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“It is too soon to give up hope,” I said.
“Not if you have never had any,” he replied sadly.
We sat together in silence, but gradually Eddie’s distant mood seemed to change to one of distraction. His attention span was never good, and I supposed that there were no rules laid down for how to behave in circumstances such as these. Lines of worry furrowed his brow, and his eyes darted wildly around the room as though searching for something he could not see.
“Are you feeling quite well?” I flinched at the inanity of the words even as I uttered them.
“Hmm?” He patted his pockets. Patiently, I repeated my question. “Yes, sorry,” he said, with an attempt at a reassuring smile. Storm clouds darkened the blue of his eyes.
“Have you lost something?”
He laughed ruefully. “Nothing important,” he assured me. “I’m sure I’ve left it in my room.”
“Do you want me to help you look for it?” I rose from the table, but he shook his head.
“No, really, Dita,” he said, holding up a hand to prevent me from following. “It’s a trifling matter, nothing to trouble yourself over.” Thoughtfully, I watched him go. Now, with this new uncertainty surrounding Eleanor’s disappearance, was not the time for the conversation we needed to have. Nevertheless, there was a lot to be said, and most of it would have to come from me.
Porter came into the room then to supervise clearing the table, and I remembered the key in my pocket. My lips parted to tell him about it, but a thought—sudden, horrible and insidious—forestalled me. I closed my mouth with a decisive snap and instead hurried to my room to fetch my cloak.
* * *
I heaved a sigh of relief. The lock had not been fixed and the door swung open easily. The cottage that Eddie used as his studio was quiet. I looked around cautiously. There was no sign that anyone had been here recently. Eddie’s easel still held the landscape on which he had been working when we first arrived. And yet…I sensed, somewhere deep and primeval inside my gut, that I was not alone in this house. The cellar door drew my eye. A new padlock, heavy and bright, rested like a jewel against its scarred panels. Why would anyone want, or need, to lock the cellar?
A series of thoughts, disjointed and apparently unconnected, played insistently through my mind. Eleanor’s words about Cad’s short visit when I was laid up with flu. On his arrival, he had said something to infuriate Eddie, who had flung out of the house in temper. Mere minutes before that scene, Cad had left Amy Winton struggling with her basket and bonnet on the cliff top. The day Nellie Smith disappeared, and Eddie’s reluctance to hug me until he had bathed. His greatcoat buttoned to the neck. His refusal to hand his bag to Porter. Sad little Vicky seeking solace in the arms of a lover—any lover, even one who loathed and despised her for being a woman—on Montol Eve. A boy who was Eleanor’s illegitimate son; a boy who looked just like Eddie. Sandor smiling down at Eleanor. Sandor with his throat cut. A forbidden love affair brought to an abrupt end by Lucy. A murderer who, like me, had travelled from Paris to Cornwall. Whose victims all looked like Lucy. A man who, in his twisted mind, hated his mother so much… No! I was wrong. I must be. Even as I told myself that, I heard Cad say, “You know I didn’t do it, Ed,” and saw the angry flush suffuse Eddie’s face.
I removed the key from my pocket and turned it thoughtfully over in my hand. Perhaps I should go straight to Cad, or even Tynan, with my fears? But what were they? I couldn’t express myself coherently in my own thoughts, let alone speak the awful words aloud to another. Decisively, I slid the key into the padlock and, with a nervous glance over my shoulder, turned it. The lock snapped open easily in my hand. That should have been my cue to run. Until that moment, I might still have been wrong.
The door swung inward, and the dark sweep of the stairs dared me to descend. I hesitated. A slight sound—was it a groan? Or the old house settling?—from the gloomy depths, reached my ears.
“Eleanor?” I called her name and another groan, louder this time, shocked me into action. As I set my foot onto the top stair, a hand—shoved hard into the small of my back—sent me tumbling into the dungeon-dark nothingness beyond the stairs. I hit the stone floor hard and the breath left my body with a loud hiss. Searing pain shot up from my wrist to my shoulder. Looking up, I saw a man’s tall silhouette framed briefly in the light of the open doorway before the door slammed and the padlock clicked shut again with awful finality. Darkness as black and silent as a crypt enveloped me.
