His eyelids fluttered open briefly. In a voice dredged from the bottom of the sea, he mumbled, ‘It’s all too late. It’s too late for me.’
‘Exactly. You probably ought to be in bed. Don’t forget, I know what pneumonia’s like.’
His hand groped for me, and like a baby he clutched his fingers around mine. ‘Never meant it …’ he said. ‘Think the world of you, Robert.’
For the first time since that night with Clara in the beach hut, guilt caught in my throat over the many nails I had struck into the coffin of my cousin’s marriage. ‘And I do of you,’ I said softly because, at that moment, it was true.
‘Tell Sally …’ he murmured, and gave a little snore and drifted back into sleep. I tried to pull him upright, but he
was a dead weight, and I thought that at least out here he was causing no trouble. On an impulse, I reached into the jacket pocket beside his breast and removed his wallet.
The photograph of the baby was still in mine; I took it out and placed it inside Alec’s. As I did so, my fingers brushed on a rounded, brittle item pushed deep into one of the wallet’s folds and, piqued by curiosity, I drew it out.
It was a small seashell, its innards worn into an iridescent mother-of-pearl by the tides, and, just visible in the dim light filtering through from the house’s blaring windows, were two tiny etched letters:
C. A
.
I held it in my hand for a second or two and then, deciding not to think about it any longer, I dug it back inside the fold and slid the wallet into the pocket of his jacket, which I arranged over his chest like a very inadequate blanket. I wondered what it was he had wanted to tell Sally, and if it had been an instruction for me or a decision for himself. Perhaps not tomorrow, because he would have the hangover from hell and be in a consequent foul mood, but the day after, I would try to talk to him again.
The crowd that remained was being herded into the dining room, with Clara at its head, waving a sparkling umbrella like a tour guide. I followed the partygoers but felt out of step with their antics now, and Clara roundly ignored me, handing out drinks to all, her coarse laugh pealing out like a worker’s bell. I remained on a window seat, watching the rain pelt against the area steps below, until there was a call to repair to the drawing room and utilize the gramophone. I, not wanting to share Clara any more, bade goodnight to all and wound my way upstairs.
I listened to them from my room, the women’s darting shrieks and the men’s rumbling laughter. As time crept on, I heard effusive farewells, and Clara’s tinkling laugh, and the stairs creaking, and the front door opening and closing. I put out my lamp and tried to sleep, but when the thunderstorm started I found it impossible to concentrate. Instead, I pulled back the curtains and watched lightning lash the sky, counting the seconds until the boom shook the panes. Twenty seconds first, then ten. It was coming closer. I remembered Alec out in the garden, but surely he would have woken by now – perhaps he had even joined the party.
I realized that there was no more noise from downstairs, but I thought that maybe a few old friends remained, smoking and drinking and chatting. I imagined them lounging on the sofa, occasionally rising to change a record, and Clara on the floor perhaps, her back to a chair, her legs folded under her, discoursing and arguing and snapping out any opposition.
My image of her there was so intent that when a small body curled beside mine in the bed I jumped out of my skin. She put her arms round my waist, and they were so cold I drew her to me and folded her into the warm bedclothes. Her hair had escaped its set; it tumbled about her face. I lifted her chin and made out her features in the dark. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded once. ‘Hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I just want you to hold me.’
‘Of course.’ Together, we lay propped up on the pillows and watched the storm rage outside. I thought of her lanterns, tossed to the elements, ruined in puddles
of rainwater, and it occurred to me that we were the same, Clara and Alec and I: flakes of paper blowing in the wind.
I imagined I would stay awake until the dawn, holding Clara and watching the storm, but I must have fallen asleep, because I was woken by Scone bringing in tea and toast. Clara was gone.
I looked at the fresh rounds of crunchy toast and my stomach vaulted, remembering all the cocktails of the night before. ‘I won’t be down for breakfast,’ I mumbled, pulling the covers up over my head and not even hearing Scone’s reply, so quickly did I fall back asleep.
I woke, much later, to a vague commotion in the house. People were running up and down stairs; from the study I heard the telephone peal, not just once, but several times. There was excited chatter; I heard Scone’s low voice, questioning, and one of the maids answering squeakily. I was struggling to a sitting position when there was a knock on the door and Agnes came in, her cap in disarray, her face flushed and anxious.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she said breathily. ‘Didn’t mean to disturb you, sir, but Mr Scone wants to know if you’ve seen the master at all. ’Cause he didn’t come back last night, see, nor this morning, and now it’s midday.’
‘Is it?’ I rubbed my eyes and saw the clock. ‘Good Lord. Don’t tell me he’s still out in the garden.’ I laughed.
‘Garden?’ She looked at me as if I were mad. ‘No, sir, he ain’t in the garden.’
‘I didn’t think so.’ I yawned and stretched. ‘I found him there last night, sound asleep in the arbour. Looked so peaceful I thought I’d leave him.’
‘All right.’ She looked about, as if unsure what to do now. ‘I’ll – um – go and tell Mr Scone.’
‘He’ll be back in a moment, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘You know what he’s like.’
She fiddled with a hem on her apron. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sure you’re right, sir. It’s only Mr Scone don’t usually worry so.’
‘I’m sure everything’s fine,’ I said, although after Agnes had gone a sense of unease asserted itself. I imagined Alec stumbling out of the house, perhaps going towards the town, and then … maybe he had just fallen asleep somewhere and, for whatever reason, had been unable to make his way back home. I thought of Bump, and his suite at the Majestic. It was quite within the realms of possibility that Alec had gone there, and was continuing the party right now, with no thought of the rest of the household.
I dressed and went downstairs. The dining room was empty, but I found a maid and asked for Mrs Pennyworth to make me up some sandwiches. When Scone arrived with them I said, ‘Any word from Mr Bray?’
‘No, sir.’ He paused. ‘We are getting rather concerned.’
I put an entire egg-and-cress sandwich in my mouth. ‘Why?’
‘I saw Mr Bray last night in the hall.’
I looked up. Scone never usually volunteered any unnecessary speech.
‘After everybody else had gone home,’ he continued. ‘Before the thunderstorm broke. He was holding the large red umbrella from the stand and said he was going to look at the sea.’
‘Then there’s your answer. Went out to look at the rain
and then decided to go on for a drink somewhere. A few of those places will open if you know the correct knock, I believe.’ I grinned. ‘I’m sure my cousin knows them all.’
‘Undoubtedly.’ Scone brushed invisible crumbs off the table into his gloved hand. ‘However, he certainly has not been home yet. The door was still unbolted when I came down this morning.’
‘Come on, Scone, you know Alec as well as I do. He’s probably still asleep somewhere, dead drunk.’ I took a huge draught of lemonade to ease my parched throat. ‘Where’s Mrs Bray?’
‘Mrs Bray is at the police station.’
‘What? She’s that worried?’
Scone did not look at me. ‘She is convinced he met with some sort of accident in the storm.’
I knew the cause of her anxiety: guilt over her place in my bed last night had sped her on to the police station, exaggerating her wifely concern. ‘She’s mistaken. In fact, I shall go out now and endeavour to bring him home.’
Scone paused. ‘Please do,’ he said. ‘Sir.’
The storm had abated, but a fierce wind whipped along the cliff, nearly taking my hat with it. The sky was iron-clad and menacing, and I bent my face to the ground and marched onwards. The beach was empty bar a few brave souls; I saw a man swimming in the sea, and stopped to squint in case it was Alec on some mad adventure, but as soon as he emerged I saw this was an elderly man, with tough, leathery skin, built like a bird of prey.
The receptionist at the Majestic gave no sign of recognizing me, but said he would call up his lordship immediately. I hovered in the lobby under the giant chan
delier, remembering the last time, and my shame as I had run out, and how none of that seemed important any more.
‘Carver!’ Bump emerged from the wheezing lift doors and came towards me. ‘I’ve a head like a pumpkin on me today. Still, I expect you’re bright as a farthing. Bet you hardly touched a drop, you weasel.’ He clapped me on the back, sending me stumbling forwards a few paces.
‘Actually, I did,’ I said, but he was not listening. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if I could pick my cousin up. I know it’s a bore, but the house is in panic and Clara’s gone to the police station.’
‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Do you want a drink? Or tea? Coffee?’
‘No, no drink. I’d just like to take Alec home, to be honest.’
He frowned. ‘Why would Bray be here? Heard he’s got a perfectly good bed at home, what.’
My stomach dipped. ‘You mean, he didn’t come to you last night?’
‘I bloody hope not,’ he said. ‘I was out for the count. God, you didn’t think it was the same set-up as last time, did you? When one’s fiancée is staying on the floor below, it rather hampers one’s movements somewhat.’
I had forgotten his fiancée. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘where is he?’
He scratched his head. ‘You said Clara’s at the police station?’
I nodded. ‘She’s worried he may have been caught up in the storm last night.’
‘I’ll ring the station now,’ he said. ‘See what news they can give me. Come upstairs.’
I travelled with him in the lift, my unease mounting.
The suite was transformed from before; now all was neat and orderly. Bump placed me on the sofa, facing the armchair where I had been humiliated, while he sat at the desk and placed a call to Helmstone police station.
‘Hello,’ he drawled. ‘Lord Hugh Mason-Chambers here. Listen, I’m calling about a friend of mine, Mr Alexander Bray. Apparently he went missing last night. Just wondering if you had any news.’
There was a pause, and then, ‘Hello. Morgan, isn’t it? Yes, I’m fine, just down for the weekend with my fiancée. Oh, thank you. Now, I’m calling about Mr Bray … Yes, that’s right … I see …’
He scratched notes on the pad in front of him. Despite my hatred of him, I was impressed by his urbanity, his languid ‘Lord Hugh Mason-Chambers here’, and the way his courtesy title unlocked doors.
He replaced the receiver in its cradle and turned to me. ‘It’s not good news,’ he said, and my stomach dropped further. ‘A dog walker this morning found a discarded shoe on a ledge of the cliff. And on the rocks by the water, what appeared to be the shreds of a red umbrella.’
I found my hands were shaking. I pushed them into the sofa. ‘Perhaps it’s not his.’
‘Perhaps.’ Bump sighed. ‘Although it seems as if the shoe is. I suppose Clara’s identified it.’
‘He may have stumbled.’ I clutched at straws. ‘He could be unconscious a few yards further along.’
‘They’re doing a search of the area now. Lifeboat’s already gone out, apparently. Although the Inspector says if the accident happened last night it … well, it may be too late.’
‘Oh, Lord.’ And then I thought of Alec’s misery yesterday, his talk of losing Castaway, his complaint of a worthless life. ‘I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid.’
‘What are you saying?’ snapped Bump. ‘Because that’s rather a strong implication, and I’m not sure I like it.’
‘I don’t like it either,’ I snapped back. ‘But we may have to face facts.’
Bump got to his feet and walked to the window. ‘Bray wouldn’t kill himself,’ he said. ‘And if you knew him at all you’d understand that.’
‘I didn’t say he had.’ The word
kill
buzzed about my brain like an angry wasp.
‘Then what are you saying?’ He turned towards me.
‘I’m just trying to understand what happened.’ I stood too. ‘I should go back to the house. See if I’m needed.’
‘Yes,’ he said dismissively. ‘Go.’
I took the lift down to the ground floor. As I walked back to Castaway, the wind battering my senses from my body, a great dread bubbled within me. I knew Alec was not a depressive sort, and yet I could not deny that he had been in the blackest of moods yesterday, the sort of mood when an impulse could strike him and he might act on it. I thought of our argument, and I prayed that nothing had happened to him bar a minor accident. I trudged up the cliff as if walking towards my doom.
Scone met me in the hallway.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was convinced I knew where he would be. I was wrong.’
‘That’s quite all right, sir,’ he said. His tone was almost kind. ‘There’s a policeman in the dining room interviewing everybody. I said you would be back shortly.’
I looked at the dining-room door, which now, unlike every other occasion, was firmly closed. ‘Do you really think …?’ I began, looking about, expecting Alec to walk into the hall with tales of another mad escapade ringing from his lips. ‘It seems like a joke.’
‘I can assure you, sir, it is not a joke.’ Scone turned away. ‘If you wait in the library, I shall call you when you are needed.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ I curled a hand over the snail end of the banister. It was beautiful, I thought. It had never occurred to me before just how beautiful it was. ‘Is Mrs Bray here?’
‘She arrived back about half an hour ago.’
I looked up the stairs and he added, ‘She has given instructions not to be disturbed. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course,’ I said automatically, knowing that she had not meant to include me in that instruction but unwilling to test the theory just yet. I sat in the library with a dry mouth and listless hands. I held a book on my lap but was unable to concentrate on more than a line. I waited anxiously for my interview with the policeman, wanting it over with and wishing it would not come at all.