“I mean, she was basically a carer to Mother for about fifteen years, for a peppercorn wage. You think we could have got a live-in nurse for the kind of money Mother paid Mrs. Warren? Thirty thousand seems like a pretty cheap price to pay to me.”
“It’s pretty rich to say ‘we’ could have got a nurse,” Harding said irritably. “I can’t see what you would know about the matter, given we haven’t seen you on these shores for the best part of twenty years. At least Abel had an excuse for cutting and running. Those of us who stuck around to see through our responsibilities—”
“You always were a sanctimonious shit,” Ezra said. He grinned, making a joke of the words, but there was no charm or humor in his expression this time, more the quality of a wolf baring its teeth. She held her breath, unsure of where this was going, but Harding didn’t reply; he simply rolled his eyes and turned away from his brother towards the breakfast room. When he got to the door, he held it open for Hal, standing punctiliously back until she had passed through.
Inside, Mitzi, Richard, and the two other children were seated at the end of the long table. Abel and Edward were nowhere to be seen.
“Harriet darling,” Mitzi said. She had put on lipstick this morning, and her mouth was incongruously cheerful against the muted, faded shades of the room, and the bleached morning light. “How are you feeling today?”
“Fine, thank you, Mitzi,” Hal said. She took the seat that Harding pulled out for her, between himself and Ezra, and sat down. “I’m not sure what happened last night—a mixture of cold and no food, I think.”
“Not to mention the shock,” Mitzi said. She pursed her lips disapprovingly as she reached for the muesli. “I don’t know what Mr. Treswick was thinking, springing the whole will situation on us like that.”
“Well, he had to tell us at some point,” Ezra said. He seemed to have recovered from his flash of irritation with Harding, and the smile was back in place, and more convincing now. “He probably thought it was better to rip the bandage off in one go, so to speak. Get it over with.”
“He should have prepared us,” Mitzi said stubbornly. “Particularly poor Harding.”
“Why poor Harding?” Ezra asked. He grinned across the table at Mitzi. “The rest of us are just as snubbed as him, you know. Or is it that much of a shock to be lumped in with us paupers?”
“Ezra,” Mitzi said, with the air of someone having her patience tested. “You haven’t been here, but Harding was certainly led to expect—”
“Tough when you’ve already put down the deposit on a new Land Rover,” Ezra said sympathetically.
“Now, look here,” Harding said, at the same time that Mitzi snapped, “Ezra, you are being deliberately provocative.”
Ezra only laughed, throwing back his head so that Hal could see the unshaven line of his jaw, and the hollow of his collarbone where his shirt was open at the neck.
Then he stood, threw down his napkin, and stretched until his shirttails came loose.
“Fuck it,” he said laconically, leaning across the table and picking up the piece of toast Richard was buttering on his plate. “This is a little more hypocrisy than I can cope with at breakfast. I’m going out.”
“Out where?” Mitzi demanded, but Ezra didn’t seem to have heard her question. He took a giant bite of Richard’s toast, tossed the crust onto the table, and then strode out into the hall.
“He’s impossible!” Mitzi exploded, as the door slammed behind him. “Harding—are you going to let him get away with that?”
“Dammit, Mit. What do you want me to do?” Harding pushed away his plate. “Anyway, he’s right.”
“What do you mean? He stole Richard’s toast! And how dare he accuse you of hypocrisy!”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Harding stood, marched over to the toaster, and shoved in two more slices of bread. “Happy? The toast is hardly the most important thing here.”
“Accusing you of hypocrisy, then—what cheek!”
“I think that was a general remark, Mit—and much as I find him deeply irritating, he’s not wrong on that particular point, is he? All of us in that church yesterday, with our carefully glum faces—and I doubt there was one person there who was sorry she was gone.”
“How dare you.” The voice came from the doorway, and all heads at the table turned, to see Mrs. Warren standing in the doorway, a coffee jug trembling in one hand. “How dare you, you little sniveling good-for-nowt.”
“Mrs. Warren,” Harding said stiffly. He drew himself up to his full height. “What I said was intended for my wife, and in any case—”
“Don’t you ‘Mrs. Warren’ me, you despicable little arsehole,” she snarled, her Cornish accent somehow making the last word into a kind of foreign invective.
“Mrs.—” Harding began, but he didn’t get to finish. Mrs. Warren set down the coffeepot on the table with a crack that sent drops spattering across their plates, and slapped him around the back of the head, like a recalcitrant child.
Hal’s face felt frozen in shock. The whole scene was surreal—Harding standing there like a pompous schoolboy caught swearing in the corridor; Mrs. Warren, her face twisted with fury; Mitzi, Richard, and the other children wide-eyed with shock.
“Mrs. Warren!” Harding bellowed furiously, rubbing the back of his head, and at the same time his daughter called out, “Daddy!” and then, when her father did not respond, more urgently, “Daddy! The toast!”
They all turned to look at the ancient toaster on the end of the table, to see smoke pouring out of the opening at the top. As Hal watched in horror, the blackened slices burst into flames.
“That goddamn thing!” Harding roared. “It’s a death trap—Mother should have thrown it away years ago.” He marched across to the wall socket, pulled out the plug, and then threw a place mat over the smoking toaster. The flames went out. A strong smell of singed cotton joined the scent of burned toast, and Mitzi let out a shuddering breath.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Is there nothing reliable in this house? Mrs. Warren, can you—”
But then she stopped, breaking off in exasperation. Mrs. Warren had gone.
CHAPTER 18
* * *
The rest of breakfast had a stifled, edgy quality, as if no one wanted to refer to Mrs. Warren’s outburst and Ezra’s disappearance; and although she knew she should have been using the time to winkle out vital facts about Maud before her interview with Mr. Treswick, Hal found herself bolting down her toast, and then excusing herself from the table as fast as possible.
In the hall outside she paused for a moment, trying to decide what to do. She had no desire to go back up to that coffin-like bedroom, but wandering around the house as if she already owned the place felt painfully presumptuous.
She needed to get out, clear her head, try to work out her next move.
Farther up the corridor she could see a door to the garden standing open, presumably where Ezra had made his exit, and she followed the stiff breeze and crunched her way out onto the gravel at the front of the house. Ahead of her was a wide sweep of drive, dotted with weeds and self-seeded saplings. To the left was a block of low buildings—garages, or perhaps former stables, she thought—but the smell of cigarette smoke filtering around the corner told her that that was where Ezra had gone, and she had no desire to face him just now. In fact, she needed a break from them all.
Instead she turned right, past a rather dismal shrubbery with a strong scent of cats, and round to the fa?ade she had seen on that postcard, the long low house, the lawn falling away to the sea. We had a very good tea at Trepassen House. . . .