The Secret by the Lake (32 page)

‘It looks like somebody was murdered in those sheets,’ Daniel managed to say.

‘Or slit their own wrists.’

Julia touched the baby clothes on the table. ‘Or they gave birth and haemorrhaged,’ she said. She sat down heavily on a chair.

We were all silent for a moment.

Of course, I thought. Of course!

Julia said sadly, ‘My sister didn’t die of fever, she died in childbirth. And they hid the blood-stained bedding so nobody would know she’d been pregnant.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘God,’ she choked out, ‘it just gets worse!’

Daniel was holding the sheets in his hand; the staining was so great that more of the old fabric was dark brown than was the original pale pink stripe. ‘What happened to the baby?’ he asked.

There was another silence.

‘Perhaps it was stillborn,’ Julia said. ‘Something was wrong. There shouldn’t have been so much blood.’

Daniel looked down into the trunk, the bundled old fabric, the quilted, bloodstained coverlet.

‘Oh no,’ I whispered. ‘No, don’t look!’

‘Take everything out,’ Julia said in a voice quiet and cold as ice. ‘Make sure there’s nothing in there.’

Daniel blanched, but he set his lips in a line and he pulled the sheets out of the trunk, the old quilt, the bedspread at the bottom. I stood behind Julia’s chair, holding her hand. I watched but my eyes were unfocused so that if Daniel were to find anything worse than what he’d found already, I would not see it. Julia sat before me, still as a statue, hardly breathing. We were both dreading Daniel saying something, for some expression of horror, but in the end all he said was: ‘It’s all right. There’s nothing else in here.’

‘Where is it then?’ Julia asked. ‘Where is Caroline’s baby?’

‘Did they bury it with her?’

Of course. That’s what they would have done – put it in the same coffin, in the same grave:
the last day of August 1931
. Out of sight, out of mind, far away from the other graves, the unnamed, unchristened child of the wicked, unmarried girl whom everyone in the village believed to be a murderer.

‘It seems so cruel,’ Julia said. ‘Even for Caroline, it seems cruel for it to have ended like that.’

Daniel stood, went to the sink and washed his hands. His face was blank, shocked.

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ Julia said bitterly. ‘Everyone knew my sister was a murderer, but they kept quiet about what else she was.’

I was thinking of Caroline’s mother, sitting next door with Mrs Croucher, inconsolable throughout the long night while Caroline’s father and Dr Croucher cleaned up the mess, the two women listening to the footsteps going up and down the stairs. In one night, they got rid of everything: the bodies of Caroline and her stillborn child to the undertaker, the soiled bedding and furniture into the shed, Caroline’s story, the hopeless love affair, her hatred for Jean Aldridge, her picture of the hanging doctor all papered over.

The whole thing, her whole life, swept under the carpet, made to disappear, as if she had never existed.

WE PUT EVERYTHING
but the picture and the baby clothes back into the trunk, closed it and dragged it outside, bumping it down the steps. The fog had come in; the garden was swathed in it, so thick that the rest of the world had disappeared completely. Daniel and I pulled the trunk as far away from the door as we could, into the middle of the lawn where we could douse it in petrol and burn it in the morning. I looked down towards the lake, trying to make out the lights of Sunnyvale but the fog was too dense. They would be there by now, the choir. They would be preparing for their first song and the old people would be getting ready to listen to them. I thought of Vivi, a bundle of nerves and excitement, and Dr Croucher in his wheelchair, and his friend the vicar oiling back his hair ready to do the introductions. Did those two men ever think about Caroline Cummings? Were they haunted by the thought of what had become of her and her child? And what of the Debegers? They had been at Fairlawn the day their daughter died. They must have been part of the conspiracy. Had they ever wondered what became of poor pregnant Caroline? Had they known about her death?

Susan must have known Caroline was pregnant.

She would be there now, at Sunnyvale, nervous and shy in her too-small cardigan, Susan who used to have to pull down her pants and bend over a chair to be beaten by Frank Leeson’s slipper, Susan who had been terrified by her own father into colluding in the lies about her only friend.

So much for the past being a better place, a more honourable place. It was not.

Daniel went back inside the cottage and I heard him talking to Julia. I stood in the fog and listened to the to and fro of their voices although I could not make out the words. I felt nothing but tenderness towards them both, but even that did not match the anger I was feeling on behalf of Susan and Caroline; it did not come close. I fetched the torch and went back down to the shed. I shone the torch into its furthest recesses. I shone it on the smudged writing on the wall.
Something something something smudge smudge smudge.
Caroline had done that, I was sure of it. She was the one with the propensity for writing on walls. What had she written? What had she been counting? Why had she set fire to the shed? What had she wanted the fire to destroy? All that was in there were blankets and cushions, Julia’s toys. I crouched down, spat on my fingers and rubbed at the smudging, but the rubbing made it worse, less clear. I smacked the wall with frustration.

I went back into the cottage. Julia and Daniel were sitting in the kitchen. The gin bottle was open on the table between them. I went to Daniel and put my hand on his arm. ‘Thank you for coming and for opening the trunk. Thank you for everything you’ve done. I know this must have been hard for you. Only I think it would be best if you went now. Julia and I need to talk.’

‘Will you be OK?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m so sorry you had to see that, Daniel,’ Julia said. ‘After all you’ve gone through already because of my sister.’

‘Caroline didn’t do anything to hurt Daniel,’ I said.

Julia frowned at me.

‘Caroline didn’t kill your mother, Daniel,’ I said. ‘She didn’t kill anybody. What happened on the dam was an accident.’

‘Amy, please!’ Julia put her hand on my arm. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

‘I can’t let this go on. It’s not fair. It’s wrong. Caroline was there, on the dam, but she never laid a finger on Jean Aldridge.’

‘Stop,’ Julia said. ‘Stop now.’

‘Jean’s death was an accident,’ I said, ‘for which Caroline was blamed.’

There was a silence. Daniel and Julia were both looking at me with shock, and something else – a kind of revulsion. I felt the weight of their confusion: it was crushing, but also I felt a lightness. After all these years of lying dormant, the seed of the truth had been exposed and there was an exhilaration that came with that.

‘How can you know?’ Julia asked.

‘I spoke to someone who was there.’

‘Nobody was there,’ Daniel said coldly. ‘Only Mrs Pettigrew saw what happened.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s all a lie.’

‘A lie?’

‘Yes. Mrs Pettigrew wasn’t even there.’

Julia gave a brittle laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Daniel, I don’t know what’s come over Amy.’ She scowled at me.
Shut up!
she mouthed.

‘I don’t understand,’ Daniel said, frowning. ‘Why would the vicar’s wife lie?’

‘Why would anyone lie?’ Julia asked, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘Why would anyone say it was murder if it was an accident?’

‘I don’t know!’ I said.

Daniel took hold of my arms. ‘Who was it?’ he asked. ‘Who told you all this?’

I could not mention Sam Shrubsole without mentioning Susan Pettigrew. I stood hopelessly silent while they both gazed at me with the same expression, shock, confusion, horror. Then Daniel let go of my arms and turned from me. He picked up the cutters. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said.

I reached out for him. ‘I’ll come with you to the door.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll see myself out.’

‘Daniel …’

He shrugged off my hand and walked away from me.

‘Daniel, please …’

‘You should have talked to me first,’ he said. ‘You had no right … It wasn’t your mother, it’s not your family. This has nothing to do with you.’

‘I thought you’d want to know the truth.’

He turned. His face was suddenly furious. ‘Do you think my father would have lied to me about something like that?’ he said. ‘Do you really think he would have lied about my mother’s death? It’s not the kind of thing anyone lies about, Amy!’

‘What if they lied to him too?’

‘They? Who were
they
?’

Mrs Pettigrew, I thought, and the others who were at Fairlawn that day. The vicar, the doctor, Jean’s parents.

‘Leave it, Amy. Just leave it.’

I followed him to the front door. He pushed it open violently. ‘I’ll leave the paint by the gate,’ he said, and he was gone.

I leaned against the wall and caught my breath. The fog came in through the open door and dissipated in the hallway. I heard Daniel banging about for a few moments and then the sound of the engine of the jeep starting and being driven angrily away. I dug my fingernails into my palms.

I wanted to cry but I was too angry, still, for tears.

I went back into the kitchen. Julia was pale. She was staring down at one of the perfect little matinée jackets, running her fingernail along the ribboned seam.

‘Oh congratulations, Amy,’ she said, without looking at me. ‘Well done. Ten out of ten. You timed that perfectly. Couldn’t you have dropped that bombshell on him at a different time? When he hadn’t just been rummaging through a trunk full of bloody sheets? When he wasn’t still recovering from being battered by his father?’

‘I thought you of all people would want to know the truth about Caroline.’

‘I don’t know what to think any more. I feel sorry for Daniel.’ She pushed away the baby clothes and raked her fingers through her hair. ‘At least that’s the end of it.’

‘No, that’s not the end of it,’ I said. ‘It’s worse than you think.’

‘For God’s sake, how can it be worse?’

‘Robert Aldridge was the father of Caroline’s baby.’

Silence. I could feel Julia’s anger. The tension in the room was white-hot.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ I said, tentative now, afraid that Julia might explode, ‘but she definitely had a crush on Robert. She definitely liked him. She drew a heart on the bedroom wall with both their names inside.’

‘Robert Aldridge took advantage of my sister?’ Julia demanded.

‘I think so. Daniel showed me the room where she used to stay when she was working at Fairlawn. I imagine … well, it would have been possible for the two of them to meet there. Robert and Jean had separate bedrooms, you see. Or perhaps they met in the hollow by the lake. I don’t know. But it could have happened easily enough.’

‘God.’ Julia shook her head. ‘I always thought he hated us because Caroline killed his wife. Yet, if what you’re telling me is true, she didn’t. Are you sure, Amy? Are you sure that my sister didn’t kill Jean Aldridge?’

‘I’m as sure as I can be.’

‘Does Robert Aldridge know the truth?’

‘It’s possible that he doesn’t.’

Julia was silent for a moment. ‘All these years,’ she said softly. ‘It’s taken all these years for me to find out what really happened.’ She held her hand to her cheek. ‘All those years of shame for my family: my father going early to his grave and my mother sending me to ballet school, keeping me distant because she wanted me to be free of the weight of being a Cummings, of having a sister who murdered. And I’ve done what my mother did, haven’t I, Amy? I’ve come back and hidden myself away because I didn’t have the courage to face the villagers. Thirty years have gone by but I still didn’t want to see the looks on their faces, to know what was going through their minds.’

Julia slid her fingers down the side of her face. ‘And then there’s Caroline,’ she said. ‘Imagine how she must have suffered. Imagine how frightened she must have been, seventeen, pregnant, living in Blackwater.’

‘I’ve thought of little else.’

She smiled at me ruefully.

‘And now you’re seeing Robert’s son?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘It would be unfair to blame him for any of this. But it’s frightening, Amy, isn’t it, once the stone is thrown into the water, how far the ripples spread.’

There was white spirit in the cupboard beneath the sink. I left Julia with the gin bottle and her thoughts and took the white spirit upstairs to the empty bedroom. It had been difficult before, but now it was impossible to see it merely as an abandoned room. Now I could slip back through time, back into the room as Caroline lay on the bed, a terrified seventeen year old, sweat sticking her hair to her skull, the terrible pain deep down in her belly, blood soaking through the sheets and the windows closed despite the August heat in case Caroline should scream and somebody walking down the lane might wonder what was going on. And who was with her? Her mother? Was her mother holding her hand, pressing a cool flannel to her brow, reassuring her? Dr Croucher had been there. Mrs Croucher had told me he’d stayed with Caroline after he’d brought her back from the dam. He would have been at the foot of the bed, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a basin of hot water at his side, towels, disinfectant, the smell of blood. Caroline hated the doctor and yet, when she was at her weakest, her most vulnerable, he was there with her, examining her, pressing her thighs apart.

There would have been no pain relief for Caroline. No sympathy for the girl. No consideration of her feelings or her modesty.

Was the doctor’s the last face she saw?

Was his the last voice she heard?

I shuddered.

So Caroline had died in childbirth and the doctor had agreed to say it was a fever, to preserve what little was left of her reputation, to make things easier for her parents – or perhaps to protect Robert Aldridge. Yes, that was more likely. It was to keep Sir George and Lady Debeger’s widowed son-in-law out of the limelight. The bastard.