Angel with Two Faces

Chapter Three

Nathaniel Shoebridge leant against the back door of the cottage that Harry had shared with his sisters, clutching a mug of cheap whisky and hoping that the solid stone walls might restore some of the strength which had deserted him the moment he stepped up to the lectern. He didn’t often drink, and the liquid burnt a harsh, sour path to the pit of his stomach, but he needed something to dull the memory of the service and the humiliation of standing in front of his own congregation without a single word of comfort to offer them. He had only been in the pulpit for a few minutes, but it had been long enough to remind him of how things used to be and he doubted that the confidence he had worked so hard to find would be quick to return.

His shyness had dogged him for years, clouding most of his childhood with a horror of being noticed that amounted almost to a phobia. He loved learning, but dreaded going to school in case he was singled out to answer a question or read in class, and the pretty, white washed laundry cottage that William Motley had converted into a schoolroom for the estate’s youngest children came to represent all that he feared most; just the sight of its slate roof through the trees was enough to send his stomach into spasms, and it made no difference that he was bright or that his classmates were friendly and his teacher kind. His education continued to be a wretched experience until, on Empire Day 1920, almost a year after he had transferred to the small secondary school in the village, everything changed. The teacher, Morveth Wearne, must have been in her fifties even then, but she had an intelligent, gentle manner that created its own discipline and the children were instantly at ease with her, Nathaniel included. As unorthodox in her lessons as in other areas of her life, Morveth had decided to follow the usual flag-waving and patriotic singing with a school play, and – in what Nathaniel later recognised as her own comment on colonialism – had chosen The Tempest. He had dreaded that day for weeks, knowing that there were not enough pupils in the class for him to avoid taking a part, and had even feigned illness to get out of it. Fortunately, his parents weren’t fooled; if they had been, he would have missed out on the most important day of his life. In his first encounter with Shakespeare, he found something that seemed more real to him than fear. So engrossed was he in the magic of the play and the beauty of the language that he lost all self-consciousness and, by the time he was called upon to speak Ferdinand’s opening lines, the words were the only thing that mattered.

After the play, and while the euphoria was still with him, Nathaniel had gone up to Morveth and asked nervously if she might give him something else to read. She looked at him for a long time, as if sensing how important this was to him, then smiled and took an old brown book with faded gold lettering from the back of the drawer in her desk. That was fifteen years ago, almost to the day, but he could still remember the faint smell of leather and the way the prayer book opened at particular passages that Morveth must have read over and over again. He had rushed through his tea that night, scarcely able to wait until he was alone in his room and able to take his time over turning its pages. Some of the words were difficult and strange at first, but the prose – which the Reverend Motley’s hurried, half-hearted delivery never brought to life in church – slowly began to speak to him through its rhythms, and he was fascinated by the markers of a man’s life which the different sections traced. From that day on, he read the book when he went to bed each night and it came to symbolise a magic even greater than Shakespeare; this, too, was theatre, but it was theatre for every day, written not just for actors but for ordinary people like him and his family and, as he grew older, he empathised with all the emotions it portrayed – anger and confusion as well as love and praise. He was drawn so strongly to these simple phrases, spoken for hundreds of years – phrases that offered a connection to the past as strong as the landscape he had grown up with – that he knew instantly what he wanted to do with his life, no matter how difficult it proved. He kept the leather-bound volume with Morveth’s blessing, and it was still the prayer book he used in church; he was forever grateful for the way in which its contents had shown him how to deal with the world and his place in it.

The murmur of voices inside the cottage was growing steadily louder now as more people arrived for the wake and drink loosened the tongues of those who had been there for some time. He knew he should go back in, but another few minutes of air might clear his head and give him the confidence to face everyone again. What would his life have been like, he wondered, if he had never been shown an alternative path to the one that was expected of him? Easier, certainly, especially in those early days. His parents had always assumed that he would work on the farm like his brothers; when he finally plucked up the courage to talk to them about his future, they greeted his intention to enter the Church with a mixture of consternation and pain. Nathaniel understood their concerns – the present incumbent of St Winwaloe’s was hardly well placed to defend the institution against accusations of corruption and greed, and people of his class were not obvious candidates for ordination – but he was intelligent and dedicated, and he stubbornly stood his ground. Gradually, with patience and a conviction which astonished them all, he brought his family round to the idea. Each time he returned home from his hard-earned college training, happier and more settled than ever, they softened a little, and were won over completely when they realised that his commitment was to the estate and not to the souls of strangers, that – rather than alienate him from them – the Church would bind him to his community more tightly than putting a spade in his hand ever could.

On a day like today, though, such certainties seemed to belong to another life. First alive, and now dead, Harry Pinching had managed to undermine everything that Nathaniel had ever been sure of. They had been friends for as long as he could remember, drawn to each other’s company by a shared love of the Loe estate and by contrasting but complementary personalities. The bond was strong and undemanding, and had fitted easily into each of their lives until one morning, just a few months earlier, when they were out riding together, racing along the sand at Loe Bar as they often did in fine weather. Nathaniel was a good horseman, one of the few people on the estate who could match Harry stride for stride. On this occasion, he had gone one better, reaching the line of rocks which acted as a finishing post a good ten seconds in front. As his friend caught up with him – his eyes bright with the exhilaration of speed and competition, his smile generous in defeat – Nathaniel was astonished to realise that what he felt for him – what he had always felt for Harry – was love. It was a moment of conviction as powerful and overwhelming as when he had first opened the prayer book, but so utterly at odds with it that he had been unable to do anything other than turn his horse and ride quickly for home, flustered and convinced that his shame was written all over his face.

Harry had known, he was sure of it, and could not resist using the power it gave him. For the first time, Nathaniel noticed a self-consciousness about his friend’s easy sexuality; perhaps it was his imagination, but Harry seemed to go out of his way to slap him on the back or shake his hand, until the briefest of touches was enough to send a jolt of desire right through him. Bewildered by his own feelings, Nathaniel found it impossible to read Harry’s. He was unwilling to believe that Harry would taunt him maliciously, but the thought that his love might be reciprocated was too dangerous even to contemplate. Eventually, unable to stand it any longer, he had simply kept away. When his family asked what had happened, he blamed his own commitment to the Church for the estrangement; the unjustified slur on Harry’s loyalty seemed a small act of betrayal in comparison with the truth.

If Nathaniel had not suspected – albeit reluctantly – that his own vulnerability had laid bare a spiteful streak in Harry, he would have dismissed outright the revelation that had come his way two or three days before the accident – a revelation which had left him wrestling with lust and guilt, love and disgust. At first, he had turned to denial as the best antidote to them but, once the suspicion was there, he could never quite convince himself that Harry was innocent of the charge laid against him. Perhaps Harry’s death was the best possible outcome – for everyone. Certainly, his own first reaction to news of the accident had been relief, and he had seen God’s hand in a situation which was beyond human intervention. But if that was the case, why did it feel so wrong, and so painful? Was that his punishment for feelings which should never have been acknowledged? Despite the words of comfort that he delivered so sincerely to others, he realised now that it was only possible to make your peace with the dead if you had reconciled your differences with the living.

He took another swig of the whisky, hoping that the sour taste in his mouth might temporarily overshadow the bitterness in his head.

‘Don’t think that will help.’ Morwenna could barely keep her fury in check, and the contempt in her voice hurt him far more than any physical blow could have done. ‘How could you let him down like that? You were supposed to be his friend.’ Nathaniel turned to look at her and, for a moment, it was as though Harry were standing in front of him. How alike they were if you looked closely, he thought, although anger – which had always brought a sulkiness to Harry’s mouth, detracting from the strength of his face – seemed to enhance his sister’s beauty, alleviating the exhaustion which made her look a decade older than her twenty-six years. He could see why so many people were attracted to her. How much easier life would be if only he could have been one of them.

‘I know you’re upset about the funeral,’ he began, ‘but you can’t expect me to stand in church and lie now that I know the truth. I’m sorry if I let you down, but I can’t pretend that my feelings for Harry are straightforward.’ That was an understatement, but he had no intention of letting Morwenna see how much he had loved her brother, or how deeply he was grieving for the loss of everything he had believed Harry to be. ‘I couldn’t find the words you wanted to hear,’ he added, knowing he was doing no better now, ‘and I wouldn’t have trusted myself to speak them anyway.’

‘It’s a shame you haven’t always been so tongue-tied,’ Morwenna said bitterly. ‘Why did you have to say anything, Nathaniel? Couldn’t you just pretend you hadn’t heard and carry on as normal? Isn’t that what they teach in your Christian schools – how to turn the other cheek?’ She looked away from him, and he could see what an effort she was making to prevent her anger from dissolving into tears. ‘I thought you were different, but you stand up there like all the rest of them, armed with your self-righteousness and your phrase-book of forgiveness, and when you have the perfect opportunity to practise what you preach, you don’t have the strength even to try to understand. Well, let me give you a lesson in absolution – there is no atonement for what you’ve started. Harry’s dead, and it’s too late to make amends.’

Nathaniel’s head was heavy with heat and whisky, and his temper got the better of him. ‘So ignorance is best, is it?’ He was shouting now, and the change in him took Morwenna by surprise. ‘You’d rather I let him get away with it than shatter your fantasy of a perfect brother? There’s a big difference between turning the other cheek and blindly refusing to see – and Harry went too far for either.’ He softened a little, trying to put himself in Morwenna’s shoes; if he was guilty about his estrangement from Harry, how must she feel? The memory of those final, angry words she had exchanged with her brother would be almost too much to bear. ‘Look, I told you what I’d heard because I thought you’d want to know. You can’t blame yourself for the accident or anything that happened before it.’

She rounded on him suddenly and, for a moment, he honestly thought she was going to strike him. ‘I don’t blame myself for Harry’s death,’ she replied, her face just inches from his. ‘I blame you. And according to your precious textbook of right and wrong, the way he died was as great a sin as anything he did in life.’

Archie took a cup of tea out to the garden and waited for Morwenna to seek him out. She had been continuously surrounded by people since the funeral party arrived back at Loe Cottage, and he hadn’t even tried to speak to her: what she wanted to say to him could clearly not be said in public. In any case, the silence during the long walk back from the church had been uncomfortable rather than respectful and he was glad of a moment or two on his own, free from the tensions that had seeped into a community which he remembered as harmonious and good-natured. A lot seemed to have changed here in just a few months – but then he only ever came home fleetingly these days, so perhaps it had been different for some time and he had simply never noticed. More than ever, he looked forward to seeing Josephine; things might have been difficult between them, but at least the awkwardness was familiar; the drama that he sensed here made him feel like an understudy who had learnt the lines for the wrong play.

As brief as his visits were, though, he was sure he would have noticed how shabby and neglected the cottage had become if it had been that way when he was last here. The flowerbeds which Mary and Sam Pinching had taken such a pride in, and which Morwenna always tended meticulously as a tribute to her parents, were now overgrown and full of weeds; terracotta pots remained empty and covered in the dark-green moss of a damp winter, and the trailing honeysuckle which covered the south-facing gable end seemed to have given up hope of anyone noticing that its trellis had come loose from the wall and was crushing the branches into the ground with its weight. The house – which his uncle and some of the men from the estate had restored after the fire – had fared no better. Stubborn orange rust marks circled the hinges of doors and windows, weeds grew out of the thatch, and the paintwork looked tired and dirty. Loe Cottage seemed to Archie to share the family’s grief, although he couldn’t help feeling that to get to this state the deterioration must have begun some time before Harry’s death. He had always admired the strength with which the twins had kept the family together after their parents’ death, but lately they must have let things go. Why, he wondered? Some lines from Tennyson came into his head – one of those merciless evocations of sadness and isolation that the poet was so good at. This was hardly a moated grange but the dreariness was the same, and Morwenna certainly looked every bit as weary as the Mariana of the poem’s title – weary, and tired of life.

Archie had no idea what she needed to talk to him about so confidentially, but it would take more than kind words and sympathy to alleviate the depth of misery he sensed in her. He finished his tea and decided to go inside: on such a hot day, he and Morwenna might stand more chance of finding some peace and quiet there. In the front parlour, where all the food for the wake had been laid out on borrowed trestle tables, he found yet another crowd of people but Morwenna was not among them. He tried to push his way further into the room, but his path was blocked by two of his fellow bearers. The elder man, Joseph Caplin, was obviously drunk – although as far as Archie could remember, he had not been truly sober since the break-up of his family – and it was the younger of the two who spoke first.

‘Well, if it isn’t the famous Inspector,’ he said sarcastically. ‘We are honoured, although I’d have put money on the fact that you’d come sniffing round Morwenna again the minute she was on her own.’ Archie ignored the bait. Simon Jacks – or ‘Kestrel’ as the gamekeeper was usually known – had always hated him and his friendship with Morwenna was top of a long list of reasons. Jacks had always wanted her and, just after the fire, when he thought Morwenna was vulnerable, he had pursued her so relentlessly that she had begged Harry to make him back off. Usually, Jacks took his resentment out on the woman he eventually married, but today he seemed happy to share it with Archie. ‘She’s got friends here, you know, and she certainly doesn’t need you, so do us all a favour and fuck off back to London.’

Jacks’s wife – a tired-looking woman with thin, mousy hair and no light in her eyes – opened her mouth to say something but Jacks silenced her with a look. For her sake, Archie tried not to let his diminishing patience get the better of him. He turned his back on the insult, and noticed with relief that Lettice and her father were over by the food, talking to Mrs Snipe. Before he could join them, though, a child’s voice cut through the room with a lightness more appropriate to a birthday party than a wake.

‘Don’t forget to leave some food for Harry.’

Everyone turned to look at Loveday with the same mixture of embarrassment and horror that had greeted her laughter in church. In the stillness that followed, Archie could hear the ticking of the clock from the hall and the insistent tapping of a fly against the window. In the end, it was Mrs Snipe who broke the silence. ‘Don’t you worry, my love, there’s plenty to go round,’ she said breezily, as if the girl had said nothing out of place. ‘Why don’t you come through to the pantry with me and I’ll show you what we’ve got in there.’

She led the girl away and the sound of voices built gradually again. Lettice grimaced at Archie from the other side of the table. ‘I know actresses who’d kill for an exit line like that,’ she called, picking up a bread roll smothered with jam and cream. ‘Isn’t it nice to be back?’

He laughed, glad to share a moment of normality, but the respite was short-lived. Joseph Caplin had climbed unsteadily on to a chair and was striking an empty whisky bottle with a knife to get the room’s attention. What was it about the British that made them insist on this excruciating moment at any wedding or funeral, Archie wondered, trying to remember if he had ever been to one which did not reduce somebody’s past or future to a drunken display of emotion.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Caplin slurred, not quite sober enough to focus on anyone in particular. ‘I’d like you to raise your glasses – to the death of Harry Pinching.’

‘To Harry Pinching.’ A number of voices spoke up loudly around the room, as if volume could compensate for Caplin’s drunken slip of the tongue. The farmer got down from his chair, smiling to himself and apparently oblivious of what he had said. Wondering how much of a mistake it had actually been, Archie left them to their drink and went through to the kitchen, glad that Harry’s sisters had at least been spared the awkwardness of the moment. He opened the back door just in time to catch the end of an angry exchange between Morwenna and the young curate. Surprised, and aware that he had walked in on a private conversation, he hesitated. Morwenna had her back to him but Nathaniel saw him instantly and disappeared quickly round the side of the cottage, though not before Archie had noticed how pale he was.

Morwenna turned to face him and, as she showed no sign of embarrassment, Archie decided against pretending not to have heard. ‘What’s Nathaniel done to make you so angry with him?’ he asked gently. ‘Is it because he and Harry had fallen out?’

‘God, how quickly word gets round – even as far as London,’ Morwenna said sharply, then seemed to regret her sarcasm. ‘I’m sorry – you didn’t deserve that, but it’s been a long day and I’m sick to death of sympathy, particularly the sort that comes tied to a dog collar.’ She paused for a moment and pushed her hair back from her eyes. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with that – boys will be boys, won’t they? It’s just that Nathaniel and I have different ideas of comfort, and I don’t want him to keep passing his on to Loveday. I’ve spent the last few weeks preparing her for the idea that she’s never going to see her brother again, and he wrecks it all by filling her head full of nonsense about the resurrection and eternal life. It’s a lot to ask of a normal fourteen-year-old to understand the difference between a pretty fable that makes adults feel better and a literal promise that someone’s immortal, but Loveday’s not a normal fourteen-year-old. You know how it is – she lives in a world of her own, and half the time I’ve no idea what goes on in her head. She idolised Harry, and it won’t take much to make her believe he was invincible. That’s just not fair – on either of us. It’s me that has to deliver the cold, hard truth and pick up the pieces afterwards, and I’ve got my own grief to deal with.’

Archie understood the resentment that certainties about life and death could create in someone whose whole sense of purpose had just been destroyed – he had felt it often enough himself – but there had been more to the exchange between Morwenna and Nathaniel, even in the brief snatch that he had heard. ‘Sin is a big word to use, though – is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’ he asked and, when she nodded, added: ‘Let’s go somewhere a bit more private.’

They walked away from the house, down to the edge of the garden where a narrow lane separated them from trees that marked the northern boundary of the Loe estate, still in sight of the cottage but far enough away to be able to talk freely. The soft afternoon light filtered through new leaves on to a sweep of bluebells which seemed to drift like smoke through the woods, and Archie wondered if Morwenna, like him, was thinking of the last time they had sat together in this very spot. It was more than eight years ago now, not long after her parents had died, but the time of year was the same and then, too, she had been racked with grief and in despair about her future. They were already good friends – some people guessed there was more between them, but he was still fighting his feelings for Josephine and Morwenna, who was never short of suitors, treated him more like an older brother – and she had asked him to go with her to salvage what was left of her life from the burnt-out shell of the cottage. Afterwards, he had sat outside with her, holding her as she cried and waiting until she felt ready to leave. He remembered looking down through the bluebell woods: the view had been much as it was today, except for two dead magpies which the gamekeeper of the time had strung up by the neck on the fence – a deterrent to other vermin and, it seemed, a potent denial of the rhyme which he had learnt by heart as a boy. The birds moved gently in the breeze, and the green and violet sheen of their feathers mirrored the flowers that covered the ground, but the lifelessness in their eyes mocked any promise of summer. The image had stayed with him, allied to Morwenna – a pairing of beauty and death which made each the more powerfully felt, and which now seemed more poignant than ever.

‘Just like old times,’ Morwenna said, as if reading his thoughts, but her attempt at lightness was not very convincing. ‘I seem to make a habit of running to you whenever there’s trouble, but I really didn’t know who else I could talk to at the moment.’

‘Twice in eight years is hardly a habit.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ She sat down on an old tree trunk and invited him to do the same. ‘I thought I could carry this on my own, but it’s been eating away at me since Harry died. Somehow it’s easier to talk to you because you’re not here all the time – and I know I can trust you not to pass judgement.’ Archie wondered again about the sin that Morwenna had thrown back at Nathaniel, but he said nothing and let her continue. ‘You see, I don’t think his death was an accident,’ she said quietly.

It was the last thing that Archie had expected to hear. ‘Are you saying that someone killed him?’ he asked, careful to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

‘What?’ Morwenna looked horrified. ‘No – God, no, nothing like that.’ She gave him a look that seemed to doubt, after all, the wisdom of confiding in a policeman, then explained what she had meant. ‘I think he took his own life – it’s the only thing that makes any sense.’

This time, Archie thought before speaking. The idea that Harry Pinching would kill himself seemed to him so unlikely that he had not even considered it as a possibility, and he chided himself for betraying years of training by subconsciously subscribing to the idea that there was a suicide ‘type’. ‘What makes you think he’d do that?’ he asked. ‘Harry always struck me as remarkably positive about life, even after your parents died.’

‘Yes, he was strong then and I don’t know how Loveday or I would have got through that without him, and it’s not that anything’s changed – it’s more the way he died. He was far too good a rider to drown like that. Even if he couldn’t keep Shilling out of the water, he’d have known that his best chance of survival was to hang on and get them both to the other bank. He loved that horse and they trusted each other – I’ve never seen such a bond between a man and an animal. There’s no way he’d simply let go.’

‘Perhaps not, if he could help it – but the Loe’s a law unto itself. You don’t need me to tell you how dangerous it is. We’ve both been here long enough to know that the stories about it live on for a reason – I can think of at least five people who’ve died in the lake or off the Bar in the last thirty years.’

Morwenna looked at him defiantly for a moment. ‘Tell me honestly, Archie – what was your instant reaction when you heard about the accident?’

He couldn’t deny his surprise at the news of Harry’s death – surprise and, if he thought about it carefully, a touch of disbelief which he had put down to his natural tendency to over-analyse. But suicide? There was the sorry state of the cottage, of course: he had assumed that it was Morwenna who was at her wits’ end but perhaps that was simply grief and worry – perhaps it was her brother who had given up on life? Somehow, though, it still didn’t seem to fit with the Harry he had known. ‘I admit I was surprised,’ he said, ‘but it’s a big leap from that to suicide.’ He looked back towards the house, and noticed that Jago Snipe and Morveth Wearne had come out on to the lawn and were looking over to where he sat with Morwenna. ‘You and Loveday meant the world to Harry,’ he continued. ‘Look at how hard he worked when your parents died, how readily he accepted responsibility for the family and the future.’ How he had grown up at last was what Archie really wanted to say, but there was no point in antagonising Morwenna by criticising her brother in any way. ‘Do you really think he’d have left you to manage like this if he had any choice in the matter?’

The pain in Morwenna’s eyes told Archie how many hours she had lain awake trying to answer that question for herself. ‘I don’t know any more,’ she said. ‘I hope not, but I’m too tired to be sure of anything at the moment.’

‘Have you talked to anyone else about this?’

‘No, although I think Morveth suspects. She sees right through me – always has. I nearly told Nathaniel just now – I was so angry after that pathetic speech he made that I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself if you hadn’t turned up when you did.’ Judging by the look of horror on Nathaniel’s face, Archie thought, the curate had already guessed what Morwenna was about to spell out to him, but he decided to keep that suspicion to himself for now. ‘I can’t tell anyone else because I don’t want people to think badly of Harry,’ she explained. ‘I can be as angry as I like with him – he’s my brother – but I can’t bear the thought of everyone else talking about him and judging him, or saying something that Loveday will overhear. There’s such a stigma to suicide.’

‘Surely not these days. People are more sympathetic now – they do at least try to understand, even if the law takes a dim view.’

‘Do they?’ She looked at him wryly. ‘Have you forgotten how your uncle Jasper refused to give Arthur Pascoe the full service because he died while he was drunk? If the Reverend Motley got the slightest whiff of suicide, we’d have been burying Harry at a crossroads halfway between here and Helston.’

‘Surely Nathaniel’s different, though?’

‘In some ways, perhaps, but even he doesn’t understand the despair that people feel sometimes – people who have no faith, I mean. How could he? I don’t think he’s had a moment of doubt in his entire life.’

That might have been true until recently, Archie thought, but just now Nathaniel looked as though his whole world had been shaken. More convinced than ever that Morwenna was holding something back, he tried again. ‘Did Nathaniel say or do something to make Harry take his own life?’ Just for a moment, he thought he saw fear flicker across her face, and she seemed to wrestle with her conscience, trying to decide whether or not to say more.

‘Loveday’s looking for you, Morwenna. She shouldn’t be left on her own for long – not today.’

Morveth had come up to them so softly that neither Archie nor Morwenna had seen her arrive. How much had she heard, he wondered? In any case, the moment for confidences was lost, and they stood up. Morwenna smiled apologetically at him, but seemed relieved to go in search of her sister, and he was left alone with Morveth.

‘We don’t see you down here often enough, Archie,’ she said warmly, reaching up to give him a hug.

Archie smiled, genuinely pleased to see her, even if he would have chosen a different moment. He had known Morveth all his life, first as his parents’ closest friend and then as the person to whom he had turned in his own moments of crisis. She was one of the few people who played a full part in the life of the Loe estate – bringing in its babies, teaching its children, laying out its dead – yet who managed to keep her distance from it, living alone in a small, thatched cottage on the outskirts of the village. When Archie had come home to Cornwall after the war, still grieving for the loss of his closest friend and believing Jack’s death to be entirely his fault, he had gone to that cottage to heal. The feeling of peace which he found in those afternoon visits was hard to describe and, for someone who had trained in science and whose career relied on logic and analysis, hard to understand, but Morveth’s wisdom – her ability to make good, for want of a better phrase – was one of the very few things in life which he had never questioned.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m well,’ he said, marvelling at how little she had changed in all those years, ‘but I wish we hadn’t had to meet here like this.’

Morveth watched Morwenna as she walked back towards the house. ‘You’ll have noticed quite a change in her, I expect?’ she said, and Archie nodded. ‘It was the waiting that nearly killed her. It nearly killed us all, to tell you the truth – watching the two of them by the water’s edge every day, pale as death themselves and praying he’d be found. Loveday thought it was some sort of game, I think – best that she didn’t understand, perhaps – but Morwenna had to be half dragged away each night. First thing the next morning, though, she’d be back. She couldn’t rest until they’d got his body. The lake played a cruel trick in keeping him for so long.’

Not for the first time, Archie thought about the darkness that was masked by the beauty of Cornwall. He busied himself with violence on a daily basis in London, but the close proximity to death in which people lived their lives here still had a way of unsettling him. ‘Why do you think Harry let go of the reins, Morveth?’ he asked.

She looked at him for a long time before speaking. ‘Don’t search for things that aren’t there, Archie,’ she said at last. ‘It will only bring unhappiness.’

Archie had searched often enough to acknowledge privately how right she was, but he was reluctant to let the subject drop so easily. ‘Unhappiness for whom?’ he asked urgently, aware that Jago Snipe was on his way over to join them.

‘For people you care about,’ she said, then added more quietly, ‘perhaps even for you.’

There was no time to press her any further. He nodded at the undertaker, whose greeting – or so Archie fancied – was uncharacteristically suspicious, and they talked for a few minutes about the weather before Christopher Snipe excused them both from the effort of finding something else to say.

‘Dad, I need to talk to you,’ he said, and his earnestness made him look even younger than he was.

‘Not now, Christopher – I’m talking to Mr Penrose.’

Archie was surprised at the response. His conversation with the undertaker was hardly too important to be interrupted, and he knew how close father and son were; their relationship had been Jago’s only solace after his wife died in childbirth.

The boy seemed reluctant to be dismissed so easily. ‘But it’s urgent,’ he said.

‘Even so, this isn’t the time or the place,’ Jago snapped. ‘You’ve already done enough for one day.’

The boy blushed and walked away. Feeling sorry for him, Archie said: ‘Loveday must be glad to have Christopher around at a time like this.’

‘What makes you say that?’ the undertaker asked sharply.

‘Nothing, really, except I noticed that he was kind to her at the funeral. With everything that’s happened, having a friend near her own age must help.’

‘They’re not friends, particularly, and being kind is what we do. If Christopher spent any time with her today, he was just doing his job.’

Archie apologised without really understanding what he had said to cause such offence. Feeling more like an outsider than ever, he excused himself to go and find Lettice and her father.

Jago and Morveth watched him walk back up the lawn. ‘Did she tell him anything, do you think?’ Jago asked.

‘I don’t know. He asked about the accident, but then he would, wouldn’t he? That’s only natural. I’ll find out what he knows, though. Leave it to me.’

‘Don’t get sucked in, Morveth,’ Jago warned. ‘I know you were close to the family and Penrose is a good man, but he’s not one of us any more. If it comes to loyalties, I know which side he’ll be on. Just be careful.’

‘One of us?’ The scorn in Morveth’s voice was out of character and took Jago by surprise. ‘Don’t be so naive. Harry was one of us, and look how he behaved. He went too far, but if we’d thought more carefully about what we were doing, he’d still be alive and none of this would have happened.’

‘It has, though,’ Jago said, regaining his composure and, with it, his authority. ‘Now we just need to make sure that we keep it to ourselves.’

Christopher hung around outside the cottage, trying to find the courage to talk to his father again and waiting for a moment when he might get him on his own. It was vital that he got to speak to him soon, before some do-gooder like Shoebridge found out what was going on and tried to interfere. It had to be Christopher who broke the news. He had sat by the church for a long time after the funeral, wondering what words he should use and watching Loveday, who had slipped back to the graveside while everyone else drifted off to the wake. She was beautiful, even there. Her white-blonde hair fell forward over her face as she looked down into the grave, taking some of the flowers from the netting around the side and dropping them gently on to her brother’s coffin. Intent on her task, she hadn’t noticed him at first, but a smile lit her face when she glanced up and saw him and, in that second, he was overwhelmed with relief that Harry was dead and buried. He wouldn’t have stood a chance with Loveday otherwise; the undertaker’s son would never have been good enough for Harry Pinching’s little sister. He remembered the time he had seen Harry coming out of the Commercial Inn with a bunch of his friends; buoyed up by beer and bravado, he had taunted Christopher and told him to keep away from Loveday, saying that his hands were only fit to play with the dead. It had made him so angry, and he smiled to himself now to think that his tormentor was suddenly a lot less free with his mouth.

Christopher had grown up in a house that lived with death and had never known anything else, so he found people like Harry – who covered their fear with mockery or superstition – difficult to understand. When he talked to girls in the village, he knew that they always had half a mind on what he did for a living; he might as well have worn his mourning suit all the time because it hovered around the edges of even the most inconsequential conversations. Loveday was different, though. She could see beyond the black. The first time they were together – properly together – she had sensed his hesitation and gently kissed his fingers one by one, letting him know that she didn’t mind, telling him without words that he should be proud of his work, that the dead deserved to be cared for as tenderly as the living.

It was always assumed that he would help his father run the business when he was old enough, and he had been happy with that – happy, and a little nervous at first. There was a lot to learn, but he enjoyed the camaraderie of working alongside his father and the satisfaction of doing a job which really mattered. Only once had he been truly afraid, and that was early on, when he had just turned thirteen. It was winter, the evening before a funeral, and he and his father had gone to a farmhouse half a mile or so out of the village on the Penzance road to make the final preparations. They were given a warm welcome – Jago Snipe knew everyone and was well respected in the community – and the dead man’s widow, glad of the company, had insisted on making tea. As she busied herself with the kettle, his father handed him a screwdriver and nodded towards the door to the stairs. ‘You start to screw him down, lad,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll be up in a bit.’ Christopher took the screwdriver, desperate not to let his father down, and made his way upstairs, looking more confident than he felt. His courage deserted him at the third stair from the top and he sank down onto the step, staring straight ahead at the room where the coffin lay, wanting to go on but reluctant to leave behind the comforting sound of voices from the kitchen. He sat there for half an hour or more, until he could barely make out the door in the darkness, and all he could think of was the first dead body he had ever seen, carried easily over Jago’s strong shoulders, pale hands tapping the backs of his legs as he walked. When his father came up to look for him, he realised immediately that he had asked too much of his son and gave him an apologetic hug. They went in together to shut the light out on the corpse for the final time, but the incident made such a strong impression on Christopher that he could still remember every detail of that room – the Bible under the dead man’s chin, the spectacles and pipe placed carefully under the coffin lining, the clock stopped at five minutes past three.

After that, his father was more careful about what he asked Christopher to do, ever mindful that he was still a young boy. Even now, he was not allowed to help with bodies which came in from the sea or after violent deaths – his father said there would be plenty of time for him to witness that sort of sadness when he was older, and always sent him on some sort of convenient errand when such a job was on. He was grateful for his father’s consideration, and knew how much he was loved, but today, thinking about what he had to do after the funeral, he was back on that third stair from the top – uncertain of what to say, scared of letting his father down, and wanting more than anything to run away. This time, he couldn’t count on reassurance and a hug – not when his father heard about Loveday, and certainly not if he ever found out that Harry Pinching’s death was Christopher’s fault.