Flora Bellamy never set foot inside The Pines again. Even though her guardian was dead, she had decided to take no chances, and hired others to empty the house before selling it. In his will, Harcourt left everything to his ward, with only one caveat: although she could decide whether to keep or dispose of “the collection”, she must do so as a whole, and not break it up.
This stipulation she decided to ignore.
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” she said to me, the last time I saw her, “but I believe it could be dangerous. Individual objects are only things, but when gathered together, they became something more – first in Mr Harcourt’s imagination, and then in reality.
“The concept in law of the deodand was that something which had once done evil could be remade into something useful, even holy, by good works. That was not allowed to happen in Mr Harcourt’s collection. His use of those things was opposed to good; it venerated the evil deed.”
Her way of redemption was to donate everything that remained in the house to a good cause. Being extra-cautious, she chose one so far away that she would not have to fear an accidental encounter with her former possessions, and had everything sent to a leper colony on the other side of the world.
I took it as a positive sign that she did not feel obliged to sacrifice herself in a similar way.
She decided to share a flat with her school friend, and embarked on a course of training in bookkeeping and office management.
Jesperson and I, naturally, discussed the details of this case – which began with one unsolved murder, and concluded with two – at great length when we were alone together, and also with Mrs Jesperson, but we were never able to agree upon how to assign the blame for the killings. We all agreed that both Adcocks and Harcourt were murdered, yet we also agreed that if there were no murderer, murder could not have been done.
I hope our next case will be less of a curiosity.
GOD MOVING OVER THE FACE OF THE WATERS by Steve Mosby
THE NIGHT BEFORE, I walked the coastline.
I didn’t set out until after midnight, as I wanted to avoid the search parties. At that time, the sky, the sand and the sea in between were identical shades of black – indistinguishable except for the moonlight that caught the ridges of the waves, and a prickle of stars overhead. The beach was invisible. Pebbles crunched beneath my feet, the sound fading to the steady push of packed, wet sand as I reached the water itself.
Everyone feels small, facing the sea. It’s the vast, open horizon, I think, and the sensation of how unimportant you are in the grand scheme of things. It’s like standing on the edge of an alien world – or perhaps like staring into the face of God, and suddenly realizing how incomprehensible He actually is. How little He cares about you. If He even deigns to notice you at all.
The sea noticed me, of course. I felt it in the rush of hiss and retreat, and the sudden waft of ice in the air as it came rolling up the beach at me before pulling back its swift, foaming fingers. The water feathered impotently around my shoes. If I ventured in then it would take me without hesitation, because that is what it does, but right here I was safe.
I squatted down and flicked at the sea.
The contempt in my message was clear, and I heard a deep, chained-dog rumble from out towards the horizon: an angry folding of faraway water that longed to reach out and take me but couldn’t.
A moment later, the smell of coconut filled the air. The contempt in the sea’s reply was equally clear.
“Fuck you,” I told it.
Then stood up, hitching my rucksack higher for comfort, and started looking.
The first coffee of the morning curdled.
I stared down at the tatters and shreds of cream on the surface. The milk was in date, so it was probably something else. Perhaps it was even the rucksack, which rested in the corner of the kitchen now, stinking of fish and rot. Whatever, I tipped the coffee away and made a fresh cup, this time without milk.
It was a little after 8.20; through the window, the sky was white as mist. I took the coffee out into the cold morning and wandered down the shivering grass of my back garden, opening the gate in the chain-link fence at the bottom. There were a few furrowed boulders out here, a short incline, and then the beach.
I sat down on one of the boulders, wrapping my hands around the steaming cup for warmth. Beyond the beach, the fluttering, blue-grey sea, gulls wheeling overhead like flies. It was still half-asleep right now, but grumbling to itself. Bruised, but too dozy to remember why.
I hoped it woke up soon.
I hoped it saw me up here and knew what I’d done.
In the meantime, I sipped my coffee and thought about Anna.
People often wonder why I never moved.
Sometimes they even ask me outright. The place must be so big for you now, they say, and it must contain so many difficult memories – and, surely, it’s painful to wake up every day, after what happened, and see the sea?
They don’t know anything, these people.
By the time I’d finished my coffee, I’d spotted the helicopter: a tiny orange speck hanging over the vast expanse of sea, the fluttering chop of its propellers sounding dull and insignificant, barely there. Down the beach to my left, a group of indistinct figures was moving steadily along.
I sloshed the dregs from my cup on to the rocks in front of me.
The sea had come to life a little by now. It was still groggy, pulling itself slowly up the beach, but I could sense the muscles it had: the tendons below the surface that were clawing this enormous, heavy thing up the sand towards me. It knew what I’d done. Eventually, it would tire and wash itself away again, drained of energy. For now, I enjoyed watching God struggling and crawling before me.
I’m not afraid of you.
Despite the disparity in their powers, the group of figures would reach me long before the sea did. Six policemen, with orange jackets over their normal uniforms, feeling their way slowly and uselessly along the braille of the coast.
Hague, of course, was one of them.
Eight months ago, a little boy went missing off the coast here. It was a familiar story. He was on the beach, playing with his older sister, and he went out too far into the waves. You can’t get away with that here. This stretch of coast is notorious for its unforgiving currents, and you’ll find few, if any, locals willing to swim in it. By the time the little girl alerted her parents, the boy had been swept out to sea and was presumed drowned.
Hague was involved in the search. He walked the coastline with different volunteers for a period of two weeks. He knew the boy was dead, but finding the body was important to him. Not understanding the whims of the sea, the parents held out hope – and would no doubt continue to do so until their son was found. So Hague walked the coast.
I watched him, day after day.
Finally, in the second week, I walked with him.
As they approached now, his expression was grim. The others looked the same. It was as though they’d passed around an emotion to wear before heading out this morning, like Vaseline at an autopsy.
I heard the scuff of their boots on the sand.
“Jonathan.”
Hague nodded as he drew to a halt in front of me, his fellow officers grouping behind.
I nodded back. “Morning.”
“It is morning, yes.” Hague looked over my shoulder at my house. “It is that. But not a good one. You’ll have been following the news?”
“A little.”
“You’ve heard about Charlotte Evans?”
Yes. Ten years old, but she looked younger. Her photograph had been on the news the past few nights: curly blonde hair and plump, sun-red cheeks. She wouldn’t look like that any more.