His gaze wandered around the tiny room. Only the illustrations had been left tidy. Unusually for Kate, the place was a mess. There were artists’ materials everywhere, plus sketches, half-finished plans and pictures, notes and screwed-up pieces of paper.
He turned to the stack of paintings that he had photographed but left them alone. Not those nightmarish illustrations, not today, knowing that his dear little Sophie could be lying out on the fen, like the subject of one of her deranged aunt’s creations.
Again, he was struck by the horrible coincidences, the unexplained connections between all the events at Whisper Fen. He recalled that last picture, and Sophie’s dream, followed by her disappearance. He had to see it again.
He pulled it out and stared at it. A yellow post-it note was stuck to the top right-hand corner.
I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay out of my room, Will, so I didn’t bother to lock it. And you have seen this before, haven’t you? On one of your earlier visits? Ironic, don’t you think? Or do you still believe that children are welcome here?
He stared at the frightened child. Perhaps he hadn’t looked at it properly before, but the resemblance was clear enough now. Not to Sophie exactly, but to Eva, her mother. The look of fear had distorted the features, but the more he looked the more it became obvious. Kate had modelled that child on his dead sister.
He left the room feeling sick. Surely there was more to this than just grief over a lost baby. Emma had been his child too, and he had coped. So what had happened to Kate?
He shut the door and stood on the landing. The answer was all around him. Holland House had happened. Its miserable history had seeped into his lovely wife’s fragile mind and taken it over. He descended the stairs, step by step. As soon as Sophie was found — alive, or . . . he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate the alternative — he would ring the estate agents. He refused to see the rest of his life out in this dreary place. Kate could argue all she liked but they were leaving, and if she thought he would leave her alone in Holland House, she could think again. He’d burn it down before that happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Liz and Matt’s concern over Kate Stonebridge had diminished somewhat, but as the hours passed, their fear for the missing girl mounted.
‘Will is in a state of panic,’ observed Liz, washing up yet another trayful of dirty mugs. ‘If only there was something we could do or say to help the poor guy.’
Matt grunted. ‘He’s seen too much in the past, like we have. All the awful situations he had to confront in the force are probably running through his mind.’
‘Add to that his worry over Kate, and the macabre history of the children of Holland House. The way she spoke so casually about there being more deaths. It had me wondering if she could be right.’
‘I’d rather stick to the facts right now, wouldn’t you?’ Matt said. ‘And fact number one is that that little girl has been missing for far too long and, frankly, I’m starting to panic too.’
‘At least Kate’s not here to see it all. Sam reckons that, if she is amenable, she’ll probably be staying for about a week, or ten days.’ Liz refilled the kettle.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that she didn’t put up a fight?’ asked Matt. ‘I thought she’d protest like hell. Will said she simply agreed.’
‘I think perhaps she was upset by having the police and a hoard of strangers arrive on Whisper Fen,’ Liz said. ‘It was her special private place, and the search for Sophie would have been a colossal intrusion into her privacy. Maybe she needed to escape for a while. She obviously didn’t think she needed treatment, so she might have thought she was using the situation for her own ends.’
‘Maybe, Mrs Freud, but right now I’m not sure about anything where Kate Stonebridge is concerned.’ Matt dried the last of the mugs. ‘If it’s alright with you, I’m going to suggest to Will that he and I go and join some of the guys out on the fen. It will do him good to feel useful. He has his mobile, so if anything happens here, you could contact us.’
‘Go for it. I’ll call if anything occurs.’
Matt went out to where Will was pacing around the garden. ‘Come on, mate. Let’s get out there and help. Liz has got everything covered here.’
Will readily agreed.
The light was failing, and clouds were forming in great boiling grey masses. Matt nodded towards the sky. ‘If it gets any darker, they’ll be calling everyone in. All we need is another bloody downpour. So, if you’re ready, let’s go over to Tylers Lane. If any of our old cronies are still there, you might get a chance to have a look at Grove’s place.’
Donning waterproofs, the two of them set off down the lane.
They arrived to find a lone officer, another new lad, still on duty and checking through the shambles that had once been a garden. The old Berridge place had always been a hovel, and it hadn’t got any better.
‘Sorry. It’s all locked up again. CID have left and so has Mr Grove, although I understand he is coming back later tonight.’
Will stood chatting to the young PC, while Matt clambered through the shrubs in an overgrown flowerbed trying to see in through one of the grimy windows. The interior was almost invisible through the smears, but he could just make out a jumble of boxes, books and other junk. The frames of the windows were rotten, the exterior walls decorated with damp patches and dangerous looking cracks. He wondered how an educated man could live in such squalor.
Will joined him, and they peered into the gloom. Matt commented that other than the electric light fittings, it was very much the same as when Isaac Berridge had stood at the table skinning his hare.
‘They said he has a computer, well, I can’t see it.’ Will rubbed at the grimy glass.
‘Maybe it’s upstairs in his bedroom. There are only two rooms up there. One was a fair-sized bedroom, and the other a sort of windowless box room. Berridge used the small room for storing everything from dozens of jars of jams and preserves to seed potatoes and dahlia tubers. He even used to make his own carrot whisky and parsnip wine, oh, and a concoction that he brewed up and sold to the local eel men and fishermen to keep them free from the ague, whatever that was. The old men used to swear by it and paid a good price for a small bottle.’
‘God, look at all this!’ Will was gazing around the yard. An old mangle stood in one corner, its rollers, once bleached white by constant washing, now split and covered in green moss and greyish mildew. There were old brass pans heaped together around the iron legs of the mangle, and a pile of rusting pieces of gardening equipment spilled out over the stone paving. The skeletal remains of a small boat leaned drunkenly against the garden wall and some equally decayed lobster pots rotted quietly beside the outside privy.
‘All Isaac’s things,’ Matt said. ‘I remember when that boat used to be moored out on the other side of the sluice. His mother used to come out here every week to do his washing for him. I can still picture the old woman all dressed in black and with her sleeves rolled up, passing the sheets through that mangle. She had muscles on her forearms like a brickie’s hod carrier. I was a bit scared of Isaac, but that was nothing compared to my fear of his mother.’ Matt grinned at Will. ‘The local children said she was a witch. She was covered in what looked like warts, although no one had the courage to get close enough to see for sure. Now I realise that the poor woman suffered from some dreadful skin complaint. No wonder she shouted and swore at the little horrors who were always pointing at her and calling her names.’