Chapter Three #3
“Eight months of solitude is a lot,” she said, hoping to draw him out, but he shrugged and said, “Suits some people.”
The cottage stood in a glade just above the shore.
They approached the back of it down a slope.
He dropped her bag in a small boot room inside the back door.
“Make yourself at home. There’s a house book with all the instructions you should need.
I’ll be here Friday same time to pick you up unless I hear from you in the meantime.
If the weather looks bad, I’ll be in touch.
If you can’t get a phone signal here, you need to walk further around the island. ”
Clio checked her phone. One bar, which disappeared as she looked.
“Any questions?” he asked. She could tell he wanted to go. It was going to be dark soon. She was thinking there was probably
something she should ask, but nothing came to mind. When the back door shut behind him, she heard total silence and felt the
weight of stillness in the air.
She explored the space. The ground floor was one large room, kitchen and living space combined, two sofas around a stove,
a large pine dining table that could seat six. The furnishings were colorful and warm. Logs and kindling were stacked by the
fireplace. Two big windows borrowed watery light from outside that illuminated the interior softly. She got a fire lit after
a few attempts, made a cup of tea, and spent a long time staring out the window.
“You know what, boss,” she said aloud, addressing Lillian. The sound of her voice was awkward in the quiet. What was she doing
talking to a dead person? She carried on anyway. “I don’t know what happened to Eleanor Bruton, but if I was going to murder
someone, this would be a perfect place to do it.”
A murder here would be without witnesses. The water provided an easy way to dispose of a body. The problem was access.
Pockmarks appeared on the surface of the loch. Rain. In a heartbeat, Clio was transported back to London, to the moment of
Lillian’s death, to the questions nobody could answer. Like, why was there a CCTV glitch in one of the most camera-heavy areas
of London for a couple of hours on that morning? Was it by chance or design that the number plate of the hit-and-run vehicle
had been partially obscured? For Clio, these were already two coincidences too many.
Then there was the bad luck of the sudden downpour and the crowded streets and the fact that the accident had happened in the blink of an eye, meaning most witnesses had been preoccupied with wrangling umbrellas, or blinkered by hoods, or running for shelter.
All the police had been able to glean from interviews was that the car that struck Lillian was likely a black sedan.
This had all needled at Clio. So had Lillian’s warning that she should be very careful.
When she gave her own statement to colleagues about that morning, she told them that she and Lillian had met for coffee and
a wander through the museum. She described it as a personal goodbye after the big party, and nobody seemed to doubt it. They
knew the two women were close.
Clio felt uncomfortable hiding information from them. It felt like a risk to lie, but also a risk to tell them the truth,
because part of her believed that Lillian’s death, just like Eleanor Bruton’s, might not have been an accident.
Diana
When Diana arrived to update her colleagues on how things had gone with Anya and Tracy, she found Sarabeth Schilders, Karen
Lynch, and Giulia Orlando waiting for her. They’d drawn the blinds in the back room of the Institute of Manuscript Studies,
and the space was dimly lit.
“It went well,” she said before they asked. It would be the first thing they wanted to know. This had been so long in the
planning. Everything was coming together. Finally. “Anya was blown away by the manuscripts. As we agreed, I asked her to let
us know by end of day tomorrow if she wants the position.”
“Why not give her a little more time?” Giulia asked. “What if having such a tight deadline puts her off?”
“I’m only following orders,” Diana said. “As you know.”
“Do you think she’ll go for it?” Sarabeth asked.
“I think so. She was like a kid in a candy shop around the manuscripts.”
“Go figure,” Giulia said.
“Do you think she believes that Tracy is the benefactor?” Karen asked.
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about there,” Diana said.
“I mean, why would she doubt it?” Sarabeth snapped.
Karen shrugged. “She’s a clever girl.”
“We’ve been very careful,” Diana reassured her. “I won’t keep you much longer. I just wanted to check in in person before
Anya and Sid leave town. Giulia, anything to add?”
“Paul and I took Sid out for a drink. He seems like a nice guy. He loved the cottage. He and Paul got on very well, too. Paul
offered to take him bouldering if they move here, and Sid seemed keen.”
“Good. Any red flags?”
Giulia shook her head. “No. He had a lot of questions about the Wi-Fi that we had no clue how to answer.”
“Let’s make sure we get answers for him and reassure them that everything can be made just the way they want it. Sarabeth?”
The older woman frowned as she polished the lenses of her glasses with the sleeve of her jacket. “I think we’re on the cusp
of winning this and doing some very serious damage to the Kats, so let’s not fuck it up. My main concern isn’t whether Anya
Brown will agree to work with us, because I think she will. It’s how we stop the Kats getting to her like they got to the
others.”
“We’ll take good care of Anya Brown.”
“They got to the others.”
Diana bit her lip. Sarabeth was wrong, but she couldn’t know the truth. And her concern was valid. The Kats were deadly when
they wanted or needed to be.
She said, “Of course we won’t let anything happen to Anya. She’s our best and last hope to transform this organization in our lifetimes.”
Clio
Clio’s sleep was wrecked again once she started thinking about Lillian. She lay in bed but kept the curtains open, because
out here on the island who was going to look in? The only artificial lights she could see were pinpricks, shining from properties
on the other side of the loch. There were no headlamps to rake the ceiling here.
Even though she felt blanketed by the deepest darkness she’d ever experienced, it couldn’t muffle her recall of the morning
Lillian died. Memories surfaced as abruptly as flipped tarot cards, riddling her with grief and uncertainty.
Tired of lying in bed, she got up early and watched dawn break over the loch, the sky oozing sherbet pinks and oranges onto
the glassy water and misting the ruined castle with watery light. She held her breath as a red stag stalked the edge of the
forest right outside the window. A cup of black tea warmed her hands. She blinked in the rising steam and the stag was gone.
She watched a heron fly past, wings beating silently just a few feet above the water, and then, for the first time since Lillian
died, she broke down the way she needed to and cried uncontrollably.
When her fit of weeping had subsided, she felt steely inside and determined.
She got dressed and went out. The forest receded around her in dark and darker shades of green, but the sun had risen high enough that here and there the edges of things seemed tinged with gold.
Wet leaves stuck to her boots as she walked the path that led around the perimeter of the island.
Now and then, something living crashed or flapped in the undergrowth, startling her, but she never saw what it was.
She was guided by a hand-drawn map of the island she’d found in the house book, and her goal was to reach Seal Cove, where Eleanor’s body had been discovered.
She knew she was close when she heard waves scraping a pebbly shore, the inhalations and exhalations of the loch. A ridge
of large stones and a patch of coarse sand lay between her and the water. The stones were slippery, and everything on the
shore was dressed in seaweed, colored briny red and yellow. There were strong smells of both freshness and decay.
The loch was mostly calm, though she could see muscular ripples offshore that hinted at currents easily strong enough to claim
Eleanor Bruton’s body. At the shore’s edge a flat shelf of rock was visible just beneath the water’s surface. If I wanted
to swim, Clio thought, that’s where I’d get in. She could see that if she slipped over in that spot, it would be easy to sustain
a significant head injury, and with no one around to help, she’d be in trouble.
It relaxed her a little, because it made the story about Eleanor’s death seem entirely believable, even if she would still
like to know why Eleanor had come here. There were many less remote places to hide out, places with fewer practical challenges
for someone living alone, places you didn’t need a boat to access, places with a shop. But maybe that was the point; maybe
Eleanor wanted to make herself as difficult to reach as possible. Maybe she wanted to deter visitors. Maybe she came here
with the embroidery for some reason, but died by accident. Though that didn’t explain why it wasn’t found among her things.
Maybe her only reason for coming was to escape her family. Not all women wanted to be free childcare providers. Perhaps she
hadn’t been as excited about her grandchild as her family believed.
Clio hiked farther around the island until her legs ached and her stomach growled. When she got back to the cottage, she ate
hungrily then fell asleep on the sofa and woke late in the afternoon, disorientated, groggy, and a little chilly. But it felt
good to have slept. She’d been running on too few hours of rest since Lillian died.
She went upstairs and ran a bath in the claw-footed tub, which had chipped enamel and cranky taps. The water was hot, but the pressure was poor, and the tub was deep. It would take a while to fill.
It was getting dark and she noticed a man in a boat on the loch, so she went to pull the drapes before she undressed. They
were made from heavy, worn green velvet and moved easily enough along the wooden rail they hung on, until the bottom of one
snagged against the leg of a chair.
Clio reached down to unsnag it, but it was caught firm at the hem. She grabbed a handful of the fabric and yanked, but it
didn’t come loose. She knelt to inspect it more closely. There was something sewn into the hem; it crinkled as her hand closed
around it. She worked the drape loose, turned the hem up, and saw a line of stitching, neat and new.
She fetched a kitchen knife to cut the threads and pulled out an ordinary white envelope. It was unmarked but sealed, a gap
at one end just wide enough for her to slip her little finger into. She tore it open and found a sheet of paper inside.
She unfolded it. At the top of the page there was a simple line drawing of a sun, with wavy rays. Beneath it, a handwritten
poem. She read it and said, “Holy shit.”
If you read this, I may be dead,
But I leave you with this little thread.
Your first refuge and your first inn,
Is a city to house deserving women.
He who on the ladder has the sacred bird displayed,
Was where two men hang but St. Eustace did fade.
Where horse and man cross Styx with Big Dog,
A visit here could lift the fog.
But if you share this castle view,
You may soon be dead, too.