Serena's POV
The boathouse is warm.
That's what I can't get over. I've braced for cold, for damp, for the rank smell of old nets and rope. Instead there's a paraffin heater by the door, and a rug on the boards, and a hurricane lamp swinging from a rafter, throwing long gold shadows. A kettle ticks on a camping stove. It smells of Earl Grey and kerosene.
It looks like a place where you'd tell a story.
Augustus Brandt sits at the centre of it in a wicker chair, in a camel overcoat, with a tartan rug over his knees and a china cup in his hand. His white hair gleams. The carnation's gone from his lapel. In its place, small and gold, is the anchor pin.
"Mrs Hale," he says. "Come and sit by the fire."
I don't move.
I stand just inside the door, with my back against the planks and my hands in my pockets, and I look at the room.
Tessa's on the left.
She's tied to a chair by the workbench, with a strip of grey duct tape across her mouth and her bandaged hand strapped to the arm of the chair. Her coat is torn. Her eyes find mine, huge and swimming, and she shakes her head, hard, a tiny convulsive movement. Don't.
Vance is beside her.
He's in his shirtsleeves. His glasses are gone. There's blood on his collar, and his long grey face has a look I've never seen on it, a kind of slack, bruised bewilderment, like a man who's walked into a door he'd always thought was open.
Between them, on the workbench, set squarely under the hurricane lamp, stands a silver cooler.
It's a handsome thing. Tiffany. About a foot high, with a fluted base and two small curved handles, its lid beaded with condensation in the lamplight.
It's open.
Inside, nested in foam, are a small grey box and a coil of wire.
And a green digital display, glowing in the shadow, that reads 10:00.
My knees go soft.
"Don't fret," says Brandt, comfortably. "It hasn't started."
"Let them go."
"I'm afraid I can't."
"They've done nothing."
"Edmund has done rather a lot." He sips. "Haven't you, my dear fellow? He's been a most unreliable servant. And Tessa's a clever girl, but she has her mother's tendency to talk."
Tessa makes a muffled sound.
"They'll be going on a little journey," says Brandt, "with the other thing."
"What other thing?"
"The truth." He smiles. "Do sit."
"I'll stand."
"Then you'll tire." He sighs. "The drive, Mrs Hale. If you'd be so kind."
I take it out of my pocket.
I hold it up, between finger and thumb. It's a small silver stick, slightly warm from my hand.
"Edmund's insurance," says Brandt. "I always did wonder where he kept it. He had the most extraordinary notion that I wouldn't think to look in a Victorian safe." A thin chuckle. "Toss it, please."
I toss.
He catches it with a small, neat movement, like a man catching a peach. He holds it up to the lamp.
"A copy of Walter's last meeting. Quite clever. I'd forgotten I'd said all that." He pockets it. "And a set of practice sheets, I understand. By poor Lionel."
"You're not going to get away with it," I say.
"Am I not?"
"The FBI..."
"Ah." He looks at the ceiling, with an air of gentle regret. "Do say hello to Ms Torres for me. I do hope she's comfortable. It's a very cold night to be lying in a ditch."
My blood stops.
"I've been quite audible, I think," he goes on. "I rather hope they get all of it. I'd hate to have to say it twice."
"You want them to?"
"My dear girl." He puts down the cup. "What do you suppose I've been doing for eleven days?"
I stare.
"I've resigned. As chairman. Effective tomorrow." He examines his fingernails. "I've signed over my shares to a charitable foundation in the name of Charles Hale. I've written to the Times. A very long, very painful letter, about a friendship that went wrong. It will appear on Sunday."
"What does it say?"
"That Charles Hale stole the Ironbridge money." He smiles. "And that his son, in his grief, attempted to cover it up. And that his daughter-in-law, in a fit of madness and grief and fury, murdered three people in a boathouse on the Maine coast, and blew herself to pieces."
"I'd be dead."
"Quite."
"And you?"
"Oh, I'll be devastated." He lifts his eyes. "I'll be on a plane. A very old man, who loved them all, and couldn't prevent it."
I look at him.
I look at the kind, tired, grandfatherly face, with its white hair and watery blue eyes. I think of a pier.
"Why?" I say.
"Hmm?"
"Why did you do it? Not the money. I know the money. Why my father?"
For a moment, something moves in his face.
It's very small. It's the first thing I've seen there that isn't rehearsed. It's a flicker of something raw, and old, and almost bewildered.
"Because he was good," says Augustus Brandt.
"What?"
"He was the best of us. He always was. He did sums in his head and sang in the choir and never once, in thirty years, did a thing he'd be ashamed of." His voice is quiet. "I took the money in 2008 because the bank was going under, and I thought I could put it back in a year. I couldn't. And Walter found it. And he looked at me with those eyes, and he said, Augustus, I'll help you fix it."
I can't speak.
"Help me. Do you understand? He'd have forgiven me." A short, ugly laugh. "I couldn't bear it."
He looks at the cooler.
"Eight minutes," he says. "Not ten. I've changed my mind."
His thumb moves.
The green display flickers. 09:59. 09:58.
"Augustus!"
"It's quite simple, my dear. The boathouse has two doors. One on the lawn, which you've come through, and one in the water. Dominic and his friends are at the second. I'm rather sorry for them. I'd hoped Dominic would stay at home." He stands, slowly, with the help of his stick. "But he's his father's son. He always did go where the trouble was."
"If he touches that wire..."
"The door goes. And everything with it."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then eight minutes." The anchor pin catches the light. "It's up to you, Birdie, whether anyone in this room walks out."
The word hits me like a slap.
Birdie.
It's Walter's. It's the name only my father ever used, on the end of a dock, with his hand on my head.
"Where," I say, "did you get that?"
"He told me." Brandt smiles. It's the saddest smile I have ever seen. "At the end. When the water came up. It was the last thing he said."
I'm shaking so hard I can barely stand.
"Goodnight, Birdie."
I lunge.
I don't plan it. I just go, across the rug, with my hands out, like an animal. And he doesn't flinch. He steps back, with surprising lightness, onto a plank in the floor, and I hear a click.
A steel shutter falls between us.
It comes down with a crash, a curtain of iron, from the rafters to the boards. I hit it with both fists. The whole building rings.
Through a crack at the edge, I see his boots.
They're moving away, down the slipway, unhurried. I hear the slap of water. The soft purr of an engine, turning over.
"Brandt!"
"Goodnight, Mrs Hale."
"Brandt!"
The engine rises to a growl.
And in the lamplight, on the bench beside my sister, in a nest of foam and wire, a small green display quietly reads 07:41.