The Death of Mrs. Westaway

Now—as they crowded around her, talking over each other in jangling voices, asking her about her upbringing, her schooling, her current situation—she found herself wondering how she could ever have envied the other children their uncles and aunts.

Harding was the most difficult—direct question after direct question, barked in that rather sergeant-major voice, like an interrogation. Abel’s style was very different, lighter, friendlier; time and again when Hal ran up against something she couldn’t answer, he broke in with a chuckle and an anecdote of his own. Ezra said nothing, but Hal felt his eyes upon her, watching.

It was Mitzi who interrupted at last with a laugh that Hal would have found grating under other circumstances.

“Good heavens, boys!” She pushed into the circle of dark suits, swatting Abel on the shoulder and taking Hal’s hand. “Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes! Look at her—she’s quite overwhelmed. Can I offer you some tea, Hal?”

“Y-yes,” Hal said. “Yes p-please.”

On the pier she tried to hide her occasional stammer, and she deliberately kept her voice low and slow, to seem older than her years and emphasize the fact that she was in control, and the querent was on her territory. Here, she realized, as Mitzi led her away from the group, her discomfort was her alibi, and she could use it to her own ends. She shouldn’t try to hide her confusion, or her youth—far from it. As she followed Mitzi across the drawing room, she hunched her shoulders to make her already slight frame seem even smaller, let her hair fall over her face like a shy teenager. People tended to underestimate Hal. Sometimes, that could be an advantage.

She let Mitzi usher her to a sofa by the fire, where one of the Westaway grandsons was sitting, jabbing at his phone in a way that made Hal think he must be playing some kind of game. It wasn’t Richard. Who was the other one . . . Freddie?

“There you go,” Mitzi said comfortingly, as Hal sat down. “Now, can I get you something? Are you old enough for a glass of wine?”

Yes, and have been for several years, Hal thought, but she didn’t say that. Drinking here would not be a good idea. Instead she gave a deliberately uncertain laugh.

“I’d prefer that tea you mentioned, thank you.”

“I’ll be right back,” Mitzi said, and tapped her son sharply on the head. “Freddie, turn that off.”

Freddie didn’t even pretend to put his phone down as his mother left, but he glanced sideways at Hal.

“Hi,” Hal said. “I’m Harriet.”

“Hi, Harriet. What’s your tattoo?”

“My tattoo?” Hal was momentarily surprised, and then realized that the cotton dress had slipped a little, showing one shoulder, and the tip of a wing. “Oh, this one?” She pointed to her back, and he nodded.

“Looks like a bird.”

“It’s a magpie.”

“Cool.” He spoke without looking up, apparently negotiating a tricky bit of the game. Then he added, “I want to get a tattoo, but Mum says over her dead body.”

“It’s illegal before you’re eighteen,” Hal said briefly. Here at least she was on safe ground. “No reputable tattooist would agree to it, and you don’t want to be going to the ones who would. How old are you?”

“Twelve,” he said sadly. He shut down his phone and looked up at her for the first time. “Can I see it?”

“Um . . .” She felt an instant sense of intrusion, but she didn’t know what else to say. “I—yes. I guess.”

She turned, and felt him pull down the cotton of the neckline, exposing the bird, its head cocked to one side. His fingers were cold against her skin, and she tried not to shiver.

“Cool,” he said again, enviously this time. “Did you pick it because of this place? You know—all of them.” He waved a hand at the trees outside the window, and Hal turned. It was too dark to make out much more than the light from the window glittering on wet boughs, but in her mind’s eye she saw again the line of magpies perched on the dripping branches of the yew. She shook her head, pulling the neckline of her dress back up to cover the bird.

“No. My—my mum’s n—”

Too late she realized she had let her guard down and had been on the verge of making a horrifying mistake. The truth was that she had got the tattoo in memory of her mother. Margarida. One for sorrow. It had seemed apt at the time. But cold horror washed over her at the realization that she had been about to admit her mother’s real name. Stupid, stupid.

“Her—her nickname for me was Magpie,” she said, after a pause long enough to feel like a chasm opening beneath her feet. As cover stories went, it was beyond lame, but it was the best she could manage on the hop. Regardless, the boy didn’t seem to have noticed the yawning pause.

“Is she Dad’s sister?” he asked.

Hal nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, I guess I should say was Dad’s sister. She’s dead, right?”

“Freddie!” Mitzi came up with a cup of tea, and when she set it down on the table she lightly slapped her son’s knee. “That is not—I’m so sorry, Harriet. He’s a teenage boy—what can I say.”

“It’s okay,” Hal said, truthfully. It wasn’t just the nugget of fact he had held out to her, confirming what she had already guessed. It was the fact that she was suddenly on safe ground here. There was no shock in hearing the words from other people—in fact, she preferred the boy’s bluntness, rather than the delicate passed away, or fell asleep that some people used. It wasn’t true. Her mother was not asleep, or in the next room. She was dead. No amount of euphemism would soften that fact. And this, at least, was true.

“Yes, she’s dead,” she said to Freddie. “I got this tattoo in her memory.”

“Cool,” the boy said again, semiautomatically. He looked awkward now, in the presence of his mother. “Do you have any others?”

“Yes,” Hal said, at the same time that Mitzi broke in.

“Freddie, for heaven’s sake, stop bothering poor Harriet with personal questions. This isn’t appropriate conversation for—”

She stopped, the words a funeral unspoken on her lips.

Hal smiled, or tried to, and picked up the tea.

“Really, it’s fine.” Questions about her tattoos were easier to answer than the ones Abel, Harding, and Ezra had been asking. She felt a shift in her stomach as she saw Harding pat one of his brothers on the shoulder and then follow his wife over to the fire.

“Warming up, Harriet?” he said as he came up to the little knot seated on the sofa. “Very wise. This place is nothing short of perishing, I’m afraid. Mother didn’t really believe in modern comforts like central heating.”

“Has it—has it been in the family long?” Hal asked. She remembered her mother’s advice about conducting readings: Don’t let them ask all the questions, ask some of your own. It’s easier to direct the conversation if you’re in the driving seat, and they’ll feel flattered if you show an interest. “My mother didn’t ever talk about this place,” she added honestly.

“Oh, donkey’s years, I believe,” Harding said carelessly. He settled himself with his back to the fire, fanning up the hem of his jacket to let the heat reach his back. “The oldest part of the building is this bit where we’re sitting now, which was built in the seventeen hundreds and was quite a modest farm for many years. Then your great-great-grandfather—my mother’s grandfather—made rather a lot of money in the late eighteen hundreds from china clay, up near St. Austell, and he used it to completely revamp the place in rather grand style. He kept the Georgian core of the old farmhouse as the reception rooms and main bedrooms, but built a sprawl of wings and servants’ quarters in the Arts and Crafts style, turning it into quite an imposing place. However, unfortunately his son wasn’t a very good businessman and he lost control of the mine to his business partner. Since then there’s been very little money for upkeep, so the house is somewhat frozen in the nineteen twenties. It needs a good million-pound investment to bring it up to spec, certainly not money your average buyer has hanging around, though it’s the sort of thing one of the big hotel chains might accomplish. Of course, the land is what’s really worth the money now.” He looked out of the window, across the rain-swept expanse of grass, and Hal could almost see him calculating—imagining identical new homes sprouting up like mushrooms, hearing the ker-ching of cash registers as each new seed germinated into a sale.