The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  She sniffed and, instead of answering, turned round. I followed her gaze; she was looking towards the Bella Vista, at the ground-floor window.

  And there, looking out at us, his head shaking uncontrollably, was her father, Dr Feathers.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’

  Mrs Hale was still looking at her father. ‘You must tell him, Rosie, you must tell Mr Bray that it was an accident; it was such an awful accident. He never meant it to happen.’

  I watched him too, resting on his stick, his head wobbling anxiously. ‘Robert died in prison,’ I said in a croak. ‘And your father let that happen.’

  ‘I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know, not until after the shell-shock, when he was in hospital. And what was I to do then? Betray him, after twenty years?’

  ‘But Robert died.’ Sorrow tugged at my throat. ‘He died.’

  Mrs Hale turned back to me, words spilling over themselves as if, now that the dam had burst, there was no way of keeping them in. ‘He was petrified, you see. My father, I mean. The next day, the day after Mr Bray went missing, the police came round to ask us if we’d seen anything, and he told them he’d seen them walking up towards the cliff together – the two cousins, that is.’

  ‘Mrs Bray told me there’d been two witnesses,’ I said softly. ‘That’s what made them arrest Robert.’

  ‘The other witness, that was Lizzie,’ said Mrs Hale, and there she was, behind her father, holding on to the back of his chair, large and square and beetle-browed.

  ‘You mean …?’ I stared at Mrs Hale’s sister. ‘She lied to the police? I thought he was her beau.’

  Mrs Hale ran a hand through her straggling hair. ‘He broke her heart. She’d already been heartbroken once, and she couldn’t bear it a second time. He never knew what a vengeful streak she had in her; he thought she was sweet, docile. That night, she was furious with him. Wanted to hurt him as he’d hurt her. She looked out of the window and saw our father outside, talking to Mr Bray. By the time the police came to interview us, she’d already spoken to Father, and he’d convinced her it was Robert she’d seen instead. She didn’t lie on purpose, but I suppose it was … convenient for her, to think that. It’s one of the reasons we don’t get on now.’

  ‘This is …’ I was inarticulate with rage and injustice. Now I saw what had made Dockie take this journey, across sea and land, all the way back to Castaway House. ‘He’s got away with it. For years.’

  ‘No, Rosie, not at all.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘Not at all. Mother found out what had happened, you see, and she left him for the Quakers. Then there was the bomb during the war, and the news of Anthony being killed, and of course his business had been failing before that … No, you mustn’t think he got away with it. In fact, it’s almost as if he’s been cursed, for years. We all have, actually.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said.

  ‘The sins of the fathers …’ She shrugged. ‘You will at least try to explain, won’t you? He can’t go to prison now. He hasn’t much longer left, anyway.’

  I looked at Dr Feathers in the window. As he saw me, he attempted to smile, and raised one wavering arm in a salute.

  ‘I need to find him first,’ I said. ‘Mr Bray. I don’t know where he is.’

  She pointed. ‘I saw him go towards the cliff top.’

  ‘What?’ I whirled away from her.

  ‘It’s only dangerous if you go too close to the edge,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t do that, would he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I began marching up the hill. A few paces on I turned, and looked back. Mrs Hale was still staring after me, clutching her hands to her chest. I smiled at her and called down, ‘I’m sure everything’ll be all right.’

  She nodded uncertainly. I waved at her, and then continued upwards.

  The sun streamed into my eyes as I walked. I passed a woman wheeling a pram up the hill, bent double with the effort, overheated in her autumn coat and headscarf. The squeak of the pram’s wheels was the only nearby sound, except for the faint squawking of gulls.

  I crossed over to the cliff-top path that wound beside the fences of the bungalows. Hard ridges had formed from the mud churned up in last week’s storm. As I puffed my way upwards, the sky blue and brilliant above me, I saw a dark figure beyond the path, standing right on the very edge of the cliff, looking down to the crashing waves below.

  ‘Dockie!’ I called, but my voice was whipped back into my mouth by the breeze sifting over the cliff. I picked up my pace, passing the glassy-eyed bungalows. A line of washing flapped; flags of terry-cloth nappies and a cream-coloured blanket, doubling over itself in the wind. A low table held a jug with remnants of lemonade; a dead wasp floated on its surface while others foolishly buzzed about the sticky rim.

  I drew level with him; he was facing the sea, his arms by his sides, leaning into the wind to hold him upright. ‘Dockie,’ I gasped, ‘please come back from there.’

  He turned, his red eyes leaking tears. ‘I remember,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I remember everything.’

  ‘I know. I know about Robert Carver. But listen, come back from there. It’s dangerous.’

  He remained where he was. ‘The story in the newspapers,’ he croaked. ‘The story Frank hid from me; they arrested him for my murder. My cousin. My friend. Arrested him, and he died in prison.’

  ‘Dockie …’

  ‘All these years, Rosie. Can you imagine? All these years I willingly let my memory rust away. Oh, Frank played his part all right. My head injury was helpful. But I could have known, if I’d searched hard enough inside myself. I could have brought it to the surface, but I thought only of myself. It never occurred to me that an injustice may have taken place.’

  I saw he wasn’t going to budge an inch, so I took a few steps closer towards him.

  He shook his newly shorn head, eyes glinting. ‘It was him.’ He pointed a finger back towards the house. ‘The doctor. He was the agent of both our destructions.’

  I thought of what Mrs Hale had wanted me to say. ‘Perhaps it was an accident,’ I said quietly.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘I feel as if a curtain has been pulled back across my mind. I see it all.’

  I took another step closer to the edge. Below me, the rocks lurked with ragged jaws. ‘What do you see?’ I said.

  ‘A party. Me, drunk and unhappy. Maudlin, self-pitying. I lean on the rail, outside the house, and he comes up the road. Never liked me, you know. Pretends to all right, but underneath considers me an idle good-for-nothing.’

  He breathed heavily, and I took one more step and held on to his wrist, my heart beating fast now as the base of the cliff loomed into view. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He smells of drink. Must speak to me most urgently. Asks if we may take a walk. As we climb, tells me that my wife and my cousin are … that I am being made a cuckold of. His duty to inform me of the fact.’

  The breeze was stronger out here on the edge of the cliff; a gull swooped nearby, calling plaintively, and I ducked out of instinct. Dockie appeared to notice nothing, except for what was occurring forty years in the past.

  ‘I’ll have none of that. Not Robert. Not my cousin, my friend. Oh yes. He insists. His eyes a flash in the lightning. His beard dripping rain. The storm curdles my anger. I shout. I curse. You worthless worm, you care nothing for me! You care for nobody but yourself. I know … I know …’

  And now I too was in the past, as thunder raked the sky and two men stood on a cliff top, drunk with rage. ‘What?’ I whispered. ‘What?’

  ‘I know what you did. You killed Gina Scott, and you allowed me to take the blame.’

  I paused. ‘Who’s Gina Scott?’

  Dockie narrowed his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I always suspected. Killed more patients than you saved, that’s what I’ve always thought. You were treating her for sleeplessness, prescribed her Veronal. You wrote the dosage down wrongly, didn’t you, and she died. Then you spread the rumour she was having a baby, so her poor parents would imagine i
t had been suicide. And everyone … everyone would think it was my fault.’

  ‘Oh, Dockie.’ I gripped his arm tightly. If he fell now, so would I.

  ‘My collar, grasped.’ Dockie put a hand to the shoulder of my dress, gripping it hard. ‘Shakes me like a dog. Ungrateful little boy. I’ve only ever tried to help. We dance at the edge, like this, just like this.’

  My toes curled on a daisy that grew at the edge of the cliff. Marvellous, that this yellow-hearted dash of life could thrive on such a bitter spot. ‘Put me down, Dockie. Please, put me down.’

  ‘And then his hands at my chest, the ground disappears and I fly through the air.’ He lifted his other arm high, raising his head. ‘Still holding my umbrella, I was. Exhilarating, beautiful. Alive.’

  The wind buffeted my hair around my face. Far below, I could hear the sea calling me. I’m waiting, it hissed as it coursed around the rocks. Come, come, come.

  Dockie swayed on the edge of the cliff as he spoke, as if in a dream. ‘The sea and the stones, pounding me, pounding me. I struggle, I drift; and then later, much later, asleep and awake, with the constant motion of the sea. They argue over whether to throw me back or save me. A foul smell from my head, like fish guts and stale beer. My clothes soaked through with the blood and the seawater; cut from me. Everything taken, except for a photograph. It’s worthless, let him keep it. It’s ruined, anyway. I must never tell a soul who picked me up, or they will rip me from throat to groin.’

  ‘Dockie!’ I shouted in his face, as fragments of earth under my feet crumbled sixty feet down to the sea. ‘Come back, Dockie … Alec.’

  His eyes found mine. ‘Huh?’

  I felt time swing slowly back to the present. I spoke as firmly as I could. ‘Put me down, Alec. Put me down.’

  He frowned, confused, but his grip on my shoulder relaxed and I was able to take a step back away from the edge.

  ‘Come with me.’ I held out my hand.

  He looked at me, and then, hesitantly, he grasped my hand and slowly, slowly, I led him back to the path. As my feet felt the solid ridges of the hardened mud, my legs wobbled and gave way, and I sank to the ground beside the bungalow fences, shaking as uncontrollably as Dr Feathers.

  Dockie looked down at me. ‘Rosie,’ he murmured. He put his own hand out towards me. ‘Dear Rosie.’

  I grasped his weathered fingers and allowed him to pull me back to standing. ‘My dear girl,’ Dockie was saying. ‘My dear, dear girl.’

  I took a few deep gulps of sweet air. I looked up at him and said, ‘Your wife. She’s not in Paris.’

  He stared at me. ‘Where is she?’

  I pointed back the way I had come. ‘She’s at Castaway House.’

  He put a hand to his chin as he stared towards the brow of the hill. ‘She is?’

  I nodded. ‘She’s waiting for you there.’

  He looked down at himself. ‘But I can’t.’ He glanced at me, terrified. ‘I cannot see her like this.’

  I put a hand to his sleeve. ‘You look fine. Honestly.’

  He touched his short hair, attempted to smooth it down, although the wind blew it back into tufts. ‘Will she forgive me, Rosie? I have been gone so long.’

  ‘I think …’ I shrugged. ‘I suppose you’ll have some talking to do.’

  He took a step along the path and I followed him, matching his pace with mine. Dockie put a hand into his pocket and brought something out, worrying it over and over in his fingers as we walked. ‘She must forgive me,’ he murmured. ‘She must.’

  I looked down and saw that he was rubbing a small seashell, twisting it back and forth in his hand. ‘You had that before,’ I said. ‘When you were turning out your pockets in the hallway, that first day I met you.’

  ‘I have no idea if it is the same one, even.’ He smiled to himself. ‘My talisman. My good-luck charm. My Clara.’

  I let him ramble on without asking more questions. In the distance, the tip of Castaway rose to meet us, and Dockie suddenly cried, quite from nowhere, ‘Sally! I had forgotten Sally. Now she – she will never forgive me. I am quite sure of that.’

  ‘Sally?’ I squinted up at him, and in a rush I remembered the photograph: a dash of a baby’s head in a quarter-inch of sunlight. My heart picked up a pace. ‘My – my grandmother … her name was Sally.’

  He touched his scalp. ‘It’s too late for Robert, though. Far, far too late.’

  ‘Did she live on a farm, do you know? Married a man named Josh Brewer? Had a daughter named Grace?’

  But I was babbling, and Dockie was not listening. There would be time, I supposed, later. I hoped there would be time later. I put my arm through his, and we reached the house together. Mrs Hale had gone inside; the doctor was missing from his spot by the window. Lizzie, too. I wondered what thoughts were on all of their minds.

  The front door was still open from earlier, and when we crossed the threshold sunlight thrust through the coloured lozenges of glass above the door, painting a motif on the hall flagstones. Blooming beneath my feet in green and red was the legend of the house.

  I knocked on the door to the ground-floor flat, and waited, my heart thumping. Dockie pulled down his cuffs and slicked back his eyebrows. After a while Star opened the door and looked out.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ she said. ‘You’ve been gone for ever.’

  ‘I went for a walk,’ he intoned in his rich plum brandy of a voice, and only I heard the nervous shake in it. ‘May I come in?’

  Star nodded. ‘She’s in the garden.’ She came into the hallway. I noticed she had the package still clutched to her chest. ‘She said you’re to go on through.’

  Dockie looked at her. ‘Alone?’

  Star nodded. ‘Alone.’

  ‘Well, then.’ He turned to me and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for everything, Rosie. I am so utterly grateful.’

  I ignored the hand, reached forward and enveloped myself in his hug. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  ‘What on earth for, my dear?’

  ‘Never mind.’ I wiped a hand roughly across my eyes. ‘Go on now.’

  He nodded at both of us and disappeared inside the flat. Star pulled the door closed and looked down at ‘Castaway House’ in red and green flooding the floor. She toed the pattern. ‘What a day, eh?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She looked up at me and I said, ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

  She grinned at me. ‘Meet you back here in five minutes?’

  ‘You’re on.’

  Star raced past me up the stairs as I went up one flight and pulled out my key. The flat welcomed me warmly in through its door, the sunshine lighting the scrolled coving at the ceiling and the flecks of old colour in the wallpaper. I found my swimming costume in the suitcase beneath a pile of unused summer blouses and stripped off, pulling it on and throwing an old dress over the top.

  Before I left I took Robert from his hiding place and looked at the sketch. I traced the contours of his face and kissed his forehead. After I put him back I checked my appearance in the mirror; my hair was still scraggy and my eye sockets hollow with tiredness, but there was a new expression there I couldn’t quite fathom.

  I waited for Star in the hallway, listening for the out-of-tune whistling but hearing nothing at all. Dockie’s coins were still on the box below the telephone, and I gathered them into a neat pile. The blackboard above was still empty of messages.

  I picked up a sixpence and rolled it between my finger and thumb. I thought of Mrs Bray’s words earlier. I may be a lot of things, but I am not a coward.

  Well, what about Rosie Churchill? Was she a coward, who ran away when things got tough? I took a breath, lifted the receiver and slid in the sixpence, then dialled the telephone number I knew off by heart.

  I closed my eyes as the phone rang, and wished I’d drunk a glass of water first, because my throat was parched, and then I heard my mother in her telephone voice say, ‘Petwick 287,’ and I knew there was no going back.

  ‘Hello?’ s
he said now. ‘Hello? Is that you, Rosie?’

  I pushed the A button and heard the coin clanking into the box below. ‘Yes,’ I croaked, and swallowed. ‘Yes, it’s me. It’s Rosie.’

  There was silence, except for the hammering of my heart. Finally my mother said, as if continuing an entirely separate conversation, ‘After you left the other day I searched your room.’

  She hesitated and I held my breath.

  ‘I found your jewellery box.’

  I breathed out and a long Haaaah sound spat back into my ear. The secret bottom of my jewellery box was where I’d stored all the notes from Harry. I hadn’t thought to throw them away. Mum wasn’t a snooper; at least, she never had been before.

  ‘Rosie.’ Her voice cracked, and a sob emerged.

  ‘Mum …’ I clutched the telephone wire in my other fist.

  ‘I should have known.’ She laughed in an odd, bitter sort of a way. ‘When I met him at the Dashwoods’ party they said to me, they said, “Be careful of that one, Grace.” Didn’t listen, of course. But I never thought he’d try it with my own daughter.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, cringing at the inadequacy of the words. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, Rosie.’ Again, the laugh. ‘Oh, Rosie, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘I …’ I began, not knowing what to say next, because maybe she hadn’t realized what the notes signified, and now I’d have to explain, and I had no words for that.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘For good. So you can come home now, and start school again, and all those things, all right?’

  ‘He …’ The air was getting stuck in my throat. I tried again. ‘I let him … Ah …’

  ‘Rosie. Darling.’ My mother’s voice softened suddenly, like a crumpling flower. ‘God, Rosie, you don’t think I hold you responsible, do you?’

  ‘I sh-shouldn’t have …’

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said firmly, and now she was like my mum of old, laying out the world for me, a piece at a time. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were innocent.’

  ‘Innocent,’ I repeated, and said it to myself, inside my head. Rosie Churchill is innocent. I felt an insane urge to giggle.