Memory and Desire (36 page)

“Well, I...” Claire began, but he was already gone.

As soon as they walked into the kitchen Claire was surrounded by cast and crew, who asked questions, made comments, and expressed their best wishes for her speedy recovery. She barricaded herself behind the tables heaped with costumes, Kate at her side. Not that anyone expressed anything to Kate. They either looked at her with broad, guileless smiles or pretended she wasn't there. Which was no surprise, with her colleague Pakenham already working the room.

“Do you feel up to turning pages tonight?” asked Priscilla.

“That much I can do,” Claire told her.

“I was worried,” Janet said. “I figured he got you this time. Tomorrow Fred and I are out of here, going back home. Enough is enough already."

Behind her Fred opened his mouth and then shut it again, knowing resistance was futile.

“Play's going well, is it?” Pakenham strutted by, his hands folded behind his back, his collar crisp against the flab of his jowls. “I shouldn't worry, matters are well in hand, everything will be sorted tonight. You can even have your party, though there'll be an empty plate at the table."

Kate's expression suggested transfers, demotions, maybe even execution. “Sergeant,” she hissed under her breath, “I don't think..."

Pakenham turned his back on her and cruised on by trailing not clouds of glory but cologne. “Not to worry. I'll be taking the perpetrator in charge very soon now. Go on about your business."

“Thank you kindly,” said Roshan, with a smile as bright as the flame on the match he struck. He lit the AGA cooker and filled the first of no doubt many kettles.

“Anything I can do to help?” Susan asked Claire. “Buttons, bows, mantelpieces?"

“Thanks,” said Claire, “Sarita will be along any minute now."

Either Diana was a bit feverish or she'd already dipped into the blusher. “The caverns? I'd never go in there. Don't want bats tangling themselves in my hair, thank you very much."

“I didn't exactly intend to go in there,” Claire told her.

“So I'm doing this on my own, am I?” Rob shouted from the hall. “We're catering the cast party as per usual, aren't we? Get a move on—those prats helping out at the pub couldn't find their own arses."

Making a face, Diana turned toward the outside door, “Yes, my lord, anything you say, my lord, I'll fetch the food, shall I, my lord?"

Trevor was just coming in. “May I assist, Diana?"

“No, no,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, “I'll have one of the prats help out, won't I? Make them earn their dosh for a change."

Claire wondered how on earth Diana had played Elizabeth. Even if Elizabeth hadn't been quite the sweet innocent of legend, still she'd only been nineteen, not a bitter and disillusioned forty. But playing against type was the equivalent of a vacation. Last Halloween Claire herself had dressed as Vampira, in a slinky black dress with plunging neckline and enough make-up for three Dianas. Not that Steve had had too good an opinion of that outfit, but by then she'd stopped caring about his opinion.

Alec and Richard wrestled a long table from a storeroom through the kitchen and into the back hall, Alec murmuring a litany of, “Sorry, excuse us, mind your step."

They passed Pakenham and in unison averted their eyes. Smirking, Pakenham moved on, telling the Littles, “I'm seeing to matters here..."

And then there was Alec playing Walter. Which was like speaking a second language, Claire guessed. He certainly was—well, principled, trustworthy, respectable—pretty much of a Boy Scout anyway. Except when it came to Elizabeth, where he split the difference between Casanova and necromancer. The villagers hadn't consciously protected him, it simply had never occurred to anyone except the blackmailer to make an issue of his belief system. “Well,” she whispered to Kate, “even if Alec does lose his job, no one will be hanging him on the village green like Elizabeth."

“Not that Pakenham wouldn't enjoy it,” Kate returned.

Sarita herded Trillian and Derek into the kitchen, relieved them of their headphones, and sent them to help in the entrance hall. She handed Claire the length of fabric draped over her arm. “This is an old dressing gown I have altered for you to wear. I am very much thinking it will give the appearance of a lady's wrapper of the period. No corsets."

“Thank goodness,” Claire replied. “Thank you."

Richard came back into the kitchen, clipboard in hand, pencil ticking off a checklist. The best case scenario, Claire told herself, was that the Trust wouldn't blame him for the deeds of his parents and would send him elsewhere to work. Whatever, he'd still lose the Hall. Everyone would lose the Hall. Even if Applethorpe and his relatives agreed to keep quiet about The Play—it'd taken on a life of its own, after all, and could still generate income for them—they had no interest in maintaining a four-hundred-year old stone and glass white elephant.

Richard might let her comfort him. Or he might decide she was too closely tied to his loss, too aware of his vulnerabilities. He was no Boy Scout. He was a knight errant, and knights errant wore armor.

Like she hadn't noticed that about him when they first met? With a grimace, Claire turned to the matter—or material—in hand, checking over the costumes and allotting them to their wearers. When it came time for her to dress, she settled for a ribbon in her short hair and a dusting of powder and blush—the audience couldn't see her face, she wasn't about to layer it in Crisco again. And the smell of the stage base turned her stomach.

She walked to the entrance hall with five other people, Fred at point, Trevor and Richard at flank, Alec and Kate in the rear. She noticed the brand-new dead bolt on the cellar door as they passed.

Once again she found herself waiting while the crowd murmured outside like Romans handicapping a gladiatorial contest. “We who are about to die salute you,” Claire murmured. She could only hope the killer had already taken his best shot.

Tonight a long table in front of the fireplace groaned with an array of bottles and plates of food covered coyly with napkins. Diana slapped away Trillian's hand. “Yes, Miss, they're little bits of cheese on sticks and such like. No, you can't have one now, you must be minding your pretty frock."

Blake and Pakenham's business suits were conspicuous among the costumes. And conspicuous by his absence, Claire realized, was Elliot.

Richard's mouth crimped with exasperation. “He went off hours ago to collect the master script, the one with his notes written in. He meant for Derek to leave it here last night, but Roshan found it in their kitchen this morning and put it through Elliot's mail slot with the post."

“Can't blame the lad,” Kate said, “what with the argy-bargy over Claire. I'm surprised he got home with it."

“Moncrief would be late to his own funeral,” stated Rob.

Alec sent Derek running to Elliot's cottage. The boy returned right before curtain time. “I tried both doors, knocked, shouted, did everything save bung a rock through the front window. His Jag's there but he's not."

“If he scarpered,” murmured Blake, “he'd take his car...."

For one delectable moment Claire watched a flicker of doubt cross Pakenham's face. Then the smug certainty settled in again, like fog. “He's getting his leg over some bit of crumpet, like as not. He'll come running in at the last minute, making sure we all know just what he's been about."

Claire did expect Elliot to pop out of a closet or down the chimney and whinny, “The Play must go on!” He didn't, though, and The Play went on without him. And, so far as she could tell, without either Elizabeth or the cat.

In the forecourt the lights reflected off the gathering cloud-cover, giving the scene an eerie, otherworldly air. Derek prompted from a regular script, Richard hissed a few instructions from the wings, and the actors, troupers all, strutted their hour and a half on the stage without direction. Or so Claire assumed. She had to concentrate so fiercely on the pages of music—the complete set of pages—that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader could've dueled with light sabers at center stage and she'd never have noticed.

Then the cast was bowing. The audience streamed down onto the stage. Kate latched her arm through Claire's and elbowed a path through the crowd. Just inside the entrance hall Blake and Pakenham stood in close consultation with two bobbies. Alec ranged up beside them, caught himself, backed off and bumped into Claire and Kate.

Blake looked around. “Well, then, PC Wood. You've been exonerated."

“Eh?” Alec asked.

Pakenham rocked back on his heels, stuffed with satisfaction. “The lad only knocked on Moncrief's door, did he? I thought it a bit much, Moncrief not taking his bows. So I made a recce myself, went round looking in the windows. Then I fetched a constable with a crowbar."

“And?” prompted Richard from over Claire's shoulder. His breath seemed chill on the back of her neck and her skin shrank in dread, not of him but of what Pakenham was about to say.

Pakenham said, “Elliot Moncrief is dead,” in the same tone of voice he'd say,
Pass the salt.
“Suicide, with a proper little confession on the desk. I knew he was our killer all along. All the evidence pointed that way."

His words thinned and squealed in Claire's ears. The cold on the back of her neck slid down her body. Her stomach did a sickly little shimmy beneath her ribs. Elliot, she thought. All she could see was his calculating expression in the pub two nights ago. Had she really been in danger from him? She'd never have gone off alone with him, Kate or no Kate.

Elliot killed Melinda? Why? Because she turned him down? There had to be more to it than that. Something about the blackmail letters, probably ... Claire turned around and collided with someone's chest. It was Richard, his skin beneath the stage base pale, the bronze gleam of his eyes tarnished.

Kate swore beneath her breath. Alec walked several paces in the other direction and peered up the staircase, hiding his expression. Maybe someone or something moved in the shadows, maybe not.

“WPC Shelton,” said Blake, loosening his tie, “we'll need you at the cottage to help with the paperwork."

“Yes, sir,” Kate said, and looked over at Claire. “Are you all..."

Pakenham smirked. “Don't need to nurse maid our little Yankee lass any more, Kate? Big bad wolf's come a cropper."

“Sergeant,” snapped Blake, “go make the announcement to the press."

Pakenham unleashed the reporters. The surge of journalistic humanity in the front door drove the actors to the back of the house. Feeling naked without Kate beside her, Claire sprinted past the cellar door, plunged into the dressing room, and pulled off her robe-cum-dress.

Everyone was painstakingly not talking at once. Priscilla was solemn, Susan looked stunned, Diana turned a thin-lipped hot-eyed glare on everyone and fled the scene as soon as she'd changed her clothes. Claire picked up the pink gown and returned it and own wrapper to Sarita in the kitchen. “Roshan and Derek took Trillian home,” Sarita told her. “She is tired, poor lass. Thank goodness it is all over."

Sarita wasn't looking particularly thankful. Her plump cheeks drooped and her hands folding the dress trembled. Claire knew how she felt, like a cotton shirt worn too many times without washing and ironing.

It's all over, she thought. It's all over. But she might just as well have been thinking in Esperanto, the words made that little sense to her. The chill on the back of her neck oozed downward like creeping paralysis.

She hurried through the entrance hall, where Rob was cursing a blue streak and shoveling the bottles and dishes back into their boxes. No, there was no need to formally announce that the party was cancelled.

Richard was waiting in the forecourt. No one recognized him in his jeans and sweater, if indeed anyone cared about the actors any more. The audience was separating itself into two entities, a large ameba-like creature with a nucleus of police and reporters which flowed through the gate and up the street, and multiple single-celled units flailing as fast as possible toward cars and buses before they got involved.

Cold hand in cold hand, Claire and Richard followed half a block or so behind the ameba, pacing themselves on Alec's tall form. Beyond the lights of Hall and village the evening was closing in quickly. Once before they'd walked through an uncertain dusk toward a dead body, Claire remembered. Perhaps they'd come full circle, back to the beginning, to the end.... She glanced up at Richard's stone-carved face and amended, it's all over but the shouting.

Richard and Claire were moving faster on foot than the cars creeping up the high street. Constables in neon-orange vests shouted and gestured, trying to move people along. A chill rain-scented wind, funneled down the narrow street, made Claire's jacket billow like a sail.

The ice-blue lights of police cars and an ambulance strobed nervously on the front of Elliot's cottage and across the red Jaguar. Strips of yellow tape held back the crowd. Various uniformed and suited figures moved in and out of the house and across the lane to the police station. Several took short cuts through Alec's garden and the pungent scents of thyme and rosemary whirled away down the wind.

Richard stopped at the curb. “This is the house my parents always let for the summer. It was a bit shabby, the plumbing would play up every now and then, but it was home. Alec and I, we'd signal each other with torches from our bedroom windows, pretending—ah, God knows what we were pretending, we were bairns, weren't we?"

The grown man who was Alec stood at the front gate, beckoning. Claire squeezed Richard's hand. Together they ducked beneath the yellow tape.

“Richard, come through,” Alec said. “Blake wants you to have a look round for the things you sent the blackmailer."

That invitation didn't necessarily include Claire. Even so, Richard tugged her forward. Alec didn't try to stop her but escorted them both past the smashed lock of the front door.

The air inside the house was still and cold, filled with a low mutter of voices. The smells of disinfectant and furniture polish didn't quite mask the ugly stench of mortality. A stack of mail sat on a small table by the door—several letters, a magazine, and a catalog.