A Dark Devotion
Page 36
‘I didn’t know about Edward until today,’ I volunteered, needing to justify myself to her. ‘I didn’t know before.’
‘Yes—Edward,’ she stated coldly.
We contemplated this fact in silence for a second or two, then Maggie went on hurriedly as if time were running out. Her breath quickened as her words gathered momentum. ‘But she does not leave straight away. No, no! Not before she has made Will sell the Gun Marsh to Edward. This is her farewell to him, you understand!’ Her voice rose suddenly in anger. ‘Already she has done her best to ruin him, she has spent all his money, now she tries to make him sell his land to her lover!’ Not trusting herself to say more on this, Maggie shook her head vehemently and replaced her cup in the saucer with a loud rattle. ‘She is making plans for Charlie too! It is not enough that she is a bad mother, that she is unkind to him. No! She plans to get the custody and send him away to this special school, to make him into what she wants him to be! To make him obey her. I ask you, Alex, what kind of woman is this?’ She repeated despairingly, ‘What kind of woman?’
‘And who knew about all this? Who knew Grace was planning to leave?’
She stubbed her cigarette out in the saucer with small stabbing motions. ‘No one! She is clever, clever. Like a fox. She says nothing. She is secretive. No one knows. But me—me…I feel many things.’ She drove a fist against her heart. ‘I guess many things. I see Will miserable, I see the money going out, out, out—she flipped a hand into space—‘I see Charlie so unhappy. Oh, Alex, he is so nervous all the time, so full of bad feelings, and wanting his mother to be good to him. And I watch Grace. And I see there are no problems for her. No, no! She is happy! She is full of herself! And then I know. Don’t ask me how, Alex, but I know. And I pray she will leave! I want her to leave! But’—she pointed a finger at me and squinted down it, as though down the barrel of a rifle—‘not with the Gun Marsh! Never with the Gun Marsh! This would kill William. This would kill his pride for ever.’ She threw her head back, she gave a harsh sigh.
‘So,’ I said, urging her quietly on, ‘you went and opened the sluices?’
‘I opened the sluices.’ The passion fell away, her voice became devoid of tone or emotion. ‘I took the handle, I went and opened them. The first was hard. Stiff. Heavy. I had to work at it, really work. The second, it wasn’t so hard, quite easy in fact. But the water—I have never seen water like this, Alex. So much water, coming so fast.’ The memory horrified her a little, but also gratified her; she couldn’t keep the gleam of triumph from her eyes. ‘Then…I came back here.’
I sat forward on the edge of my chair. ‘But…the call to Grace.’
‘It was me. I called her. Just like I said to the police. Just like I told them.’ She was tiring now, her eyelids were drooping.
‘And what did you say to her?’
‘I asked if Will was back. I said that the marsh was flooding. No,’ she corrected herself. ‘No…
I said it was flooding badly.’ She added force-fully, ‘There was no talk of Will opening the sluices. This would be mad. Why would I say a thing like this? I was wanting to know if he was back. Why would I ask for him at Marsh House if he was here with me? No, Edward is crazy to say these things.’ The thought of Edward sent her into a new fit of agitation. ‘Why would he say a thing like this? Will, he was still in his car then. Still far away. No, Edward has this totally wrong.’ She tapped a finger against her head to indicate madness. ‘He heard it wrong. Ha! Or he wanted to hear it wrong! He is saying this just because he wants to hurt Will.’
I sat back, puzzled again. ‘But why did you make the call, Maggie? Why did you want to find Will?’
She put on a look that was both sheepish and defiant. ‘I began to think…perhaps I had done the wrong thing. Perhaps I had been too…quick. That I had been thinking with my heart and not my head.’ She was glancing away all the time, not avoiding my eye exactly but not meeting it either. ‘You see, there was so much water, Alex. It came so fast, it covered everything just so quick. I began to think that I had done too much. That I should call for help.’
I asked, ‘You didn’t think of trying to close the sluices yourself?’
‘Of course,’ she asserted rapidly. ‘I was going out to try and do it, to close them, when Grace arrived. Yes, I had the handle with me, I was walking. Yes…’
‘There was a row?’
She blew loudly through pursed lips, a sound of disbelief. ‘Grace was in a rage…I tell you, Alex—such fury! She was shaking with anger. Quite mad.’ Maggie fixed me with a firm gaze and raised an eyebrow. ‘I do not say this too strongly, Alex. Mad. She hit me, she kept hitting me. On the arm firsts then the side of the head. She was wild with rage. There was bloody I thought my ear was broken inside! I thought…’ With a small motion of her hand, she left this thought behind. ‘I tell you, Alex, never have I known anything like this! Then…oh, we said many things, many bad things, many things we had wanted to say for a long, long time!’ She laughed abruptly, a short biting laugh. ‘Then…when the words were over, she went off to close the sluices. She marched off with the handle.’ Her voice fell. ‘I did not see her again.’
She fell silent, and we both looked away to the window.
‘What did you do then?’
‘Me? I was recovering myself. It is many years since anyone hit me like this, Alex. Since I was a child. In fact, I think never has anyone hit me in this way, around the head. I was…shocked. I could not breathe. I stayed there until I felt better.’
‘Where?’
‘By the outhouse.’ She waved towards the back of the cottage.
‘And then?’
Another shrugs another descent into exhaustion. ‘I came inside to wash, to sit, to recover more.’
‘And Charlie? Where was Charlie all this time?’
‘Inside,’ she replied briskly. ‘Watching TV. I had put a video on, his favourite, so that he would not see me opening the sluices.’
‘When did Grace disappear? What time roughly?’
She pulled the corners of her mouth down, she raised a palm. ‘Oh, before six. Maybe ten minutes before six. I don’t remember.’
‘Quite a long time before Will arrived, then?’
She went through the motions of testing her memory again. ‘Yes.’
‘And you never saw any sign of Grace after that?’
‘No.’
‘When Will arrived, did you go out to the sluices with him?’
She lowered her head and nodded.
‘And you said nothing to him?’
‘I said nothing.’ She kept her head down. ‘I was ashamed. I didn’t want to tell him it was all my fault.’
I sat forward in my seat. ‘But the car? Grace drove around in her car.’
‘I took it back myself. Later. I didn’t want anyone to know she’d been there.’
‘How much later?’
Another cigarette appeared from the packet. As she occupied herself with the business of lighting it I noticed that her hands were trembling. ‘Later, later—when Will was busy with the sluices. Ten, maybe.’ She gazed at me levelly through the smoke and said with a show of calm, ‘So, there we are. That is what happened, Alex. I am not proud of it, but that is the story.’
A dozen questions rushed into my mind. ‘You never thought of telling anyone that Grace had gone off onto the marshes?’ I asked incredulously.
Her expression grew defiant. ‘I didn’t care what had happened to her. I didn’t care if she was lost, wet, hurt…I didn’t care if she was dead. In fact, the thought made me happy, Alex. I have to say, it made me happy.’
‘You didn’t even tell Will?’
‘Especially not Will! Tell him that she was unfaithful? Tell him she was leaving him for Edward Woodford? Tell him she was taking the Gun Marsh as a wedding present to her lover? She boasted about all these things, she was proud of it! Tell him some of the things she said—terrible, terrible things that should never be said? No, no! I said nothing!’
‘Charlie saw nothing,’ she cried immediately. ‘He knows nothing. He must not be upset again! He must not be told this!’ Something came over her then, faintness or pain or sickness, and she screwed up her eyes suddenly, she clutched her stomach. ‘My pills, Alex! Could you…?’
I fetched them for her. ‘Is it okay to take more so soon?’ I took a glance at the label.
Brushing the question aside with a quick gesture, she took two of the capsules and washed them down with the dregs of the tea. ‘Five minutes, Alex. Just five minutes…’
I stood over her, looking down at the pale ravaged face. She seemed cold and I brought a dry coat from the hall and laid it over her.
As I closed the door behind me I heard her give a slight gasp.
The door was unlocked, the interior low and narrow under a sloping roof with a small skylight. Immediately ahead of me I saw the hook that Will had carried to the sluices on the night of the storm, the hook he had used to pull Grace’s body from under the gate. Beside it were gardening tools and seed boxes, and beyond, a stack of rotting deck chairs, an old lamp, and a pile of bulging cardboard boxes.
The sluice handle was attached to the nearside wall. I wrenched it from its clips and was stepping backwards when I noticed a second handle clipped to the back of the door. The two appeared identical, so I left the second handle where it was.
I strode towards the Gun embankment and climbed the grassy slope. Reaching the path, I walked even faster. A wind was blowing sideways off the salt-marsh, the rain fell coldly against my face. I passed a couple of dog-walkers in hooded anoraks who looked at me curiously: at the lack of a proper waterproof, at the handle gripped in my fist, at the look in my eye probably, too.
Reaching the first sluice, I faced the mechanism and, grasping the handle in both hands, jammed it into the socket. I prepared to throw my weight into the first turn, only to find that the handle spun freely without resistance: it had failed to engage the worm gear. Rattling the end of the handle, thrusting it deeper into the socket, I felt it slide in and engage the thread. I began to wind.
The mechanism was very stiff or the gate very heavy, but it was all I could do to make the handle turn. I began to pant slightly, to feel my muscles protest. It was half tide—I heard the water starting to trickle in. After six or seven turns, I peered over the edge of the tunnel and saw that the gate had lifted no more than a foot.
I lowered it again. It went down much more easily than it had come up.
Still breathing hard, I tucked the handle under my arm and walked quickly back.
I climbed the stairs softly, stepping on the outside of the treads to reduce the chance of noise. The landing was more difficulty it creaked under my weighty but the rain and Charlie’s computer drowned out much of the sound and when I paused to listen there was no sudden movement from the sitting room, nothing from Maggie at all.
I tapped gently on Charlie’s door. The computer squawks stopped. I tapped again and opened the door a few inches. ‘Charlie,’ I called without showing myself. When he didn’t respond, I called again and put my head around the door.
He was sitting in front of the computer screen which was displaying garish red figures bouncing around a schematic green maze.
‘I’m afraid Granny’s still not feeling too well,’ I told him. ‘I think perhaps you won’t be going to Norwich today.’
Looking back at the screen, he accepted this without a word.
I stepped into the room. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ I said it kindly, but not quite so kindly that he felt he could refuse.
Instantly, he hunched a little, he lowered his head, so that the white-blond hair fell forwards over his forehead.
I moved further into the room. ‘Has this happened to Granny before?’
Unable to escape some sort of response, he gave a minimal nod.
‘Is it always this bad?’
But he wasn’t at all sure about that, he frowned uncertainly, and I left it alone.
Drawing up a chair beside the desk, making myself at home, I stole a closer glance at him and it seemed to me that he was far more alert today, that if he was taking tranquillizers they weren’t having nearly such a drastic effect as before.
‘Charlie, can I ask you something? Just a small thing, but I thought you might be able to help me out.’
The vivid pale eyes remained fixed on the bouncing red figures in a solemn glare. The computer continued to emit loud squawks and whoops.
‘Would you mind?’ I gestured towards the game.
He pressed a button and there was an abrupt silence.
Crossing his arms tightly across his chest, he didn’t look at all happy at the idea of questions, but he didn’t protest either.
‘The thing is…’ I paused, anxious to explain myself clearly without talking down to him. ‘You know what I’m doing here, don’t you, Charlie? You know what my job is? I’m here to represent your family—that is, you and Dad and Granny—in your dealings with the authorities. To help sort things out with the police, the coroner’s office, all those sorts of people. Now, representing you and your family has a very particular meaning. It means that I’m completely on your side. In every situation. Whatever happens. It means that I’m here to protect your interests the whole time.’
He was utterly still apart from his eyes, which travelled from one unpromising side of the table to the other, in search of escape.
‘The thing is, I need your help, Charlie.’ I spoke diffidently, like an old friend asking an important favour. ‘You see, if I’m to look after you and Dad and Granny properly, to the very best of my ability, then I need to get a couple of things clear in my mind. About when things happened that night—the night the Gun flooded, I mean.’
Tension rose rapidly into his face, a tide of alarm. He tightened his arms.
I continued easily, ‘I just need to know whether certain things happened before other things or after. You see, Charlie, it’s important for me to get the time-scale right. Well, it’s important for Dad, actually.’ I hadn’t intended to say this, but now it was out I left it hanging in the air for a moment where it would do no harm to my cause. ‘It’s been explained to me—in fact, several times—but somehow I still haven’t got it straight in my mind. I was hoping you could put me right.’
The pale eyes flickered towards my face and darted rapidly away again.
‘For instance’—I made a show of searching my mind—‘when Mum heard about the flood and came rushing back here, was that before dark, or after dark?’ Wanting to give him plenty of time, I added in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I thought your memory might be better than Granny’s, you see. She was a bit hazy about all that, about whether it was before dark, or after dark.’ I affected the look of someone who needs to be helped out on a puzzling point. ‘It’s to help Dad,’ I explained again, to fill the silence.
When he finally spoke, his voice was so soft that I almost missed the word. ‘Before.’
‘Before dark? Well, you see I thought it must have been,’ I said companionably. ‘Yes, I thought so…’ I might have been shrugging it off, I took it so lightly. ‘And Dad—that’s the other thing I’m not clear about. When Dad arrived, when he went out to the sluice, that was…’ I was the dim-wit now, touching the side of my head as if to jog an inadequate brain. ‘That was…later, wasn’t it? When it was getting dark?’
He nodded rapidly, as if this might encourage me to cease the torture sooner.
‘In fact, nighty wasn’t it? I mean, pitch black?’
Tucking his chin down further, Charlie nodded again, a single tense jerk of the head.
Outside, the rain fell dully against the
sill and dripped heavily onto the ground below.
‘Well, that’s all!’ I said, wrapping things up. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just hadn’t got it quite straight in my mind.’
I watched some of the tension drop away from him.
‘Oh…’ I narrowed my eyes in concentration, I fluttered my fingers, as if a last niggling question were just coming back to me. ‘Yes…One other thing. Not important, just my curiosity, but…you must be very strong, to open the sluices on your own.’
His reaction caught me by surprise, it was so sudden and so intense. He shot me a brief horrified stare, then his face puckered into an expression of misery, and a tear appeared from nowhere, followed in quick succession by several more, spilling down his cheeks as if from a concealed tap. He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head to hide his face.
I leant forward, I reached a hand tentatively across the table, only to hold back. ‘Charlie, it’s all right,’ I said soothingly. ‘No one’s blaming you. No one at all. I promise you.’
I found a clean tissue in my pocket and handed it to him. Crushing it into a tight ball, he dragged it hard across his eyes, rubbing them mercilessly.
I echoed, ‘No one’s blaming you, Charlie.’
The worst of the storm passed almost as quickly as it had begun. His face emptied, his tears dried up, he seemed subdued by the strain of it all.
‘You thought you were doing the right thing, I can understand that.’
I sensed him closing himself off, dropping the shutters again. I added quietly, ‘I knew it had to be you, Charlie. But you see, I haven’t mentioned it to anyone till now, not a word, because I didn’t think we’d ever need to tell anyone. But now we have to tell them, Charlie. You know why? Because otherwise the police are going to get it all wrong.’
His expression was blank; I felt I was talking against glass.