Shilpa opened the door, but it wasn’t the door to the bathroom like she had expected. It led to the garage. A faint smell of petrol hit her. The room was busy with dusty boxes on shelves and an old tumble dryer in the corner next to the family car.
Shilpa was about to close the door when she noticed the car was a silver estate. She took a closer look at the emblem on the grill. It was a Mercedes. She stared at it for a moment. It was the same car that had run her off the road. She was certain of it. Had Martin been visiting Caroline a couple of days before she died? He would have known that his niece was a forager. Could he have slipped into the house while she was in the garden and replaced the amethyst deceivers with lilac fibrecaps?
Caroline had accused Martin after she had read her father’s journal. Shilpa had witnessed the argument at Martin’s house. Martin would have known that Caroline had evidence against him, even if it was vague. Had he killed his brother and then his niece? Martin didn’t seem capable of murder, but perhaps after living with the guilt of what happened to that boy all those years ago, he felt it his duty to kill his brother and to live with the burden of doing so. Cecelia had been Martin’s first love. Elaine had said so, and Shilpa could see in the way Martin spoke about Cecelia that she was still very much on his mind, even if she had died decades ago. Had Martin been avenging her death on the night of the party?
Shilpa took a breath and stepped backwards. Martin called her name, and she turned. When she saw the blade, she screamed. Without thinking, she ran towards the front door.
‘Wait,’ she heard Julia say as the woman took a step towards her with the knife in her hand. Shilpa hesitated. Julia could have been the one driving the car. Caroline and she were friends. They foraged together.
‘Listen,’ Julia spat.
There was no way Shilpa was going to listen to the woman with the long, unruly hair brandishing a knife. Shilpa made it to the door, but when she tried the handle, it didn’t open. She fumbled with the thumb-turn, rotating it anticlockwise. With a clunk of metal the inner bolt slotted into place, locking the door. ‘Come on,’ she mumbled to herself as she felt Julia close behind her.
‘Shilpa,’ Julia said.
Shilpa didn’t turn around; instead, she managed to move the thumb-turn clockwise. She pulled the heavy composite door towards her and leapt out into the rain. As she ran to her red Fiat, she skidded on the gravel outside. She pulled herself up and made it to the car, pressing the central locking on her key and pulling at the door handle with trembling hands. She put her car into gear and drove out of the driveway. She didn’t stop to see who or what was after her. She heard a loud scream and muffled shouting as she edged to the road, but she didn’t dare look back.
Shilpa got out of the bath and wrapped herself in her fluffy grey dressing gown.
In the sitting room she turned on the television. She didn’t want to watch anything; she just wanted the company. Tanvi and Brijesh were out again, but Tanvi had called and said they would be back soon. Shilpa didn’t think she could sleep after what had happened today. Her mind flitted between whether Martin and Julia were capable of murder or not.
There was certainly motive if Martin had believed his daughter would inherit a share of Arden Copse, and of course it could have been a revenge killing. All those years of hatred for his brother that he had bottled up could have easily manifested into something vicious. And what was his wife’s role in all of this? Shilpa couldn’t shake the picture of the woman heading towards her with a carving knife in her hand. But no matter which way she looked at it, she was struggling to come up with a strong motive for why Julia would want both Roy and Caroline dead.
Shilpa reached over to her bag on the sofa and pulled out the tattered notebook Caroline had given her. Caroline had been certain that something in her father’s journal pointed to his killer. Was it just the incident involving the boy and the wasp that Caroline had based her deductions on, or was it something else? What had Shilpa missed the first time she had read the old notebook?
Shilpa opened the book and flipped through the pages. There was nothing. She was about to put it down when she noticed two of the pages at the back of the book were stuck together down the long edge. She slipped her fingernail between the pages and gently prised them apart. There were three photo corners stuck to the page. Their yellow colouring told Shilpa that they were old. She touched one corner, and it came loose. A photo had once been in this book, but someone had removed it. Had it been Roy? Caroline? She let her eyes drift over the page. There were scribblings in another hand; it wasn’t the words of an eight-year-old but someone much older. She gasped when she saw her name. Shilpa focused her eyes on the page and tried to figure out what she was seeing. In a moment, she had it. Caroline had used her father’s journal to make some notes. Notes she wanted Shilpa to see. It made sense now. It wasn’t the story of the little boy eating the wasp that Caroline wanted Shilpa to see, but this. It was why Caroline had entrusted the journal to her in the first place.
Shilpa began to read.
‘You’re back,’ Tanvi said as she entered the house. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I found a note from Caroline.’
‘She sent it to you before she died?’ Brijesh asked from behind Tanvi. He had an armful of shopping bags. Trust Tanvi to find things to buy in the smallest of shopping towns.
‘That would have been simpler,’ Shilpa said. ‘I found a confession at the back of Roy’s journal.’
‘What?’ Brijesh and Tanvi said in unison. ‘She killed her father?’ Tanvi asked. She took her coat off and sitting next to Shilpa, she gave her a hug, then she took the journal from her and started to read. ‘What’s this?’ Tanvi pointed to the faint writing at the bottom of the page.
‘It says “baby”,’ Shilpa said. ‘And it looks like a year has been written next to it – 1965.’
‘Who was born in 1965?’ Tanvi asked.
Shilpa shrugged. ‘Could this be the same baby Caroline was referring to in her note before she died?’
Tanvi shrugged. ‘You don’t have the picture. It’s an old journal. It could be a photo of anything.’
‘Like a cat,’ Brijesh said, unhelpfully. ‘What did Caroline’s note say?’
‘That she was the one to trip the lights when her father died,’ Shilpa said.
‘Why?’ Brijesh asked.
‘She was angry with him for changing his will. She says in her note that she fought with him at his party. She was angry at him for leaving Arden Copse to Annabel, and what annoyed her more was that she was certain Annabel had overheard her conversation with her father. She saw him get up from his seat and walk towards the edge, but he stopped a sufficient way from it. In a moment of anger, Caroline thought she would turn the power off. The day before the party, the electricians had discussed the lighting with her. I witnessed them speaking to her,’ Shilpa said. ‘Caroline knew which switch to flick on the consumer unit to plunge the cliff into darkness, and she was well aware that her father would be momentarily scared because of his fear of heights.’
‘Didn’t you say that you asked her about her father being afraid of heights and she denied it?’ Brijesh asked. He put the shopping bags down and sat on the sofa opposite Tanvi and Shilpa.
‘She lied,’ Shilpa said with a wan smile. ‘The same way she lied about rearranging flowers when her father died. She wasn’t anywhere near the flowers. She was cutting the power to the lights on the cliff.’
‘So if she turned the lights off when her father was standing, he could have just misstepped and fallen to his death,’ Tanvi said.
‘She felt responsible,’ Shilpa said, ‘but she was certain that didn’t happen.’
‘How could she be?’ asked Brijesh.
‘Because her husband said he saw him as the lights came back on,’ Tanvi said, putting the journal down.
‘Roy Arden didn’t fall when the lights were off. He fell just after the lights came back on,’ Shilpa said.
‘So if Jack saw Roy when the lights came back on, then he would have seen what happened next.’
‘I can see why you’re ready to collapse,’ Brijesh said.
Shilpa laughed. ‘It’s not just this. Let me tell you about the day I’ve had.’
‘Well, it’s obvious,’ Tanvi said.
‘What is?’ Brijesh asked.
Tanvi playfully tapped Brijesh on the nose. ‘Who killed Roy. It’s there in the note. Caroline’s husband, for some reason or other, probably his continual condescension, had it in for his father-in-law. The lights went off, and he saw his chance.’
‘It makes sense,’ Brijesh said. ‘Didn’t you say that Martin saw Jack walking towards his brother as he left the party?’
‘And isn’t he the estate manager? He installed the ridiculous knee rail to keep people safe apparently,’ Tanvi said.
Shilpa nodded. ‘So you think he hated Roy and saw his chance to push him off the cliff. Then when he suspected his wife of finding out, he killed her as well? Wouldn’t it be easier to just get a divorce?’ Shilpa asked.
‘It’s still a bit of a hassle, divorce. Murder is easier, especially if you have a taste for it.’ Then seeing Shilpa’s expression, Tanvi said, ‘You asked for my opinion. I was just giving it.’
‘I’m not sure I did ask for it,’ Shilpa said with a smile. She felt empty and cheated. Why had Caroline gone to such lengths to cover up her part in that night’s events? She was sure her late friend hadn’t told the police what she had done. It was plausible that she had caused her father’s death and was looking to Shilpa to give her a credible suspect to exonerate her.
Tanvi squeezed her friend’s shoulder. ‘You’ve had a long day,’ she said. ‘Sleep on it.’
Shilpa stood up. She needed her bed, and her friend was right. Just hours ago she had been convinced that Martin and Julia were behind the deaths of Roy and Caroline, but now she wasn’t so sure. She said goodnight to her friends and headed to her bedroom.