The Drowning Ground (27 page)

Hurst raised his eyes. ‘I knocked on the car window, because the silly sod was fast asleep, and then I went straight round the side of the house. And it was on fire.' Hurst paused, stunned, as if reliving the shock. ‘I thought I could somehow put it out – I ran in there without thinking – and got as far as that stairway. That's when the whole thing just seemed to come apart and fall on top of me. Your man had to pull me out.'

‘And Frank inherited the house because he was the elder son?'

Hurst nodded slowly. ‘The house has been in our family for generations. Nothing left of it now, so they tell me. I haven't been able to bring myself to go out there again.'

‘And there was no other car? It was just the police car when you arrived?'

‘Just me and sleeping beauty,' Hurst said bitterly.

‘But what about his daughter?' I said. ‘Rebecca. She still hasn't come forward, Mr Hurst, and we know Frank was looking for her. You said that she would write to him from time to time when we talked before, but where is she? Have you seen her?'

Suddenly the door swung open and Mrs Hurst came in with some tea things.

She put down the tray and sat down on the edge of a sofa. She was trim and neat-looking and far more elegant than her husband. She had very blue eyes and she gave her husband a look of ill-concealed annoyance that bordered on contempt. Hurst seemed not to notice it, or if he did he didn't care.

‘They need to talk to Rebecca,' Hurst said.

‘She's in London,' Mrs Hurst said. ‘We already told you that. She'd be about twenty or twenty-one by now.'

Hurst sat back in his seat. Outside, their granddaughter was playing some game of her own invention and was running fitfully from place to place in the snow.

‘He began to give up hope after she left him,' Mrs Hurst said. ‘Got very absent-minded. Became fussy about certain things. Got rid of Nancy.'

‘His housekeeper.'

‘Yes, which I can tell you was not a good thing to do. She was very efficient. He let the whole house go, and when you asked him about it he shrugged you off. Actually, he became a bit of a bore.'

‘He stopped talking about Rebecca altogether,' Hurst said. ‘And we rarely saw him.'

‘The house became a disaster. He went and bought that beastly dog of his. And he put those bars on the windows.'

‘I couldn't believe it when I saw it,' Hurst said.

‘I was furious,' Mrs Hurst said. ‘He had absolutely no right.'

‘But why did he do it?' I asked.

‘He wouldn't tell me,' Hurst said. ‘All he offered was a lot of bloody stupid nonsense.'

Hurst looked as if he had a mind to leave it there, but, seeing my expression of polite inquiry, he continued reluctantly. ‘Well, he told me … he said he was sorry about what he had done to the house.'

Mrs Hurst looked surprised.

‘He was sorry,' Hurst said. ‘But it was a feeling he couldn't really explain. Of course, he knew the whole village hated him because of what had happened to Sarah. But he couldn't leave in case Rebecca came back. But he said that sometimes he'd be lying there, fast asleep in his bed, and he would wake up and be sure that someone was in the house with him. And he thought it might have been Rebecca. He thought she might have come back. But when he went downstairs there was never anything missing, although some things had been moved around.' Hurst looked up. ‘He was losing his grip. I told him so as well. He didn't much like hearing it of course.'

‘But how many times did this happen?' I asked. ‘How many times did he wake up like that and go downstairs?'

‘Oh, I don't know – a few times, I suppose.'

‘So he thought someone was trying to break in to the house. Even before that time he went to see her in London and she didn't show up?'

‘That's right.'

‘And when was that?'

‘Oh, I don't know,' Hurst said. ‘Around a year after she left maybe.'

‘But what could they have been looking for? Did he have any kind of idea?'

Hurst placed his cup back on the table. ‘I don't know. I tried to get him to move out of there and start anew. Told him he could move in with us for a while … while he looked for somewhere else. Somewhere a bit smaller if he liked. But of course it was no use.'

‘But did you ever press him?' I said. ‘Did you ever ask him what was really wrong?'

‘Well, he started talking about Rebecca. None of it made much sense. He hadn't mentioned her in ages. But he said it didn't matter any more. None of it mattered any more. Because he knew for sure that she would never be coming back.'

‘And did he say why? Did he say how he knew this?'

‘No. That's all he would say.'

I asked them for a photo of Rebecca. Mrs Hurst went upstairs and came back a few minutes later with a snapshot that I put in my pocket. Then I drove back to Dashwood Manor.

37

As Graves waited for Downes in front of the ruins of the house, he remembered the fire leaping up from the wreckage and exploding into the air. It had been utter pandemonium, and they had been sure that the fire was going to spread into the forest. And maybe into the village too. And then, in the midst of all that chaos, he had discovered that Downes had plunged himself into its raging centre. He'd been there and then he wasn't. Like the house had eaten him alive.

Downes arrived a few minutes later. He got out of the car and, without a word, beckoned towards what was left of the house. Graves followed him down the path to the garden and through the gate in the black fence surrounding the swimming pool.

A plastic deckchair lay on its side amongst a large pile of dried brown leaves. A plastic pot had blown across the patio and now lay wedged against the fence. There was a large umbrella, which was faded and folded shut. The water in the pool was dark, and there was a smell of rotting leaves.

‘So Brad Hooper went to see Sarah,' Downes said, still hardly able to believe it. ‘He went to see her on the day she died and he never said a bloody word about it.'

‘Yes,' Graves said. ‘He panicked. He thought she had told Frank about their affair and he wanted to know why. So he came round here to have it out with her. Then he saw Rebecca and was afraid she'd tell Hurst that he'd been snooping around, so he legged it.'

‘And he was sure he saw Rebecca?'

‘That's what he says. And so this is where it happened,' Graves said. ‘This is where Mrs Hurst drowned.'

Downes nodded. ‘It was Nancy's afternoon off, but she came back early. She spotted Sarah from the house. Ran down here and jumped in. Then she called an ambulance. It took them a while to get here – it was too late anyway. According to Nancy and to Frank Hurst, Sarah Hurst went swimming most days in the summer. The pool hadn't been used for years, but it was one of the first things she had repaired when she married him and moved in. She used to spend hours and hours sitting out here in the sun. And most days after her swim, she'd lie on one of those deckchairs over there, or on a towel by the side of the pool. And that's exactly what she was doing the day she died.'

Graves watched as Downes took a few steps away from the pool, while the wind picked up, swirling and rustling the leaves. The snow came in a sudden flurry, hard and sharp in their faces.

‘An intruder could have done it,' Downes said. ‘I wondered about that for a while – thought someone could have come round the back and tried to get into the house.' He turned and looked towards the ruins. ‘You can just see the steps from here. She shouts out. Whoever it is comes through the gate and on to the patio. There's a struggle. She falls, hits her head and ends up in the water somehow.'

Downes ran his hand along his face. ‘But what if I know all about Mrs Hurst's summer-time routine, how she likes to be out here all alone when it's hot? Hooper knew. She used to lie right here,' he said, drawing the tip of his shoe along the edge of the pool. ‘That's where most of the blood was.'

Downes got down on his haunches and looked, almost as if he half expected traces of the blood to still be there.

‘Hurst?'

‘Hurst knew that she'd been having an affair, but his alibi was unshakable.' Downes held his right hand wide open, as if he were holding something large and heavy inside it. Swiftly, he brought his hand down towards the tiles. Then he stopped abruptly, as if he were looking at Sarah Hurst's limp body lying by the side of the pool. ‘All you'd have to do is roll her into the water and watch her drown.'

Graves looked out at the water, while Downes pressed his palms against his knees, thinking.

‘Death by drowning,' Downes said. ‘Because that's what killed her. It was the water that killed her, not the blow to the head.'

‘That's what the autopsy said, is it?' Graves asked innocently.

Downes straightened up. ‘According to Brewin, there was a single large contusion at the base of the skull,' he said, tapping hard at the side of the swimming pool with his knuckles, ‘and there were several traces of stone embedded in her skull that matched the coping stones here.'

‘So she fell,' Graves said simply. ‘Sorry, sir, but it sounds pretty straightforward and you did say this kind of thing happens a lot.'

But Downes looked reluctant to let it go. ‘I don't know,' he said a little weakly. ‘It was just a feeling I had at the time, I suppose.'

‘Maybe you're right, sir,' Graves said, giving in a little. ‘Maybe Rebecca did see someone when she was up in her room. If Sarah Hurst's death wasn't an accident, I mean. And maybe that person found out later. Maybe Rebecca said something. Or hinted at something.'

‘About Sarah Hurst, you mean?' Downes said.

‘Yes.'

‘All right, but why wait that long? Rebecca didn't go missing until she was older. It was two years at least after Sarah Hurst's accident.'

‘Maybe she didn't really know what she had seen. She was too young. Couldn't piece it together until she was older, like Collinson said. Or maybe Hooper's lying through his teeth. Maybe he didn't run away when he saw Sarah lying there fast asleep. He could just as easily have picked up a rock, hit her with it and pushed her in. He admitted to me that he was furious with her.'

Downes fell silent for a while and then sighed loudly. ‘You could be right,' he said. ‘Could be that Rebecca's death is completely unrelated to that of the other two girls. Maybe it was an accident. Or maybe Hooper killed Sarah Hurst and then killed Rebecca later. But if that's the case, why did he admit that he came back here that afternoon when you talked to him? We could be chasing our tails in circles, you know.'

Downes caught his own dissatisfied and annoyed reflection in the surface of the water. He kicked a small stone and it skidded along the ground before making a mournful half-hearted splash. The stone became a pale white shadow in the darkness and then was gone.

‘Come on. Let's get out of here,' he said.

38

‘Doesn't really help us all that much, though,' Graves said, taking a gulp from his pint. ‘Sounds like that housemistress sent you off on a wild goose chase, if you ask me.'

I lifted up my own pint glass, admired it for a while and then took a long swig. Well, one thing you could say about Graves was that he was direct. ‘Unless Lang was wrong and the nightmares were about something else,' I ventured without much enthusiasm. ‘Something that had nothing to do with the accident at all and he missed it. But you're probably right, Graves. It doesn't add to what we already know about her.'

‘A quiet girl who preferred her own company,' Graves said.

I had chosen a bar in the upstairs rooms of the Royal British Legion near the train station in Moreton-in-Marsh. Or ‘The Warmongers', as Powell had only half jokingly referred to it. ‘And how about the village?' I said.

‘There's hardly any talk about her and nothing concrete. A few people mentioned the accident on the pond. That's all they remember, or it's the thing they remember first anyway. You know about that, though.'

I nodded.

‘We had a little more luck at her old school. But no boyfriends as far as we can tell and no close friends. She seems to have been a pretty, quiet girl right from the start or at least that's the feeling I got this afternoon,' Graves said. ‘And she seems to have spent a lot of time at home. They seemed close. But when her stepmother died, he packed her off to that boarding school.'

‘She didn't last long there,' I said. ‘Apparently she stole some money from the bursar's office. She'd been seen but she refused to hand over the money.'

‘How much?'

‘Eight hundred pounds almost. It wasn't all that much money. Not for them of course. Just petty cash. They didn't want a scandal, so they kept the police out of it.'

Graves rubbed the side of his nose and sniffed and took another drink. ‘Eight hundred pounds. You reckon she might have done it on purpose?'

‘Got caught, you mean? Maybe. We know she wanted out of the school. Didn't seem to be very happy there. Maybe she didn't really care one way or the other if they caught her.'

Graves was not, I had been relieved to see, a teetotaller. In fact he was almost halfway through his first pint already. His hands, I noticed, had become rough from hauling all that rubble away from the house.

‘So she stole the money, because she needed it to run away. But do you think she was running away on her own or was someone helping her? Someone who knew that she had stolen the money, been expelled for it, and was using it as a way of getting her on her own. Maybe it was just a trick all along,' Graves said. ‘A trick to get her on her own.'

I put down my glass and turned it clockwise. ‘Could be. Let's say for now that the person who killed Rebecca was the same person who made those two girls disappear. And let's assume that Sarah Hurst's death was simply an accident. We know Rebecca wanted to leave home anyway, so I'm not really sure that she would have needed all that much encouragement. She'd talked about it openly. Word gets round fast out there, so we can assume that it was common knowledge in the village.'