Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

Ella banged down the canapé plate with irritable vigour and said, ‘I wish you’d take this seriously. They’ll find the body – because of course he was dead – and when they do they might find something to link it to us.’

‘Like what? Ella, it’s over fifty years!’

‘You’re just being silly,’ said Veronica.

Ella said, ‘But there is something that might link us.’

‘Oh God, what?’

Veronica saw that Ella was looking really ill, almost as if the flesh of her face had fallen away from the bones. This was so dreadful she drank some more wine while she tried to think what to say. Perhaps Clem would think of something. Veronica looked at him hopefully, but Clem was simply staring at Ella in goggle-eyed silence.

In a tight, dry little voice Ella said, ‘My wristwatch. I’d been given it the day before for a birthday present. Don’t you remember – we checked the time on it?’

‘Vaguely. What about it?’

‘When we got back to Mordwich Bank,’ said Ella, ‘I hadn’t got it on.’

This time the silence lasted much longer, but in the end Clem said, ‘You mean you lost it while we were in Cadence Manor?’

‘I must have done.’

‘You never said.’

‘There was no need to worry about it while Priors Bramley was sealed off.’

‘But… it’s only a watch,’ said Veronica. ‘It won’t have survived all those years, and even if it did, nobody will know it was yours.’

‘It had my initials engraved on it, and the date,’ said Ella.

‘Well, I suppose a date might be traced back, but initials aren’t very recognizable.’

‘Mine were,’ said Ella. ‘E.L.F. – don’t you remember? I was Ella Lilian Ford in those days. Have you forgotten how I used to be teased at school about being an elf? And as for the watch not surviving – it was gold. Gold survives everything.’

‘Yes, but are you sure it was gold? I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but gold’s frightfully expensive.’ Veronica did not want to say it was unlikely that Ella’s mother could have afforded gold, but everybody knew the family had been really hard up.

‘Yes, I am sure,’ said Ella, her mouth set in the stubborn line Veronica recognized only too well. ‘My mother saved up for it for ages because it was a special birthday – double figures – and she wanted to mark it. She did double shifts in the Railwayman’s Arms for months beforehand.’ She broke off, compressing her lips, and Veronica knew Ella must be very upset indeed, because she hardly ever admitted her mother had worked as a barmaid in an adjoining village. Genteel poverty was the usual pitch, generally on the lines of, ‘My family lost their money in the First World War’. Clem’s father had once said that far from losing their money in any war, the Fords had never had any money at all, and had been reduced to all kinds of straits to make ends meet. In fact, in certain quarters Ella’s mother had been known as Barrack Room Brenda. Veronica had never given any of this much credence, because Clem’s father liked to make up dramatic stories.

‘My mother wanted me to have something I’d keep for years and years,’ said Ella, and added rather waspishly that this being so, it was a pity she had had to lose the watch the day after being given it. ‘Gold’s indestructible,’ she said. ‘So if they find the watch near the man’s body, they’ll trace it back to me.’ She looked at the other two. ‘And that means to the two of you, as well,’ she said. ‘So you’ve both got to promise me that you’ll keep to the vow we made all those years ago.’

‘I promise,’ said Clem after a moment, and Veronica, who wished Ella would not be so intense, because, for goodness’ sake, nothing was very likely to happen to any of them, shrugged and said, ‘I promise as well.’ Then she finished her wine and hoped that her exciting evening could now proceed without any more interruptions.

In the event, Veronica’s evening was very good indeed. The scented candles burned alluringly and the chilled wine and neat little snacks went down well. Veronica smiled to herself, remembering Ella’s pretentious frozen canapés. She thought she was so great, that Ella. It was a pity she could not see Veronica now, serving this elegant little supper, embarking on the first exciting steps in a new love affair.

There was nothing quite like the start of a romance – Veronica liked the word ‘romance’; she always used it in preference to anything earthier – when you were both finding out about one another. You planned what you would wear for each meeting, and you devised sexy romantic games to play. It was an adventure, and if Ella wanted to look down her nose and consider Veronica a slut, Veronica did not care.

When the food had been removed and the glasses topped up, there was nothing slutty about permitting a civilized embrace. It was a testing of the water, as it were, the first steps in establishing how far things could go.

After a while, the embrace became fevered, and after a longer while it became insistent. Veronica giggled suddenly, and he drew back at once.

‘Is something wrong?’

Giggling at such a moment had been a very bad move. It was partly nerves, of course, but men did not like being laughed at, especially when they were revving up to be amorous. He looked angry, and Veronica sought frantically for a way to retrieve the situation and his dignity, and found it.

‘Nothing’s wrong at all. I was just thinking you have unsuspected depths.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ he said.

It was all right; he sounded mollified. She said, ‘No, but really. You almost seem like a different person.’

‘Well, let’s explore those depths and that different person, shall we? Do you want to do that?’

‘Now? Tonight?’

‘Isn’t that what this is about?’

And even though one was still not a slut, this was the twenty-first century and Veronica was a modern woman, quite capable of giving those pert twenty- and thirty-year-olds a run for their money. She had kept her figure and looked after her skin, and in a dim light she could pass for a lot younger than she actually was.

In any case, she had spring-cleaned the bedroom that morning and put lavender-scented sheets on the bed, and it would be a pity to waste all that effort.

Entries From an Undated Journal

I had to expend a good deal of effort hiding what I came to call ‘the darknesses’. I think I managed it very well, though. I don’t think even Crispian, with his perceptive mind, knew about that side of my nature. I often thought Serena knew, but she never referred to it. She was a cold-hearted bitch, Serena Cadence. I didn’t hate her, but I didn’t much care for her.

I hated Crispian, though. It was partly because he stood in the way of things I wanted, but also because he had all the attributes I longed to possess. I used to look at him, and think: how does he exert that charm over everyone he meets? He was not especially good-looking, you understand, in fact you’d have said no one would afford him a second glance. Brown hair, the colour of clear honey, and eyes to match, and the characteristic slanting cheekbones of so many of the Cadence men. But people did give him that second glance and they usually gave him a third, as well.

The curious thing was that my decision to murder him never shocked me. It didn’t even frighten me, and it certainly never worried me in… in any moral sense, I mean. I believed then and I believe now that I had logical and sane reasons for it. I really was, and still am, entirely sane. Although as the hours tick away in here, I’m not sure if I’ll remain sane.

Sane…

I wonder if anyone who reads this will be familiar with the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ? It was fashionable in the closing years of the nineteenth century and it’s a chilling tale. I’ve sometimes had the eerie feeling that Stevenson was able to look ahead over the years and see straight into my own mind. His tortured misguided Henry Jekyll went through the agonies I go through, and as for the evil-intentioned Hyde…