The Death of Mrs. Westaway

by Ruth Ware

  “Well . . .” Ezra rose and stretched, so that Harriet heard his spine and shoulders cracking. “We’ve done all we can to sort this out for the moment, so I suggest we leave it to the lawyers now.”

  “I will be in touch with you all,” Mr. Treswick said slowly. His brow was furrowed, and Hal felt deeply sorry for him, as he lifted his glasses to rub at the place where the rests pinched the sides of his nose. “There may be quite some disentangling to do, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Hal said, and she had no need to fake the miserable compunction in her tone. She wished, more than anything, that there was a way to tell him of her own complicity in this, without ending up as part of a prosecution, but she couldn’t risk it. Better to cling to the shaky pretense that this was all an innocent mistake, though she was beginning to wonder how long that edifice could hold up. “Good-bye, Mr. Treswick.”

  “Good-bye, Harriet.”

  She nodded and stood, and he took her hand. At first she thought he was going to shake it, but he did not; he simply held it, rather gently, and when at last she smiled and pulled away, she thought for a moment that he did not want to let her go. It was a disquieting thought, the memory of his dry, old fingers holding hers rather insistently, and it stayed with her as she followed Harding down the hallway back to reception, wondering . . . wondering. . . .

  At the end of the corridor, Hal looked back, and she saw that he was still there, standing in the doorway of his office, his gaze somber, and Hal found herself pondering his expression as she passed through the doorway after Harding, back into the bright, crowded little reception area.

  The door swung shut behind her, but she could not resist one last glance back as it closed, to see him still standing there, his arms crossed, his brow furrowed. She could not escape the idea that there was something else Mr. Treswick would have said, if he could. Something more. But what?

  CHAPTER 41

  * * *

  “Well,” Harding said, as they exited the lawyer’s office and stood uncertainly in the street outside. “Can I buy anyone lunch? Or, perhaps more to the point, a pint?”

  “Not me,” Ezra said. He looked up at the sky, which was heavy and yellow, with the promise of snow. “I’ve got a crossing booked from Folkestone tonight. I need to get back and start packing.”

  “Tonight?” Harding blinked. He looked a little piqued as he buttoned up his jacket against the cold wind. “Well, I think you could have warned us. I doubt Mrs. Warren will appreciate your running out like this.”

  “Jesus!” Ezra said. He hadn’t shaved that day, and his four o’clock shadow extended down his throat below the neckline of his T-shirt. Hal thought he looked a sharp contrast to Abel’s groomed handsomeness, and Harding’s bluff middle age. “Will you piss off with the emotional blackmail, Harding. I’ve got a business to get back to.”

  “We’ve all got responsibilities—”

  “I didn’t even want to bloody come!” Ezra said. There was something a little dangerous in his voice, and Hal had the impression that he was holding himself back.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Abel snapped. Hal had the sudden image of a bubbling anger beneath the smiling, good-natured façade, as if something inside Abel were reaching boiling point and making the kind, compliant exterior increasingly hard to maintain. “I don’t know why you’re acting like you’re uniquely pissed off to be here.”

  “Keep out of it, Abel,” Ezra growled, but Abel shook his head.

  “No. I know Maud was your twin and this has stirred up a lot of painful stuff for you, but she was my sister too. You don’t get a monopoly on grief and difficult upbringings—in fact, you know what? You had a far easier time of it growing up than either Maud or me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were her favorite, you know that full well,” Abel said, a little bitterly.

  “If Mother had a favorite, she didn’t let me know about it,” Ezra said shortly.

  Abel gave a laugh. “Utter bollocks. You know you could twist her around your little finger. Same as Mrs. Warren. Maud and I got pasted for things you escaped with scot-free. You could have got away with murder.”

  “Abel, shut up,” Ezra said curtly.

  “Telling you truths you don’t want to hear?”

  “You know nothing.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You don’t know what it was like for me those last years, after Maud ran away. You were off in the city shagging whoever your current toyboy was—”

  “Oh, so we’re resorting to homophobic slurs now, are we?” Abel said.

  “I have no problem with you shagging whoever you want,” Ezra said, his voice dangerous and level. “I’m just making the point you weren’t bloody there, so don’t tell me what it was like.”

  “Children, children,” Harding said, with a rather forced laugh. “That’s quite enough. Now, come on. Of course you’re quite right to leave whenever you want to, Ezra. No one is suggesting otherwise. Just that it would be a good idea to keep us all apprised of your plans.”

  “Well, in the spirit of keeping you both apprised, I’ll probably head off tonight as well,” Abel said. He shivered a little at the cutting wind that was blowing down the narrow alley. “There’s snow forecast, apparently, and I want to make a start before the roads get shut down. I can’t afford another day out of the office either, and . . . well . . . I need to see Edward. Sort some things out.” There was a short, awkward silence. “Do you want a lift back to London, Harding? I know Mitzi took the car.”

  “Thank you,” Harding said, a little stiffly. “That would be very kind.”

  They had reached the car park now, and Abel pulled out his keys and pressed the remote unlock.

  “What about me?” Hal said, rather faintly.

  “I’m sorry?” Harding turned to her, and then blinked. “Oh. Harriet, of course. What time is your train?”

  “I don’t know,” Hal said. “I haven’t checked the timetable. But I need—”

  The word stuck in her throat, but she forced herself on. “I mean, I don’t have any way of getting to the station.”

  “I’ll drop you off en route,” Ezra said briefly. “But I warn you, I want to be away by four. Is that too early?”

  He unlocked his car.

  “Thanks,” Hal said. “Any time is fine, honestly. I think there are trains roughly every hour until about six.”

  Ezra nodded. Then without another word, he got into the car, fired the engine, and drove off.

  Beside Hal, Abel let out a gusting breath of exasperation as he watched his brother’s car drive away.

  “Oh dear. I’m sorry, Hal. I . . . we’ve never really got on, the three of us. We’re too different, and I don’t think we’ve ever got over a childhood of Mother playing us off against each other. I don’t know what Ezra thinks, maybe he honestly doesn’t believe Mother favored him, but to everyone else it was pretty clear that as far as she was concerned, he could walk on water, and she didn’t try to hide it from the rest of us. It was no fun growing up with that.”

  “It—honestly—it’s none of my business,” Hal said awkwardly.

  “Quite,” Harding said crisply. He put an arm around Hal’s shoulders. “I think the last thing Harriet needs to take home with her is memories of our dirty washing. Well, my dear, this has certainly been a very odd business, but I hope now that our branches of the family have found each other, you’ll stay in touch.”

  “I will. I promise,” Hal said, though she had a horrible feeling she did not have much choice, given Mr. Treswick’s worried look as she left.

  “Now,” Harding said briskly. “Let’s all get out of this perishing wind and back to Trepassen to break the news to Mrs. Warren.”

  CHAPTER 42

  * * *

  “Where is Mrs. Warren?”

  The words floated up the stairwell towards Hal as she bumped her case down the final flight, and she felt a little prickle of something—trepidation, perhaps.

  All the
time, while packing, she had had to fight the urge to cram her belongings into her case any old how, so strong was the sense that the old woman might be making her way up the stairs for one final confrontation.

  Strange fantasies tripped through Hal’s mind—someone sliding the bolts closed on the bedroom door and locking her in, or barricading the door at the foot of the stairs. Ezra’s impatient good-byes, Well, I can’t wait for Harriet any longer. The others dispersing before the snow hit—leaving her alone, in the darkening house, with a vengeful old woman. . . .

  So strong was the feeling that she had left the bedroom door open while she packed, the better to hear the tap, tap of her stick on the stairs—though even as she did, she reminded herself of that morning she had found Mrs. Warren waiting in darkness outside her door, the silence of her approach.

  Was Mrs. Warren really the frail old lady everyone assumed, or was that walking stick simply another layer of deception? Whatever the truth, it was clear she could move quietly when she chose.

  Now Hal was packed and ready, her coat on, and the sky was dark with snow, and she wanted nothing more than to get away.

  Abel and Harding were standing in the hallway when she rounded the corner of the landing, and Abel turned his face up towards Hal as she bumped the case down the stairs.

  “You haven’t seen her, have you, Hal?”

  “No.” She joined them in the shadow of the staircase. “Not since last night.”

  Even at breakfast she had not been there—the coffeepot had been steaming on a mat when they arrived in the breakfast room, the toast and cereal laid out, no sign of Mrs. Warren.

  “Ezra’s gone to find her,” Harding said. “He’s the only person likely to come out of her lair alive.”

  But at that moment there was the sound of a door slamming far up the corridor, and they turned to see Ezra striding towards them, shaking his head.

  “I tried the door of her room. It’s locked, and she’s not answering. Must be asleep or gone into town. Would you say good-bye for me?” he said to Harding, who nodded.

  “If I see her, but we’ll be leaving right after you two. She’ll be sorry not to say good-bye.”

  “Probably, but it can’t be helped. The forecast is getting worse, I don’t want to wait. Good-bye, Harding.” They shared a slightly awkward man-hug, more a backslap than an embrace, and then Ezra turned to Abel.

  “Bye, Abel.”

  “Good-bye,” Abel said, “and look, I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn.”

  “I—well, I’m sorry too,” Ezra said, rather stiffly, and Abel held out his arms.

  “Hug it out?”

  Ezra looked profoundly uncomfortable as his brother put his arms around him, and Hal had the impression of an unyielding, unwilling mass, but he put his arm around his brother and squeezed, almost in spite of himself.

  Then it was Hal’s turn. She embraced each of the brothers in turn, feeling Harding’s unaccustomed paunchy softness beneath the Barbour, and Abel’s lean hard ribs under his soft sweater, the surprising strength of his grip as he hugged her.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” Harding said.

  “Good-bye, little Harriet,” Abel said. “Keep in touch.”

  And then Hal was climbing into Ezra’s car, and the engine was growling, and they were off, down the driveway, the magpies rising up in a cloud behind them as the first speckles of snow began to fall.

  • • •

  AT FIRST, THE DRIVE WAS quick, and Hal sat in silence, her head resting against the window, and tried not to think about what she would do when she got back to Brighton.

  A strange feeling was prickling in the pit of her stomach. Part of it was trepidation—an unwillingness to face the plethora of choices she would have to confront when she stepped off the train at Brighton station. She could go home for a couple of nights perhaps, but any longer than that and Mr. Smith’s men would come knocking.

  But beneath the worries was something else, something that tugged at her heart when she thought of Abel and Harding and Ezra, and the feeling of their arms around her. It was homesickness almost, a visceral longing so sharp it was like a pain inside her. But it was not for any home she had ever had. It was, perhaps, a longing for what might have been. For that alternate existence where she had family to fall back on, a safety net. She had never realized how alone she was, until she had glimpsed the alternative.

  But she shook herself. She could not think like this. What she had lost had never been hers, and she had to be positive. She had turned her back on a fraud, had got herself out of a nightmarish situation. And—remembering the trailing thread on the stairs, and the paranoia of that restless, horrible night—she was safe. At least for the moment.

  Had it been real? She still didn’t know. But the more she thought about it, the more she could not believe it was one of the brothers. An image kept coming back to her: Mrs. Warren, silently standing outside her door, her stick nowhere in sight. She could move swiftly and quietly, Hal was certain of it. She could walk without her stick. It was not impossible. Perhaps she had escaped more than just prosecution.

  The sky seemed to darken with her mood, and as they pulled up outside Penzance station, the snow was no longer melting straight onto the windscreen. Instead, as Ezra turned off the lashing wipers, it began to stick, speckling the glass, and sliding down to form little drifts at the bottom.

  “Well . . .” Hal said, rather awkwardly. “Thank you, Ezra. For the lift. I guess . . . I mean, I suppose this is good-bye. . . .”

  “I’m not coming back, if that’s what you mean,” Ezra said. He looked out of the window at the falling snow. “I’ve done my bit by Harding. My life is elsewhere now, and I need to get on with it, not keep looking back here.”

  “I can understand that,” Hal said. There was a heaviness around her heart, but also, as she thought of the leap her mother had made, and Ezra too after his twin had disappeared, a kind of hope. If they could leave everything, start anew in another place, another country even in Ezra’s case, perhaps she could too?

  “Well . . . good-bye,” she said again, and fumbled with the door handle. As she dragged her case across the slushy tarmac, she did not look back.

  Inside the station, everything was strangely quiet. There were few staff, and even fewer passengers, barring a couple of students sleeping on rucksacks, covered with coats. A train was standing at one of the platforms, but the lights were switched off.

  Hal frowned, puzzled, but it was only when she turned to look at the departure board that her stomach turned over.

  Canceled. Canceled. Canceled.

  Train after train. London. Exeter. Plymouth. Nothing was running.

  “Excuse me—” She ran panting across the slippery forecourt, and touched one of the station attendants on the arm. “What’s going on? Why are all the trains canceled?”

  “Ent you heard?” the man said, rather astonished. “Heavy snow up the coast. There’s been a blockage on the line near Plymouth. Can’t no trains get through until it’s cleared, which won’t be today.”

  “But—” Hal felt her face grow even paler. “But—but you don’t understand. I don’t have anywhere to go. I have to get back.”

  “Ent no trains leaving today,” the man repeated firmly, shaking his head. “And probably not tomorrow neither.”

  “Shit.”

  Before she had realized what she was going to do, Hal had picked up her heavy case and was slipping and sliding back across the wet tiles to the entrance of the station, where Ezra had dropped her off.

  “Ezra!” she cried. The snow was barely slush, but it was enough to bind in the wheels of her case, slowing her down.

  “Ezra, wait!”

  But his car was no longer there.

  For a minute she just stood, staring into the falling snow, fighting off the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her. What could she do? Phone Harding? But he and Abel would have already left, more than likely, going the opposite way.

  There was l
ittle point in getting out her purse—she knew what it contained, which was a few pound coins and an expired bus pass.

  She was alone, without any money, in a strange town, and the temperature was dropping. What could she do?

  Without quite knowing why, Hal found herself crouching down, balancing on the tips of her toes as she wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her face to her knees, making herself as small as possible, as if trying to keep every particle of warmth she still had left in her shivering body, as if to physically contain the fear that was suddenly growing and growing inside her.

  She was still crouched there in the snow, gripping the handle of her case as though it was the only thing that could keep her safe, when a car horn beeped loudly, making her jump to her feet and almost lose her balance in the snow.

  It had grown very dark—too dark to perceive anything more than a dazzle of headlights and the growl of an engine.

  And so it was with a flood of relief almost overwhelming in its warmth and physicality that she heard the sound of an electric window and Ezra’s laconic voice saying, “What the hell are you doing crouched in the snow like the little match girl?”

  “Ezra!” Hal stumbled through the slush, her feet slipping, towards the car. “Oh, Ezra, I’m so glad to see you—what are you doing here?”

  “I had to turn the car to head back to the road. More to the point, though, what are you doing?”

  “The line’s closed. No trains are running. I thought I was stranded.”

  “Hmm . . .” She could see his face now in the light from the dashboard, brow furrowed, thinking. “That is a problem . . . you’d better hop in.”

  “But where will you take me?”

  “We’ll figure it out. I can drop you at Plymouth, maybe, if the track from there is okay. Or . . . you live in Brighton, don’t you?”

  Hal nodded.

  “It’s not a million miles out of my way, if the worst comes to it.”