The Death of Mrs. Westaway

by Ruth Ware

  But why had she lied to Hal herself?

  Hal had been turning the question over and over in her head with increasing urgency, but she could think of only one reason—to protect her.

  But from what?

  It was dark when the train pulled into Penzance, and Hal was almost asleep, but she roused herself and picked up her case, feeling the weight of all the extra clothes and papers she had crammed into it. As she stepped off the train onto the platform, she had the strangest sense of déjà vu, mixed with the unsettling realization of how far everything had changed. There was the station platform, with the big clock and the echoing announcements, and there she was herself, with her torn jeans and shabby hand-me-down case, and her hair falling in her eyes.

  But there too was Abel, standing on the platform, looking up at the arrivals board, and when he saw Hal standing on the other side of the barrier his face broke into a smile, and he waved his car keys in the air.

  When Hal was through the barrier she found herself engulfed in a completely unexpected hug, and then Abel released her, and grinned, his tanned face creasing into lines of relief.

  “Harriet! It’s so good to see you. You gave everyone quite a fright. We’d barely got used to having you around and then—well.” He broke off, his face twisting in a rueful smile. “Let’s just say, it’s good to know you’re okay.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hal found herself studying his face from the side as they walked slowly up the platform. Do you know my father? she wanted to ask. Is he Edward? But the words were unthinkable. “I didn’t mean to make everyone worry. And I’m sorry my train was delayed.” She glanced up at the clock. Nearly half past nine. The train had been supposed to arrive at eight thirty. “Were you waiting long?”

  Abel shook his head.

  “Awhile, but don’t worry. To be honest, I was glad of the excuse to get out—I had a surprisingly good coffee in the station café. I’m not sure I could have taken another one of Mrs. Warren’s cups of gray dishwater.”

  In the station light, Abel’s eyes were uncompromisingly gray themselves, but Hal couldn’t stop herself checking again when they reached the car park, trying to make out their color beneath the floodlights as Abel paused to unlock a sleek black Audi.

  He caught her staring, and Hal flushed and looked down.

  “Something on my chin?” he asked, with a laugh. Hal shook her head.

  “I’m sorry. No—it’s just, I . . .” She swallowed and felt her cheeks flush. “I’m still trying to get used to the idea that I have all this family. It’s so hard to compute.”

  “I can only imagine,” Abel said lightly. “We’re finding it a bit of an adjustment ourselves, and there’s only one of you. It must be ten times stranger for you, finding a whole family you never knew.” He opened Hal’s door and took her case, before shutting her inside. When he came round to the driver’s side, he shut the door, turning out the internal light and throwing everything into shadows, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard.

  “Abel,” she said slowly as they pulled out of the space. “I—I wanted to thank you again, for that photo of my mother. I don’t have very many pictures of her at my age and it means . . . well, it means a lot to me, that’s all.”

  “That’s all right,” Abel said easily. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and then put the car into gear. “You’re very welcome. I don’t have many pictures of that time either, unfortunately. I had more, but they didn’t always come with very happy memories, so I didn’t keep as many as I should. But I’ll have a check when I go home, see if I can find any more. If there’s any with your mother in, you’re welcome to keep them.”

  “Thank you,” Hal said quietly. They were winding through the narrow streets behind the station when she plucked up her courage.

  “Abel, can I ask something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Who—who took that photo? The one you gave me?”

  “Who took it?” Abel frowned. “I’m not certain. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh . . .” Hal’s stomach turned as they rounded a corner slightly too fast. “I don’t know. I just wondered.”

  “I honestly can’t remember. . . .” Abel said. He was still frowning, and he rubbed at the bridge of his nose as though giving himself time to answer. “I think . . . yes, I’m almost sure it was Ezra.”

  Hal swallowed, feeling like she was taking her life in her hands.

  “It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . Edward, was it?”

  “Edward?” Abel glanced sideways at her in the darkness of the car, the unearthly green light from the LEDs on the dashboard making his expression strange and hard to read. “Why on earth would you say that?”

  His voice was suddenly completely unlike that of the warm, solicitous man she had grown to know over the last few days. There was something cold and bitter in it, and Hal felt herself grow very still, like a mouse that has seen a snake rise up from the grass. She knew suddenly and with certainty that it would be very, very stupid to mention the diary.

  “I—” She had no need to make her voice sound small. It was already a squeak in her throat. “I—I don’t know. I just wondered.”

  “It was Ezra,” Abel said flatly, turning back to the road, closing off the discussion.

  But that could not be true, Hal thought, as the car swung around the corner. Ezra was in the photograph.

  “It’s just—” she tried again, but Abel cut her off, and this time his voice was cold with what sounded like anger.

  “Harriet, that’s enough. It wasn’t Edward. I didn’t know him back then. End of story.”

  You are lying, she thought. His name is in the diary. You must be lying. But why?

  CHAPTER 33

  * * *

  When they arrived at Trepassen House, Abel parked the car and Hal followed him round the house to the main entrance. There were no lights visible, and the house looked almost deserted, the blank windows like black, expressionless eyes. Hal had a sudden premonition of how it might look in twenty, thirty years’ time—the roof caved in, the windows cracked and broken, leaves gusting across the rotting parquet.

  “We’re back,” Abel shouted as they entered the main door, his voice echoing along the corridor, and Hal felt her stomach flip, before she could analyze why. But when the drawing room door opened and Harding’s head came out, she realized. It was Mrs. Warren she was afraid of. Before she had time to dissect the realization, she found herself in Harding’s stiff embrace, her cheek against his tweed-upholstered shoulder, as he patted her awkwardly and uncomfortably firmly on the back of the head, like a cross between a Labrador and a child.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, and then again, “Well, well, well.” When he pulled back, Hal was astonished to see that his jowly face was ruddy with some kind of suppressed emotion, and his eyes were watering. He dashed at them, and coughed. “Mitzi will—hrumph! She will be very sorry to have missed you, but she has already left to drive the children back home. They have school tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hal said humbly. “I’m sorry to have missed her too.”

  “Edward had to leave too,” Abel said. Hal felt a sharp pang of something, quite different from the vague guilt she had felt at the sound of Mitzi’s name. She realized that she had been hanging on to something—the prospect of seeing Edward, looking into his eyes, trying to find something of herself in his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Is he—will he be coming back?”

  “I doubt it,” Abel said. His face was rather grim, and he seemed to realize it suddenly, and make an effort to shake it off. As he took Hal’s coat he forced a smile, a rather insincere one. “Unless we get held up here for another weekend, which I sincerely hope we won’t.”

  “Have you eaten?” Harding put in. “I’m afraid we have all had supper some time ago, but there’s tea in the drawing room and I could ask Mrs. Warren for a sandwich. . . .”

  He trailed off a little doubtfully, and Hal shook her he
ad emphatically.

  “No, please, I’m absolutely fine. I ate on the train.”

  “Well, come through and have some tea, at least. Warm yourself up before you go to bed.”

  Hal nodded, and Harding ushered her into the drawing room, where tea was waiting on the coffee table.

  The fire was burning low in the grate, and the lamps on the side tables were lit, giving the room a golden glow that somehow covered up the cobwebs and the cracks in the paneling, the dirt and the frayed curtains, the damp and neglect. The room looked, for the first time, almost homelike, and Hal was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of longing. It was not exactly a longing to stay here, for Trepassen was too gothic and gloomy to ever feel like a truly welcoming place. It had the sense of a house where people had suffered in silence, where meals had been eaten in tension and fear, where secrets had been concealed, and where unhappiness had reigned more often than contentment.

  But it was, perhaps, a longing to stay a part of this family. For all his pomposity, the wetness at the corner of Harding’s eye had touched Hal more than she could express. But it was not just Harding. Ezra, Abel, Mitzi, the children—each in their own way had welcomed Hal, had opened themselves to her, trustingly—and she had repaid them . . . how? With lies.

  Only Mrs. Warren, Hal thought, unsettlingly. Only she had never trusted Hal.

  The thought niggled at the back of her mind as she accepted the cup of tea that Harding poured, and cautiously dipped in a rich tea biscuit. Since those hissed midnight accusations, Hal had been turning Mrs. Warren’s words over and over in her mind, and she kept coming back to the same uneasy conclusion. Mrs. Warren . . . knew.

  But had she kept quiet? The only explanation, and it was not a very comforting one, was that Mrs. Warren had something to hide herself. . . .

  The clock on the mantel chimed as Hal swallowed the last of the tea, and she, Harding, and Abel all looked up.

  “Good Lord,” Harding said. “Half past ten. I had no idea it was so late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hal said. “I’ve probably kept you up. My train was delayed.”

  “No, no. You didn’t keep me up,” Harding said. He stretched, his checked shirt pulling up from his belt and exposing a little slice of doughlike middle. “I assure you. But today has been . . . well, let’s just say I’m finding this whole weekend more than a little wearing, and with Mitzi and the children away it’s a chance to catch up on my beauty sleep. So I think, if you don’t mind, Harriet, it will be up the stairs to Bedfordshire for me.”

  “I’ll turn in too,” Abel said with a yawn. “Where’s Ezra?”

  “God knows. He disappeared after supper. Probably out walking. You know what he’s like.”

  “Did he take a key?”

  “Again, I refer the honorable gentleman to my previous answer,” Harding said, a little irritably this time. “God knows. This is Ezra we’re talking about.”

  “I’ll leave the front door unlocked,” Abel said with another yawn. He rose, brushing imaginary lint off his trouser legs. “Lord knows, there’s little enough to steal. Right. Good night, Hal. Can I give you a hand with your case?”

  “Good night,” Hal said. “And no, don’t worry, I can manage myself.”

  • • •

  THE NARROW STAIRCASE THAT LED up to the attic was unlit, and Hal searched for a long time before she found the switch.

  But when she clicked it, nothing happened. She clicked it again, but still no light. Her phone was somewhere deep at the bottom of her bag, and with her hands full of luggage, in the end she was forced to make her way upwards in darkness.

  There were no windows on the attic landing, and the darkness, as she climbed, was absolute, an inky, sooty blackness so intense that she could almost taste it. When she reached the top she put down her case and felt with her fingertips for the turn of the corridor and the door to the attic room—her room, it was beginning to feel like, though the idea gave her a strange, queasy feeling, as if history were looping round and coming full circle.

  This time, although it was stiff, the door gave with a sharp tug, and she fumbled forwards into the room, feeling for the light switch.

  When she flicked it, there was again no light, and this time Hal felt a surge of irritation. Had the whole circuit gone? What the hell?

  It didn’t matter so much in here, for the curtains were open, and enough moonlight came in to enable her to find her way to the bed, undress, and crawl between the cold sheets.

  She was almost asleep, watching moon shadows moving on the wall, when she noticed something.

  It was not a fuse. Someone had taken the bulb out of the light fitting in the center of the room, deliberately leaving her in the dark.

  All that hung there now was an empty socket.

  CHAPTER 34

  * * *

  “Can I ask a question?” Hal asked over breakfast. She took a piece of toast from the pile in the center of the table and was about to spread it with marmalade, but when she unscrewed the top of the jar there was a thick crust of mold over the jelly, and she felt her appetite diminish.

  “What?” Harding looked up from his own toast, which he was briskly plying with butter. “A question? Of course. What is it?”

  “St. Piran village. How far is it?”

  “Oh . . . matter of four miles. Why do you ask?”

  “I thought . . .” Hal swallowed, and twisted her fingers in the fraying edge of her jumper. “I thought I might go for a walk this morning. Do we have time? When are we seeing Mr. Treswick?”

  “Unfortunately, not until tomorrow,” Harding said. He cut his toast in half, a little more forcefully than the action required, and his knife screeched on the plate, making Hal wince. “It seems he is a busy man. So you are free to do whatever you wish today. But it’s not a very nice walk, I warn you. The fields are being plowed at this time of year, so walking across them is rather hard work and distinctly muddy. You’d do better along the main road, but it means dodging the traffic.”

  “I don’t mind,” Hal said. “I just—I feel like I need some fresh air. Is it . . . is it hard to find?”

  “Not especially,” Abel said. “But I’m not sure if you’re dressed for it.” He looked at her a little doubtfully. The snappy chill of the night before was gone and he was back to his usual solicitous manner, but Hal couldn’t help wondering if the cold irritation was still there beneath the caring veneer. Which face was the real Abel Westaway? “It’s very nippy out there. We don’t get snow in this part of Cornwall very much, but we had a frost last night.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Hal said. She put her hands in the pocket of her hoodie and hunched her neck into the collar. “I’m very tough.”

  “Well, you don’t look it,” Abel said, and he flashed a little avuncular wink. “Listen, if you’re really going to go, take my walking jacket. It’s the red one on the peg by the front door. It’ll be too big for you, but at least it’s windproof, and if it comes on to rain you won’t get drenched. There’s rain forecast for this afternoon. But if you get to St. Piran and it starts tipping it down, or if your legs are giving out, give me a ring, and I’ll come and collect you from outside the post office.”

  “All right,” Hal said. She stood up. “I might go now—get started while it’s dry. Is that okay?”

  “Fine by me,” Abel said. He put up his hands, and gave her a quick, wry smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. In the morning light, they looked suddenly rather blue. “I’m not your father.”

  • • •

  OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR, HAL got out her phone and opened up maps, and into it she put an address: 4 Cliff Cottages, St. Piran, Cornwall.

  The dial whirled as her phone calculated the distance and walking time, and then a route flashed up—down the drive and onto the main road.

  She turned into the frosty wind, and pushed the phone deep into the pocket of Abel’s walking coat, and then set out, the wind in her face, the phone warm in her grip.


  I’m not your father.

  Why had he said that? It was so uncomfortably close to her own speculations that she had not been able to find a reply—and had only gaped, and then left the room hurriedly, hiding her shock. Did he know something? Had he and Ezra been talking? Hal had not thought much of Ezra’s casual inquiry in the car on the way back from Penzance, but now his words came back to her, and she found herself wondering about how much the brothers really knew.

  Abel’s comment had been a perfectly reasonable remark, on the face of it, just as Ezra’s question was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. People wanted to know where you came from, who you were. It was something Hal had dealt with her whole life: “Where’s your dad?” “What does he do?” Questions that every child in the playground asked, trying to size you up. Even, most vexatiously, “Why don’t you have a father?”

  Grown-ups tended to phrase the inquiry more tentatively—“Do you have family near?” or “Are your parents around?”—but it came down to the same thing.

  Who are you? Why don’t you know?

  The questions had never seemed to matter much when Hal’s mother was alive. Back then, she had known who she was—or so she thought. But now they chimed so closely with her own thoughts, she wanted to scream.

  For that was the worst of it. Not the lack of a father. Not even the not knowing.

  But the lies.

  How could you lie to me? she thought as she tramped down the long, winding drive, past the twisted yews with the magpies watching her as she went beneath, through the forbidding iron gates.

  You did know and you lied to me, and you stopped me from asking the questions I had a right to have answered.

  She had never hated her mother—never. Not when there was no money, and the other children had heelies and Pokémon cards, and she had sensible shoes and drawings she’d done herself on little scraps of paper. Not when the electricity money ran out and they sat by candlelight for a week, cooking on a gas canister borrowed from a friend. Not when her shoes ran into holes, and her mother was late home from the pier and missed parents’ evenings and class plays because she could not afford to turn down a client.