Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(60)

“Do you actually believe that?” His tone walked the line between bitterness and incredulity. “Heaven and hell and nonsense in a similar vein?”

“Not heaven and hell. That all seems rather silly, doesn’t it. God or whoever up there on a throne, casting this soul downward to eternal torment, tossing this soul upward to sing hymns with the angels. That can’t be what this”?her arm took in the cliff side and the sea?“is all about. But that there’s something else beyond what we understand in this moment…? Yes, I do believe that. So for you…You’re still the spiritual being undergoing and attempting to understand the human experience while she now knows?”

“Helen,” he said. “Her name was Helen.”

“Helen, yes. Forgive me. Helen. She now knows what it was all about. But there’s little peace of mind in that. For you, I mean…Knowing that Helen’s moved on.”

“It wasn’t her choice,” he said.

“Is it ever, Thomas?”

“Suicide.” He looked at her evenly.

She felt a chill. “That’s not a choice. That’s a decision based upon the belief that there are no choices.”

“God.” A muscle moved in his jaw. She so regretted her slip of the tongue. A simple expression?my lord?had reduced him to his wound. These things take time, she wanted to tell him. Such a cliché but so much truth within it.

She said to him, “Thomas, do you fancy a walk? There’s something I’d like to show you. It’s a bit of a way…perhaps a mile up the coast along the path, but it’ll give us something of an appetite for dinner.”

She thought he might refuse, but he did not. He nodded and she gestured him to follow her. They headed in the direction from which she’d just come, dipping down at first into another cove, where great fins of slate shot out of the encroaching surf and reached towards a treacherous cliff top of sandstone and shale. The wind and the waves made talking difficult, as did their positions?one behind the other?so Daidre said nothing, nor did Thomas Lynley. It was, she decided, better this way. Letting a moment pass without acknowledging it further was sometimes a more efficacious approach to healing than troubling a developing scar.

Spring had brought wildflowers into areas more protected by the wind, and along the way into combes the yellow of ragwort mixed with the pinks of thrift while bluebells still marked the spots where ancient forests had once stood. There was scant habitation in the immediate environs of the cliffs when they ascended, but in the distance stone-built farmhouses crouched alongside their greater-size barns, and the cattle these served grazed in paddocks that were marked by Cornwall’s earthen hedgerows with their rich vegetation where dog rose and pennywort grew.

The nearest village was a place called Alsperyl, which was also their destination. This comprised a church, a vicarage, a collection of cottages, an ancient schoolhouse, and a pub. All fashioned from the unpainted stone of the district, they sat some half mile to the east of the cliff path, beyond a lumpy paddock. Only the church spire was visible. Daidre pointed this out and said, “St. Morwenna’s, but we’re going this way just a bit farther if you can manage.”

He nodded, and she felt foolish with her final remark. He was hardly infirm and grief did not rob one of the ability to walk. She nodded in turn and led him perhaps another two hundred yards where a break in the wind-tossed heather on the seaside edge of the path gave way to steps hewn into stone.

She said, “It’s not much of a descent, but have care. The edge is still deadly. And we’re…I don’t know…perhaps one hundred fifty feet above the water?”

Down a set of steps, which curved with the natural form of the cliff side, they came to another little path, nearly overgrown with gorse and patches of English stonecrop that somehow thrived here despite the wind. Perhaps twenty yards along, the path ended abruptly, but not with a precipitous cliff edge as one might expect. Rather, a small hut had been hewn into the cliff face. It was fronted with the old driftwood of ruined ships and sided?where such sides emerged beyond the cliff face itself?with small blocks of sandstone. Its wooden face was grey with age. The hinges that served its rough Dutch door bled rust onto pitted panels.

Daidre glanced back at Thomas Lynley to see his reaction: such a structure in such a remote location. His eyes had widened, and a smile crooked his mouth. His expression seemed to say to her, What is this place?

She replied to his unasked question, speaking above the wind that buffeted them. “Isn’t it marvelous, Thomas? It’s called Hedra’s Hut. Evidently?if the journal of the reverend Mr. Walcombe is to be believed?it’s been here since the late eighteenth century.”

“Did he build it?”

“Mr. Walcombe? No, no. He wasn’t a builder, but he was quite a chronicler. He kept a journal of the doings round Alsperyl. I found it in the library in Casvelyn. He was the vicar of St. Morwenna’s for…I don’t know…forty years, perhaps? He tried to save the tormented soul who did build this place.”

“Ah. That would be the Hedra from Hedra’s Hut, then?”

“The very woman. Apparently, she was widowed when her husband?who fished the waters out of Polcare Cove?was caught in a storm and drowned, leaving her with one young son. According to Mr. Walcombe?who does not generally embellish his facts?the boy disappeared one day, likely having ventured too near the edge of the cliff in an area too friable to support his weight. Rather than confront the deaths of both husband and son within six months of each other, poor Hedra chose to believe a selkie had taken the boy. She told herself he’d wandered down to the water?God knows how he managed it from this height?and there the seal waited in her human form and beckoned him into the sea to join the rest of the…” She frowned. “Blast. I’ve quite forgotten what a group of seals is called. It can’t be a herd. A pod? But that’s whales. Well, no matter at the moment. That’s what happened. Hedra built this hut to watch for his return, and that’s what she did for the rest of her life. It’s a poignant story, isn’t it?”