Chapter Sixteen #3
But this is all right. I can go round – back into the hall, then through the adjoining room into the library by its other entrance.
Moving quickly and quietly, I take this route, and make it into the library undetected.
A low illumination seeps into this room from the door to the drawing room.
As I scan over rows of books, I’m almost thankful for this, as now I can just about make out the colours.
I start to pull down any I find with a green spine, checking to see if they could be Arabella’s diary, but each one turns out to be an ordinary print work: dictionaries, encyclopaedias, novels, bound magazines, Reacher’s various books on birding.
My search disturbs a large spider, which runs across my hand before skittering away.
I’ve never minded them much, but at Harfold, the creatures seem to multiply in every corner and cranny.
The crawling sensation continues to tickle my skin long after the creature’s moved on.
Giving up on the shelves, I search inside the reading desk drawers, one by one, inching them open with painful slowness and flinching at every squeak of wood. There are all sorts of things stuffed in here, but again no diary.
Upstairs, then? At least Arabella’s bedroom will be empty, if this is her in the drawing room. I sidle up to the door and place my ear to it. Don’t dare to breathe.
Yes, a very low conversation is happening on the other side – I recognize both Arabella’s and Reacher’s voices.
So they haven’t killed each other yet, then.
But they are arguing: despite the hushed tones, there’s an undercurrent of conflict.
Then I catch my name, and realize they’re discussing me.
How flattering! I try pressing my ear directly to the keyhole, and now I can make out the individual words.
I hear Reacher first, the end of a sentence: ‘… still out there.’
‘For heaven’s sake, will you stop fretting?’
My heart hammers so hard at the sound of Arabella’s voice that I think it might burst, and I’m hit with a churn of emotions. Rage, pain, grief, revulsion, love. I push them all down. Need to focus on the task at hand.
Reacher huffs in irritation. ‘I am perfectly within my rights to be concerned that a dangerous individual is at large. You didn’t hear her, Bellsy!
The way she was bragging about her hateful plans, how she had it all mapped out to frame me for her crimes.
I can’t bear to think what she would have done to you if I hadn’t caught her first.’
That sets a fresh fire of anger in my chest. Twisting it all up to put the blame on me.
There’s a silence, and I wonder if Arabella is about to defend me, accuse Reacher of lying.
Then she sighs. ‘I know, Morry.’ Despite everything she’s already done, this still has the power to hurt me.
She really thinks I wanted to harm her? After I gave her nothing but love!
Or maybe that’s what she needs to believe, rationalizing her choice to kill me after the fact.
A way to live with what she’s done. ‘But I have already told you: she won’t be coming back. ’
‘Of course,’ says Reacher, voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘She has to be dead, because you saw a hare.’
‘I did! The moment she fell in the water.’
Oh, I like that. Fell. So Arabella hasn’t told him exactly what happened, then.
Arabella is still speaking, her tone breathy, almost reverential.
I struggle to hear over the pulse thrumming in my ears.
‘There it was, across the river, looking at me. Then it sprang up and I swear, Morry, it started to dance – exactly like in the story. As soon as I saw it, I was struck with this immense calm, and I just knew the curse had taken her instead, and now it was sated. I was forgiven. George had let go.’ That must be George Allen – but what does he have to do with anything? Maybe I haven’t heard her right.
Arabella doesn’t elaborate on this last comment, instead moving on to describe how light she now feels.
She starts listing all the things that she and Reacher can do now that they’re free.
I think I’ve got the picture. Before I lose my sense and go bursting in there, I make myself leave the library and hurry upstairs, reminding myself of the purpose of this covert visit.
Despite my best efforts earlier this year, Arabella’s bedroom is still a pigsty.
There’s no hope of finding anything by touch alone, so I risk lighting one of the many half-melted candles that lie scattered around.
Holding this up at an angle to avoid getting hot wax on my skin, I check over the shelves, then every cupboard and drawer.
Under the mattress. Still no sign of the green notebook.
I’m about ready to say to Hell with all this.
No: I can’t give up. Where else would Arabella keep something special to her?
Then I remember Christmas Day, when I caught her in the closed wing, with that cabinet in her old quarters.
But I’d already been in there to poke around, shortly after, and found the cabinet empty, and there weren’t exactly plenty of other hiding places in that sparsely furnished room.
My head’s throbbing – I’m not sure if that’s still from my little ‘fall’, or from all the thinking.
I remember another piece of information, all of a sudden.
The story Tom told me on Guy Fawkes Day about the former governess, the one with the alleged taste for cocaine pills.
He’d said Lord Lascy claimed to have discovered her hoard in the nursery, concealed in a cabinet with a false base.
I don’t know which room would once have been the nursery, but what’s the betting this is the same piece of furniture?
Taking the candle with me, I head out on to the walkway to cross to the other wing, cupping my hand around the small light to reduce its reach, just to be on the safe side.
As I pass the corridor that leads to Reacher’s room, I hear a faint pip-pip: Finchley, sending out his sad pinking call in the hope of an answer.
I pause. Consider it. Don’t be reckless, I tell myself.
There’s no point in getting caught over a petty act of revenge like this.
But then Finchley pinks again, and I can’t bear to leave him there.
I hurry silently down to Reacher’s room, opening the door with a careful hand so as not to creak the hinges.
There’s the cage on its stand, left uncovered with a stub of candle nearby to give the lonely chaffinch some light.
‘This isn’t where you belong, is it?’ I whisper to him, picking up his cage and taking it over to the window, before pulling up the sash a fraction, just enough for a small bird to squeeze through. The cage door unlocks with a simple latch. I hold it open.
Finchley hops forward on his perch, tilting his head.
‘Go on, then.’
In a blur, the chaffinch is gone, just the flash of white tail feathers visible out there in the night. And then nothing.
I put the cage back where I found it. How unfortunate that Reacher forgot to latch it properly, that Mrs Allen had left the window open for a bit of air.
I’m grinning as I finally enter the closed wing, noting once more the clean track in the dust underfoot. As if someone has been travelling to and from the room regularly – to write a diary, perhaps? This has to be it.
Happily, Arabella’s old bedroom has been left unlocked, further confirming my theory that it’s in regular use.
I enter and cross to the cabinet, kneeling down to examine it.
The last time I looked inside, I’d poked my hands all over the interior and found nothing.
Then again, I hadn’t been looking for a secret compartment.
This time, when I take it in properly, I can see that the base does look much thicker than you would expect.
I don’t have anywhere to put the candle down, so I have to work single-handed.
First, I try sliding the bottom board this way and that, to see if it slots out, but my fingers simply skid across the surface.
Then, thinking of the mystery pictures I’ve seen at the cinema, I try looking for a hidden latch to press, a carving which doubles as a release.
Running my palm along the underside of the cabinet, I find a much simpler solution: a handle.
I give this a yank and, with a satisfying click, a drawer drops down.
When I slide it open, I’m faced with not one, but an array of notebooks.
Of course: if this is a diary that Arabella has been keeping for many years, it makes sense that there would be multiple volumes.
I don’t see the most recent instalment in its greenish leather binding – the others are all different sizes and colours, no interest shown in consistency.
I pick one of them up and find a date marked on the front: 1917.
Flick through the pages, not really taking in the words, until something catches my eye.
Arabella has a habit of underlining particular words, and I’ve just found ‘curse’ picked out in this manner.
28 March 1917. I had not been thinking of a curse exactly, but now that Morry has planted the idea in my skull, I can’t seem to shake it.
My suspicion proved that Reacher was the one to fan the flames of this delusion.
Attention drifting on a few lines, I see more: Because everything always goes back to that blasted night. To what I did.