The Death of Mrs. Westaway(76)

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?”