I stand at the entrance to that narrow corridor leading to Bedroom 3, fumbling for a light switch I can’t find. I force myself to walk into the darkness, arms outstretched. Cringe when my fingers hit against the panels of the door at the corridor’s end. Hesitate inside the memory of Don’t go in! We can’t ever go in! This is the only room I’ve never been inside, not even as a child. Mum made sure of that; made sure that El and I were so afraid of it we’d pass by the corridor without ever looking. I think of her screams. The echo of this door’s slam. Grandpa was afraid of it too – sometimes I saw him standing inside the doorway to the Donkshop, staring across the landing at this corridor, and all of him would be shaking, his mouth slack, eyes blank. Would El have hidden something in Bluebeard’s Room? Would she have come in here? I don’t know. But I know I have to look.
When I touch the handle, I realise I’m muttering hard and fast under my breath, ‘He only comes out at night, he only comes out at night.’ I make myself stop. All of Bluebeard’s wives ended up hanging on hooks rusted red with blood, except for the last. And what saved her was ignoring her fear long enough to look, to unlock the only door he told her never to open. And so I turn that handle. Push open that dusty dark door. And go inside.
Bluebeard’s Room has no windows. I knew this on some level because its exterior wall is Mirrorland’s alleyway, but still, it catches me unawares. The darkness. I find the light switch. Turn it on before I venture inside.
The air feels coldly heavy, smells of old paint. In one corner is a battered leather armchair, a standard lamp. Everything else is hidden under draw sheets. I look at every wall, every shadow, as if I still expect to see the corpses of Bluebeard’s wives. Or hear Mum’s shrieks echoing and thrashing their way through the floorboards to the pantry and cupboard and ocean below.
Focus.
I step farther into the room, start pulling off sheets, coughing out dust. Under the second sheet is a big wooden box. I stop. My heart stutters. Not a box. Our treasure chest on the Satisfaction. Bound with bands of black leather and a padlock gold with rust.
I kneel. The padlock hangs open. I take hold of the lid and lift it up, cringing at the loud squeak of its hinges.
It’s full of old sheets. I start taking them out, piling them on the floor. When my fingers hit against something hard, I instantly snatch them back.
Come on.
I reach back in, take out the last sheet.
There are two objects. One large, one small. The large: a blue-handled drill with a hollow cylinder attached. The smalclass="underline" a round steel handle at one end, a black rubber screw plug at the other.
I rock back on my heels. Press my clammy fingers to my face. El didn’t put these things here. She didn’t put them in this awful room for me to find. Because I know instinctively what they are.
I think of Logan’s face, the careful tone of his voice. We found evidence it was scuttled. Deliberately sunk.
I look back down at the hole saw. The transom drain plug.
They’re Treasure Trophies.
The stairs are in darkness. The only light comes from the red milky Victorian lamp in the hallway. I feel my way down the staircase, the bannister cold under my palm. The house continues to sleep, loud and old; its clanking, creaking veins like a hidden map of black roads and copper wires, like secrets locked behind doors and inside cupboards, oceans, midnight worlds of fire and fury and fun.
I pass the kitchen, look at my face in the mirror above the telephone table. I open the door to the drawing room. Finally let go of my breath.
The room is warm, golden. The big floor-to-ceiling curtains have been closed against the rain and the night, and the fire is feeding noisily on a pile of shaved logs, dancing against the bottle-green tiles. There are clusters of tealights on side tables and along the length of the Poirot, reflecting gold and silver in mirrors and polished wood, so that it looks like every Christmas Eve. All that’s missing is the eight-foot Fraser fir, twinkling white and shedding its needles, making the whole room smell like a winter forest.
Unconscious fantasies. I think of the words until they blur inside my head. Until all I can see is Bluebeard chasing us with his deadlight. His blood coughing out of his ruined skull, seeping black into the Satisfaction’s gun deck.
Ross gets up from the chesterfield, smiles cautiously.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’
His eyes dart quick around the room. ‘Say if this is too much.’
‘No. No, it’s fine.’ But I can’t seem to come any farther into the room. I can’t seem to make myself do anything.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ The deep frown line between Ross’s brows is back. I want to press the pad of my thumb against it, smooth it flat.
‘Yes.’ I make myself move towards the couch, towards him.
‘Sit, please,’ he says, briefly reaching out to squeeze my cold hand before moving past me to the bar.
I sit. Watch him. The silhouette of his narrow waist and broad shoulders in the flickering, twinkling light, the thick curl of his hair against his neck. My fingers move to the pocket of my jeans, where El’s letter sits inside its ziplocked bag. Its presence both comforts and terrifies me. I see the sherries sitting on the turquoise tiles of the Poirot. Gold inside carved crystal. Two instead of four. El really did tell him everything.
‘Aperitif,’ Ross says, setting them down on a candlelit coffee table, reminding me of that special romantic occasion corner in the Italian restaurant. When he sits next to me, I can feel the heat of him against my thigh. I can smell the piney, musky familiarity of him. I can hear my heartbeat, heavy and too loud.
‘Cheers,’ he says and solemnly enough that I finally drop my frozen smile. The low, long ringing of our glasses outlives my sherry. I feel its wonderful burn all the way to my stomach. I should ask him about his day, I know. What happened when he went into work. How he’s feeling, coping. I’m doing a very poor impression of normal. Ross thinks so too. He reaches for my chilly fingers, wraps them inside his own.
‘It’ll be okay, Cat,’ he whispers. ‘At least we have each other.’
And I close my eyes against the warm press of his lips against my temple.
CHAPTER 26
I sit at the kitchen table, while Ross stands in front of Mum’s Kitchener. The rain batters against the window; the wind howls, trapped inside the garden’s high stone walls. The kitchen is hot and wet, yet still somehow cold. I’m shivering.
I pick up the Shiraz that Ross poured for me. Put it back down without drinking. The smell of minced beef turns my stomach. My head aches, feels thick and boggy, and I’m too jumpy, too nervy. Every few minutes, my heart skips one beat and then overcompensates with too many. Maybe it’s grief, shock: too many ground-shifting tremors in too short a space of time. El dying. Marie’s confession. Vik’s ‘Mouse’. El’s letter. Everything that’s ever happened in this house. I need to ask Ross about what I found in Bluebeard’s Room. I need to ask him about Marie and that text. About what Vik said. And I really need to ask him about everything that El has accused him of. But I can’t.
Ross sets a lid over the chilli pot and comes back to the table, sits close enough to me that I can see those silver flecks inside his irises.
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about. Jesus, you’re freezing.’