The House At Sea’s End

‘Jack? He can’t have.’

‘You said yourself that the war was a desperate time. People do desperate things in desperate times.’

She looks at him as if half conceding the point. In the background, a clock ticks.

‘Mrs Hastings,’ says Nelson. ‘Do you know how Hugh Anselm died?’

Stella’s brow furrows. ‘Some sort of accident, wasn’t it?’

‘He was found dead in his stairlift.’

‘How terrible.’

‘We think foul play may have been involved.’

He meant to shock her and he does. Her eyes widen and her hand clenches on the arm of her chair.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that someone deliberately stopped the stairlift. Someone who knew that Hugh Anselm had a heart condition and that the agitation of trying to free himself would be likely to kill him.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Archie Whitcliffe was suffocated,’ says Nelson brutally. ‘I think the same person killed both men.’

‘Archie? Suffocated? I don’t believe you.’

‘A post mortem examination cannot lie,’ says Nelson, though they can and do.

There is a silence. Out of the French windows, Nelson can see the sea, brightest blue under a paler blue sky. A white-sailed yacht moves slowly across the horizon.

‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ Stella is very pale but her voice is perfectly steady, ‘am I to understand that you suspect someone in this family of these horrible crimes?’

‘I suspect no-one and everyone,’ says Nelson portentously.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Someone killed those men and I think it was to protect the memory of Buster Hastings. Dieter Eckhart too. He was about to uncover the truth. I think someone killed to prevent that happening.’

She stares at him, her hands still clenched on the arms of her chair. An alarm goes off, making them both jump. Stella Hastings looks at her watch.

‘Time to check on Mother. Excuse me, Detective Chief Inspector. I won’t be long.’

And she goes out. Leaving Nelson to look out of the window, across the bay to the lighthouse. In front of him is a row of plants, one of which, he now realises, is planted in a German officer’s helmet.

Ruth is glad that she came. It is a beautiful afternoon, the sea sparkling in the sun. There is no snow left on the beach and it could almost be a summer day, if it were not for the sharp air that makes her catch her breath and wish she’d brought a scarf.

Craig is waiting for her at the foot of the slope. He is warmly dressed in a donkey jacket and black woolly hat.

‘Where’s Ted?’

‘He had to go back. Some domestic crisis. I said I would wait.’

‘That was kind of you.’

As Ruth follows Craig across the beach, she wonders about Ted’s domestic crisis. As far as she knows, he isn’t married or living with anyone. He’s a bit of an enigma, Irish Ted. He once told her that his name wasn’t even Ted.

Sandra had been happy to look after Kate for an hour longer. ‘No problem. Don’t worry so much, Ruth.’ But Ruth does worry. Tatjana’s words have left her feeling bruised and vulnerable. She has tried a couple of times to ring Tatjana back but her phone seems to be switched off. Is Ruth really such a terrible mother? She loves Kate more than her life but maybe this isn’t enough. Certainly the whole maternal thing doesn’t come easily to her, as it does to women like Michelle. Ruth never knows what to say to Sandra or to other mothers – one excruciating morning at a mother and baby group was enough to show her this. She doesn’t know what baby food to buy or which car seat to avoid. She’s never read a parenting magazine or watched Supernanny. She and Kate are having to make it up as they go along. And she’d thought she was doing all right, until the conversation with Tatjana.

But Tatjana has her own issues. Ruth knows this but she still shies away from talking properly to her friend. She has had her chances over the past weeks, but she has been too cowardly to take them. Tatjana will go home tomorrow and Ruth may never see her again.

They have left Broughton now and are crossing the beach where the barrels were found. The tide is out, rock pools stretch in front of them and Ruth can see the remains of the Victorian sea wall, like a green-slimed monster rising from the water, but something in the air perhaps, or in the wild calling of the seagulls, tells her that the tide may be about to turn. They’d better keep an eye on it. There’s no way off this beach and the cliffs are too high to climb.

‘How much further?’ she asks.

‘Just round the next headland.’

They have to climb over rocks, sharp with barnacles and crusted mussels, then in front of them lies another bay, a perfect semicircle scooped out of the sandstone cliff. And there, rearing out of the shallow water, is the unmistakeable hull of a ship. The water has eaten away at the wood and Ruth can see the blue sky through its prow but the shape is still there, a largish boat, about the size of the launch that took them to the lifeboat. It looks both menacing and strangely sad.

‘Have you any idea how old it is?’ asks Ruth, splashing forwards, despite the fact that she isn’t (for once) wearing her wellingtons. The water is freezing.

‘I don’t know but I think about sixty or seventy years old by the shape of it.’

Ruth knows nothing about the shape of boats but this one looks as if it has been here forever. ‘What makes you think it was a fire ship?’ she asks.

‘There are barrels inside,’ says Craig. ‘Take a look.’

‘We’d better be quick,’ says Ruth, looking out to sea at the waves coming in towards them, shockingly fast.

‘Oh, we’ve got all the time in the world,’ says Craig.

Nelson is still staring out of the window when Stella comes back into the room.

‘How is she?’ he asks.

‘As well as can be expected. Peaceful.’ That note of resignation again. It casts a shadow on the bright afternoon, a shadow reflected on Stella’s face as she joins Nelson by the window.

All that is left of the garden at Sea’s End House is a thin strip of land, about a metre across, that runs alongside the house. The back garden has disappeared completely. But someone has taken trouble with the tiny piece of ground that is left. There is a narrow ribbon of lawn and someone has been tending the flowerbeds.

‘Strange to see the flowers coming up again after the snow,’ says Stella. ‘They’re hardier than you think, spring flowers.’

‘Are you a keen gardener?’ asks Nelson. He isn’t, though he quite likes mowing the lawn. Michelle loves garden centres; they’re her idea of heaven.

‘No, but we have someone who comes in. There’s not really enough for him to do now but he’s always looked after our garden. And his grandfather before him.’

Something stirs in Nelson’s brain as he looks at the spindly tulips pushing up out of the chalky soil.

‘Wasn’t he in the Home Guard? Your old gardener?’

‘Yes, Donald Drummond. He was devoted to Buster. And to Irene.’

As clear as if it is being amplified into the air around him, Nelson’s hears Hugh Anselm’s voice: Donald said they were only filthy Jerries and would do the same to us. Donald Drummond, the gardener.

And, like a kaleidoscope spinning before his eyes, so fast that the colours are blurred and the shapes indistinct, Nelson sees himself looking down from Archie Whitcliffe’s window. He is watching the gardener mow the lawn. Then, he sees himself at Hugh Anselm’s sheltered accommodation, admiring the grounds, so beautifully kept, recently mown, newly planted.

‘What’s the name of the gardener you have now? Donald’s grandson?’ he asks, so sharply that Stella steps back.

‘Craig. I assumed you’d know him. He’s an archaeologist too. One of Ruth’s team.’