The House on the Cliff (31 page)

“Oh?” Arianrhod didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“Yes. In fact, he broke down in tears. . . .”

Arianrhod gave a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She didn’t sound very sorry. “But I don’t really think I need to know all this. I’ve done my best to help. . . .”

“No, you haven’t.” I tried to remain calm, but her blasé attitude was beginning to anger me. “In fact, your son’s mental state is partly your fault, as far as I can see.”

Psychotherapists don’t like using the word “fault.” It’s not one of the approved buzzwords. But in this case, I felt it was fair enough.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“You told Gwydion to come and see me. Told him to tell me a pack of lies about a recurring dream he’d been having. A dream in which he witnessed his father pushing Elsa Lindberg overboard on the yacht.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Yes. And I believe him.”

Arianrhod looked down at her cigarette, tapping the ash off it into the ashtray.

“He faked the whole thing at your behest,” I went on. “He came to me with this story of a recurring dream, and then pretended to have a recovered memory about the murder. He did it so you could explain why you hadn’t been to the police before about Evan, and to dupe me into being a witness. Am I right?”

Arianrhod took another drag of her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs for a couple of seconds, and then let it out.

“And it was you who tracked me down and sent me that photograph of Evan with blacked-out eyes, wasn’t it? To kick-start the whole process?”

There was a silence, and then she nodded assent.

“Well, aren’t you going to say sorry, at least?”

“Sorry.”

Her voice was flat. She sounded like a sulky child being made to apologize for a minor misdemeanor. I wanted to slap her.

“It’s bad enough lying to me, using me for your own ends,” I continued, “but what I really can’t understand is how you could have done this to Gwydion. You can see how vulnerable he is.”

Arianrhod didn’t reply.

“In fact, I actually hold you responsible for Gwydion’s breakdown.” I was in full flow now. “You’ve manipulated him, lied to me, and all to get at Evan.” I paused. “But what I don’t understand is why. If you were so keen to put Evan behind bars, why didn’t you inform the police about Elsa’s murder twenty years ago? Why wait until now?”

“I’ll tell you why.” Arianrhod spoke slowly and firmly. She seemed entirely unrepentant about what she’d done. “Because before all this came out I found out something about Evan. You know about this knighthood he was up for?”

I nodded.

“Well, I heard him talking about it on the phone to Rhiannon, his so-called PA. He didn’t know I was listening. He told her he was planning to wait it out on the yacht until he got the knighthood, then divorce me. Set up home with her. Marry her. The day after the knighthood was going to come through, he’d begin proceedings.” She paused. “I couldn’t believe it. Cradle-snatcher. Bastard.” She seemed almost to be talking to herself. “He’s nearly old enough to be her grandfather. It’s disgusting.”

She took another drag of her cigarette and looked at me, as if remembering that I was still there. “This was the final straw, as far as I was concerned. Evan’s always had his women, but the fact that he was going to set up home with this one . . . she’s pregnant, so I’ve heard. Doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for, the little fool.”

She stopped for a moment, and a look of anguish suddenly came over her face, before vanishing just as suddenly.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I’d always defended him before, tried to keep the marriage going. But there was no point anymore. So I decided, at last, to spoil his plans. Do what I should have done many years ago, and report his crime to the police, instead of going on covering up for him.”

“But why didn’t you just pick up the phone and report him? Why did you have to involve Gwydion in all this?”

“I needed to explain why I hadn’t gone to the police before. Getting Gwydion to come to you and say that he had recovered a memory of the incident seemed more believable. Especially if you could act as an expert witness at the trial.” She lowered her voice, as if talking to herself. “It was a good plan. If Gwydion hadn’t screwed it up, it would have worked. But now . . .” Her voice trailed off.

My anger subsided a little. Arianrhod had used me, used Gwydion, to further her own ends, but I couldn’t help sympathizing with her to some degree. Evan was a man apparently without shame or guilt—I knew that from personal experience. He took what he wanted, when he wanted. And now, as he was moving into his old age, he’d decided to set up home with a younger woman. Leave the wife he’d mistreated for so many years, the wife who had faithfully supported him through thick and thin, put up with his womanizing, covered up the scandal about Elsa Lindberg. It wasn’t surprising that when he’d finally betrayed Arianrhod completely, she’d decided to take her revenge, put her husband in the dock, as a last act of defiance.

“Tell me, Arianrhod,” I said. “What really happened to Elsa? What do you know? What does Gwydion know?”

Arianrhod laid her cigarette carefully in the ashtray and began her story. I sensed she was choosing her words carefully.

“I remember it well. It was a beautiful day for sailing, but I didn’t want Evan to take Gwydion out on the boat. He was only six, and he couldn’t swim. It wasn’t safe, and he hated going. But Evan insisted. I went out for the day, to take my mind off it, and when I got home that afternoon I found Gwydion alone in the house. Elsa wasn’t there, and nor was Evan. Gwydion was in his room, lying on the bed, crying. Something had traumatized him, and I got him to tell me what it was. He said he’d seen his father kissing Elsa on deck, and then he’d felt seasick, so he’d gone to the cabin to lie down. While he was there he’d heard them fighting, so he’d come up and seen Evan pushing Elsa off the side of the boat. I managed to calm him down, and when Evan got home, later that evening, I asked him about it. He told me that Gwydion was lying, that there hadn’t been a fight. Elsa had just decided, of her own accord, to swim back to shore from the boat.”

She paused, as if casting her mind back, and then went on. “Elsa didn’t come home that night. When her body turned up on the beach the next day, Evan told me it was an accident, that she must have drowned as she tried to swim into the bay. He was distraught, or pretended to be. Then he admitted that the previous day he’d been trying to seduce her. Told me that if it was discovered that she’d been on the boat with him, his career would be ruined. Begged me to help him.” She sighed. “So I did as he said, and when the police came, I backed up his story.”

“So it was Gwydion who told you that he’d seen Evan push Elsa in the water?”

“Yes.”

“You had no other evidence.”

“No.” Arianrhod looked puzzled. I could see she was wondering what I was getting at.

“He was only six. Didn’t it ever occur to you that he’d made up the story? Out of anger toward his father, perhaps?”

“Children don’t make up things like that.”

I tried a different tack. “The thing is, I noticed, when Gwydion told me the story, he got one little detail wrong. He said that when he saw Evan and Elsa kissing, they were sitting by the wheel of the yacht.” I paused. “I actually went down to Penarth and checked Evan’s yacht, and I saw that it has a tiller, not a wheel.”

Arianrhod looked nonplussed for a moment. Then she recovered herself. “Maybe he had it changed.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Oh, how should I know. I don’t know anything about boats. I can’t stand them.” She was irritated now. She picked up her cigarette and tried to take a drag, but it had gone out, so she put it back in the ashtray.

“And another thing. Elsa was a good swimmer.” I didn’t say how I knew that. I didn’t want to give away too much information. “And it wasn’t far into shore. How would she have drowned on the way back?”

Arianrhod shrugged. “The currents out there are treacherous. And the tide has a way of coming in very fast in the bay. Once it’s in, you can’t get a foothold on the rocks. You’re out of your depth.”

“Yes, but she could have climbed in on the jetty.”

“That can be difficult, too.” She paused for a moment. I could see she was thinking about something. Something she wasn’t telling me.

“I wasn’t going to mention this before,” she said at last. “I wanted everyone to think that Evan was the person responsible for Elsa’s death. But the truth is, there was another man involved.”

“What d’you mean, another man?”

Arianrhod put her head on one side and looked at me quizzically.

“Why do you think your husband leapt to Evan’s defense so quickly?”

For a moment, I was nonplussed. Then I realized what she was getting at.

“You’re not implying that Bob had something to do with this, are you?” I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. He would have told me.”

“Well, it’s the truth. Honest to God. Bob was waiting for her when she swam in to the bay that day.” She paused, as if casting her mind back. “He’d come round to the house, ostensibly to see Evan. But the person he really wanted to see was Elsa. He’d met her at the house before, they’d played tennis together a couple of times. I’d noticed he was rather smitten with her.” There was a sly note of pleasure in her voice. “He was a bit of a lad, in those days, anyway. Maybe he changed after he met you.”

I didn’t believe a word of what she was saying, but the story Mari had told me about Bob running off on his teenage fiancé came into my mind, along with an image of the translator in the skimpy dress. A pang of fear ran through me.

“Evan and Bob had evidently locked antlers over Elsa, this pretty little thing of nineteen. They were like a pair of rutting stags. It was quite comical to watch.” She gave a wry grin. “Bob was ten years younger than Evan, of course, so it looked as if he might be in with a chance. But it was clear to me that Evan was going to win out. He always did, one way or another.”

There was an arrogance in her tone that made me realize how proud she’d been, perhaps still was, of her position as the long-term mate of the alpha male, however much he’d humiliated her.

“Bob wouldn’t give up, though,” she went on. “He was determined to stick to Elsa like a limpet. So when he came round to the house that day, I sent him down to the jetty to wait for the boat to come in.” A smile began to play on her lips. She looked like the cat that got the cream. “For all we know, it could have been Bob, not Evan, who drowned Elsa.”

This time, it was Elsa who flashed through my mind. Elsa from the photo that Solveig had showed me: blonde, with long, tanned legs, innocent yet knowing. Could Bob have known her? Tried to seduce her, as he had the others? It seemed impossible. Yet . . .

I tried not to show that I was rattled.

“How could he have done that?”

Silence fell for a moment. Then Arianrhod got up from her chair, as if having made a sudden decision.

“Come on, I’ll take you down there and show you.”

21

Outside, a wind was blowing up. There was a faint rustling of trees as we walked over the lawns behind the house and into Arianrhod’s seaside garden, bounded by its high walls. With winter coming on, it didn’t look as pretty as it had done last time I’d visited. As we passed by, I noticed that she’d been neglecting it. She hadn’t been deadheading the roses, the flowerbeds were full of dry brown stalks, and the vegetable patch had been left to molder, untouched.

She opened the small wooden door set into the wall and led me out onto the cliff-top path outside. We made our way carefully along the track, trying to avoid the mud, and stopped for a moment at the top of the steps to look at the view. There wasn’t much to see that day. A thick mist had descended over the brown water, and the sky above was a leaden gray.

I peered down the slippery steps cut into the rock that led to the beach below. The tide was in, as she’d said, right up to the foot of the cliffs. I hadn’t seen the bay like this before, the water completely covering the flat expanse of volcanic rock beneath. I shivered involuntarily, remembering the first time I’d come here and stood looking out to sea on the cliff edge, with Arianrhod; and the second, when I’d gone down the steps with Gwydion, to the beach far below.

Arianrhod noticed me eyeing the steps nervously.

“Come on. I’ll lead.”

She began to walk down the steps, turning to wave me down after her. She didn’t hold on to the handrail, balancing herself by holding her arms out on either side of her. I was more cautious. I grasped the rail, maneuvered myself onto the steps, and then slowly, carefully, took each one, feeling its bumps and cracks with my foot before putting my full weight on it.

Arianrhod looked back and grinned. “See you at the bottom.”

She walked, practically skipped, down the steps ahead of me. She seemed suddenly energized, carefree almost. I hadn’t seen her move like that before. I wondered, fleetingly, whether it was the danger, the possibility of falling, that had excited her. But mostly I concentrated on my own slow progress down the steps, praying that I wouldn’t trip and hurt myself. I’m not a daredevil, never have been; I know some people get a kick out of taking risks, but I don’t—not the physical kind, anyway.

When I finally reached the bottom of the steps and walked out onto the jetty, Arianrhod was standing looking out to sea. She didn’t turn round as I came level with her.

“It’s quite deep out here, isn’t it?” I said. “When the tide comes in like this.”

“Mmm.” Arianrhod wasn’t listening. She seemed distracted. “Let’s walk out to the end,” she said, still gazing out at the horizon. “That’s where Elsa would have swum in. I’ll show you.”

I looked down at the boards on the jetty beneath my feet. I hadn’t noticed it before, but some of them were missing. Others were soft with seawater.

“Is it safe? I mean, in all this wind?”

Arianrhod turned to look at me. I saw a glimmer of amusement in her eye that struck me as curious, in the circumstances.

She nodded, took my arm, and led me down to the end of the jetty. We stood there for a moment, the wind blowing in our faces, the water all around, making a peculiar slapping noise as it hit the wooden boards beneath our feet. I thought of the time Gwydion and I had kissed there. The sound of the sea hitting the decking had excited me then; now it just made me feel afraid.