! What a lovely surprise! You should have telephoned: I would have picked you up from the station in the motor car,’ and into the arbour, carrying a tray of what looked like gin and tonics laced with sliced cucumber, came Clara Bray, wearing a linen hat that shaded her all-seeing eyes.

  I wondered if she had heard our conversation, and felt myself blushing, knowing how vicious her tongue could be, but she simply laid the tray on the centre table and handed them out. ‘I bribed Scone to mix me one himself, on the condition I was to take it up to you all,’ she said, stirring her drink with a metal spike. Her nails were cadmium red and glittered in the sunshine. ‘What a glorious afternoon.’

  She sat down on the third bench, completing our circle. Uncle Edward pulled at his shirt collar and said, ‘Too damn hot for me.’

  ‘Well, at least we have the shade here.’ She put her palms flat on the bench behind her and leaned up at the dappled sun, her white neck arcing towards it. My uncle looked away, growling indistinctly. She yawned and said, ‘I may have a swim later. Did you bring your costume?’ She spoke with closed lids, and it was not clear to whom she was directing her question.

  ‘Of course not,’ growled my uncle. ‘Can’t stand the bloody beach.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember Viviane telling me that you never much took to the seaside.’ At the mention of his wife’s name on Clara’s lips, my uncle pressed his own together and looked as if he’d like to murder her right now. ‘How about you, Robert? Have you a costume?’

  I shook my head. ‘I th-think I inherit an aversion to water from my uncle,’ I said, knowing as I said it that attempting to ingratiate myself with him like this was doomed to failure. ‘At least, I can swim, but I’ve never done it in the sea.’

  Clara took her drink and sipped at it. ‘Now that is a shame,’ she said. ‘Seems to make a mockery of coming to stay in our beach house at all, if you’re not going to swim.’

  Her use of the plural possessive clearly incensed my uncle, whose nostrils flared. I noticed a mischievous smile on Clara’s face and saw that she knew what she was doing. I sipped at my ice-cold, sour drink. ‘I have to think of my health,’ I murmured.

  Clara pouted. ‘Of course you do, darling.’ The shape of her lips as she pouted provoked a tumble of emotions within me, and to hide them I turned away and studied a bumblebee hovering over the lupins behind the bench. ‘How was your journey?’ I heard her ask my uncle.

  He harrumphed, and instead of replying, said, ‘I expect you know why I’m here.’

  I turned back to see Clara’s left eye give a small twitch.

  ‘Actually, I don’t,’ she said, and I sensed, under the smile and the charm, a touch of nervousness in the way her wedding ring chimed on the glass.

  ‘Doesn’t tell you everything, then? Thought that was the modern way.’ Uncle Edward turned to me, as if I should know about the modern way. ‘Newly-weds telling each other every last boring detail of their lives.’

  ‘Then I suppose we’re not very modern,’ said Clara in a bright, brittle voice, and I felt so sorry for her, achingly sorry for her, married to my insensitive cad of a cousin and lost in a world to which she did not belong.

  Uncle Edward harrumphed again, perhaps with approval this time. ‘Well, I expect you’ll find out after I’ve spoken to him,’ he said, and turned to me. ‘Only thing is, no
body seems to know where the blazes he’s got to.’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ I said, standing up, a little unsteadily on the gin slurring my insides. I put the glass on the tray carefully. ‘I’ll try his usual haunts. I’m sure somebody will know where he is.’

  ‘My husband has a lot of friends,’ said Clara lightly, picking at a thread on her dress. ‘He’s what you might call a social animal.’

  ‘I know what my son’s like,’ snapped my uncle, and Clara’s eye twitched again.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ I said, more certainly. ‘And I shall bring him home.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clara, smiling. There was genuine warmth in that smile, and I returned it. My uncle said nothing, merely cleared his drink and thumped it back on the tray, looking at the empty glass expectantly.

  I walked back through the garden, up into the morning room and along the hallway until I emerged by the front door. I had already started to walk down the hill when I heard someone behind me call, ‘Sir! Sir, wait!’ and I turned.

  Agnes was running up the area steps, red-faced and out of breath. I took a few paces back to the gate that led to the basement well and waited for her.

  ‘I saw your feet,’ she said, panting. ‘I was in the servants’ hall and I thought, I recognize them feet, so up I come. I wanted to say thank you.’

  I frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘For talking to Madam. She’s allowing me to share with Jane and Harriet. We’re a bit squashed, but it’s all right. So thank you, sir, thanks a million.’

  Now I remembered, and felt embarrassed that such a small change had wrought such a big improvement. She seemed transformed from the snivelling little mite I’d encountered on the pier a few weeks ago. ‘And you’re fine now?’ I asked.

  She laughed. ‘I’m not saying as Jane and Harriet are that happy, but I don’t care. See, they don’t want to sleep in that room either. Who would? Course, Madam said it wouldn’t bother her, but she ain’t like the rest of us, eh, sir?’