فصل 46

CHAPTER 46

Hal’s phone was upstairs in the attic, and she wore no watch, but she was sure from the stillness of the house that it must be gone midnight, probably long gone.

But there was no way she could go back to bed with this weight of truth heavy inside her, and the questions churning and churning.

There was only one person she could go to—one person who might tell her the truth.

Mrs. Warren.

And she had to go now, before Ezra woke up. If she left it until dawn . . .

Hal picked up the album, pushed back the chair, and stood, trying to summon her courage, remembering the thread across the stairs, the hissed invective in Mrs. Warren’s voice—Get out—if you know what’s good for you . . .

Like Joan of Arc, her mother had been. Like a maid going into battle.

Well, she had not inherited much from Maggie. Not her features, not her eyes or her hair, not even her sense of humor and skepticism. But perhaps she had inherited her mother’s courage.

Hal took a deep breath, steadying herself, trying to quiet the questions clamoring inside her—and then she opened the study door and stepped softly through the orangery to knock at the door of Mrs. Warren’s sitting room.

There was no answer at first, and Hal knocked a little harder, and as she did the door swung inwards, unlatched, and she saw that the gas fire in the little sitting room was on, and that the lamp on the table was burning.

Had Mrs. Warren fallen asleep in her chair?

It was pushed in front of the fire, close up, a blanket slung over the back of it making a dark shape that could have been a hunched old lady—but when Hal went cautiously forwards, her free hand outstretched in the flickering darkness, it only rocked away and then back, unmoored, and she saw that it was empty except for a couple of cushions.

“Mrs. Warren?” Hal called quietly. She tried not to let her voice shake, but there was something very eerie about the silence, broken only by the low rise and fall of a radio, and the creak, creak of the rocking chair upon the boards.

After the study, the sitting room was stiflingly overheated, and Hal wiped her brow, feeling sweat prickle across the back of her neck.

The sound of the radio was coming from behind a door at the back of the sitting room, and Hal took a cautious step towards it, but as she did so she nudged a little side table covered with pictures, and they fell, half a dozen of them.

“Shit!”

She grabbed for it, steadying the table before it could topple, but the pictures were like dominoes, clattering down in sequence, and Hal stood, frozen for a moment, her heart in her mouth, feeling its panicked thumping.

“Mrs. Warren?” she managed, her voice shaking. “I’m sorry, it’s only me, Hal.” But no one came, and with trembling hands she began to right the pictures, one after the other.

As she did, she saw, with a growing sense of disquiet, what they were.

Ezra. All of them.

Ezra as a baby, in Mrs. Warren’s arms, his soft hand reaching out for her cheek.

Ezra as a toddler, running across the lawn.

Ezra as a young man, almost unbearably handsome, his smile flashing out, unguarded and full of wry mischief.

Ezra, Ezra, Ezra—a shrine, almost, to a lost little boy.

There was one of the three brothers together on the mantelpiece. None of Maggie, though that, perhaps, was not surprising. Not a single one of Maud. And none, save for that one picture with Ezra in her arms, of Mrs. Warren herself.

It was as if all the love in that twisted old heart, all the caring and gentleness, had settled on a single person, concentrated into a beam of adoration so ferocious that Hal felt that it could have burned the skin.

“Mrs. Warren,” she said again, a lump in her throat now, though whether it was pity or fear, she could not have said. “Mrs. Warren, wake up, please, I need to speak to you.” But nothing. Silence.

Hal’s hands were shaking as she crept, inch by inch, across the firelit room, towards the door at the back, holding the yellow album out in front of her now, like a shield. She imagined pushing it open, the hunched figure standing behind in silence and darkness, just as she had that night outside the attic, waiting, watching.

“Mrs. Warren!” There was a note of pleading in her voice now, almost a sob. “Please. Wake up.” She was at the door now. Nothing. No sound, no movement.

Her hand was on the panel.

And then she pushed, and the door swung open, showing a narrow bedroom with a single iron cot bedstead, a flowered flannel nightgown folded neatly at the foot.

Beneath the bed were two carpet slippers, side by side, and a coat was hanging on a peg next to the door.

Of Mrs. Warren herself, there was no sign at all.

Hal felt her heart steady in her chest, relief flooding her momentarily, but then another kind of uneasiness took hold.

If Mrs. Warren was not asleep or in her sitting room, where was she?

“Mrs. Warren!” she shouted, making herself jump with the shock of the noise above the quiet hiss of the gas. “Mrs. Warren, where are you?” And then, at the back of the bedroom, Hal saw another door, and it was standing ajar.

“Mrs. Warren?”

She stepped into the bedroom, her sense of intrusion growing at the feeling that, with every step, she was venturing farther and farther into Mrs. Warren’s private sanctum. Part of her quaked at the thought of the woman’s fury if she discovered Hal here, but part of her was driven on by a kind of fascination—taking in the cross on the wall above the austere bedstead, the photograph of Ezra on the nightstand, and the small, pathetically small, flannel nightgown folded across the foot of the bed.

She wanted to turn back—but it was impossible now. It was more than a sick curiosity to know what was behind Mrs. Warren’s formidable façade. It was a desire—no, a need for answers. Answers only Mrs. Warren could give.

Her hand was outstretched. She was almost at the door—

“Hal?”

The voice came from behind her, making her jump convulsively and swing around, eyes wide in the darkness.

“Wh-who’s there?”

No sign of anyone at first, and then something moved—a dark shape in the doorway, and he stepped forwards into the little room.

The snow had stopped, she realized with a sense of detached wonderment, and the moon had come out, sending a thin white light slanting across the bare boards between them.

“Hal, what are you doing?” There was no censure in his deep voice, just a kind of concerned curiosity.

“E-Ezra,” she stammered. “I was—I was looking for—for Mrs. Warren.” It was true, after all.

“Why? Is something wrong”

“I’m fine,” she managed. But it was not true. Her heart was beating so hard and fast it made a hissing in her ears, a roar she could barely silence enough to hear her own thoughts.

He stepped forwards into the moonlight, one hand stretched out as if to take hers, lead her back to safety.

“Hal, are you sure you’re all right? You look very strange. And what’s that you’ve got there—is it . . . is it a book?” She looked down at her hands, in which she was still holding the yellow album, and then up at Ezra, at her father.

She met his eyes, and it was like falling into dark, leaf-strewn water, like falling into her own past.

Because suddenly, in a single, crystallizing instant, she understood.

Once, at school, Hal’s teacher had had them conduct an experiment, where they cooled a bottle of water to below freezing, and then tapped it sharply on a table. When they did, the water froze all in an instant, the ice spreading with impossible swiftness, like some kind of magic spell.

As she stood there, gazing into Ezra’s dark, liquid eyes, Hal felt as if the same process were taking place inside her—a painful chill spreading out from her core, turning the blood in her veins to ice, and her limbs stiff and frozen. Because she understood—finally—and without needing to know what had happened to Mrs. Warren.

She understood Mrs. Warren’s odd expression that first day, Mrs. Westaway’s will, and her strange, cryptic message to Harding.

She understood the wording of the bequest, and the “mistake” that had occurred—not Mr. Treswick’s fault at all—how could she have ever thought that dry, careful little man would make such a catastrophic error?

She understood why Abel had denied Edward’s presence at the lake that day, and why Ezra had refused to challenge the will or pursue the deed of variation, and that odd, throwaway line that had niggled and niggled and niggled at her subconscious.

And most of all she understood why her mother had cut herself off from her past, and Hal with her.

Get out—if you know what’s good for you.

Not a threat, but a warning.

And she had understood it too late.