Memory and Desire (25 page)

“So I hear,” Alec said. “Is this the box?"

Kate sat down and started sewing, her face downcast, her ears pricked forward.

Claire put the box on the windowsill and opened it. In the dim light the linen cloth looked fragile as gauze and the embroidery seemed colorless. The mildew odor wasn't nearly as bad as that of the much younger books downstairs. It just went to show you how much influence Alec had over Richard, talking him into leaving the cloth in the damp little garret instead of in the storeroom with the dehumidifier. “A bath in distilled water would help preserve it,” she suggested.

Alec reached toward the cloth. “There's an herb,
saponaria officianalis,
also called ‘Bouncing Bet,’ which foams up in water and makes a lovely soap for old needlework."

“Really? You'll have to give me the recipe.” Claire pointed. “There're some holes in the stitching, moths eating the wool threads, probably. I'll try some unobtrusive repairs, assuming I can match the colors. Sometimes the modern dyes are too vivid."

“Vegetable dyes duplicate the old colors."

So he didn't mind her working on the cloth, then. “These colors are vegetable dyes, aren't they? Loden green, chestnut brown, madder red, yellow—yellow's made from onion skins, right?"

“Right"

“Did you ever notice the hair stitched into the patterns?"

“Yes.” Alec traced the intricate embroidery with his forefinger, lightly, barely touching the cloth, as though it was singing a distant song that he could hear through his fingertips.

“Do you think maybe Elizabeth really was a witch?"

His fingers curled defensively back into a fist. “And if she was?"

“Well, then she was. I mean, everyone takes The Play as gospel, that Elizabeth was innocent....” Claire realized she was mixing metaphors. Hard to believe it'd once been so easy to talk to Alec when now he was standing with the breadth of his shoulder turned toward her, shutting her out. Like Richard with her, it wasn't that she was particularly inarticulate, it was that she didn't want to violate Alec's boundaries. Except unlike Richard with her, she had no idea where Alec's boundaries were.

“They accused Elizabeth of poisoning the well and of devil worship,” Alec said, his voice so low it was almost hoarse. “She
was
innocent."

“Oh yes, she was. So what if she really was the village wise woman or Wiccan or whatever. That was all a long time ago. It's not an issue any more. We know better now."

His hand opened and flattened against the cloth.

Claire imagined a man lying on his lover's breast. She blundered on, “Is that what Melinda meant in Richard's letter about ‘the truth behind The Play'? Is that what you were asking if Melinda told me, not that the room exists but that Elizabeth's story is a lot more complex than The Play lets on? I'd like that. I'd like to think she was more than just a victim."

Kate stitched calmly on. The odor of benzene sharpened the cool draft from the room next door.

“Thank you,” Alec said. Gently he fitted the lid on the box. “Now if you'll excuse me, Claire, Kate, dress rehearsal is tonight and it's still raining.” He turned toward the door.

Claire was right behind him. She took his arm and pulled him around to face her. His face was keener than it had been a week ago, its composure eroded. She'd already violated his boundaries today, for whatever reason. She might as well add assault and battery to the trespassing charges. “I'm sorry, Alec, but I have to know. Were you and Melinda having sex?"

“No. That wasn't right, not for us. We were friends is all.” Politely Alec pulled his arm away and walked off, his steps booming, leaving Claire to swallow her next invasive question:
Why were you being blackmailed?
And yet he wouldn't have answered that if she had asked it.

Kate waited until he'd disappeared out the door. “Good go, but no joy."

“All I did was step on his toes. I've been stepping on his toes ever since I got here. Melinda stepped on his toes and I don't know why."

“Pakenham's a gormless git. That doesn't mean he's wrong about Alec. He's a bit peculiar, isn't he? And he did find the body."

“That's a point in his favor. Melinda's body could've stayed in the garden forever and no one would have known."

“True,” said Kate, an equal opportunity cop. “A lot of things could've gone on here forever and no one would've known. But now..."

“Now?"

“It's like the curtain's gone up, the show has started, and everyone in Somerstowe is playing a role."

“Everyone in Somerstowe except Richard is playing a role,” Claire corrected.

Kate squinted down at her needle and didn't answer.

Claire dropped heavily into her chair and considered the needlework. A few continental stitches at the edge of Venus's artfully draped gown to steady the spliced-in bit of canvas and then a trame stitch across the hole so that the new stitching would be as thick as the old. Tentatively she pressed her needle into the pre-existing stitches, wondering whose hand had made them. Alec may have sensed something in the old cloth but all Claire's fingertips sensed in it or in any of the old needlework was dusty thread. She'd take Alec's kind of peculiar any day, though, considering what some nut cases got up to.

Great—the rosy pink cotton thread was shinier than the antique wool, the modern wool thread was too thin, and neither of them was quite the right color. Richard would spot the patch from across the room. Yes, you needed to mark where you'd made the restoration, just not with a flashing neon sign.

She could unravel several strands of cotton and several of wool and twist them together. After checking with Richard, of course. She stabbed her needle into the pincushion. “Let's go get lunch,” she said to Kate.

“Good idea."

Huddling beneath the umbrella, they bought sandwiches from Roshan and took them back to the Hall kitchen. There they sat chatting about herbal dyes and old needlework with Sarita, Priscilla, and Janet, who answered in words of one syllable and stared off into space. Embarrassed, Claire guessed. Hoping she's somehow made it all go away. Claire had always thought confession was good for the soul, but then it hadn't done much for Richard, either.

Elliot sat in lonely splendor in the cooker's aura of warmth, making notes in his copy of the script. Occasionally he tilted the contents of a silver flask into his mug of tea and threw a comment toward the women, sharing his extensive knowledge of Hollywood costume design and the idiosyncrasies of Americans. Some of his remarks were more than a little barbed—his tirade on how awkward American money was, for example, all the same size and color—but Claire refused to rise to the bait and agreed sweetly with every bit of blarney he emitted.

Diana popped in with a box of utensils and crockery. She and Elliot ignored each other. Fred wandered through and Janet rushed to make him a cuppa. Rob appeared with a box of sandwiches. Richard walked in one door and out the other, face set in deep thought, oblivious to the multiple eyes that followed him across the room let alone Claire's “Yo! Over here!” gesture. Alec never showed up at all.

Well, she reflected as she rinsed out her mug, in any play there was more going on behind the scenes than on the stage. “I need to ask Richard about that thread,” she said to Kate. “He went thataway, didn't he?"

The entrance hall was gray and damp, the brave tile floor filthy with footprints. A couple of pairs of boots, each in its own puddle, stood in front of the cold and empty hearth. Richard wasn't in the needlework storage room, although the bare bulb hanging from the cobwebbed ceiling was glaring away. Claire turned it off, then turned it back on.

Were the tidy rolls of needlework disarranged? Hard to tell. Richard might carry an inventory in his head, but she certainly didn't. Probably he'd had some organizational inspiration and changed a few things around. Focussing on your work being therapeutic and everything.

He wasn't in the library, although his clipboard leaned against the fireplace. When Claire and Kate circled back into the kitchen Sarita said she thought she'd glimpsed him outside. Claire stepped out into the forecourt.

Several men were bolting the wooden seating to the jungle gym of tubing. Others raised light standards, running various cords and cables from them to the antique fuse box by the kitchen door. Fred leaned against the wall beside it, huddled into his yellow slicker. He wasn't goldbricking—he was making sure no one turned on the electricity to the forecourt outlets until the wires were properly insulated and secured in their conduits beneath the bleachers.

“Fred!” Claire called. “Have you seen Richard?"

“He said he'd be in the library,” returned Fred.

“I was just...” She turned back into the house. Fine. She'd wait by the waterhole for a few minutes. Maybe he'd run down to the Lodge.

With the faithful Kate still tagging along—well, her job was tagging along, wasn't it?—Claire went back into the library and walked down the room to the portrait between the windows. “This is Phillip Lacey. Looks a bit like Richard, doesn't he?"

Kate considered. “In the forehead, maybe..."

Speak of the devil, or the household god, whatever—just outside the library door Richard's vibrant voice said, “I thought you'd be out organizing the animals two by two."

“The rain'll clear this evening, no fear,” Alec's cooler tones returned. Stiff fabric rustled and creaked—he was either putting on or taking off his slicker. “Richard, you let Claire take Elizabeth's shroud."

“I had no reason to stop her. She's good, she won't damage it. She won't, will she, by cleaning and mending it?"

“I don't think so, no. It's not that. I'm wondering how much she knows."

“Here we are again,” Richard said, his voice dropping almost into a whisper. “Last year this time we were asking ourselves how much Melinda knew."

The long room funneled his words directly to Claire's ears. Which seemed to be ringing—oh, the blood was draining from her face. She lurched forward—
don't say any more, please don't say any more ...
Kate's hand closed firm and uncompromising on her upper arm and pulled her back.

Alec's whisper was hoarse. “Maybe if you and I had told the truth, the whole truth, Melinda might still be alive."

“Then Claire would never have come here."

“So that's the way of it, eh?"

“Oh aye, I'm afraid it is. She's here, and because she's here she's in danger. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, Alec. I don't want to hide anything, but none of the—the secrets, the privacies—are mine to reveal, are they?"

“It's our own choice whether to remember or to forget the past. Whether to take up the memories or reject them."

“The sins of the fathers? Or their blessings?"

“Both. I know which I've chosen, for good and for ill. Let me bear my own sins, Richard. You have your own."

“They're not my own, are they? That's just the point."

“No, the point is that all this is part of—well, you can call it a divine plan or pattern, I'm thinking."

“Alec, I...” Richard's voice suddenly boomed. “Yes, Rob? A leak in the pantry? I'll be there straightaway."

“Choose what you've found with Claire,” Alec said, and his steps, each a tiny squeak of a boot, receded down the hall and were gone.

Oh God, Claire thought. She almost fell over as Kate jerked her back behind the bookcase. Richard's footsteps came into the room. The clipboard clicked against the marble. His steps retreated out the door and faded away.

“Sorry.” Kate let go of Claire's arm.

Claire sagged against the books. “You have to tell Blake what they said, don't you?"

“Yes, I do. Although tonight will be soon enough.” Frowning, she added, “It's all hearsay, Claire. Inference. Not necessarily anything he can use."

“Oh, he'll be able to use it, all right.” Claire felt sick, stunned, crazy-mad and angry-mad both. At Richard. At Alec. At Melinda. At herself. Hadn't she told herself recently that if people weren't hiding secrets then no one would get hurt? That might not be the most asinine thing she'd ever thought—thinking Richard had revealed everything was right up there too—but it sure came close.

Richard, of course, had nailed it. Everyone had privacies. Melinda, for example. She wanted to keep her past hidden. She hadn't hurt anyone by keeping it hidden. It wasn't the hiding that would've hurt, it was the revelation.

Claire had never revealed what she knew about Melinda's past. And yet that had been only Melinda's past. Alec and Richard weren't talking about only The Play, were they? There was more. The whole truth and nothing but, so help—what? Alec's divine pattern?

And had she ever learned something else—how easy it was to assume your conversations were secret. In the future she'd guard her tongue. Literally, when it came to Richard, if that was her only choice—Alec's comment to the contrary. But she didn't know what to choose right now, which truth took precedence. Alec? Richard? Melinda? Somerstowe with its long memory?

Claire led Kate back up to the gallery. She separated the strands of wool and cotton thread and took three threads from each. As she twisted them loosely together she visualized a seventeenth-century rope maker twisting a noose small enough for a young girl's neck.

She went to work. Rote work. Dumb, numb work. The silver needle lanced in and out of the soft pink of Venus's gown. Claire thought of Richard's bedroom and shook her head. She couldn't mourn a relationship she'd never had.

Kate stitched away silently, her brows cramped. She had no choice, had she? For her there was only one truth.

Just before quitting time Claire finished her patch and pronounced it good. As she looked up she thought she saw movement in the shadows at the end of the room. Her overworked eyes, she rationalized. She turned off the lamp and the movement was no longer there. If she detected a faint scent of pomander or the patter of paws, she ignored them.

In the high great chamber Susan was just peeling off her rubber gloves. “Dress rehearsal tonight,” she called. “How are the costumes coming?"

“Sarita says they'll be ready,” Kate returned politely. “Everyone's been for a fitting today."