Memory and Desire (22 page)

“Re-sealing a letter's not easy,” said Kate.

Claire said, “The Nairs are no more outsiders than Richard or even Elliot."

“And since they hardly speak English,” concluded Pakenham, “it would be stretching a bit to think them capable of blackmail, wouldn't it?"

Blake eyed his sergeant, face inscrutable. “Mrs. Nair helped us pinpoint who had had letters. Lacey saw Moncrief with one, and he and Wood each knew the other had gotten something a bit awkward, but most everyone else assumed their letters were unique."

So Richard hadn't told even Alec what was up? Claire asked herself. Alec could've guessed about The Play. He could hardly tell Blake he'd known about it all along. Was that why he was being so evasive?

“I asked each person who they thought was the blackmailer. Some of them thought it was Melinda, right enough. But then,” Pakenham concluded cheerfully, “every man jack of them might could be lying."

Feeling Shakespearean, Claire added, aye, there's the rub.

Blake glanced at his watch. “The cast party began about ten pm, with everyone scoffing down sandwiches, crisps, and champagne. It ended about eleven. Miss Varek was last seen alive at midnight. We've had the post-mortem report—judging by how well she'd digested the sandwiches, she probably died no later than half-past twelve. And further excavation of the grave turned up her camera, broken. Couldn't retrieve any data from it at all."

Claire tried not to think about Melinda's poor withered husk, a mockery of her beauty and vitality, turned into an exercise in biological necromancy. Just another source of data. “So who was out and about around midnight?"

“Most everyone,” answered Pakenham. “The Digbys and their prayer service, remember? I thought I had something when Heather Little told me Diana Jackman left around one am, said she was ill. Diana—she's a piece of work, isn't she?—told us she'd gone to Elliot's cottage for sex. He confirmed her story, said she'd arrived there just past one and stayed until first light. They've been having it off for years."

Claire shook her head, unsurprised. So Melinda hadn't broken her date with Richard to see Elliot. Not if he'd been with Diana.

If Elliot had offered Melinda cheap amusement, he offered Diana the glitter she yearned for. That it was glitter without the gold was something she seemed to have noticed only recently. What had happened to break them up? Claire's own arrival in Somerstowe, reminding Diana of how Elliot had acted over Melinda? And yet if Diana was still having sex with him the night Melinda died, she mustn't have been as big an issue between them as Claire had thought.

Kate said, “That doesn't clear Moncrief for the hour between twelve and one."

“He could hardly have killed Miss Varek,” replied Blake, “buried her, driven her car to the reservoir, and returned here in the space of an hour."

Even if he did drive like he was trying out for the NASCAR circuit, Claire thought.... “Wait a minute. Who says he drove the car to the reservoir right then? Maybe he waited until the next morning."

“Very good!” Pakenham told her. “But Roshan Nair noticed Melinda's car missing from the car park beside the shop when he gave the prayer service up at a quarter to two. Didn't think a thing of it, though. Not then."

“Oh,” Claire said. Just because she didn't like Elliot didn't mean he was the killer, she reminded herself.

“As for Rob Jackman,” said Blake, “he never went to the vigil to begin with. Has little use for Digby and his ilk, I gather. Says he went home and went to bed. Never missed his wife, though. Separate bedrooms. Jackman knew about her and Moncrief, called her a whore and Moncrief her ponce."

“Jackman has form,” added Pakenham. “He was inside for several months in his early twenties, convicted of assault and battery. And word on the high street is he knocks his wife about regularly. Since he has no alibi for the time of the murder, just now he's our prime suspect."

“Motive?” Kate asked.

Pakenham shrugged. “He didn't want the blackmailer to let the village know he can't keep his wife in line."

“Some of the volunteers aren't accounted for,” concluded Blake. “Fred Siebold and Janet Harlow had a row on their way to the church and he went back to the B&B alone. No alibi for him, either. And then there's PC Wood. He says he was at home, but since he lives alone..."

“No alibi,” Pakenham said with obvious relish. “I don't care for his looks at all. We should have the Chief Constable relieve him of duty."

“I'm afraid so,” agreed Blake.

Claire picked up her needle, compressing her lips to keep herself from wading in in Alec's defense. So had everything in Somerstowe been going along smoothly and happily until first Melinda and then she herself came along? Or would all those fault lines have slipped no matter what? If people didn't hide secrets, she thought irritably, then no one would get hurt.

Pakenham reached into his jacket and pulled out his cell phone. Blake gazed out through the leaded glass lights of the window. The panes were warped with age and no doubt gave him a view of the world as distorted as the reflection in a fun house mirror.

Turning back to the canvas, Claire told herself she was ready, willing, and eager for Act Two to get under way. Was anyone else?

By the time the workday was over Claire had finished her patch. It looked good, she told herself. Any triumph in a storm, or however the adage went. She turned off the light and headed downstairs, Kate at her heels. Susan was posting an article on preservation theory on the bulletin board in the entrance hall. “Richard's gone on to the Lodge, Claire. If you hurry you can catch up with him. You have a couple of hours before rehearsal."

Great, Claire thought. Was it that obvious she and Richard were very tentatively considering a relationship? She should put a notice on the board herself:
Hear ye, hear ye, we have barely held hands.

“My granny's like that,” Kate commented. “Always match-making."

Claire walked right on past the Lodge instead of stopping in for afternoon tea and meaningful if cautious eye contact. She parted from Kate at the Nair's back door—Kate was renting their extra bedroom—and fixed her own mug of tea in her flat.

She tried playing one of Melinda's jazz CDs. The aimless wailings of a saxophone layered onto the repetitive shuffle of a brush-stroked drum was more maddening than inspiring. They'd never agreed on jazz. They'd never agreed on bagpipes, either.

Turning off the CD player, Claire skimmed the day's newspaper—war, pestilence, corruption, celebrities—been there, done that. Then she doggedly updated her night-of-the-murder timetable. But there seemed little point to her note taking. Been there, done that, too.

When Claire emerged, the evening sky was bruised with clouds. Fine, let it rain tonight, if only it would be clear for the first performance Friday. Reckless, to perform The Play in the forecourt of the Hall, in whatever weather the English summer dispensed, but it certainly added authenticity.

She said as much to Sarita, who bustled from the shop carrying several long cardboard boxes and her sewing basket. “It has never rained on The Play,” Sarita replied. “Not so much as once, I am told."

“Elizabeth's dead hand from beyond the grave?” Kate followed Sarita out the door, her arms draped with fabric.

“Alec would say it was a sign of her innocence. Here, let me...” Claire hoisted the basket.

“Two days only remaining until opening night,” Sarita went on. “The weather I cannot control. What is concerning me is the wardrobe."

“I'm sure everything will be ready in plenty of time."

“For the second year in a row I am making a new costume for Elizabeth. Last year Melinda was much smaller than Diana. This year we cannot use Melinda's dress for Trillian....” Sarita's lustrous dark eyes flicked to Claire's face. “Of course we are not using Melinda's dress. I am sorry to be speaking so thoughtlessly."

“You're not speaking thoughtlessly,” Claire assured her, “you're focussed on your work. It's good to have work to focus on."

“Quite right,” said Kate behind her back.

Past the main gate of the Hall they went, and through the door off the courtyard into the old kitchen. The huge fireplace, big enough to garage a car, emitted a chill draft and the furtive scurryings of squirrels and starlings. Claire set the basket down on the long trestle table and helped Kate spread out the dresses with their billowing skirts.

Everyone in town seemed to be milling around the room, their voices echoing from the vaulted ceiling. Priscilla Digby applied a match to the mysterious recesses of the AGA cooker and filled two kettles at the trough of a sink. Rob arranged sandwiches, crisps, and biscuits beside a row of teacups. Alec, in jeans and sweater, coached Fred in his three lines. Blake, his moustache looking distinctly wilted, and a uniformed constable waited in a corner. Their eyes focussed mostly on Rob Jackman, although everyone else came in for the occasional sweep, like searchlights across a prison yard.

“View halloo!” caroled Elliot from the outer door. “Is everyone ready? The play must go on!"

The human surge toward the door snagged on the imposing figure of Roshan Nair. His moustache looked freshly starched. When Elliot reached for Trillian's hand Roshan favored him with a shining white smile as sharp and bright as a scimitar. Elliot backed off. This was one Elizabeth he wouldn't be road-testing.

Richard materialized from the main house, exchanged a carefully gauged smile with Claire, and followed everyone else outside. Blake and his constable brought up the rear.

Sarita started checking the costumes for securely attached buttons and functioning, if concealed, zippers. Kate and Claire waded in where they could, shaking out jackets and testing hooks and eyes. Through the open door came currents and cross-currents of voices, suddenly quelled by Elliot's peremptory, “Places, everyone. A quick run-through and then costume call. Full dress rehearsal tomorrow night. If it doesn't fit, now is the time to call our lovely multiple wardrobe mistresses’ attention to it. Richard—Phillip—the prologue, if you would be so kind."

Claire unfolded a lace collar and pricked up her ears. Even issuing bald architectural directives Richard's voice was a delight. Now, tuned and strummed, it sent shivers down her back.

“Look down, O Muse, and smile upon this unaccustomed hand. Here do I, a man of uncouth and idle pleasures, bend his meager talents toward that year long past, wherein Summerstow was assailed by plague and fear as though the four eternal horsemen did ride about its narrow streets and harvest souls like corn. Save the soul of a maiden, snatched untimely not by immortal terror but by mortal calumny, by her very neighbors who so forsook the duties of humanity. All but one, and he, amid his toils and care, could not deliver her.

“On yonder green, beneath St. Thomas's o'ertipping tower, stands the place of infamy where the pitiful story was played out. O man! both loyal and perverse! O woman! gentle and spiteful in equal measure..."

Elliot's affected voice was a bucket of cold water. “Richard, this a tragedy. Could you find a little emotion in the lines, please?"

“I'm quite familiar with the tragic nature of the play, thank you, Elliot,” Richard retorted.

You can say that again, Claire thought. The quiet conviction of his delivery suggested unfathomable depths of emotion, underscoring the tragedy better than any amount of “thud and blunder,” as Melinda would have put it.

Sarita stitched the mile-and-a-half long hem of Trillian's costume, a modest teal-blue gown. Kate polished the buckles on several pairs of shoes. Claire sewed button after button down the back of her own costume—since she was turning pages for Priscilla, the pianist, it was her back that would be to the audience—and listened.

Even though Trillian hadn't the experience to plumb her dialog for Elizabeth's innate dignity, her youth emphasized the woman's plight. She was still a bit shaky on her lines, earning more than one elaborate sigh from Elliot. Alec's Walter was stiff. Claire suspected he was pointing up that the young clergyman's inability to save Elizabeth stemmed as much from the flaws in his own character as from the lynch mob mentality of the townsfolk.

Diana played even Lettice's minor lines as though she was doing Lady MacBeth's sleepwalking scene. The normally taciturn Rob ranted and raved, overshooting Cecil's motivation, doubt and disillusionment, to target a malicious rage. Claire shuddered. Rob could've broken Melinda in half with his bare hands.

The secondary characters spoke their lines with skill mingled with boredom, depending on how many years they'd been playing the same parts. Richard's voice came and went, providing a base line to the orchestrations of the others.

Phillip had written—well, had begun—a play about the tragedy of witch-baiting while he and his cronies in the Hell-Fire Club amused themselves with occult mumbo-jumbo exponentially more offensive than anything Elizabeth had stitched into her cloth. But if Phillip had been caught the repercussions would've been social, maybe political, not legal and certainly not lethal.

In real life, Phillip had taken the occult too lightly. The truly tragic aspects of The Play probably had been Julian and Dierdre's work. It was Cecil who'd taken the occult much too seriously.

Both men, passionate in their own ways, were Richard's ancestors. Did their personalities linger in his? How much of the Celtic warrior poet from his mother's ancestry was concealed behind that crisp Norman exterior like nuclear fuel rods concealed behind lead shielding? If Richard ever went critical Claire wanted to be miles away. Or else with him, in the upstairs bedroom at the Lodge ... It was way too soon to be thinking about sex.

“Lovely!” Elliot shouted. “Tea time! Cue-to-cue afterwards, with music!"

People flooded into the kitchen, seizing sandwiches and rattling teacups. Sarita, Claire, and Kate scrambled among the drifts of material matching costume to body.

Janet, playing a shopkeeper, was swathed in yards of gray cotton with the obligatory white collar. Both Rob and Alec were in strict black and white, although Rob, as Cecil, was permitted a bit of lace. Claire checked inside the first black coat. “ASW” read the printed initials. Since Alec was still outside, she put that coat down, handed Rob the one labeled RPJ, and tried not to shrink back as he tried it on. No alterations required. No conversation, either.