The Death of Mrs. Westaway

He sank to the bed, his head in his hands.

“Oh God.” The words were out before she could stop herself, and as soon as they were spoken she heard her mother’s voice in her head: Never show them you’re shocked, nothing makes people more defensive than censure. You’re their priest, Hal. This is a confessional, of a sort. Be open—and they will give you the truth.

She put her hands to her mouth, as if preventing herself from saying any more, and then simply stood there, looking down at the top of his head, cold with shock. A small, far-off, practical part of her mind was whispering: If only you had your phone, you could have recorded this. But it was too late. Her phone was far away, up in the attic, with no hope of her reaching it without alarming him. And besides, the truth was more important now. She had to know.

He spoke again, his voice harsh and cracked, his head still bowed as if with the weight of his confession.

“I asked her to go for a walk, I thought if we went out of the house, to somewhere with happy memories . . .” He trailed off, and then shook his head. “We went down to the lake. She always loved the boathouse, but when we got there it was so cold, there was ice on the water, and it was like everything had changed. When I tried to kiss her, she slapped me. She slapped me.” He sounded incredulous. “And I was angry, Hal. I was so angry. I put my hands around her neck, and I kissed her—I kissed her, and when I let go . . .”

He stopped. Hal was cold with the horror of it.

She could imagine it so well, the icy slap, slap of the water against the jetty, and poor Maggie’s desperate struggles, her feet kicking against the slippery planks. . . .

And then what? A body . . . slipped through the thin shards of ice into the cold black waters . . . a boat, deliberately holed, to pin it down and cover the bones.

And silence. Silence for more than twenty years.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her hands to her face. “Oh my God.”

He looked up at her, and there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said.

And then he stood, and he reached out, and for a moment, a terrible moment, Hal thought that he was going to kiss her too.

But he did not. And then she realized what he was about to do.

CHAPTER 49

* * *

“Ezra, don’t.” Hal began to back away, but he was between her and the door, and the only place she could go was backwards, back towards the other door, the chink of darkness at the far side of the room. Was it an exit? Or a dead end? She had no way of knowing. “Please. You don’t need to do this. You’re my father, I won’t tell anyone. . . .”

But he was coming closer, and closer.

“The others will realize—they’ll know you came back—they’ll see the tracks of the car. Mrs. Warren, she’ll hear you—”

But even as she said the words, she knew they were futile. Even if Mrs. Warren was here somewhere, she had covered up one murder by her darling boy.

There was no point in screaming. No one would hear her. But while her brain told her that, her muscles knew that it was the only thing they could do, and she took a huge breath, filling her lungs, and screamed.

“Help me! Someone help me, I’m in ro—”

And then he was on her, like a cat on a mouse, his hand over her mouth, stifling the sounds.

Hal bit down, hard, tasting blood, and with one hand she scrabbled at the bedside table for something, anything to use as a weapon. A lamp. A cup. A photograph frame, even.

Her fingers were clutching, and she heard the crack of breaking glass, and then she had something in her grip, a lamp she thought, and she hit him over the back of the head with it as hard as she could, hearing the smash of the bulb and the crunch of the metal shade.

Ezra let go of her mouth to roar with pain and clutch at her hand, forcing her to drop the lamp, and she filled her lungs again—but this time, before she could scream, his hands were around her throat, crushing it.

She made one last reach for the bedside table—and then she gave up. She couldn’t not. The pain in her throat was huge, a crushing pressure, and every instinct was forcing her to get her hands up, try to prize off his grip.

Fighting was no longer the most important thing. Breathing was.

Hal brought her hands up, digging her nails into his knuckles, trying to loosen his fingers enough to draw a single ragged breath, but his grip was immensely strong, and she could feel herself giving way, giving up, her vision disintegrating into fragments of black and red, and the roaring in her ears was like waves of darkness, and the pain in her throat was like a knife, and she had a brief flashing image of the blindfolded woman on the eight of swords, hemmed into her prison of blades, blind, bleeding, trapped, and as the room fractured into blackness she had time to think, I am not that woman. She is not my fate.

She thought of her mother, of how fast this had been. Seconds only, how strange that life could be extinguished so fast. . . .

Her legs were still kicking, more in instinct than by design, and through her fragmenting vision she could see Ezra’s face, his mouth ugly and square with grief, tears running down his nose.

“I’m sorry,” she heard through the roar in her ears. “I’m so sorry, I never wanted to do this—”

Her legs were barely moving now. She wanted to cry out, beg him, but she could not whisper, let alone speak. The pressure on her windpipe was too great, and she had no breath left in her.

Hold on.

She was not sure whose voice it was. Maggie’s. Maud’s. Or maybe it had always been her own—only her own.

Hold on.

But she could not. His fingers were crushing her, and everything was slipping further and further away.

There was no point fighting. He was too strong.

She let her fingers fall from his, stopped trying to pry his grip from her throat.

And as she did, her knuckles brushed something on the bed, something that had fallen from the nightstand in the struggle.

She closed her hand around it, and with almost the last of her strength, she picked it up, and smashed it into his face.

Hal heard the crack of the glass before she realized what it was—the broken photograph frame—and then she saw the spray of blood as a shard of glass dug deep into the bony ridge above his eye socket. He gave a scream of pain and took one hand away from her throat, feeling for the piece of glass sticking out of his brow, the pouring blood blinding him. For a moment Hal stared in horror. She had no idea what she had done—whether the glass had gone deep enough to penetrate something vital. But she could not stop to find out.

She let the picture frame drop, dug her fingers beneath his remaining hand, and then she swung her knee up and into his crotch with all the force she could muster.

And he let go.

Stumbling, gasping, her breath tearing in her raw throat, Hal made for the door at the far side of the room.

“Oh no you don’t!” She heard his voice like a hoarse roar of pure fury, but it was too late to turn back even if she had wanted to.

As she flung herself against the door it gave way beneath her weight and she found herself falling, tumbling, down cold steps, until she stopped with a crunch at the bottom.

• • •

IT WAS EXTREMELY DARK. HAL’S head throbbed with the old bruise, where she had hit it before, and her throat screamed with pain from Ezra’s near throttling.

The fall might have killed her, she thought, were it not for the fact that she had fallen against something soft and yielding.

It was only when she put her hand down to try to stand, and felt soft hair beneath her palm, that she realized what it was, and when she did she had to stifle the whimper that tried to escape her bruised throat.

It was Mrs. Warren. And, as Hal’s fingers traced across her face, her glasses, her open mouth, Hal could tell—she was dead and completely cold.

But she had no time to find out more. Above her, she could hear Ezra moving with lumbering ferocity like a wounded animal, crashing into furniture as he staggered towards the open door. He would be down here in a moment, and then she would be dead—wounded or not, he was far, far stronger than her, and his blinded eye was not much disadvantage in this inky black.

She must be in some kind of cellar beneath the house. The only question was, was there another exit?