Memory and Desire (4 page)

Roshan and Sarita murmured pleasantries and showed her out. Claire climbed the steps to her door. From her vantage point on the landing the village and countryside looked like a watercolor, soft greens, golds, and grays streaked by the dark horizontal of the street. The bobby was leaning against the wall outside the pub, chatting with an elderly man. Beyond several green-edged slate roofs rose the spire of a church. The shadow of Somerstowe Hall reached toward the town as though the old house wanted to join in. Somewhere a lamb was bleating, “Muuuum! Muuuum!"

Elliot strolled along the sidewalk and into a suitably picturesque cottage. As he passed a red Jaguar parked in the driveway he patted its hood affectionately. Aha! So the car was his. That was no surprise. What Claire wondered was why, if he'd been in such a hurry to get his mail, he didn't pick it up hours ago when he'd first blasted into town.

Melinda had driven like that, passing bats out of hell on her way, and was perpetually taking defensive driving courses to wipe the tickets off her record. Claire, on the other hand, had never gotten a traffic ticket. There was some basic imbalance there. There was a lot about her relationship with Melinda that'd been unbalanced. It was like Claire had always played it safe because she'd had Melinda to take the risks for her.

Maybe, she thought, Melinda had been able to take risks because she'd had Claire to be her anchor.

Frowning, Claire unlocked the door. Her leaden feet stumbled over the edge of the carpet. At least she had the carpet as an excuse this time, she thought, remembering her undignified stutter-step toward Richard.

The door wouldn't shut—the carpet was bunched beneath it. She went back out onto the landing and grasped its edge to pull it smooth. Her fingertips touched paper. From beneath the heavy material she pulled a small envelope that had once been white but was now gray with dust. The word “Melinda” was pasted on its face in block letters cut from a newspaper.

The back of her neck went icy cold. Claire jerked the carpet flat, leaped inside, and slammed the door behind her. She took the envelope to the kitchen and slit it open with a paring knife.

The message inside was also cut from smeared newsprint. “Somerstowe shall not suffer a witch to live. Hie you hence, evil one, or your own demons will pick your bones.” Folded in the paper was a snapshot of Melinda in jeans and T-shirt. The photograph was punctured repeatedly by pinholes. The pin itself, an ordinary dressmaker's pin, was tucked into the center of the picture. Its head and its point framed Melinda's face with cold steel.

Claire clapped her curry-scented hand over her mouth, pressing a gasp into her lungs.
Sympathetic magic.
A pin stabbing, a knife stabbing, witchcraft ... Those were the words one of the townspeople addressed to poor Elizabeth Spenser. According to both history and drama, Elizabeth had not hied herself hence. And she'd paid the price for her stubbornness, not by steel but by rope.

Someone slipped the letter under Melinda's door for her to find. It'd gone beneath the carpet instead. She hadn't found it. There might have been others she'd laughed off, or this might have been the only warning before someone carried out the threat. A death threat.

“Good God,” Claire said aloud. And the concept of “murder,” which had been a word in her vocabulary, an item on her list, suddenly became a sharp point lodged in her own heart. “Oh my God."

Blake would only re-open the case if he had new evidence. Here it was. Wide awake now, Claire thrust the letter into her purse and headed out to look for a telephone booth.

The engines of the huge jet rumbled in her ears. She wriggled, trying to escape. She was trapped in her seat, surrounded not with sleeping but with dead bodies, each murdered by a dressmaker's pin between the eyes....

Claire jerked awake. Above her a nubbly plaster ceiling shimmered with reflected sunlight. That pounding in her head was someone knocking at her door. Groaning, she rolled out of the hide-a-bed and pulled on her robe.

“Who is it, please?” she called from her side of the door.

From the other came a calm male voice. “Police Constable Alec Wood, Miss Godwin. DCI Blake rang me and asked me to call round."

“Oh, sure—just a minute."

Claire charged into the bathroom, dragged a comb through her hair, and found her glasses. Her travel clock read 8:10. She'd set the alarm for 7:30 and never pulled out the knob. That figured.

At least her message of the night before had reached Blake. Claire folded the bed and tightened the sash of her robe. She was hardly wearing the proper clothing for a gentleman caller, but policemen were like doctors, they had to take what they could get. She opened the door to find the same bobby she'd seen twice last evening. No, three times—he was the man who'd been strolling through the portico of the Hall.

He took off his hat, revealing a head of curly brown hair. “I'm sorry to knock you up."

Claire gurgled, suppressing her laughter. She knew perfectly well what that expression meant here, she simply hadn't been prepared to encounter a transatlantic malapropism quite so soon. “It's a good thing you waked me up, I have to be at the Hall at nine and I didn't turn on my alarm clock. Come on in. Would you like some coffee?"

“Thank you,” Alec stepped inside and closed the door. “It's good to meet you at last, Miss Godwin. I'm sorry about the circumstances, Melinda going missing and all."

Claire's reputation had certainly preceded her, hadn't it? “I just wish I'd been able to come sooner,” she told him.

“DCI Blake said you found a threatening letter addressed to Melinda."

“Yes. It was under the carpet just inside the door."

“Someone slotted the letter beneath the door and legged it, then, didn't know his scheme had gone wrong."

Alec, thought Claire, sure wasn't the country bumpkin cop beloved of stage, screen, and television. He was maybe a couple of years younger than she was, tall enough to have to stoop coming in the door, his broad shoulders square and yet not at all tense. A tremor at the corners of his mouth suggested it was accustomed to smiling. He had a good face for a policeman, his even, open features as reassuringly matter-of-fact as his uniform.

He had a good face, period. She filled the teakettle, set it on the hot plate, and took two cups and a jar of Nescafe from the cabinet. “I wonder whether Melinda even knew she was being threatened. She sure never told me."

“Would she have done?

“Taking it as a joke, maybe."

Alec nodded in agreement. “Yes. She'd think it was a joke, being a bit of a joker herself."

Claire pulled the letter from the desk drawer where she'd locked it last night and offered it to him.

“Put it down there, please.” The letter safely on the scarred wooden top of the table, Alec pulled a pair of tweezers from his pocket and teased the letter and the photograph from the envelope. He bent over them.

Claire poured boiling water over the instant coffee and added milk and sugar. She set the steaming cup on the table, far enough away from Alec's hand he wouldn't accidentally knock it over onto the evidence. But even though his hands were as large and strong as the rest of his body they moved with deliberate delicacy.

“The words are from The Play,” he said. “A load of rubbish about witchcraft and all. Are you familiar with it?"

With witchcraft? Oh.
“The Play? I've never seen it performed."

“Whoever did this has done. The words are changed slightly from the script as per Elliot's direction."

“You played Walter Tradescant last year, didn't you?"

“I've played him for three years now, since Rob Jackman gave up the role. He was getting a wee bit long in the tooth for the role of the male ingenue. And I'm a bachelor, to boot. More suitable, so some would think."

Really? Who would think? Melinda?
Walter had been Elizabeth's lover—in the old-fashioned sense of the term, not in the modern trash your inhibitions and get down to it sense. Claire drank, grimacing not at the heat of the coffee but at finding yet another candidate for Melinda's real-life lover. She'd find men hanging in the wardrobe next, arranged neatly on hangers.

Alec frowned. “Now, that's no good. I made this snap myself. Richard tacked it up on the bulletin board in the entrance hall."

Melinda's miniaturized face looked up from the table. She'd taken on the expression of a fashion model, eyes slightly crossed, lips parted, expression vacant. And yet the angle of her brows mocked her pose. Claire could hear her asking, “Why is it that in order to look glamorous you have to look brain dead? Why is it you have to be glamorous in order to be taken seriously by the good-old-boy Establishment?"

“That stone wall in the background,” Claire said, “looks like the Hall's boundary wall."

“That's what it is, right enough. Melinda, Fred, and Janet were on lunch break, picnicking in the garden, when I made the snap."

“And the pin?"

“Ready to hand, I expect. Every year Sarita uses up a box or two of pins, with the costumes and all."

“How could Blake's people have missed the letter beneath the rug?"

“He only sent a couple of men, not an entire investigative team. No body, you see. No probable cause.” With his tweezers Alec turned the picture over and looked narrowly at the date printed on the back.

“Why would anyone threaten Melinda, try to get her to leave? Did you see anything going on?"

“The usual behind-the-scenes ego trips. Melinda was an outsider, but only a bit more so than, say, Elliot himself."

“Or Richard?"

“Richard has an impeccable pedigree,” Alec said with a hint of a chuckle.

“And Melinda didn't,” said Claire. “She wasn't into ego trips, but she was no shrinking violet, either. She could've rubbed someone the wrong way. Or maybe someone was envious of her looks and her talents. Not that resentment or envy or anything else justifies murder."

“Murder?” Alec glanced sharply up. “Is it murder then?"

His eyes were a striking gold-green, the color of sunlight in an English forest. Oberon, king of Faerie, must have eyes like that. “I don't see how she could've died in an accident and not been found. So that means someone else was involved. But...” Claire sighed. “Now that it looks like it really was murder, well—it's kind of anticlimactic. Melinda wasn't an anti-climax. She should've gone out with a clash of cymbals and a lightning bolt. It's not fair. She deserved better than just—disappearing...” Alec's clear gaze had loosened her tongue, Claire realized. There was a useful talent for a policeman.

He looked back at the letter. “Were you envious of her?"

“Sometimes. I know what was below the surface gloss, though. Hers was a real ugly duckling story. I think she was always afraid she'd wake up someday and find herself an ugly duckling again."

A slight movement of Alec's mouth and eyebrow annotated her statement with what might have been a personal memory. “It might have been envy. It might have something as ordinary as greed—she had that diamond ring, remember. But every murderer thinks he's justified, doesn't he?"

“I don't know. Murder has only recently become part of my vocabulary."

“I'm sorry it has done, Miss Godwin."

“It's Claire."

“Claire.” Alec drained his coffee and set the mug down. From his pocket he pulled a plastic evidence bag. He shoved the letter, the picture with its macabre pin, and the envelope into it. “I'll send these along to Derby. Blake won't be half narked when he learns it was here all along. He'll have your carpet up, I reckon, and start interviewing all over again."

Claire contemplated constables in the hands of an angry Blake. “I hope he won't be mad at you."

“I wasn't the one assigned here.” And suddenly the smile broke through the uniformed solemnity, a pearly crescent that made her feel as though matters were properly in hand. “Ta, then. See you again soon.” Replacing his hat, in three long strides Alec went out the door and shut it behind him.

Whoa.
A charming and empathic public official. And a good-looking guy ... Another suspect, Claire reminded herself. Just because Alec was nicer than Richard and less fake than Elliot didn't mean he wasn't hiding something about Melinda.

He hadn't expressed either like or dislike for her, let alone implying a more-than-friends relationship. And yet he'd known Melinda well enough to agree with Claire's ugly duckling comment. Was he just more perceptive than some people or had she opened up to him, too? Melinda didn't tell many people about her past. Why should she? She'd worked hard polishing her manner, her mind, and her appearance. She deserved the good fortune she'd made for herself. She hadn't deserved death threats, let alone murder.

Murder, which demanded a murderer, and means, and motive. Not to mention a corpse. Judging by the malice in the anonymous letter, the diamond ring was, at most, a side issue. What the real issue was, though, Claire could only imagine. And she had a vivid imagination. What she didn't have were facts.

She drank the rest of her coffee and fixed herself some toast. Okay, she'd found a clue. Even if she'd fallen over it by accident. Whether Blake picked up on it or not, she wasn't going to stop asking questions of the volunteers and the local people. Melinda always said Claire was stubborn beyond all reason.

She cleaned up the kitchen, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, and locked the door of her flat behind her. The morning was bright and clear. Fluffy clouds floated in a blue sky, innocent of rain. Somerstowe village looked more than ever like a postcard, the telephone booth and Elliot's Jaguar adding artistic dashes of red. Claire took a deep breath of the cool breeze, willed herself not to look over her shoulder, and set out for the Hall.

She'd done her homework. She knew that the Hall's stone perimeter wall considerably pre-dated the house. The hill which it crowned was partly artificial, the remains of an eleventh century Norman motte built by one Baron de Lacy, a minion of William the Conqueror. By 1592 the country had been peaceful enough for the Laceys to tear down the old Norman keep and build an up-to-date mansion from its stones. It hadn't been peaceful enough to take down the Norman bailey wall.