“What about me?” Hal said, rather faintly.
“I’m sorry?” Harding turned to her, and then blinked. “Oh. Harriet, of course. What time is your train?”
“I don’t know,” Hal said. “I haven’t checked the timetable. But I need—”
The word stuck in her throat, but she forced herself on. “I mean, I don’t have any way of getting to the station.”
“I’ll drop you off en route,” Ezra said briefly. “But I warn you, I want to be away by four. Is that too early?”
He unlocked his car.
“Thanks,” Hal said. “Any time is fine, honestly. I think there are trains roughly every hour until about six.”
Ezra nodded. Then without another word, he got into the car, fired the engine, and drove off.
Beside Hal, Abel let out a gusting breath of exasperation as he watched his brother’s car drive away.
“Oh dear. I’m sorry, Hal. I . . . we’ve never really got on, the three of us. We’re too different, and I don’t think we’ve ever got over a childhood of Mother playing us off against each other. I don’t know what Ezra thinks, maybe he honestly doesn’t believe Mother favored him, but to everyone else it was pretty clear that as far as she was concerned, he could walk on water, and she didn’t try to hide it from the rest of us. It was no fun growing up with that.”
“It—honestly—it’s none of my business,” Hal said awkwardly.
“Quite,” Harding said crisply. He put an arm around Hal’s shoulders. “I think the last thing Harriet needs to take home with her is memories of our dirty washing. Well, my dear, this has certainly been a very odd business, but I hope now that our branches of the family have found each other, you’ll stay in touch.”
“I will. I promise,” Hal said, though she had a horrible feeling she did not have much choice, given Mr. Treswick’s worried look as she left.
“Now,” Harding said briskly. “Let’s all get out of this perishing wind and back to Trepassen to break the news to Mrs. Warren.”
CHAPTER 42
* * *
“Where is Mrs. Warren?”
The words floated up the stairwell towards Hal as she bumped her case down the final flight, and she felt a little prickle of something—trepidation, perhaps.
All the time, while packing, she had had to fight the urge to cram her belongings into her case any old how, so strong was the sense that the old woman might be making her way up the stairs for one final confrontation.
Strange fantasies tripped through Hal’s mind—someone sliding the bolts closed on the bedroom door and locking her in, or barricading the door at the foot of the stairs. Ezra’s impatient good-byes, Well, I can’t wait for Harriet any longer. The others dispersing before the snow hit—leaving her alone, in the darkening house, with a vengeful old woman. . . .
So strong was the feeling that she had left the bedroom door open while she packed, the better to hear the tap, tap of her stick on the stairs—though even as she did, she reminded herself of that morning she had found Mrs. Warren waiting in darkness outside her door, the silence of her approach.
Was Mrs. Warren really the frail old lady everyone assumed, or was that walking stick simply another layer of deception? Whatever the truth, it was clear she could move quietly when she chose.
Now Hal was packed and ready, her coat on, and the sky was dark with snow, and she wanted nothing more than to get away.
Abel and Harding were standing in the hallway when she rounded the corner of the landing, and Abel turned his face up towards Hal as she bumped the case down the stairs.
“You haven’t seen her, have you, Hal?”
“No.” She joined them in the shadow of the staircase. “Not since last night.”
Even at breakfast she had not been there—the coffeepot had been steaming on a mat when they arrived in the breakfast room, the toast and cereal laid out, no sign of Mrs. Warren.
“Ezra’s gone to find her,” Harding said. “He’s the only person likely to come out of her lair alive.”
But at that moment there was the sound of a door slamming far up the corridor, and they turned to see Ezra striding towards them, shaking his head.
“I tried the door of her room. It’s locked, and she’s not answering. Must be asleep or gone into town. Would you say good-bye for me?” he said to Harding, who nodded.
“If I see her, but we’ll be leaving right after you two. She’ll be sorry not to say good-bye.”
“Probably, but it can’t be helped. The forecast is getting worse, I don’t want to wait. Good-bye, Harding.” They shared a slightly awkward man-hug, more a backslap than an embrace, and then Ezra turned to Abel.
“Bye, Abel.”
“Good-bye,” Abel said, “and look, I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn.”
“I—well, I’m sorry too,” Ezra said, rather stiffly, and Abel held out his arms.
“Hug it out?”
Ezra looked profoundly uncomfortable as his brother put his arms around him, and Hal had the impression of an unyielding, unwilling mass, but he put his arm around his brother and squeezed, almost in spite of himself.
Then it was Hal’s turn. She embraced each of the brothers in turn, feeling Harding’s unaccustomed paunchy softness beneath the Barbour, and Abel’s lean hard ribs under his soft sweater, the surprising strength of his grip as he hugged her.
“Good-bye, my dear,” Harding said.
“Good-bye, little Harriet,” Abel said. “Keep in touch.”
And then Hal was climbing into Ezra’s car, and the engine was growling, and they were off, down the driveway, the magpies rising up in a cloud behind them as the first speckles of snow began to fall.
? ? ?
AT FIRST, THE DRIVE WAS quick, and Hal sat in silence, her head resting against the window, and tried not to think about what she would do when she got back to Brighton.
A strange feeling was prickling in the pit of her stomach. Part of it was trepidation—an unwillingness to face the plethora of choices she would have to confront when she stepped off the train at Brighton station. She could go home for a couple of nights perhaps, but any longer than that and Mr. Smith’s men would come knocking.
But beneath the worries was something else, something that tugged at her heart when she thought of Abel and Harding and Ezra, and the feeling of their arms around her. It was homesickness almost, a visceral longing so sharp it was like a pain inside her. But it was not for any home she had ever had. It was, perhaps, a longing for what might have been. For that alternate existence where she had family to fall back on, a safety net. She had never realized how alone she was, until she had glimpsed the alternative.
But she shook herself. She could not think like this. What she had lost had never been hers, and she had to be positive. She had turned her back on a fraud, had got herself out of a nightmarish situation. And—remembering the trailing thread on the stairs, and the paranoia of that restless, horrible night—she was safe. At least for the moment.
Had it been real? She still didn’t know. But the more she thought about it, the more she could not believe it was one of the brothers. An image kept coming back to her: Mrs. Warren, silently standing outside her door, her stick nowhere in sight. She could move swiftly and quietly, Hal was certain of it. She could walk without her stick. It was not impossible. Perhaps she had escaped more than just prosecution.
The sky seemed to darken with her mood, and as they pulled up outside Penzance station, the snow was no longer melting straight onto the windscreen. Instead, as Ezra turned off the lashing wipers, it began to stick, speckling the glass, and sliding down to form little drifts at the bottom.
“Well . . .” Hal said, rather awkwardly. “Thank you, Ezra. For the lift. I guess . . . I mean, I suppose this is good-bye. . . .”