‘So where are the keys for the guns?’ I said, wondering aloud more than asking.
‘Depends how fussy they are,’ Alec said.
‘No’ very,’ said Reid. ‘Wi’ that yard door not locked.’
‘Yes,’ I said. That was bothering me. I went out into the corridor again and along to where it stood open. I stepped out into the yard and crossed it. Beyond the gate a path led down to the jetty and I could see the sea loch, shining still and silver; high tide on a windless moonlit night and it was a mirror lying there. I gazed, then squinted, and then I began to run. There was a little boat out in the open and a figure in it, sitting so still that not a ripple disturbed the reflection of the moon in the water.
‘Alec!’ I shouted as I went. ‘Reid!’
The figure had heard me and moved, I knew, for all round the boat suddenly the perfect image of the moon and trees broke and shimmered. I ran to the jetty, right to the end and peered across the water. Behind me came the pelting footsteps of the constable and then Alec, shuffling and swearing.
‘Who is it?’ I said. ‘There’s only one. Is it Aldo? Has he killed her and taken her body out there to dump it?’
‘If he has, he’s put her frock on,’ said Reid. His young eyes had picked out more than mine. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed. ‘Miss Lipscott, you’re all right. We-’
Fleur stood and then even I could see it was her, in her dress with her hair down her back.
‘Fleur, darling,’ I shouted. ‘Row to shore- No!’
Fleur had gone. She had simply stepped over the side of the little boat and dropped into the water.
‘Alec, wincing, had started taking off his waistcoat and kicking out of his shoes, but his face was shining with perspiration and his breath was ragged.
‘Reid!’ I said, turning to where the constable stood frozen.
‘I cannae swim,’ he said. I could have slapped him.
‘You- You pick drowned fishermen out of the sea all the time!’ I shouted. ‘How can you not swim?’
‘Fisherfolk never learn to swim,’ Reid said. ‘It’s bad luck.’
I tore off my hat and coat, my dress, my shoes and my petticoats too and in my chemise and stockings, before I could give myself time to think, I jumped off the jetty into the icy water.
It was so cold that my shoulders seized up around my neck and I was only paddling forward by inches, so I turned on my back, looked up and prayed for strength and courage. I prayed to Hugh, who swam in Loch Ordie every morning between May and October, to Nanny Palmer who took a cold bath until she turned ninety and had a shower machine put in, and to my old childhood self, with Pearl and Aurora and Fleur, jumping in and out of the tide at Watchet all day long.
Then I turned back over and started swimming.
I warmed a little with the exertion, or numbed perhaps, but I made it to the boat anyway and rounded it. She had not sunk and was not struggling. I could see her floating face-down with her hair fanned out and that wicked, disgusting picture of Ophelia flashed in my mind once again. I swam up and grabbed her.
‘Floribunda, don’t you dare, you little monkey,’ I said through chattering teeth. ‘Your mother will die of grief and your sisters will never smile again.’
She had reared up, spluttering, and now she flicked her hair out her eyes and splashed frantically, trying to get away from me.
‘I killed him,’ she said. ‘I killed him.’
‘You didn’t kill anyone, Fleur,’ I told her.
‘I killed him, I killed him.’
I surged forward and grabbed her round the neck under one arm, then I turned us both onto our backs and with my free hand I made for the shore. She was limp against me and I could hear her muttering on and on, through her chattering teeth: ‘I killed him. I killed him.’
‘You’re killing me,’ I shouted. ‘Try to swim, darling.’
I spoke lightly but I was terrified. My arm was heavier and weaker with every stroke and we were no longer on the surface but low in the water, our legs deep down into the chill. I took a breath and a mouthful of water came in with it.
‘Fleur, please!’ I begged, trying to shake her. She was a dead weight under my arm. I put my mouth beside her ear and yelled at her.
‘Sabbatina needs you!’
She flailed then and her head rose, but it was too late.
‘We’re sink-’ I said and the water closed over my head and I was falling.
13
My hair seemed to rip at the roots as a hand took hold of my head, then an arm was under my back, and then I was bent over the side of a boat, with my top half shivering in the air and my legs still dragging in the water. I opened my mouth and a gush of cold poured out. Alec hauled me with his one good arm until I lay on the floor of the dinghy like a load of wet washing, watching Constable Reid hang over the side with his boots wedged under the bench to keep him anchored.
Up he came, with nothing, and dragged in a tearing breath before he plunged under again, so deep that the boat lurched over until the cold water was slopping in. And up he came. And he had a foot and a leg and then her hips and her arms and her coughing, choking, head and she was in the bottom of the boat beside me and weeping there.
‘We found another boat,’ said Alec. ‘Obviously.’
‘I killed him,’ Fleur whimpered. ‘I killed him.’
‘You killed no one,’ I said, mumbling through my numb lips. ‘You poor darling, you lost your father and your lover and your friend-’
‘Body heat’s the thing,’ Alec said. ‘But I can hardly move. Grab my legs, Dandy. Better than nothing.’
‘Ch-charles wanted to d-drive my car,’ chittered Fleur. ‘And he was intoxicated. Not drink. D-drugs, Dandy, and I bought them! Leigh wanted to try something new.’
‘You didn’t shove them down his neck or hers,’ I said.
‘I f-fell out when it hit the tree,’ she said. ‘I tried to get them out.’
‘Of course, you did, you good girl,’ I said.
‘I’m not a g-good girl,’ she cried. ‘I killed him.’
‘And then you saw that wretched Elf take the coward’s way out right in front of your eyes, didn’t you?’ She nodded, fast and shivering. ‘And Giuseppe Aldo was a cold-hearted devil of a man. You told him straight, my love. I read your letter. He killed his wife, not you.’
‘I know,’ said Fleur. ‘He m-murdered her. For me. I didn’t kill anyone in a b-battle or a crash or a suicide. I know that now, because I k-k-killed him.’
‘Aldo?’ said Alec.
‘I w-was in the b-boat.’ She was shaking so much now that her voice was like a rattle. ‘And he swam. In a r-r-rage. He swam. And I j-just j-jabbed him with the oar. J-j-jab-jab-jab. Until he was g-gone.’
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Fleur, and her eyes turned upwards as she fainted away.
I hugged her close, although I was almost as cold as she was and, pushing the sodden hanks of her hair back from her face to kiss her eyes, I shuddered to remember Rosa Aldo’s hair in the cable station that day, how it lay in a clump on her soaking dress, and how cold and grey her skin was above the dirty lace of her collar. Perhaps I was passing out too but all of a sudden I could feel again the water closing over my head and filling my mouth and I struggled to sit up.
‘They say drowning is peaceful,’ I said.
‘If it is,’ said Alec, ‘then it was too good for him.’
‘The car’s dead,’ said Constable Reid a few hours later. He had joined Fleur, Alec and me in the lodge kitchen, where we sat wrapped in blankets and nursing the latest in a succession of toddies.
‘The Turners’ car?’ I asked, and he nodded.
‘Donaldson’s car needs to go back anyway,’ said Alec. ‘And you’re the only one of the lot of us who’s fit to drive.’