The Death of Mrs. Westaway(90)

She was leaning on the door, peering through a gap between two of the planks, when suddenly the rotten wood gave and the door burst inwards, sending Hal stumbling inside, slipping on the wet, slimy platform so that she staggered, trying to save herself from shooting into the water, and fell to her knees, barely inches from the lake surface.

She knelt there, panting, steadying herself. The fall had jarred bones already bruised from last night, making her grit her teeth with pain, but as she sat back on her heels nothing seemed to be broken.

Was she safe? Hal looked down at the jetty planks beneath her feet, at the lapping, leaf-strewn water, thin shards of ice floating on the surface. She wasn’t sure. This place looked ready to collapse into the lake at the slightest provocation, and she would not have been surprised if her foot had gone straight through the planks into the water beneath. At least it was shallow. Cautiously, she picked up one of the sticks that had fallen through the holes in the roof, and pushing aside the fragile, broken sheets of ice, she tested the depth. Barely a foot before the stick jagged on something hard beneath the water, a smooth shape that showed pale as Hal pushed away the leaf mold with her stick.

As she peered closer through the dark, slightly peaty water, she recognized the shape of a boat, hull up beneath the water. Black, rotting leaf debris had settled over it, masking it, but her stick had stirred up the water, and faint streaks of white showed where she had trailed the tip. As her eyes got used to the dim light and the way the water slanted the perspective, Hal made out something else—a jagged hole near the keel. Had someone sunk it deliberately?

All of a sudden, this didn’t feel like the place her mother had described in her diary, the place where she had laughed and swum and played with her cousins, and with the boy she was about to fall in love with. It felt . . . The realization came to Hal suddenly, like a cold touch on the shoulder. It felt like a place where something had died.

Hal shuddered, and stepping as lightly as she could, she stood and moved backwards, through the broken door, and back out into the cold morning light. The air tasted fresh and sea-clean after the scent of brackish water and rotten wood in the boathouse, and she breathed it deeply. As she did, her phone pinged with a reminder, and she pulled it out of her pocket to check, though the lurch in her stomach told her what she already knew.

11.30—appt with Mr Treswick.

God. Well, there was no point in putting it off. And even a kind of relief to think that in a few hours the whole business would be laid to rest. She just had to hope that Mr. Treswick would be as accepting of her part in the “mix-up” as Harding, Abel, and Ezra had been . . . or appeared to be, at least.

Hal shivered, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her fleece. Suddenly toast and coffee—even Mrs. Warren’s coffee—seemed very welcome, and she walked quickly up the hill to the house, her frosty breath streaming over her shoulder.

Behind her, the boathouse door swung quietly closed, but she did not look back.

CHAPTER 40


* * *

“Oh dear.” Mr. Treswick removed his glasses and polished them, though they were quite clean already, from what Hal could make out. “Oh dear, oh dear. This is most awkward.”

“Please.” Hal put out a hand. “Please, it’s my fault. I should have—I should have said something earlier.”

“I blame myself, very much,” Mr. Treswick was saying, as if he hadn’t heard. “I must say, it absolutely never occurred to me that Maggie’s name was Margarida too. I knew of course that there had been a cousin, but everyone referred to her as Maggie, and I’m afraid I simply assumed her full name was Margaret. Oh dear, this is extremely problematic.”

“But the legacy cannot stand, presumably?” Harding said impatiently. “That’s surely the main thing?”

“I will have to take advice,” Mr. Treswick said. “My instinct is to say that no, it does not stand, since Mrs. Westaway clearly meant the legacy to pass to her daughter’s child. But the fact that Harriet is named along with her address . . . oh dear. This is very knotty indeed.”

“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. . . .