Blackthorn Winter (34 page)

The police called the station for an officer to escort us home. We were happy to linger. The Coopers' kitchen was warm and cheerful, and the village outside was gray and cold. I had the shivers, and had to keep wrapping my arms around myself, squeezing hard. Duncan's expression was blank, his mouth set. When Mr. Cooper invited us all upstairs to see his model train set, the Goops leaped up in excitement, ready to be diverted. But Mom shook her head, smiling, and stayed at the table with Mrs. Cooper. Duncan and I followed the others upstairs to the top-floor attic where Mr. Cooper had an electric train and village set up on a big table in the center of the room. We watched for a few minutes as the trains whizzed around the tracks, past the miniature farms and towns. The Goops were enchanted.

I imagined for a moment that there were people in those little trains, traveling through villages and countryside, gliding through tunnels. Little people with their secret lives.

Just as Mr. Cooper let Ivy and Edmund take over the controls, I felt Duncan's hand close around mine. He squeezed my fingers gently. We slipped out of the room together and went down the little hallway to the small room that was his whenever he stayed at his grandparents' house. It would probably be his room all the time now, I thought.
Because how could Duncan go back to living at the Old Mill House with Quent in prison or living somewhere as a fugitive?

As if he had read my thoughts, Duncan slumped down onto his bed and said, "Guess I'd better move all my stuff over here now."

"Yeah," I said, sitting on the bed next to him. It was a narrow bed, like my own. The room was simply furnished with a dresser, desk and chair, and a faded blue rag rug on the floor. The curtains at the window hung limp. They were white lace, yellowed from age but clean. The walls were bare, nothing like the bright walls hung with posters in Duncan's room at the Mill House. "I guess you'll be living here now. But what will happen to all Quent's stuff?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Don't know much about anything, it seems. I mean—damn it, Juliana,
how
could I not have known?" He punched the mattress. "How could I live with a murderer for two years and never have a clue?"

"Nobody suspected him," I said. "How
could
you have known?"

"You'd think there would have been
something.
Some clue."

"But there wasn't?"

"Not so I noticed. I mean—nothing that made me think
murder!
Still..." He hesitated. "I knew he was jealous of her. I'd known that for a long time."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

Duncan stared up at the ceiling. "Well, every time Mum won a local prize for her paintings, Quent would cheer and celebrate. But then he'd work extra long and hard in his studio. And the day she got the call that her
work had been selected to be exhibited in that prestigious London show, he was furious. I could see it in his face. Furious that hers had been chosen and his had not. Because he had submitted work, too."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not to Mum and me. No, he was all congratulations and big hugs and a bouquet of flowers. But I heard him out in the studio later that same day, crashing around. Through the window I saw him hurling pieces of wood against the walls. Letting off steam, I thought."

"You didn't realize then that all her successes were like knives twisting in his gut," I murmured.

Duncan reached over and lifted my braid. He wrapped it gently around his hand, then unwound it. He closed his eyes. "No, I didn't realize," he whispered.

"But even if you had, what could you have done? Lots of people might be upset about not winning an award," I reasoned. "A lot of people might stomp around and throw things in private to let off steam. But it wouldn't go any further than that. It wouldn't lead to murder."

"I wonder how he did it," Duncan said, eyes still closed. "You told the officers that Quent confessed to my mum's murder. But you didn't give details, really. Did he tell you? How could he be sure she would have the accident? Did he fix the brakes somehow, so they wouldn't work? What did he say to convince her to leave so early, while I was still at school, when she knew I was planning to go with her?"

"No," I said. "Duncan, she
didn't
leave willingly. She wouldn't have gone without you—and she wouldn't have left her special necklace behind. That's the whole point. That's how I figured it out. And then—in the tunnel—he
told me more. He said he knocked her on the head with the same beach stone he used on Liza. He put her in the car and arranged the accident."

Duncan sat up, groaning, and put his head in his hands.

I rubbed his back, silent. I couldn't think of anything to say to make things better. I could just picture it happening. Quent knocking Nora out, carrying her to the car, wrapped up in blue plastic just as I had been. He would have bundled her into the back, and set off for the coast road, heading toward London. He would have positioned the car at the edge of the cliff, sat Nora in the driver's seat, seat belt properly fastened. And then he would have released the brake so the car plunged down the cliff.

Had he walked all the way home? Or did he have a bike in the back of his car, so he could ride home on the back lanes, unseen? In any case, he was back in Blackthorn in time to play the part of the grieving widower when the police found the wreck.

Mom's voice called to me up the stairs. It was time to round up the Goops, she said, and head home. An officer had come to escort us. Reluctantly I stood up. Duncan stood up, too, and we embraced in the darkness of his little room. Then I moved away. I went back to the model train room where the Goops were happily acting as engineers. Mr. Cooper sat in an armchair, staring blankly out at the dark windows. He was in shock, too, I realized. It was his daughter Quent had murdered.

The police officer waiting to escort us was the tall one who had helped lift me out of the tunnel. Since the main road was blocked in an attempt to catch Quent, he would walk with us to our cottage. We left Duncan and his grandparents standing silently at their front door, and traveled
swiftly across the quiet village. The Goops were subdued and clung to Mom's hands. The chilly sea wind buffeted our bodies as we hurried through the night.

I kept my eyes on the broad back of the officer, fearful that any shadow might conceal Quent. He might leap out at me, arm raised, hand wielding a beach stone.

As we unlocked the door in the stone wall of the Old Mill House and stepped through, I looked over to the big house. All the windows were dark.
Quent will never live there again,
I thought, as we followed the path across the lawn to our place. Despite all that had happened that afternoon, despite my conversation with Duncan in his room, I still wasn't used to thinking of Quent Carrington, our trusted landlord, as the bad guy. And what if Quent had eluded the police and somehow doubled back, and was hiding inside his house in one of the dark rooms? I looked over my shoulder as we passed the house.

He will never live there again.
Again, this thought came to me with certainty. Prison would be home to Quent from now on, unless he evaded the police and maybe escaped to another country and lived as a fugitive. How long would he be able to manage that, when he so loved being in the center of the art world?

I tried to shake Quent out of my head as we went inside our cottage. The place looked strange to me, as if I had been away from it a very long time instead of only a few hours. The police officer checked every room, then smiled and left to take up guard outside the cottage. Mom ran me a full tub of hot water, drizzled in some of her special daphne-scented foam bath, and insisted I have a nice, long soak. I eased into the bath, wincing as the bubbles closed over my scrapes and bruises. For once I was allowed to use
up all the hot water, and I didn't have to hurry out so someone else could use the bath after me, while it was still hot. I lay back, eyes closed, breathing shallowly. I was comforted at the thought of the policeman stationed outside, watchful in the dark. Quent would not find me now.

My arms floated. Images, too, floated through my mind: Liza, smiling at us on our arrival in Blackthorn, her witchy black hair blowing in the wind off the sea. And Liza again, carried in Quent's arms through the upstairs hallway of the Old Mill House. Buzzy, smiling at me as we walked on the beach together, collecting shells. And Buzzy again, crumpled up in that dark closet, partially hidden by blankets.
Buzzy
...

My eyes popped open and I focused hard on the bottle of bubble bath on the ledge. I tried to force the images of dead people out of my head, tried to keep my mind a blank.

I heard Edmund's voice from the kitchen. "Let me talk to him, Mom!"

And Ivy's voice: "Me, too!"

I heard Mom's voice muttering and realized that she must have phoned someone. There were few silences. Mom was doing all the talking, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. I closed my eyes again and drifted. I don't know how long. I nearly fell asleep.

Then the phone rang. I sat up in the tub and listened. Heard Mom's surprised yelp. "
What?
" she cried loud and clear. "Oh, no, are you
sure?
Oh, no!"

The water was still enticingly hot, but I sloshed my way out of the tub and grabbed a towel. I stood on the mat and dried myself hurriedly, reached for my bathrobe, and jerked open the bathroom door.

Mom stood by the kitchen sink, wide-eyed. When she saw me, she turned away and hunched over the phone. Her voice grew softer but still I heard: "That's just awful. So sad ... I can't believe it ... but maybe it's for the best? I just don't know..."

Ivy and Edmund sat at the table with mugs of cocoa. They both looked at me and shrugged, mystified by Mom's phone conversation. I pulled out a chair and sat with them, waiting for Mom to hang up. The room seemed full of shadows.

After another moment she laid the phone down and turned slowly to us. Two bright spots of color stained her cheeks. "That was Detective Inspector Link."

I think I had already known as much.

"There was an accident," she continued softly. "On the motorway to London. The police were chasing Quent's car at high speed. Quent spun off the road suddenly, trying to take an exit, and his car rammed into a concrete post."

The shadows receded. I pictured Quent as I'd first seen him, driving wildly with Duncan in his sports car. And then later that day, smiling and genial, taking us off to the Old Ship for our welcome-to-Blackthorn meal. And then I pictured him as I'd last seen him on Castle Hill: face contorted, voice hissing in fury as he shoved me into the ancient tunnel. "
In you go.
"

"Did the police catch him, then?" Edmund demanded. "Did they take him to jail?"

"They caught him," Mom said, then fell silent for a moment before adding, "he was in bad shape."

I caught my breath.
Oh, Quent.

"While they waited for the ambulance, Quent confessed to both murders," Mom continued. "A full confession, and
one of the officers wrote it all down, everything Quent was saying. He kept talking all the way to the hospital. The officer said it was as if a floodgate had opened and he had to get everything off his chest before—" She stopped.

"Before what, Mom?" pressed Ivy. But I knew.

"Before he died, honey," said Mom quietly. "Quent died before he got into surgery." She looked at us for a moment, and her lips quivered. She lowered her head into her hands and started to sob.

We all started to cry then, right there around the table, but whether I was crying for Quent, or for Liza, for Nora, for my own poor Buzzy, or for
all
of them—I just didn't know.

The phone rang again and it was Dudley Cooper. Mom stood up and went over to the kitchen counter to talk to him. He and his wife and Duncan had also been informed by the police of Quent's death—and his confession. Mr. Cooper was apparently doing all the talking, because for a long time Mom just stood there nodding and murmuring and taking notes on a pad of paper. When Mom got off the phone again, she was calm and composed. The bright spots of color had faded. She sat down at the table, took a deep breath, and told us the details of Quent's confession.

Although he was gravely injured, he seemed determined to relate everything, Mom told us. He told the police what he had revealed to me in the tunnel, plus more—maybe because his conscience was troubling him, but maybe just wanting the police to know how clever he had been. Mom shook her head. "Quent staged it all very thoroughly," she said with a twist of her lips. "Showed real artistic flair."

"And he nearly got away with it," I added.

"Yes, he thought he had," said Mom. "Until the night of
his welcome party in our honor." Quent had told the police how Liza grabbed the ring of keys off the hook by the door, and set off for the cottage. He followed, asking her what she was doing. She babbled something about Nora's necklace and he realized Liza would never keep quiet about her suspicions even if she couldn't prove anything. He grabbed the same rock he'd used on Nora, and bashed Liza on the head. When she was unconscious, he stopped the flow of blood with one of Mom's painting rags, then took a few more minutes to stack our boxes over the blood that had stained the floorboards. "Then he carried Liza's body back to the house," concluded Mom, "pretending she was so drunk she had to sleep it off."

"That's when we saw him in the hallway," I said, picturing it again. It made me queasy to think that Liza was pretty much dead at this point, yet Quent passed it off blithely as a drunken stupor. And we'd all believed him.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "He was obviously a good actor as well as a gifted artist." She wrapped her arms around herself with a sudden shiver. "He was clever—and ruthless. He returned to the party and rejoined his guests as if nothing had happened! Sometime a bit later he slipped out again and carried Liza down the back stairs, out to the Shreen, where he left her to die." She shook her head with the horror of it.

"But Jule figured it out!" Ivy said.