The Secret by the Lake (30 page)

I cleared my throat. ‘I need to know about something that happened thirty years ago. I daresay it’s not something you’ll want to talk about, but I would so appreciate your help.’

‘When you say “something that happened …”?’

‘I mean a drowning.’

‘You mean Jean Aldridge’s death?’

I nodded apologetically. ‘Susan told me to ask you.’

‘Ahh.’

‘She knows something, I know she does, but she’s too afraid to talk to me. So she nominated you.’ I smiled with as much charm as I could muster.

Mr Shrubsole rubbed his chin. ‘I made a promise that I would never speak about that day.’

‘I’m not here to cause trouble, Mr Shrubsole, really I’m not. I only want to know the truth.’

Still the man hesitated.

‘Please,’ I asked.

He held open the door for me. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said.

I followed him into the living room. There was a television set in one corner with a blown-glass fish arched on a crocheted doily on top of it, two easy chairs, two live goldfish swimming peaceably around a large bowl. We sat in the chairs. Dance music was playing from a transistor radio on the sideboard.

Mr Shrubsole sat back in his chair and considered his thoughts for a moment. When he spoke again, he spoke softly. He said: ‘Secrets make you lonely, did you know that?’

‘I never thought about it.’

‘Oh, they do. It’s their nature to isolate a person. Making someone keep a secret is the same as building a wall around them. Sooner or later the person behind that wall wants to set themselves free. Susan Pettigrew is trapped behind a wall of fear.’

‘Yes.’

‘And me, I’m trapped behind a wall of guilt.’

He stood up. He wandered over to the window and looked out. He patted his pocket, found a packet of cigarettes. He tipped the packet upside down, took out a Woodbine and put it between his lips. He offered the box to me and I shook my head.

‘I was at school with Caroline,’ he said. ‘I liked the girl.’

He shook a match from a metal box on the sideboard, struck it on the serrated edge of the box, lit the cigarette and then blew out the flame.

‘She knew about the reservoir,’ he said, ‘same as all the Blackwater children know, then and now. They know how dangerous it is below the dam. It’s the deepest part of the lake and impossible to climb out – there’s nothing to hold on to. And of course there’s the pumps to contend with, the pressure of the water draining through the sluice-gates creating a downward current. You fall in there, and unless someone drags you out pronto, you’re a goner. Caroline knew all that and everyone knew that she knew. If she
was
going to push Jean Aldridge in the reservoir, that was the place to do it.’

I said nothing. Mr Shrubsole’s face was in shadow. Dust-motes danced in the light from the window behind him and in the cigarette smoke rising blue-grey towards the ceiling.

‘I was fishing,’ he said. ‘I’d taken a rowing boat out on to the lake. I was supposed to be catching trout that my father could sell in the village but the fish weren’t biting. It was hot and I was sleepy. The boat was hardly moving, the sun was beating down. I was lying across the seat with my hat pulled down over my eyes, half-dozing. I wasn’t far from the dam, fifty yards or so, and it was a clear day. I didn’t see Jean Aldridge arrive, but I saw her on the slope, with her binoculars, and the pram was up on the dam behind her. The hood was up on the pram, to keep the sun off the baby. It was a big pram, the kind they used to call a baby carriage, you know? Wheels the size of bicycle wheels and the frame like the hull of a boat. I wasn’t much interested in Jean, to be honest. Didn’t like the woman, she’d upset my mother once or twice. Mother was a seamstress. Nothing she ever did for Jean Aldridge was good enough and Jean could be funny about paying. But then I saw Caroline walking along the dam. Susan was with her, but a long way away, hanging back. I knew Caroline. I sat up when I saw her, called out to her and waved but she didn’t see me and just at that moment, I got a bite on the line. So I was only half-watching Caroline because the other half of my mind was on the fish.’

‘But you saw what happened?’

‘Oh, I saw all right. She went over to the pram and looked down into it. Then she peered over the dam and saw Jean sitting on the slope below her. Everything Caroline did was very slow. It was like watching someone on the screen at the cinema. Slow. Not real. She picked the baby out of the pram and she held it up to her cheek, cuddled it. I was reeling in the fish. I thought she was just going to put the baby back. But then the pram started moving.’

‘Caroline pushed it?’

‘No, no. Maybe Jean hadn’t put the brake on, or maybe the brake was faulty, I don’t know. Caroline never touched it. The pram started to roll down the grassy slope. It soon picked up speed, bumping down the hill.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘It reached the rim of the reservoir and it bounced right off the edge, into the water. There wasn’t much of a splash, no noise or anything; the pram bounced into the water and it floated. It was all quite slow and dreamlike. That’s what it was like.’ A second pause while he took another drag of his cigarette. ‘Caroline was standing on the dam with the baby in her arms but Jean, down below, didn’t know she was there. She thought the baby was still in the pram. She was on her feet in an instant, took off her glasses, jumped straight into the water – plop – like that. Then she disappeared … and never came back up. She was gone and the pram was still floating. The whole thing was over in the blink of an eye. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone.’

He tapped the end of his cigarette and ash fell into the ashtray. ‘I dropped the fishing line, lost it overboard because I was in such a hurry to get back to the shore. I rowed as fast as I could. When I got to the dam, Susan was with Caroline and Caroline was just standing there, holding the baby. She had a kind of faraway look in her eyes, and tears were running down her face. She said: “It wasn’t meant to be like this.” That was all she said: “It wasn’t meant to be like this.” Those words haunted me. They’ve haunted me ever since.’

I looked beyond the man, past the room, back down the valley … and I was there, on the dam, thirty years earlier. I was looking down into the water and the sun was hot on my skin and the surface of the lake was flat calm and the fish were jumping for the flies that dipped and floated just above the surface. And the baby was in my arms, tiny, warm, his hard little head bumping against my shoulder and I could smell the baby smell of him, the smell of the skin behind his tiny ear, the smell of his neck beneath the white cotton sun-bonnet.

And now I was looking through the water, through the greeny clearness of it, watching as the pram floated on the lake’s surface, bobbing, the momentum it had gathered as it rolled downhill moving it further from the shore. I watched, and it was peaceful. My eyes were at water-level; it was as if I were a fly floating on the water’s surface. On the bank, I saw Jean Aldridge push herself to her feet, saw the horror in her face, saw her take off her spectacles and drop them on the grass and then I watched as she jumped into the water clumsily, like the middle-aged woman she was, arms and legs flailing. Her jumping rippled the water and the ripple unsteadied the pram. It tilted and filled and then it began to sink, slowly, down into the water. Close to the dam wall, Jean sank more quickly, sank like a stone. She plunged down, to the sluice-gate, and was trapped there, pressed against the railings by the weight of the water, her skirt forced up around her body.

‘It
was
an accident then,’ I said. Sam did not hear me, he was not listening.

‘I told Caroline and Susan to stay put while I went to Fairlawn to get help, and off I ran.’

‘And did they stay put?’

He shook his head. ‘No. They set off across the dam. They didn’t get far though. Caroline collapsed halfway over, still holding the baby. I didn’t see her fall. I went straight to Fairlawn and I could hear a right row going on inside, raised voices and that, and I had to bang on the door and yell until someone came. Dr Croucher was there with the vicar and Jean Aldridge’s parents, Sir George and Lady Debeger, right posh folk. I took them back down to the dam and we saw Caroline all collapsed in a heap, with the baby in her arms and Susan sitting beside her, stroking her hair. The doctor went and fetched Caroline back home in his car and her ladyship took the littl’un. That was the last time I ever saw Caroline.’

‘What about Jean?’

‘They had to bring in professional divers from Bristol to retrieve the body. I was watching when they brought her up. I’ll never forget it. She was like a mermaid, like something that lived in the lake, all the water streaming from her, and her arms and legs trailing. She was wearing a good tweed skirt and a white blouse. It was still buttoned. The thing that got me, though, the oddest thing, was that she still had one shoe on. Her stocking had come loose and it was down by her ankle, but her shoe was still on her foot.’

‘But I don’t understand, Mr Shrubsole. If Jean’s death was an accident, like you said, why did it need to be covered up? Why the secrecy? Why weren’t you allowed to talk about it?’

Mr Shrubsole put the cigarette to his lips and narrowed his eyes as he sucked on it. ‘Sir George Debeger took me home that evening in his Jaguar. I almost got a clip round the ear, because my dad thought I was in trouble. But Sir George had a word and it all went quiet until a few days later. My father had me up and dressed in my Sunday best, gave me a lick and a spit, made me smart and he took me down to the village club. They were all there, the four big cheeses, the vicar, the doctor, the headmaster and Sir George. Anyroad, they made me stand in front of them as if I was up before the court and they told me Caroline had died of fever. They said it was a good job and all, because now she was dead, they wouldn’t have to say anything to the police about her pushing Jean Aldridge in the lake. And I said she hadn’t pushed Jean in the lake, Jean jumped in all by herself and Caroline was nowhere near her at the time. And they said that I couldn’t possibly be sure of that because the sun would have been in my eyes and I’d been too far away to see clearly. They asked if I’d been dozing on the boat and I said that I had and they said, well then! As if that proved that I couldn’t possibly have seen what I knew I
had
seen. They said I was mistaken. They told me I was wrong that many times that I started to believe their version myself.’ He inhaled again. ‘Anyway, they said it would be best if I didn’t say anything at all to anyone about what I
thought
I’d seen.’

‘They told you to keep quiet?’

‘There was an incentive.’

‘What kind of incentive?’

‘My sister had been proper poorly, she had a dreadful chest – TB. Mother was worried sick about her. Dr Croucher said if I promised to keep my mouth shut, they’d arrange for her to go to the hospital in Bristol and they’d pay for her medicine and everything. They were as good as their word. Mother was happy, my sister eventually came home right as rain and my old man was pleased with the outcome. I reckon they slipped him a bob or two as well. Life seemed to get a bit easier for us afterwards; wheels were oiled.’

‘What about Mrs Pettigrew?’

‘What about her?’

‘I heard she was walking back from the asylum and witnessed the murder.’

‘Nobody else was on the dam.’

‘So the vicar’s wife lied?’

‘I don’t suppose she had to say anything much. Word soon got around that Caroline had killed Jean Aldridge. It was the kind of thing people whisper about amongst themselves. The whole village knew they had to keep it quiet to stop the police poking their noses in. People told the story without any help from Mrs Pettigrew. It wasn’t as if she ever had to stand up in court and say she’d seen something she hadn’t. It was the same as me. I didn’t have to lie. I just had to not say anything.’

‘But …’ I trailed off, overwhelmed with the unfairness of the situation, the injustice. ‘Daniel Aldridge thinks Caroline killed his mother, Caroline’s own sister thinks she was a murderer. Her parents went to the grave believing the worst of their daughter. It’s so awfully wrong.’

‘I was fifteen years old. My sister was at death’s door. What else was I to do?’

‘Oh, I don’t blame you, Mr Shrubsole. It must have been terribly intimidating for you to be held up in front of all those important men. I just don’t understand why any of this had to happen in the first place.’

The man stubbed out his cigarette. He ground it down into the ashtray.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ he said, ‘I’ve always felt bad about it. Always. But whichever way I look at it, it wasn’t my fault people blamed Caroline. I never said a word about that day, one way or another. That girl had a terrible reputation, she’d done some bad things. It didn’t take long for the story to go round and soon other people were putting in their three-penn’orth. They said they’d seen the two women arguing, Caroline attacking Jean, Jean trying to defend her baby. Once the story took hold, it stuck. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t do anything, could I? I was trapped because as far as anyone knew, I wasn’t there that day, I didn’t see anything. I’d promised to keep the secret for ever. I’d promised on my sister’s life.’

‘It’s not a secret any more,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘You’re free.’

‘Have you told Susan Pettigrew that she’s free?’ he asked. ‘Do you think her life will get better if her father knows she’s been blabbing? No, of course it won’t. Don’t you think she’s suffered enough? You can’t do anything about the dead, miss. It’s the living you need to look out for now.’

JULIA WAS ASLEEP
in the living room when I got back to the cottage. I was dead tired too. All the way down the hill I had wondered what I should do. I didn’t know how to present Julia with this new version of events. I was afraid of somehow making things worse. If I told her, the first thing she would want to know was how I had come by the truth – and that would mean implicating Sam Shrubsole, who I wasn’t worried about, and Susan, who I was. The second thing Julia would want to do would be to confront Dr Croucher and Reverend Pettigrew, and while I knew a confrontation was necessary, I also knew that it would, without a shadow of a doubt, cause huge problems for Susan, who had nobody to stick up for her. What would she do if she lost her job at Sunnyvale and her father threw her out of the vicarage? What would become of her then?