Page 64 of The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
“I got a note under the door this evening, while I was out at the gallery with you,” he told me. “A sheet of legal paper, folded in half, with a message typed on it.”
“And what did this message say?”
“I’m sorry, Patrick. They want all of it.”
“The money? After my commission and the expenses of the show have been deducted, that’s still well over thirty million pounds, Harry. You can’t possibly be suggesting you’re going to just hand all that money to some...”
I trailed off. Harry was shaking his head. His face was solemn. “They’ve told me they want all the money, Patrick. The entire sale price of the painting. And we’re going to give it to them.”
JULIETTE, PARIS, 1938
The facts of the matter were simple enough, reported in the newspapers at the time. A family tragedy. A boating expedition across the lake. The two Willoughby girls, Juliette, aged six, and Lucy, ten, sneaking off unnoticed on a sunny afternoon, with a small parcel of sandwiches and cake pilfered from the kitchen, to row over to the island. What was not recorded was the fact that it was all my idea, all my fault. That I had badgered my sister, cried and stomped and sulked since breakfast, until she finally rolled her eyes and relented.
The island itself was a long, thin squiggle surrounded by reeds, one path leading from the little wooden jetty through the knee-high grass up to the pyramid that my father had built as his future mausoleum. Next to it, a little circle of stamped-down grass where we had unpacked our picnic baskets with Nanny so many times before.
We never made it. Not that afternoon, that calm, sunny afternoon.
I saw something glint in the water and then dart under the boat, and we both scrambled across to one side to lean over and see what it was. The boat tipped. We both fell. As we were falling, the boat came down on top of us.
I lived. Lucy did not.
The water was not deep, but it was cold, and neither of us were strong swimmers and we were some way from shore.
I can still taste that lake water. The feeling of being sucked down into darkness, freezing cold, the weight of my clothes growing, nobody in earshot. I remember scrabbling at the side of the upside-down boat, trying to pull myself up on it, failing, trying again, failing, trying again. In the distance, golden sunlight was falling across the still, peaceful lawn.
It was one of the gardeners who spotted me clinging desperately to the hull, threw himself into the water, and swam across. He dragged me to the shallows, my feeble kicks doing little to help, my limbs so chilled from the water I could feel nothing, desperately struggling to tell him through chattering teeth that my sister was still out there.
He pulled me up onto the bank and laid me on my side and I threw up brown water.
By the time he turned back to get Lucy, the lake’s surface was still and unbroken.
He lunged in, lurching around in the water, calling her name, struggling to take his jacket off and free his arms, his shirt clinging to him as he ducked under the water again and again. I shivered violently, thinking if I was this cold how freezing poor Lucy must be. A housekeeper carried me inside, and I sat alone wrapped in a blanket on a bench in the front hall and waited for the inevitable news.
It was the only time I ever saw my mother cry.
Several times that afternoon my father asked me to explain again what had happened, whose idea it had been, how the boat had capsized. Even as a child I knew what he was really asking: who can I blame? The answer was: me. It might have been both of us who tipped the boat. But I had seen the flash in the water. I had begged Lucy for an island picnic.
My mother hugged me briefly and asked the housekeeper to put me to bed, even though it was only late afternoon. On the other side of the room my sister’s bed was empty. I lay there with the light coming in still around the curtains, thinking about Lucy lying somewhere else in the house, cold and wet and alone, and I was unable to bear it, the ache in my throat sharp as daggers. A sob that would not come.
She was dead, and it was my fault. My beloved older sister. My father’s obvious favorite. Everyone’s favorite, really. The sister all the servants doted on. The sister who tried to take the blame for me so many times when I had done something naughty—broken something precious, torn my dress again. The sister who begged my father for months until he gave us those matching pendants—wedjat eyes to protect their wearer from harm—the only time he ever parted with any of his collection for anyone. The sister whose example, even when she was alive, I never seemed able to live up to. To whom I had always been compared and found wanting.
My mother had always been chilly and distant and my father eccentric, but after Lucy’s death she froze completely and his behavior became increasingly bizarre.
By the time I reached the Gare du Nord, it was almost morning. It was hard to believe that life was carrying on as normal, the porters shouting, whistles blowing, a man mopping down one of the platforms and whistling tunelessly to himself. I took a seat at a table and ordered a croissant and black coffee, surprised to see that my hands were not shaking as I lifted the cup to my lips. Shock, I told myself. That is why none of this feels quite real yet. That is why it was so hard to believe that somewhere, on the other side of the city, two burned bodies were being removed from a charred apartment, the sapeurs-pompiers stomping around amid the ashes of my life with Oskar in their blackened boots. The landlord and his wife, watching it all. Around my neck was the pendant I found under my sister’s pillow after she died—I always wondered if it might have protected her, had she worn it that day on the lake, had she not taken it off for safekeeping—with mine now resting around the neck of a dead stranger.
On the left side of my jaw, hidden by hair worn loose, was a single long bruise. The ache was steady and continuous. Every time I took a sip of coffee I had to suppress a wince as the hot liquid came into contact with the cut on the inside of my cheek. The croissant I pulled to tiny pieces and soaked in the coffee before slipping it into my mouth, and still it was painful to chew. Every time my jaw throbbed, I thought of Oskar, could see once more that look in his eyes. I had to force myself to finish the croissant. I ended up leaving most of the coffee.
It was time for my train.
As we were pulling out of the station, the sun appeared over the rooftops, setting the windows glinting. A woman and her husband belatedly found their way to my carriage and sat down. I smiled at her, looked back out the window. Did I mind if he put one of their suitcases up over my head, she asked? Bien sûr, I replied. I only had one small case, inside it everything I now owned in the world.
In my lap, gripped tightly in my gloved hands, was my new passport, the one with my face in it and someone else’s name. No, not someone else’s. That was what I had to learn to accept. My name was not Juliette Willoughby any longer, and never would be again. If this was to work, if all of this was to be worth it, I had to be the woman in that passport. A new name. A new life. That was what stretched out in front of me. To myself, not moving my lips, I practiced saying it, my new name, my only name.
Alice Long.
Part IV
The Murder
