THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

back. If you’re scared for any reason, just ring me.’
    ‘Or me,’ says Clough.
    ‘You’re very kind,’ says Maria. ‘You’d better go now. George needs his sleep.’
    Driving home, windows open to keep him awake, Nelson thinks about Maria and her delicate, compassionate relationship with Archie Whitcliffe. Why had the old man left her his books? Why did he make her the guardian of this secret, protected so long and with such ingenuity? Had Archie discussed his will with Hugh Anselm? Is this what was agreed at their last meeting, if it ever took place?
The last of the three of us left alive will leave instructions as to where to find this evidence.
Archie had been the last of the three. Why had he decided to pass on his secret in this way?
    The house is dark. Michelle and Rebecca must both be in bed, but when Nelson goes into the study he sees that the computer is still on. By the blue light of the computer screen, he takes the letter from his pocket and reads:
    Dear Archie and Hugh,
    By the time you get this I will be long dead. I have asked my younger sister to post this on her eightieth birthday which will be in the year 2001. Can you imagine that date? I can’t. What I think is that the world will have ended by then. Maybe some asteroid will have hit us just like Hugh is always saying.
    I’m sorry but I just can’t live with it. Knowing what we did to those poor fellows that night. I keep dreaming about it, and in my dreams they are coming for me because they
know it was my fault. I should have stopped them. I know you tried, Hugh, but it wasn’t enough. I know we have made the film so that one day everyone will know what happened but I can’t help thinking that we need some sort of sacrifice. A life for a life. So that is what I am going to do. Tomorrow morning, before it is light, I am going down to the beach at Broughton. I am going to swim out beyond Sea’s End Point. I am going to swim and swim until I can swim no more and then I am going to let the sea take me. It sounds beautiful put like that, doesn’t it? I don’t think it will be beautiful but it will be right. Then maybe the rest of you can live your lives in peace.
    I hope so much that you will be reading this at the end of long, happy lives.
    Your friend,
    Danny
    Nelson sits there for a long time in the dark, the letter in his hand. He is sure, beyond any doubt, that this is the letter that Archie was reading on the night that he died. The letter that he had hidden for so many years inside the Agatha Christie classic. Was the title somehow significant?
Evil Under the Sun
? But these murders were committed by the light of the moon, witnessed only by Jack Hastings’ wakeful little brother, himself now dead.
    Archie’s memories must have been stirred by Nelson’s visit, which is why he went to sleep that night with the word ‘Lucifer’ on his lips. Lucifer – the plan to turn the seas into fire. Or maybe even a reference to Buster Hastings, the ‘old devil’ himself, the man who had murdered five peoplein cold blood (not forgetting the man killed by his loyal sergeant) and forced his troop to take a blood oath, promising to keep his secret forever. Archie had kept his promise but, while he slept that night, someone had come into his room and suffocated him. Who is still alive who would kill to protect the Hastings name?
    And who else might they kill?

CHAPTER 29
     
    All in all, Ruth is relieved to go to work on Monday morning. A policeman returned her car late on Sunday night and, by then, a lot of the snow had melted. During Sunday evening, as she and Tatjana watched TV, huge chunks of snow kept falling off her roof. When she went to bed, early because she was exhausted, she could see dark patches appearing in the Saltmarsh and the tops of the reeds emerging from the blanket of whiteness.
    Monday morning is bright, almost spring-like. As she drives to work, the roads are clear, the snow remaining only as dirty sludge in the gutters. The university grounds are still white though. A huge snowman draped in a UNN scarf stands at the entrance to the Natural Sciences block but, as Ruth passes, its head falls forward, like a deposed tyrant. Soon all the snow will disappear, like a dream of winter. That’s what Saturday night must be, Ruth tells herself sternly, a dream. Now she must get on with real life. She sighs, climbing the stairs to the archaeology corridor.
    She has a meeting with the Field Team at ten. Trace isn’t there