‘There is some champagne in the crypt,’ he said. ‘Go and get us a bottle, will you? Have one drink with me to celebrate my last bestseller? Then I promise I’ll tell you everything else you need to know. I locked the trapdoor – even I get the heebie-jeebies sometimes.’
‘But all those stories about bodies being found in the crypt, and witches, and ghosts… you made all that up to keep people away from here.’
He grinned. ‘Yes, all just a figment of my dark and twisted imagination. But it worked, didn’t it! The only thing the builders found down in the crypt when we restored the place was damp. I like peace and quiet and privacy. I don’t want people bothering me, but sometimes I scare myself. Sometimes I spent so many years inside those stories, that the world I made up felt more real to me than the one I lived in.’ His blue eyes watered, and Robin could tell that his mind had wandered somewhere far away. But then he blinked and was back. ‘The key for the padlock on the trapdoor is in one of the kitchen drawers… I forget which.’
Robin hesitated, but then did as he asked. The first thing she saw when she walked into the larder was the giant freezer, then she noticed all the tools lined up on the wall, including all the woodwork chisels and stonemasonry tools neatly arranged according to size. The axe frightened her just as much then as it always had. For years, Henry had enjoyed carving things out of wood and stone, he said it was a bit like carving fiction from real life. It just required patience, imagination, and a steady hand. Every summer, he would chop down an old tree that was blocking his view of the loch with that axe, then carefully carve an animal sculpture into the remaining stump. Owls and rabbits were his favourites. All with spooky, oversized eyes, a bit like his own.
The trapdoor really was locked, and it took her forever to find the key. The smell of damp as she walked down the stone steps reminded her of so many things that she would rather have forgotten. But there were no ghosts in the crypt – at least not that variety and not that day – only alcohol. By the time she returned to the study holding a dusty champagne bottle, she was surprised to find Henry still staring at the fragile clipping of The New York Times bestseller list. His agent had circled his book in red. It was number one.
Robin poured two glasses and held one out for the old man to take, but he didn’t. When she looked a bit closer, she could see that he wasn’t moving and his blue eyes hadn’t blinked for some time. She felt for a pulse but there wasn’t one. On the desk, she noticed some items that hadn’t been there before: an empty bottle of pills, a list of instructions, and a will. She drank the glass of champagne that was in her hand. Not in celebration, but because she required alcohol. At least he died happy.
Robin buried Henry that night, scared that someone might see if she waited for the sun to come up. She wrapped his body in an old bedsheet along with some of his favourite books, then dragged him out of the chapel. In his will, he had asked to be cremated, but having a cemetery right outside, and a shovel, had proved to be very convenient; albeit hard work. There were other instructions Robin chose to ignore, too. Like telling anyone at all that Henry had died. The following morning, she ordered a very nice-looking headstone online using Henry’s bank account details, and when it arrived, she engraved it herself using Henry’s tools. He had a staggering amount of money – more than she’d imagined – but Robin never spent a penny of it on herself. Despite it being clear in his will that the author had left her a considerable sum. The only time she ever used his bank card again was to buy props for the visitors, because that was for them, not her. Two days after Henry died, she sacked his cleaner, knowing that nobody else ever came to visit the recluse. Even the Blackwater Inn had closed down years earlier, thanks to Henry. He would be as alone in death as he chose to be in life.
When Robin found Henry’s work in progress on his laptop, she read it out of curiosity more than anything else. It was another typically dark and twisty Henry Winter novel. She hadn’t realised that she was holding her breath during a particularly frightening scene, until the rabbit made an unexpected sound in its cage and made her jump. Robin didn’t like her namesake being locked up. She carried the enormous white rabbit outside the chapel, and when it didn’t run away, she closed the doors behind it, hoping that she would never see it again. But it didn’t budge. When she carried it farther away, closer to the long grass and the loch, it just came back, sitting outside those huge gothic doors as though waiting to be let in. She didn’t understand back then, but not everyone wants to be set free.