The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  I spread my palms wide. ‘Just to talk.’

  ‘We’ve nothing to talk about.’ The whites of her eyes were scratched with red. ‘I don’t want to see you again.’

  ‘Clara …’

  She turned away from me.

  ‘I’m as upset and worried about all this as you are –’ I began.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ She spat the words through dried, flaky lips. ‘This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  I almost laughed with the absurdity of that sentence. ‘Of course it isn’t. He’s my cousin. And my friend. I don’t want any of this.’

  She turned back to me, her face screwed into a tight little ball of misery. ‘Alec is the only man …’ she began, her voice shaking. ‘The only man I have ever loved, and I treated him worse than a mangy dog.’

  ‘You and me,’ I said in my softest voice. ‘It has nothing to do with all this.’

  She came towards me. ‘I love him! Don’t you get it, you imbecile? You were nothing to me, Robert. I only did it to … to … well, I don’t know why I did it, and now he’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do.’

  She lapsed into tears; hideous, weeping sobs. I took a step towards her but she held a hand up, the other still clutching the locket, Viviane’s locket that Alec had given her, with a scrap of his hair inside. ‘Stay away from me! I swear it, I’ll scream if you touch me.’

  ‘I’ll give you some time,’ I murmured. ‘We’ll talk later.’

  ‘We’re never going to talk. I never want to see you again.’ She pointed at the door. ‘I want you to pack your things and go. Do you understand me?’

  ‘You don’t mean it.’

  Her face transformed, gargoyle-like, and she rushed at me. ‘Get out! Get out! I never want to see you again!’

  ‘Clara …’ But there was no talking to her. I hurried out of the room, closing the door behind me, and heard the key turn in the lock as soon as I was gone. I backed away into the library next door, my heart beating hard, my breaths rackety and hollow. I held on to the back of the chair as tears squeezed from my eyes. I had no one to blame but myself.

  I had been living a fantasy – a fantasy that Clara secretly loved me but was trapped inside a farce of a marriage, undertaken purely for financial gain. She had lied to me, yesterday in the summerhouse a hundred years ago. She was not a mercenary; or, at least, if she was, then she was one who also loved her husband.

  And then I thought of the seashell I had discovered in Alec’s pocket last night, the shell Clara had found for him and etched their initials into, the shell that had not been lost at all, that had never been lost, that had instead, just as he had promised her, been kept beside his heart.

  I saw it now, saw the whole truth: here were two people who loved each other dearly but had done their best to wreck all the tenderness out of their marriage. Stupid, stupid fools, but not as stupid as me for being strung along by all the spite they’d expended on each other. I remembered Lizzie’s words of yesterday, and the truth she had told about Clara and Alec and their mutual love. I recalled the way I had dismissed her own heartbreak, as if such an emotion could be overcome by force of will, and I sank to the floor, hunching myself beneath the writing desk as if the room were too large and unsafe a place for my shattered soul.

  I remained there a while, the back of my head against the cold wall, and then, as if galvanized to one last action, I scrabbled my hand upwards on to the desk, retrieved the letter opener and began gouging into the wooden underside of the windowsill.

  The work took me some time, and calmed me, in an odd sort of way. At that moment, it seemed as if it was of the utmost importance that I finish the task, and that I could do nothing else until it was completed.

  After the letters had been etched, I was still not satisfied, and so I retrieved the ink pot and pen from the desk and, as if I were a master craftsman, began a careful blacking in of my work. It was tricky going: ink dribbled on to my face and my hands, spotted my suit and the floorboards, but I knew that none of this was important; creation was the thing, and this was far more vital than a watercolour of a lake or a sketch of a gull on the crest of a wave.

  Finally, it was done. I raised my weary eyelids one last time to take in my art:

  And then slumped, exhausted, against the wall, dropping pen and pot to the floor and closing my eyes.

  Immediately, I fell asleep and dreamed of Clara standing on the peak of a giant, pallid skeleton of a diplodocus. Beside me was Alec, who took my hand and with his other pointed upwards. ‘Look away, Robert,’ he said. ‘She’s going to jump off.’

  A hand touched my shoulder and I came to, startled. It was Scone, on his knees, crouching under the desk to reach me. ‘I’m afraid the police are back, sir,’ he said, taking in my appearance with a sympathetic waggle of his head. ‘They would like another word with you in the dining room.’

  I staggered downstairs, feeling as if I had been woken in the middle of the night, although the clock in the hall said it was only seven o’clock. Dawes welcomed me into the room and took a seat beside the window. At the table now was a dirty-looking middle-aged man straining out of his shirt buttons. He indicated the chair beside him and said, ‘Mr Carver, do have a seat. My name’s Inspector Morgan, and we just have a few more questions for you, if you don’t mind.’

  I shook my head and sat down. I felt as if I had been drained of all life. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know about Mrs Bray,’ he said, and I kept my face as still as I was able. ‘What do you make of her?’

  I attempted as regular a voice as I could. ‘Well, she’s – um … she’s my cousin’s wife.’

  Morgan cleared his throat. ‘Yes, we know that. I want your impression of her.’

  I was weary of this; I wanted the day to be over, so I could begin anew tomorrow. ‘Of what relevance is this, anyway?’

  ‘You see, Mr Carver, we’ve been talking to a lot of people today, and the general idea is that … well, I’ll be frank. That you are in love with Mrs Bray.’

  ‘They’re mistaken. We’re friends.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you’re friends. Just as you’re friends with her husband, your cousin. But you’ve entertained hopes of it being more than that, haven’t you?’

  I shook my head. I wanted to laugh at the irony. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘She’s very beautiful.’ He winked at me in an unpleasant manner. ‘I’m sure half the town is in love with her. There’s no shame in it.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘Not even the tiniest bit attracted to her?’

  ‘No.’ I sighed.

  Morgan looked at his assistant, who was writing more notes. ‘Get that, did you?’ he said, and was rewarded with a nod. ‘Good. Now we’ve cleared that up, how about your relationship with Mr Bray, your cousin?’

  I breathed, relieved to get away from the subject of Clara. ‘It’s good, I suppose. He’s been very generous in letting me stay here.’

  ‘Hasn’t he just?’ Morgan looked about him. ‘Nice place he’s got, eh? A lot nicer than mine, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I had no idea where this was leading.

  ‘Yours too, I expect.’

  ‘It’s bigger,’ I said coldly. ‘But I don’t set much store by material possessions.’

  ‘You’re an unusual young man, then.’ Morgan stared at me in the manner of a dead fish. I had the feeling he did not believe a single word I said, but I could hardly betray Clara to this odious being. Besides which, I supposed it would not make much difference whether he knew of our affair or not. ‘Most people would be wildly envious. I mean, he’s your cousin, and he’s got ten, fifty times what you got.’

  ‘I shall inherit some money when I’m twenty-five,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s face it though, it isn’t going to be enough to get you all this, is it? I bet you were jealous of him, weren’t you? Beautiful wife, gorgeous house, all these servants at his beck and call. Didn’t ap
preciate how lucky he was, did he?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t,’ I said. ‘But I’ve never been jealous.’

  Morgan put his head to one side. ‘So what were you arguing about yesterday evening in the garden?’

  My head ached. I put my elbow on the table and rested my forehead in my palm. ‘What argument?’

  ‘Oh, a few people heard you going at it hammer and tongs.’ He chuckled. ‘Apparently you told him … what was it, Dawes?’

  I heard a riffle of paper.

  ‘That he’d grown up with a silver spoon jammed inside his mouth, sir,’ Dawes said. ‘Oh, and that he lived in a little bubble of privilege, everything he’d ever wanted handed to him on a plate.’

  ‘Bubble of privilege.’ The Inspector sniffed. ‘I don’t blame you. I’d have felt the same, being you.’

  ‘I only said those things because he was feeling so damn sorry for himself. Look, let me explain.’

  ‘No need. So you deny you were jealous of your cousin?’

  I saw Clara then in my mind, and felt her beneath me and around me, and now I understood why every time I’d found elation so hard to come by: I had been her substitute for the man she really wanted.

  ‘Yes. I deny it,’ I said quietly.

  ‘All right then.’ Morgan nodded, and leaned ever closer towards me. I smelled his celery breath. ‘Seeing as we’ve cleared up the first argument, what about the second one?’

  ‘There was no second one.’ I shrugged. ‘In fact, I think that’s the only argument we’ve ever had.’

  ‘On the cliff top between about half past one and two o’clock,’ said Morgan as if I had not spoken. ‘Do you mind telling me the details of that argument, sir?’

  I sighed again. ‘I told him,’ I said, nodding at Dawes. ‘Your witnesses must be mistaken. The last time I saw Alec was in the garden, and he was asleep under a bush.’

  ‘I know that’s what you’ve told us, but I’ll be frank, Mr Carver, I don’t believe you. Now. Two separate people say they saw you walking up the hill outside the house, towards the top of the cliff, just before the thunderstorm broke. You deny that also?’

  ‘I do. Absolutely, I do.’

  ‘Very well. Now then. I don’t suppose you’ve seen the Evening News tonight, have you?’ When I shook my head, he said, ‘See, I took the step of releasing a statement to the press, and on the cover of tonight’s paper there’s an appeal for witnesses. Anybody who was near the cliff top last night, before or during the thunderstorm.’

  I looked at him. He was smiling broadly.

  ‘Of course, there are always the cranks who call up saying they know everything, but we’ve weeded them out. However, there was one man – I won’t tell you his name, and he’s unknown to you anyway, but I have to say we very much appreciate his help, especially considering he’s a married man, living in Shanker, who apparently has a lady friend living in Helmstone. He says he sneaks across the fields to visit her, in case he gets spotted on the road.

  ‘According to him, the storm had just begun, and he was hurrying on his way to be warm and dry, when he spots what he thinks are two lovers embracing on the cliff edge. Not wanting to disturb them, he skirts round the outside, and it’s only when he’s level with them that he realizes that they’re not embracing, but having a fierce argument.’

  I shook my head. ‘That wasn’t me.’

  ‘The person facing towards him fits the description of your cousin. Now this man, presumably Mr Bray, shouted to the other person, ‘I know what you did.’ Those words were quite clear. Our witness made good his escape, not wanting to pry, so to speak, and it was only on reading the paper this evening that he realized what he may have witnessed. And so, like a good little citizen, he called us up and told us everything.’

  Dark hands were clamping about my lungs. ‘I wasn’t there,’ I croaked. ‘I swear to you on … on everything I hold dear, it wasn’t me.’

  Morgan smiled. ‘Accidents happen,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you were just having a right old barney and he slipped. I know you probably feel terrible, but you’ll feel a darn sight worse if you don’t tell us now what happened.’

  ‘I was in bed,’ I whispered, as the breath leaked from my throat. ‘I was in bed all night.’

  ‘And you’ve a witness to that?’ he asked, and I closed my eyes and thought back to Clara’s small, cold body curled in beside mine, and wondered when that had been. I tried to ignore the two policemen facing me, the chilly width of the dining room around me, and found myself back inside last night, alone in bed as the thunderstorm shattered the sky.

  I swallowed on a hard, dry ache in my throat. ‘This argument on the cliff top,’ I began, and both Dawes and Morgan looked up keenly. ‘Did it … That is, is it certain to have happened just after the storm began?’

  Morgan gave his inferior a quick glance. Dawes nodded. ‘Within a matter of seconds. A minute at most.’

  Then it was no use. Even if Clara were to tell these men she had betrayed her husband on the night of his disappearance and slept with me, her testimony would be worthless. She had come to me a good half an hour after the storm had begun. I wondered, with a sense of disquiet, where she had been at that time, but then dashed the thought away. Clara loved Alec, a thought that pierced my heart like a shaft of ice. She would never have hurt him.

  And then I wondered, with a growing unease, if she realized the same about me. Clara would not think me guilty, surely? So we had no alibi for each other; what did that matter? She must know who I was and what was real and that, however bad it appeared, I would never, ever, ever have pushed Alec off the cliff edge, never in a hundred years.

  I shook my head. ‘In that case I’ve no witness, I’m afraid.’

  I took a breath and heard the rasp in my throat. Scone was right, there was an answering whistle in my lungs, an awful, off-kilter wheezing sound. The Inspector got to his feet and put a hand on my shoulder, and the band round my chest tightened further still. ‘Then I’m afraid, Mr Carver, that I am going to have to arrest you on suspicion of attempted murder and that you are going to have to come with me now to the police station. The cuffs, Dawes.’

  I heard the rattle of metal and saw two silver bracelets gleaming, and my lungs revolted, and I began coughing and coughing; and as I was jerked to my feet in a haze, my arms pulled behind my back, and my chest constricted tighter and tighter and ever tighter, I begged Clara to come to my rescue. Never mind if you don’t love me, I beseeched, just come downstairs and tell them you know me and that I would never do harm. Please, Clara, please.

  But she did not come. The front door opened as if by itself, and I was bundled through it and out into the dark, unforgiving night.

  Dear Clara

  I expect you to have been rather surprised when, on seating yourself at the breakfast table in the morning with a fresh pot of coffee at your elbow, Scone handed you this parcel and you saw that it was from me. I expect you are, even as you read this, half-angry, half-astonished at the nerve I have in writing to you at such a time. I suppose you are tempted to hand the whole thing to one of the maids to burn. I hope you do not. I sincerely hope you do not.

  Every day that I have not spent in the sick bay I have worked on the manuscript you now hold in your hands, hunched over the tiny table in my cell, peering at the paper in the weak light that shows through the barred window high up in the prison wall. It has certainly been a distraction from the clanging of tin mugs on bars, the screams in the night from the madman in the cell next door, the potato slops and shrivelled grey meat that passes for food.

  I apologize; I had not meant to be indelicate, but I have no strength to rewrite this letter and, besides, this place hardens one. Even as a remand prisoner I have become hardened, and what once would have seemed unbearable now seems very commonplace indeed.

  You are no doubt by now impatient with my waffling, and drumming your fingers on the tablecloth, waiting for me to get to the point. You see, Clara, the one thing I have here is time, a
nd I forget that in the outside world, life moves much faster. If, as my lawyer believes, I am soon to be released, then I imagine I should be made rather breathless by the screaming hurry with which people demand things done.

  I will be honest: that day cannot come soon enough. My cell walls stream with damp, and my health is failing here. I have had several asthma attacks, none serious, but I am still waiting for the latest bout of bronchitis to clear up. Luckily I am no longer in the sick bay, which is not so much a place for convalescence as an opportunity to obtain any diseases currently missing from one’s collection.

  Now I know I really must press on, or you shall screw up this letter and hurl it towards the fireplace. How are you, dear Clara? I hope you are not overwhelmed with fear and despair and anger. I hope you are sleeping well. I hope you still have the use of the servants, that the sale of Castaway has been temporarily suspended.

  However, most of all, I hope that you believe in me. I hope that you know that the reason my case will probably never come to trial is not just lack of evidence, but the indisputable, incontrovertible fact that I am innocent.

  Surely, Clara, you must know that had there been some sort of accident, that had Alec fallen from the cliff in my presence, I would have owned up to it immediately. I may have behaved poorly on any number of occasions, and this memoir here is proof of that, but I have never evaded my responsibilities.

  I am certain that you have realized that whoever the two witnesses are, they must be somehow mistaken – or they are lying. Clearly, somebody did have an argument with Alec on the top of the cliff; this person to whom, apparently, Alec said the words, ‘I know what you did.’ I am aware that the papers have made much of this, which no doubt has caused you great distress, but for me, those words have another significance. Were Alec talking of a recent incident, I am convinced he would have said, ‘I know what you’ve done.’