Memory and Desire (35 page)

“I've thought the matter over carefully,” Trevor concluded, “just as I've thought over the matter of Alec and his family. The first rule for a priest should be the same as that for a doctor—or a conservator, Richard. First, do no harm. I'd do more harm telling about the true provenance of The Play than by keeping quiet."

So the voice of sweet reason, thought Claire, was also the voice of faith. She liked that.

“Even Maurice Applethorpe and his cousins would agree with you there,” Blake said carefully, “since the income from The Play is tied to ownership of the Hall. And he would like to own the Hall, I believe."

Nice bait-dangling, Claire told herself. Would Trevor bite? Everyone's eyes, even Pakenham's truculent glare, turned toward him. Behind her Richard's hands might just as well have been lumps of stone.

“Yes, Applethorpe is only interested in The Play as an adjunct to the Hall. That said, he did give me quite a turn one evening. We were sharing a whiskey in the Druid's Circle after one of my lectures—very keen on genealogy, Maurice is—and he was going on about the Hall. I was growing quite nervy, afraid he intended to ask me if I thought The Play was genuine. But no, what he had the cheek to ask was whether I thought Maud Cranbourne's will was legitimate! How absurd!” Trevor laughed.

Richard's hands spasmed. No matter how finely Trevor could split hairs, if he got hold of the truth about the will he'd have to tell. Claire looked from Blake, who was nodding soberly, to Pakenham, who was turning red again. Would Blake play Nigel, who was coming in tomorrow—no, today—as cleverly? Or was Blake's discretion only delaying the inevitable?

“Thank you for coming in, Vicar,” said Blake. “We'll certainly bear your evidence in mind. Kate, show him out, please."

Murmuring, “Next Saturday week will be this year's prayer vigil, I'll be suggesting a meditation on the Golden Rule,” Trevor let Kate usher him out.

She shut the door behind him. “You heard that, Sergeant. Elliot Moncrief knows about The Play. If he's been getting a tidy commission off the sub-rights he'd be very motivated to keep someone from telling the truth about its origins."

“I'll tell you what we should do. We'll have Wood look into his crystal ball. Knows all, sees all. Bugger all.” Pakenham slammed shut his notebook.

End of another scene, Claire thought. Richard patted vaguely at either her shoulders or the chair and paced off across the room.

For a long moment, Blake rubbed his temples. At last he looked narrowly at Alec. “PC Wood, I'm not going to take you in charge. Miss Godwin here says she was attacked by someone else as she was watching you."

“Sir!” Pakenham protested. “He and Lacey are working together..."

Blake waved him away like a mosquito.

Pakenham threw his pen into the table, point first. It bounced off the tape recorder. Several words, of which only “doddering old duffer Digby” were intelligible, broke through his clenched teeth and past his contorted lips. A moment later he added tightly, “Thank you for your assistance, Claire."

He thought she was lying, too. “Any time, Arnold.” Her face split in a yawn that was close to a snarl.

“As for the rest of your story, PC Wood,” Blake concluded, “well, keep yourself available for further questioning. You are not reinstated to duty, not by a long chalk.” He reached across and clicked off the tape recorder.

With one last look at the shroud, Alec replaced the cover of the box. His sun-shot eyes turned to Blake. He said calmly, “I'm not going anywhere, Sir. I have another performance of The Play tonight."

A what? Oh yes, the performance.
Claire wasn't sure she could still walk, let alone read music. But, as Elliot would say, the show must go on.

“You, too, Lacey,” said Blake. “Stay in town."

“I'm booked for the performance as well.” Richard paced back across the room and pulled gently at Claire's chair—
let's get out of here before he changes his mind.
She stood up, grabbing at his arm for support. Alec might have calmed down—confession being good for the pagan soul as well, she supposed—but Richard was positively brittle, the muscle of his arm quivering beneath her hand, his jaw stretched taut as a rubber band, his eyes simmering.

No, she thought, Blake didn't have and was never going to get enough evidence to charge Alec and Richard, separately or in tandem, with murder. And yet Pakenham, blast him, was right. When all this came out they'd still be screwed. Because of Melinda. Because of Claire herself. And because of someone who wasn't content with the status quo, someone who'd threatened and finally murdered to change it.

Alec, Kate, Richard and Claire broke into the open air. Alec was the only one who didn't wince at the brilliant sunlight. “Cheers,” he said neutrally, and headed not toward his house but toward the Hall, probably to replace the shroud in the secret room. The other three turned the other way. Richard walked backward for a few steps, watching Alec's retreat, then with a tight shrug turned around and fell in beside Claire.

Roshan Nair was setting out a rack of sunscreen. Beside him Elliot inspected a handful of mail. “I say,” he called as the trio walked by, “the guardians of our public safety are growing more attractive every day."

Kate offered him a sardonic salute.

Rob and Diana were arranging tables and chairs along the sidewalk outside their door. Janet stood looking into a shop window, shoulders hunched, as though deliberately turning her back on the pub. Everyone was in shirtsleeves. “The weather,” Claire said. “It's never rained on The Play."

“Not once,” replied Richard. “You might could think it was divine intervention."

She and Kate had been standing in the attic room when Alec came in and said something about the weather and The Play, as though he had some sort of deadline. She saw again the fine dust in the cracks between the floorboards. Chalk dust. Alec had been casting spells there. Making magic. If he could control the weather she had a job for him back home, where the problem wasn't too much rain but too little....

Just because Alec said he could control the weather, she reminded herself, just because he thought he could control the weather or cast protective spells or find Melinda's body with her wedding ring didn't mean he actually could. “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” Shakespeare's Glendower puts it, to which Hotspur replies, “Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?"

Alec found Melinda's body. The weather was beautiful. And Claire was still alive to question his skills. Whether that was all a coincidence or the product of Alec's willpower was simply a matter of perception.

“Funny,” she said, “How the concept of Alec—or anyone—making magic seems absolutely normal. Common. Ordinary."

“If he's abnormal, then we need another definition of ‘normal.’ Have a kip, if you can sleep.” Kate swerved and went into the Nair's back door.

Richard walked Claire up the stairs to her flat, waited while she unlocked the door, then glanced around inside. She considered asking him in for a mutual back rub.... No. If she touched him he might break. If he touched her—well, she'd like being putty in his hands, but not now. Not until it would be a premeditated meeting of minds and hearts and bodies rather than a distracted ad lib.

This time they managed to kiss without knocking their glasses together. It was like warily touching a hot stove. “Later,” Richard said with a wry smile, and walked back down the stairs.

“Later.” Claire locked the door. Without bothering to pull out the hide-a-bed she collapsed onto the couch and spread the deerskin blanket out over her.

For a time she tossed and turned fitfully, dreaming of Alec hanged from Pakenham's poisoned pen and Elizabeth Spenser stumbling down dark passages echoing with a
drip drip drip
of blood. But the scent of grass and roses and Richard surrounded her, and eventually Claire eased into a deep, refreshing sleep filled with images of sunlit fields and stone brushed with gold.

Claire woke herself up mumbling lines from The Play: “This pathetic female, lewd and blasphemous consort of the devil—see how she droops, her countenance pale. She recks well her own guilt though she cannot bring her tongue to speak it—the proof is before us—shall Somerstowe suffer a witch to live?"

Rolling off the couch, Claire staggered toward the bathroom. Poor Elizabeth, she thought inadequately.

She reeled back from the face reflected in the mirror. If she didn't quite look like the wrath of God, she certainly resembled the annoyance of a saint. It was too warm to wear a turtleneck or wrap a scarf around the bruises on her throat, so she took the other tack and put on a scooped neck T-shirt. Letting it all hang out, her mother's generation would say. Or as her own would put it, showing some attitude.

She paused at the bottom of her staircase to scan the sky. The day had betrayed its early promise and clouds were massing in the west. When Kate came hurrying around the corner Claire commented, “Alec must only be able to concentrate on so many things at once."

“He's had a rough go,” Kate replied, without committing herself to anything. “I was having a word with the lads—Pakenham's after arresting Alec tonight after The Play."

“He didn't—he hasn't—damn it, he's innocent."

“Plain as the nose on your face, if you ask me. Not that anyone's asked me. Blake's not saying anything at all, just put it about that if one reporter hears about the evidence Alec gave this morning he'll be tearing strips off us, and no mistake."

“So Blake's on Alec's side?” Claire asked hopefully.

“Like as not he's only being cautious."

“Great. Let's get some food."

Dodging the cars and buses clogging the main street, the women dropped into the Druid's Circle for either a late lunch or early tea of pub grub. They were served by Giles and another youth, who were more interested in watching a soccer match than in carrying plates and glasses back and forth. But neither Rob nor Diana was there to enforce efficiency.

Several photographers and reporters walked a holding pattern between the Lodge and the Hall gates, which were guarded by a couple of uniformed constables. Kate and Claire veered up an alley, across a yard, and in through the postern gate in the Hall's perimeter wall.

The first person Claire saw inside was a slightly built masculine figure inspecting an empty birdbath. “Right on schedule,” she said. “Just as I'd expect."

“Who is it?” asked Kate.

“Nigel Killigrew, Melinda's ex-husband. Yo, Nigel!"

He galloped across the lawn toward her. “I say, Claire! I was most concerned to hear about last night's misadventure! Are you all right?"

“I'm fine. The bruises look a lot worse than they feel. This is WPC Shelton, my guardian angel,” she added. It was a little late to play the “just another volunteer” card.

“Good to meet you,” Nigel said, shaking Kate's hand.

He hadn't changed. With his long nose, prominent teeth, and silvered hair swept back from his face he reminded Claire of an aardvark. His Savile Row suit and old school tie proclaimed not only prosperity but propriety. For a brief time he'd complemented Melinda—until Melinda got tired of playing by his rules and went back to her own.

He'd always been scrupulously polite to Claire. “I made my way past the sentries with the help of Detective Sergeant Pakenham. He talked to me briefly last year, after Melinda went missing, and seemed more interested in obtaining the name of my tailor than in finding her. Sad, isn't it, how the days of the gentleman detective are gone forever?"

Kate strangled a guffaw.

“I made an appointment for tomorrow with him and—DCI Blake, is it? Just now I thought I should pay my respects to Melinda, especially since there was no funeral, only her ashes, I understand, returned to her brother in America. I sent flowers. That seemed fitting."

“Would you like to see where we found her?” Claire asked.

“Please, if it's no trouble."

Claire led Nigel toward the end of the lawn and the walled garden. “There,” she said, pointing toward the row of rose bushes, none of which looked any the worse for wear for having been dragged from their bed and replanted. In fact, they were blooming away as colorfully as the idealized flowers on a greeting card.

Nigel bowed his head. Claire backed tactfully away, thinking vague poetic thoughts. Was it T.S. Eliot who wrote about breeding roses out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire ... She looked over the sunlit countryside wondering if Melinda's only family, her much older brother and his wife, had bought some cold, sterile vault for her ashes. Or had they scattered them to the winds as she'd have wished if she'd ever imagined herself dying?

As though in answer, a breeze fanned Claire's cheeks. In the trees behind the Hall the omnipresent crows scolded and then fell silent. Down the slope from the gardens the ring of stones rested impassively. Yesterday she would've thought they were waiting for a congregation that had long ago moved on to other rites. Now she knew better.

“Killigrew has an alibi,” Kate said, with no pretense at poetry. “Pakenham did check that out."

It was Nigel's connection with Somerstowe that had brought Melinda here to begin with, but you could hardly blame him for that. Or because Melinda's connection with him made Richard suspect her as the blackmailer. “I know,” said Claire. “He's only the straight man."

Nigel cleared his throat and looked around. “Well, then. You're participating in The Play, Claire? WPC Shelton?"

“I'm turning pages at the piano,” Claire replied, “and we're both helping with the costumes. Speaking of which, I'm afraid we need to be going."

“Of course. I'm looking forward to the performance. It's been several years since I've seen ‘An Historie.’”

They left Nigel standing alone by the garden wall. He wouldn't be solitary for long, though. The gates would open in an hour, and already a throng gathered outside the Lodge and strained eagerly toward the Hall.

Here came Elliot the director, not even remotely the poet, heading toward the back exit. “If something wants doing properly,” he announced as he passed, “you have to bloody well do it yourself, don't you?"