by Ruth Ware
“Um—” Hal found herself completely at a loss. This girl was self-assured in a way that Hal had never been. “I— How old are you?”
“Fourteen. Rich is nearly sixteen. Freddie’s twelve. He’s a total dickwad, so I wouldn’t bother with him. Rich is okay if you can get him to take his headphones off. And hey, I’m at a girls’ school, I need to keep on his good side, right? He’s my shortcut to hot older boys.”
“I never really thought about it like that,” Hal said faintly.
“Have you got a boyfriend?” Kitty asked. Hal shook her head.
“Girlfriend?”
“No, I—I’ve not really been in the right place for dating for the last couple of years.”
“Gotcha,” Kitty said wisely. She nodded and put another Haribo in her mouth. “You should try a dating app. They can match you up by location.”
“That wasn’t really what I—” Hal began, but then the drawing room door opened and both their heads turned, to see Mitzi standing there.
“Oh, girls. I thought I heard voices. Kitty, if you want to come into Penzance, you need to get your shoes on, and tell Richard to hurry up. Harriet, if you have a moment, your uncle would like to speak with you.”
Hal nodded, and looked past Mitzi to where Harding was standing in the drawing room, his back to the door, looking out to the cloud-dark sky and rain-soaked lawns. The sea in the distance was invisible in the mist.
Mitzi stood back, ushering Hal inside, and then closed the door, and Hal heard her trotting purposefully away up the corridor, lecturing Kitty as she went.
Hal stood waiting nervously for Harding to turn around, but he did not. Instead he spoke, still facing the view in front of him.
“Harriet, thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
For a moment, Hal could not think what to say in reply. The incongruity of the phrase struck her—as though they were both businessmen discussing a merger, rather than—rather than what?
“I—you’re welcome,” she managed at last, and took a hesitant step forwards into the room.
But Harding was speaking over her, as if he were determined to get through his piece and would not be derailed from his course.
“As you may have gathered from Mr. Treswick last night, there is quite a lot of paperwork we need to go through before he can start to move forward on the process of obtaining probate.”
“I, well, yes,” Hal said. She felt her stomach twist at the mention of paperwork. What could she do? Could she delay the meeting? Or would it be better to go and find out what they needed from her, and then claim she had forgotten it? “Although I didn’t know, I mean, I didn’t bring—”
“There is a great deal we need to discuss,” Harding said. “All this”—he waved his hand at the expanse of green lawns falling away in front of the windows—“all this is a great responsibility, and there are a lot of decisions you will need to make, Harriet, and fairly quickly. But that will come later—in the meantime, we have an appointment with Mr. Treswick in Penzance in”—he glanced at his watch—“just under forty minutes, and it will be fairly tight to get there. You don’t have a car here?”
Forty minutes? Hal felt her mouth drop open in horror. This was all moving much too fast. She needed time to research—to work out what Mr. Treswick was likely to ask. What if they wanted her to complete forms, and she tripped up over some minor detail? Then she realized that Harding was waiting for an answer to his question, and swallowed.
“I—no—” she managed faintly.
“No matter. We’ll squeeze you in. There’s a fold-down seat in the boot.”
“But, Unc—” She stumbled over the word, unable to make herself articulate it, and began again: “Look, there’s something I must—”
“Later, Harriet,” Harding said briskly. His moment of reflection had passed, and he turned, clapping Hal on the shoulder so that she staggered, and then opened the door to the hallway. “There will be plenty of time to talk on the journey, but for now, we must get going or we’ll be late for Mr. Treswick. The appointment is at noon so we are already cutting it rather fine.”
With a sinking heart, Hal followed Harding into the corridor, and from there out to the front of the house, where the car was waiting, the three children belted in the back.
“Just a moment, Harriet, while I get the boot seat set up,” Harding said, but his face changed as the big estate boot swung open. “Mitzi? Where are the fold-down seats?”
“What?” Mitzi looked over her shoulder. The engine was already running, and her impatience was plain. “What are you talking about, Harding?”
“The boot seats. Where are they? Harriet is traveling with us.”
“But she can’t—there’s no room. We took the seats out to make room for the cases, remember?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Does no one in this family plan more than two steps ahead?” Harding said testily. “Well, there’s a simple answer: Freddie will have to stay behind.”
“Firstly, darling”—Mitzi’s voice was brittle as cut glass—“it was your idea to remove the seats, if you remember. And secondly, Freddie can’t stay behind, he’s a beneficiary. Mr. Treswick needs to see his ID.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Harding said explosively. Hal felt a little flicker of hope ignite inside her. Was it possible she would not be able to attend after all?
She was just about to offer to remain at the house when a voice came from behind her.
“Good morning, all.”
Hal and Harding both turned, and Hal heard Harding’s sigh, a plosive noise, like a whale coming up for air.
“Ezra,” he said flatly.
He was standing, hands in his pockets, grinning widely.
“Hello, dear brother. And hello again, Harriet. Nice to see Harding is putting you firmly in the crumple zone. Have you investigated what happens to the estate if Harriet doesn’t survive the trip, Harding?”
“Ezra!” Harding snapped. “That is an entirely inappropriate joke to make. And no, Harriet won’t be traveling in the boot, as someone”—he ignored Mitzi’s eye-rolling sigh of exasperation from the driver’s seat—“forgot to pack the spare seats. We were just discussing how to proceed.”
“Well, I can solve that,” Ezra said. “I’ve got to go into Penzance myself. I need to transfer some money while I’m here. I’ll give Hal a lift.”
“Oh.” Harding seemed—Hal couldn’t quite put her finger on it—almost disappointed at having his bubble of irritation pricked. Or perhaps it was annoyance at having to be beholden to his brother. “Well. That is a . . . neat solution. Excellent.”
He shut the boot with a slam and smoothed his Barbour jacket over his stomach.
“Right. Well. Do you know where we are heading, Ezra?”
“Very much so.” Ezra twirled his car keys on his finger. “I may have been out of the country for a while, but Penzance isn’t so vast that I’m likely to lose my sense of direction. See you there, Harding.”
“Very good. Do you have my mobile number?”
“I don’t,” Ezra said carelessly. “But given I’ve survived this long without it, I’m sure we’ll manage.”
Harding gave an exaggerated sigh, and pulled his wallet out of the inner pocket of his Barbour. Inside was a small stack of business cards. He pulled one off the top, and handed it to Hal.
“I will entrust you with this, Harriet, as I have very little confidence in Ezra’s organizational abilities. Don’t lose it. And don’t be late.” He opened the passenger door and climbed inside the car. “The appointment is at tw—”
But his last words were drowned in the scrunch of tires on gravel as Mitzi accelerated. Hal heard a faint, “Bye, Hal!” from her window, and then the car disappeared out of the gate and down the drive, a cloud of magpies rising indignantly from the trees as they passed below.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
“So . . .” Ezra’s voice, as he led the way through the arched gate and around the side of the s
table block, to a yard blowing with weeds and grasses, was a long, drawn-out drawl. “You are my . . . niece, I suppose it would be?”
“Yes,” Hal said. The word was almost lost in the scrunch of their feet on gravel, and the sound of the wind in the trees, and when Ezra didn’t turn she said it again, more loudly, trying for more conviction this time. “Yes.”
“Well, well,” Ezra said. He shook his head, but did not elaborate, and instead held out his car key towards the low, dark sports car parked beneath the trees on the other side of the yard. It gave a little beep-beep and the lights flashed once, to show that it was unlocked. As they drew closer, Ezra gave a short, mirthless laugh, and looked up at the tree above.
“Little bastards,” he said. “Mother should have had them poisoned.”
For a moment Hal could not work out what he was talking about. She followed his gaze up to the branches above, and saw once again the magpies hunched against the sea wind, their bright beady eyes following her movement. It was only when she looked down at the car that she realized what Ezra had meant. From the back, the car looked fine, but as Hal came closer, she could see that the windscreen and the expensive matte paintwork of the bonnet, the parts of the car parked beneath the cover of the trees, were thickly spread with a layer of dense black droppings, halfway between bird guano and something more like a rabbit’s.
“What is it?” Hal asked, even as she looked up at the birds overhead, and then grimaced. “Sorry, stupid question.”
“You guessed right,” Ezra said, a little grimly. “I should have remembered not to park here. Clearly Harding did. Right, there will now be a short pause while I go for a bucket. I’m sorry, it’ll make us late for the appointment, but I can’t see to drive, and it etches the paintwork if you leave it on. Stay here, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry,” Hal said. She watched Ezra as he turned and walked back across the courtyard, leaving her alone with the car, and the cawing of the birds.
A few minutes later he returned with a bucket of warm water.
“Stand back,” he said briefly, and Hal stepped hastily out of the way just in time for Ezra to sluice the car, making the birds above screech and cackle as they rose into the air and then resettled.
“That’s as good as it’ll get without a proper car wash,” he said at last. “I suggest you get in, and we’ll make good our escape while we can.”
• • •
AS THEY PASSED THROUGH THE wrought-iron gates onto the open road, Hal felt as if an enormous weight had lifted from her shoulders, but she didn’t realize that she had let out an audible sigh of relief until Ezra turned to look at her, the corner of his mouth twisted into a wry acknowledgment.
“Glad I’m not the only one.”
“Oh.” Hal felt herself flush. “I didn’t mean—”
“Please. I’m not one for hypocrisy. It’s a horrible place. Why do you think we all got out as soon as we could?”
“I’m sorry,” Hal said. She didn’t quite know what to say. “It—it’s strange, because it’s such a beautiful building, in some ways.”
“It’s just a house,” Ezra said briefly. “It was never a home—not even when I lived there.”
Hal said nothing. Harding’s words to Mitzi echoed in the back of her head: My mother was a bitter, poisonous woman and her one aim in life was to spread that poison as far and wide as she could. . . . Ezra had grown up with that poison. They all had.
Was Harding right? Was the decision to leave the house to Hal his mother’s last act of vengeance?
“I have no interest in that place,” Ezra said. He glanced over his shoulder as they came up to a blind bend, hugging the curve of the road. “I only came back to see my mother buried. I am telling you this, Harriet, so that you understand there’s no hard feelings on my part about my mother’s will. Understand? My only wish in all this is to leave this place now and for good. You can do what you like with it, as far as I’m concerned. Sell it. Tear it down. I really don’t care.”
“I understand,” Hal said quietly. There was a silence in the car, while she searched for something to say, something to forestall the questions that would come if she let the silence stretch out too long. Control the conversation, she heard her mother’s voice in her ear. Make sure you are in the driving seat, not the client. She felt a sudden overwhelming rush of longing to know about her mother’s past, about her connection to this place. What had it been like, coming here as an orphan cousin? Had her mother felt the same oppression that Ezra had described, that Hal herself had felt? How long had she stayed? A week? A month? A year?
If only she could ask Ezra. He must have known her. The photograph, warm in Hal’s back pocket, was evidence of that—evidence that they had met, spoken.
“Your—your car,” Hal said at last, struggling for a remark. “It’s a left-hand drive, I’ve just realized. Do you live abroad?”
“I do,” Ezra said. For a minute he seemed disinclined to say more, but then he added, “I live in the south of France, near Nice. I own a small photographic gallery down there.”
“How lovely,” Hal said, and the envy in her voice was no fabrication. “I went to Nice once, on a school trip. It was beautiful.”
“It’s a nice place, yes,” Ezra said shortly.
“Have you lived there long?” Hal asked.
“Twenty years or so,” Ezra said. Hal did the maths in her head as he stepped on the accelerator to pass a parked car. He could not be more than forty, which meant he must have left England almost as soon as he left school. London had not been far enough for him.
“You live in Brighton, don’t you?” he asked, glancing across at her. Hal nodded.
“Yes. It’s nice too, the beach isn’t as spectacular as Nice, but . . . I don’t know. I can’t imagine living far from the sea.”
“Me either.”
They continued in silence for a while. It was only when they reached the outskirts of Penzance that something occurred to Hal and she broke the quiet in the car.
“Un—” The phrase felt strange and false on her tongue, but she forced it out. “Uncle Ezra, do you—do you speak French?”
He glanced across from the road, his expression a little quizzical, with an element of some skepticism Hal couldn’t quite pin down.
“I do. Why do you ask?”
“I wondered . . . I heard a phrase . . . après moi, le déluge. What does it mean? It’s something about a flood, isn’t it?”
“Literally, yes.” Ezra shot her a look, and then indicated a turn in front of a lorry. After they had completed the turn, he spoke again. “But it’s a famous saying in France. It’s usually attributed to Louis Quinze, who was the last king before the Revolution came and destroyed his son. The literal meaning is, as you say, ‘after me comes the flood’—but the real meaning is something more profound and ambiguous. . . . It means either, ‘after I go, everything will collapse into chaos, because I have been the only person holding up the dam,’ or else something even darker.”
“Even darker?” Hal said. She gave a small laugh. “That’s pretty dark already.”
“It depends how you take it, though. Does it mean, ‘I am dying, I have done all I can to prevent this, but now it must take its course,’ or does it mean . . .” He paused, waiting for a gap in the traffic, and Hal realized she understood what he was saying.
“I suppose there’s a sense of . . . not just knowing what may come, but willing it to happen,” she said. “Acknowledging your part in precipitating it. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
Hal could not quite work out what to say in reply to this. The thought came to her again: an old woman, knowing the end was coming near, rubbing her hands as she drew up the will that was to set her nearest and dearest at each other’s throats. Had it really been as calculatingly vicious as that?
There was no love lost between Harding and Ezra, you didn’t have to be a cold reader to work that out. But what was her o
wn part in all this?
They drove the last mile or so in silence, Hal lost in her own thoughts, until at last Ezra drew into a car park and stopped the car, pulling up the hand brake with a crunch and killing the engine.
“Well, here we are. There’s just one hitch.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s twelve twenty. I think we’ve missed the appointment.”
“Oh.” Hal said. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and felt a sudden sickening mix of emotions wash over her—a queasy relief at not having to face Mr. Treswick today, and trepidation at the thought of Harding’s reaction, and at the knowledge that she had only postponed the encounter. “Fuck.” It was out before she had considered it, and she bit her lip. The word was not in keeping with the image she was trying to present to the Westaways—meek, unassuming little Harriet, butter wouldn’t melt. Swearing wasn’t part of the deal, and she felt as cross with herself as if she’d sworn at a client. The pink on her cheeks was real, though it was a flush of annoyance at her own unguardedness, rather than shame. “Sorry, that was—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re an adult. I’m not your keeper. And while we’re at it, can we stop with the Uncle Ezra business? I’m not your uncle.”
Hal flinched in spite of herself, and perhaps Ezra noticed, for he rephrased.
“I didn’t mean that as coldly as it sounded. But we’ve never met. Uncle implies a relationship that we don’t have—and as I said before, Harding has the monopoly on hypocrisy in this family. I’m done with all that.”
“Okay. . . .” Hal said slowly. “So . . . what should I call you?”
“Ezra will do fine,” he said. He opened his car door.
“Wait,” Hal said impetuously. She put out a hand towards the gear stick, not quite touching his. “If—if we’re swapping names . . .”
“Yes?”
“Everyone here calls me Harriet, but that’s not what my—” She stopped. She had been about to say, that’s not what my mother called me, but somehow the word stuck in her throat. “That’s not what my friends call me,” she finished.