The Death of Mrs. Westaway

by Ruth Ware

  “What? When?”

  “After she had you. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened, but I know she came back, for Bill Thomas ran a taxi from Penzance in those days—he’s long dead now—and he took her up to the house, and told me afterwards. He said he dropped her off and asked if he should wait, but she said no, she would call when she wanted to be collected. He said she had a look on her face like a maid going into battle. ‘A Joan of Arc look’ was what he called it.”

  “But why?” Hal found herself frowning, shaking her head. “Why would she go back, when she tried so hard to get away?”

  “I don’t know, my darling. All I know is, that really was the last I heard of her. Of either of them. Neither of them ever returned again, after that, and I never heard a word from them again. I often thought about them—and about that baby, you, I suppose it would have been! I often wondered how they were doing. You say your ma became a fortune-teller?”

  “Tarot,” Hal said. She felt a little numb, battered by all the information that Lizzie had imparted. “She had a booth on the West Pier in Brighton.”

  “That’s no surprise,” Lizzie said. Her broad face broke into a smile. “Oh, but she loved her tarot cards, treated them like fine china, she did. And many’s the time she read for me. Three children, she said I’d have, and three children I did. And what about Maud? I always thought she’d go on to become some university professor at a women’s college. History, it was, she wanted to study, I remember. She said to me, ‘There’s nothing you can’t learn from history to tell you how to deal with the present, Lizzie. That’s why I like it. However evil men are now, there’s always been worse.’ So that’s what I’m guessing.” She took another sip of her tea, her blue eyes twinkling at Hal over the cup. “Professor of history at the University of London, that’s my betting. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know,” Hal said. Her throat had closed, and her voice, when she managed to speak, was stiff and croaky. “I never met Maud, at least not that I can remember. My mother never even mentioned her name.”

  “So she just . . . disappeared?” Lizzie said. She raised her eyebrows, faint blond shadows almost disappearing into her yellow fringe.

  “I suppose so,” Hal said. “But wherever she went, she must have gone before I could even remember her face.”

  CHAPTER 36

  * * *

  The walk back to Trepassen House took Hal much longer than the outward one. She had refused the offer of a lift from Lizzie, and partly the slowness was because the walk was uphill, and the rain had started making the verges slippery, forcing her to stop and wait for a gap in the traffic every time she passed a deep verge-side puddle, or risk getting drenched by the splash-back.

  Partly, though, the plain truth was that she was deliberately walking slowly, trying to sort out the tumble of thoughts before she had to face Harding and his brothers with the truth.

  She had to come clean—she had known that, even before Lizzie had spoken the words. She had known it, Hal thought, even before she left for Brighton. She had been running away from the whole situation—from the confession she knew she must make.

  She tried to imagine the words.

  I lied.

  I have been lying to you since I got here.

  My mother was not your sister.

  She felt sick at the thought—there had been something about the relief with which Harding and Abel had welcomed her back yesterday, almost as if she had been their own sister, come home at last. And now she was going to tear that all away from them again—plunge them back into the decades-long uncertainty they had endured before Hal walked into their lives. How would they react?

  Harding would rage and bluster. Abel would shake his head—Hal could almost see the disappointment in his eyes. Ezra? Ezra she didn’t know. He was perhaps the only one of the three she could imagine taking the news with equanimity, maybe even laughing. But then she thought of the barely suppressed rage and grief she had witnessed beneath the surface when he spoke of his sister’s disappearance . . . and suddenly she was not so sure.

  Whatever happened, though, however angry they were with Hal herself, Harding at least would be relieved, once the news had sunk in. For Hal’s bequest would fail, and . . . then what? The money would return to the pot, presumably, and would be treated as if their mother had never made a will.

  Thank goodness Mitzi wasn’t there—for the thought of confessing in front of Mitzi, who had been so kind . . . Hal almost doubted she could have brought herself to do it.

  But Lizzie knew—and with that came a kind of relief, for there was no going back, no way Hal could chicken out now. She had to push through with this, make her apologies, and . . . then what? Go to see Mr. Treswick, she supposed, to explain the whole situation.

  But beneath those thoughts were layered other, more disturbing ones. For behind all this lay one simple, immutable fact: Maud was still missing—and no one seemed to know what had happened to her.

  Sometime after February 1995 she had slipped out of sight of her mother, brothers, and cousin, and disappeared. Had she gone of her own volition? Or was the truth something else, something more sinister?

  Hal thought of her as she walked, of the fiercely intelligent child that both Lizzie and Mr. Treswick remembered with such amused awe. Of the girl in Maggie’s diaries, who had fought with Mrs. Westaway and guarded Maggie’s secrets. And of the woman she had wanted to become—free, educated, independent. Had she made it? Was that the truth—that she had helped her cousin free herself from Trepassen House, and then disappeared in her own turn, to make her life somewhere else? It was possible. But it seemed so unlikely—and so strange, that in all the years, Hal’s mother had never even mentioned her name. However much Maggie had wanted to leave the unhappiness of Trepassen behind her, it seemed unbelievably callous to have erased the existence of a woman who had done so much to help her.

  But the only other possibility was even more disturbing—that Margarida Westaway was dead.

  CHAPTER 37

  * * *

  Hal was soaked and shivering by the time she got to the big wrought-iron gates. She was profoundly grateful that Abel had made her take his walking jacket, but the hood was too big to stay up. However tight she pulled the drawstring, the wind blew it back and sent the rain running down the back of her neck to soak her T-shirt.

  For a mile or so she tried holding it in place with one hand, but even with her fingers scrunched as far as she could get into the cuffs of the coat, it left her hands cold and blue, and in the end she abandoned the hood, and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the coat.

  When Hal pushed open the gate, the hinges shrieked, a low, mournful sound that cut through the patter of the rain, and made her shiver in a way that wasn’t just cold. There was something about the long, low note that made the skin on the back of Hal’s neck crawl. It was as though the house itself were dying in pain.

  By the time she got up to the house, there was a little sleet mixed in with the rain, the tiny shards of ice stinging her cheek and making her eyes water, and in spite of her trepidation, she was glad to reach the shelter of the porch, where the wind dropped and she could shake off the worst of the water. Inside, she took off Abel’s coat, watching as the water pooled on the tiles, and feeling the sensation painfully returning to her chapped fingers, stinging as the blood began to return. From the drawing room she could hear male voices, and taking a deep breath, she put the coat on the peg and made her way across the hallway to the half-open door.

  “Hal?” Abel looked around as Hal entered diffidently. “Bloody hell, you look like a drowned rat. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I was enjoying the walk,” Hal said. She moved closer to the fire, trying to mask the chattering of her teeth. It was not quite a lie. She had not enjoyed the walk, not exactly, but she had not wanted a lift. She’d needed the time to clear her head, work out what she was going to say.

  Across the room Ezra was sprawled on the sofa, reply
ing to something on his phone, but he looked up as Hal passed him, and gave a snorting laugh.

  “I’ve never seen anyone look quite so impressively bedraggled. I’m afraid you’ve missed lunch, but we could probably brave Mrs. Warren’s lair for a cup of tea if you need something to warm you up. Or the water in the immersion tank should be hot, if you want a bath?”

  “I’ll do that,” Hal said, grateful for the excuse. Part of her wanted to get this over and done with, but another, more cowardly part was clutching at any straw to postpone the cataclysm that was sure to follow. “Wh-where’s Harding?”

  “In his room, I think. Having a nap, is my guess. Why?”

  “Oh . . . just wondered.”

  • • •

  THE BATHROOM WAS UPSTAIRS—JUST one for the entire house, with a huge claw-footed tub streaked green with copper rust, and a lavatory in one corner with a chain that clanked and screeched when Hal pulled it, reminding her of the metallic groan of the gates.

  But the water, when she turned the brass taps, was hot, and the pressure was good, and when she at last lowered herself into the scalding heat, she felt something inside her release, a tension that she hadn’t known she was holding on to.

  Uncle Harding—I’m not who you think I am.

  No. Absurdly dramatic. But how could she say it? How could she bring it up?

  When I went back home, I discovered something. . . .

  And then the story of the diary, as though she had just come to this dawning realization.

  The trouble with that was that it was a lie.

  So what, then?

  Harding, Ezra, Abel—I set out to defraud you.

  Maybe the words would come, when she was faced with them all. Closing her eyes, she submerged herself beneath the water, so that her ears filled with the sound of her own pulse and the drip, drip of the tap, driving out all the other voices.

  • • •

  “HARRIET?”

  Hal jumped and turned, clutching the towel to herself, as Harding’s head came out of the doorway of one of the rooms. At the sight of her, damp and pink from her bath, bare shoulders rising from a swath of towel, he looked almost as horrified as Hal felt.

  “Oh! My dear, I’m so sorry.”

  “I had a bath,” Hal said, unnecessarily. She felt the corner of the towel slip, and hitched it up, holding her damp clothes in front of herself like a shield. “I was just going up to get dressed.”

  “Of course, of course,” Harding said, waving a hand to indicate that she should feel free to go, though when Hal turned he spoke again, forcing her to turn back, shivering as she did, in the sudden draft. “Oh, Harriet, I’m so sorry—there was one thing I wanted to say, before we met with the others. I won’t keep you, but I wanted—well, your offer to perform a deed of variation was very generous, but I’m sorry to say that Abel, Ezra, and I discussed it, and Ezra is being rather difficult about it. He’s an executor, you know, and as such he has to agree to any such deed, and he feels, rather strongly, that Mother’s wishes should be honored, however perverse and disruptive. I must say it seems an extraordinary position to me, given he never showed the least interest in her wishes when she was alive, but—well—there it is. We’ll discuss it with Mr. Treswick tomorrow, anyway.”

  Hal shivered again, unable to prevent it, and Harding seemed belatedly to realize the cold.

  “Oh dear, I am sorry, I’m keeping you dripping in the corridor. Don’t mind me, I’ll see you downstairs for a gin and tonic, perhaps?”

  Hal nodded, stiff with the knowledge of all that she had left unspoken; and then, unable to think what else to say that was not an addition to all the lies she had already told, she turned and made her way up the stairs to the attic room.

  • • •

  IT WAS PERHAPS HALF AN hour later when she pushed open the door to the drawing room and found all three brothers sitting around the coffee table, in front of a roaring log fire.

  There was a bottle of whiskey on the table between them, and four tumblers—one unfilled.

  “Harriet!” Harding said heartily. His face was flushed, with a mix of heat and whiskey, Hal suspected. “Come in and have a drink. I’m afraid my offer of gin and tonic turned out to be premature—there’s no tonic in the house. But I did take the precaution of buying a bottle of whiskey when I was in Penzance earlier, so we do at least have that.”

  “Thanks,” Hal said, “but I don’t really—”

  She stopped. She didn’t drink, not anymore. There had been too many oblivious nights after her mother’s death, too many times when one glass had dissolved into many. But now she had a sudden, powerful yearning for something, however small, to nerve her for what she was about to do.

  “Actually, thanks,” she said, and Harding poured her a generous, overgenerous, measure, and pushed the tumbler across the table to her.

  He refilled his brothers’ glasses at the same time and then raised his own.

  “A toast,” he said, meeting Harriet’s eyes. “A toast to . . .” He paused, and then gave a short laugh. “To family.”

  Hal’s stomach tightened, but she was saved from answering by Ezra’s derisive snort. He shook his head.

  “I’m not bloody drinking to that. To freedom.”

  Abel gave a chuckle and picked up his own tumbler. “Freedom seems a little harsh. I’ll drink to . . .” He raised his glass, thinking. “To closure. To seeing Mr. Treswick tomorrow and getting home to Edward ASAP. Hal?”

  The acrid smell of the whiskey stung her nostrils, and she swirled it, looking down into the tawny, glinting depths.

  “I’ll drink to . . .” Words crowded in—unsayable words. Truth. Lies. Secrets. Her throat tightened. There was only one toast that she could find in her heart, the crowding, painful truth, waiting to be blurted out. “To my mother,” she said huskily.

  There was a long pause. The whiskey in Hal’s glass trembled as she looked around the circle of faces. Harding’s mustache quivered as he raised his glass.

  “To Maud,” he said, his voice harsh with suppressed emotion. The whiskey caught the light, winking solemnly.

  Abel swallowed hard, and raised his own tumbler.

  “To Maud,” he said, very softly, his voice so low Hal would not have been sure of the word if she had not known what it was already.

  Ezra said nothing, but he raised his glass, and his dark eyes were bright with a grief Hal found almost too painful to look at.

  For a moment they sat, all four of them, glasses raised in silent remembrance, and then all of a sudden, Hal could bear it no longer. In one movement, she threw back her head and gulped the whiskey down in three long swallows.

  There was a short silence, and then Harding burst out with a kind of shakily relieved laughter, and Ezra clapped a slow round of applause.

  “Well done, Harriet!” Abel said drily. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, you little mouse.”

  There it was again. Little mousy Harriet. But it was not true. It had never been true. After her mother’s death, she had made herself small and insignificant, but the façade that she showed to the world was not the truth of her.

  Inside there was an iron strength—the same strength, Hal realized, that had enabled her mother to escape Trepassen, start again in a strange town, pregnant and alone, and build a life for her baby daughter. At the heart of Hal, beneath the unassuming layers and drab clothes, was a deep, resilient core that would keep fighting, and fighting, and fighting. Mice hid and scuttled. They froze in the face of danger. They allowed themselves to be made prey.

  Whatever Hal was, she was not a mouse.

  And she would not be anybody’s prey.

  Uncle Harding, I’m not who you think I am.

  When she put the glass down, it rattled against the tray, and she cleared her throat, her cheeks burning with the consciousness of what she was about to do. She remembered Mrs. Warren’s look that first night . . . the look of someone watching a flock of pigeons, who sees a cat suddenly cree
ping from the shadows of a nearby tree. The look of someone who stands back . . . and waits.

  “Well—” Harding began, but Hal interrupted him, knowing that if she did not do this now, she might never do it.

  “Wait, I—I have something to say.”

  Harding blinked, slightly put out, and the corner of Ezra’s mouth quirked as if he was amused to see his brother discomfited.

  “Oh, well, please.” Harding waved a hand. “Be my guest.”

  “I—” Hal bit her lip. She had been turning this moment over and over in her mind ever since she left Cliff Cottages, but the right words had not come, and suddenly she knew that it was because there were no right words, there was nothing she could say that would make this okay. “I have something to tell you,” she said again, and then she stood up, not quite knowing why, but feeling unable to stay slack and safe in the corner of the sofa. She felt like she was about to fight, to defend herself from attack. The muscles in her neck and shoulders hurt with tension.

  “I found out something when I was back in Brighton. I hadn’t been sure before, but I went through my mother’s papers and I found out—”

  She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, wishing she had not drained the whiskey so fast, but had saved a sip for now. Harding was frowning; Abel was suddenly tense, leaning forwards in his chair, his expression full of a kind of apprehension. Only Ezra looked unconcerned. He had folded his arms and was regarding her with interest, like someone watching an experiment play out.

  “Well?” Harding said, with a little impatience in his voice. “What did you find? Spit it out, Harriet.”

  “Margarida Westaway—your sister—she was not my mother,” Hal said.

  She felt a great weight roll off her, but there was no relief in its passing, only an aching pain, and a kind of dread as she waited for the crash as it dropped.

  There was a long silence.

  “I—what?” Harding said at last. He was staring at Hal, his plump, ruddy face scarlet with the heat of the fire, or with shock at Hal’s speech, she was not sure which. “I beg your pardon?”