No Cherubs for Melanie (6 page)

Bliss smiled. “So what happened that evening?”

Both men knew which evening he was talking about. “I didn't have time to deal with him. It was right in the middle of dinner. Two staff off sick with…” He glanced up at the chandelier then gave his head a quick shake. “I don't remember now. Anyway, a couple of juniors just dragged him to his office and dumped him on the floor. Nobody had time to deal with him. Nobody wanted to deal with him. He had a nasty habit of firing people on the spot.”

Bliss glanced around the unprepared dining room. “What will happen to the place now?”

“We don't know. The lawyers and accountants are working on it but haven't said anything. We're still being paid, but trade has gone down the tube since the publicity over his death. Of course the lying bastards who dine here all said how nice and quiet it would be without him, but the truth is many of them only came to watch him making an ass of himself. Rich snobs, nobody would even fart in the same room as them usually. They'd go to the opera or ballet, wouldn't understand a bleedin' word, say it were absolutely wonderful, then come here and he'd give 'em a right mouthful ‘Fuck this,' he'd say, and, ‘Fuck that,' and they loved every minute of it. They could understand it; it took them back to their roots. But they'll soon stop coming altogether unless something happens.”

Bliss nodded sagely, doubtful they would easily find another obnoxious drunk capable of running the place. Then he checked his notes. “So what did he have for dinner that night?”

“Nothing.”

Bliss looked confused. “I thought… Wait a minute.” He clicked open his briefcase, selected the thin file and searched for a handwritten page. “I've got a statement here from the head waiter.”

The chef jumped in: “Malcolm, the head waiter. He took his dinner up to him — the boss had an apartment upstairs. But he didn't eat anything. He didn't touch it. It was quite common. He'd order dinner, but would start on the bottle and forget all about the food. It used to piss me off, especially when he ordered something special. I'd spend bloody ages making it perfect just so he couldn't complain, then it would get chucked in the bin.”

Bliss persisted; he'd already set his line of questioning and couldn't easily change tack. “Who could've tampered with his dinner that day?”

The chef replied slowly, carefully emphasizing each word by liberally interposing clicks, and insisting by his tone that Bliss should comprehend. “Like I said: he didn't touch it. He didn't eat anything, and the only stuff he ever drank came out of a bottle — his own bottle.”

Bliss studied the chef's face critically asking, “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

The chef fidgeted noisily and ruminated under Bliss's stare, but then spread his hands and shook his head. “Nothing.”

“All right. I'd better talk to Malcolm then,” said Bliss, trying to pick a sliver of orange peel out of his teeth.

“He quit.”

Bliss shot him a surprised look.

“It was nothing to do with the old man's death,” the chef added quickly. “Well I suppose it was in a way. Once word got out that the old man had kicked the bucket, the buzzards gathered and picked off the best staff. Malcolm went to the
Faison d'Or
.”

“You're still here though,” said Bliss, stating the obvious.

“I had a few offers, but I figured I might have a chance of taking full control with the new owner. I've been running this place for years anyway. You could never rely on the old man.”

A high-heeled waitress, with a bum that stuck out like a small shelf, and nicely formed breasts hidden by a virginally opaque white blouse, leant provocatively over him to refill the coffees. Bliss chased an errant thought from his mind, then reflected and let it back.

“So who does own it?” he continued as the waitress drew his eyes in her wake.

“I guess his daughter. She's a strange girl — woman really, I suppose. She must be in her thirties now. She went abroad to live — Canada — just after her mother died.” The chef glanced at his watch and rose. “And now, Inspector, I wonder if you'd excuse me. I've got a kitchen to run.”

Gordonstone's wife — dead! thought Bliss, but he kept quiet, unwilling to admit his ignorance of such a basic piece of information. “I'd like to have a nose around, and talk to any of the staff who were here the night Gordonstone died… if that's OK.”

The chef nabbed a passing waiter and turned to Bliss. “Jordan will show you around.”

“I'll need a list of everyone on duty that day, and also a customer list if you have one,” Bliss said, before the chef could get away. Wandering around the dining room, Jordan in tow, ostensibly searching for evidence, Bliss soon found himself staring up into the giant chandelier, expecting its myriad glass eyes to offer some sort of clue. The crystal prisms swayed and tinkled slightly, wafting in the draft from an open door, and an eerie feeling swept over him, causing him to step away, irrationally
fearing the whole thing might suddenly come crashing down on him. Then Jordan dropped a bombshell: “That's what killed her.”

“Killed who?”

“Mrs. Gordonstone.”

Bliss's head jerked around in surprise. “The chandelier killed Gordonstone's wife?”

“So they say. It was before my time. It was years ago.”

“What… It fell on her?”

“I don't know. You'd have to ask Chef. He was here then.”

Bliss's eyes followed the thick white rope from the top of the chandelier as it wound its way up through a pulley and down the wall, to where it was tethered in a figure eight around a huge brass cleat that might have once graced the deck of a schooner. He imagined it might take two, even three, strong men to lower the giant chandelier to the floor for cleaning, and walked over to examine the rope. The chef, returning from the kitchen, noted Bliss's interest. “They had the rope shortened after the accident with Mrs. Gordonstone.”

Bliss stared at the chandelier as if expecting it to divulge some crucial piece of information. What accident? When? Mentally asking, demanding of it, “What happened?” The chandelier knew. It was a giant all-seeing eye that had peered down on the great room for over two hundred years. One giant fly-like eye with a mass of crystal lenses each absorbing images from the room below. Locked in its crystal gaze were the secrets of thousands of spies, philandering husbands, and shady businessmen. And the secret of Betty-Ann Gordonstone's death.

It was the fifteenth of October, 1987, just before the great hurricane. The creaking floorboards, a natural security
system of all old houses, alerted Betty-Ann Gordonstone to movement outside her room; the room in which she had lived alone for nearly ten years. She peered at the bedside clock: almost two o'clock. A door hinge squeaked with a familiar sound — Margaret's door.
He's going to her… I know he is
.

Whispers in the hallway confirmed her suspicions. She lay, immobile, as she had on a hundred other nights, listening to the furtive sounds: hushed whispers, doors opening and closing with a careful hand, moans, groans, and an occasional muffled cry.

Would the torment never end?
I saw you
, she longed to say to Martin.
You touched her didn't you?
If only she had the courage to confront him, to tell him: I know what you're doing to her. You could have gone to a prostitute. Not Margaret. You didn't have to touch Margaret.

She dug her head into the pillow. “It's none of my business.”

A voice deeper inside countered,
It is your business. She's your daughter. He's your husband
.

They're both adults, she reasoned, knowing full well that was no justification.

Why don't you stop him?
said that other, inner voice.

The painful memory of a bruised cheek reminded her why. There was no point in even trying to talk to him, to tell him that she knew, to demand that he stop.

Noises in her head augmented the sounds from Margaret's room. Cries for help — Melanie's cries. A six-year-old's screams, which had lasted for ten years in her mind and had grown ever more persistent.

Sleep, when it came — if it came — offered no respite. Nightmares merely replaced the anguish of reality. And in the morning there was more pain. Having to face her daughter as she bounced into the room: “Hello Mummy. How are you today?”

What was there to talk about? What, she often wondered, did other mothers talk to their daughters about. So many times over the years she had been tempted to ask, “So Margaret, just how was Daddy last night? Was he good?” What would the young woman say?

But she would never find out. Some unspoken agreement, some taboo, would always get in the way. Do other daughters confide sexual experiences to their mothers? Betty-Ann sometimes wondered. But Margaret was not like other daughters.

Margaret was a tease, taunting her with innuendo, revealing little secrets in tidbits, never once admitting anything specific. She dropped hints, even an occasional conspiratorial wink, as if craving her mother's approval, wanting her mother to be pleased for her, whispering excitedly: “Daddy's been really nice to me.” No details, nothing specific. Betty-Ann would turn away, wanting to know — to be certain — but, at the same moment, not wanting to know.

Unable to protect one daughter, she now watched the other being slowly sucked through a gauze curtain into a place she could see but never touch.

Awake, as usual, she glanced at the bedside clock: two-thirty now. Night or afternoon, she wondered. Does it matter? Not really. Although she guessed it was night. It was always night when she heard the sounds. The noises of the night, noises familiar to any prisoner: cries of anguish in the dark, lover's whispers, creaking bedsprings, and an occasional shout of alarm from an inmate tortured by a nightmare. Every day in prison was the same: the same people, the same cell, the same view from the same window, the same smells from the slop bucket, and the same boiled cabbage. The only difference between day and night was the sounds.

Betty-Ann lay for a few moments ticking off the years in her mind. Ten, she counted, with the backhanded pride of a hunger striker. Ten years of self-imprisonment, ten years flagellating her mind, ten years of refusing to give in to temptation. Tormented during the day by the clamour of people in the restaurant below and at night by the sounds in her mind, she even denied herself the lush dreams enjoyed by most prisoners. How easy it would be, she often thought, just to walk out and rejoin society. But what punishment would that be. How much more challenging it was to stay, without guards, bars, or locks.

She slipped out of bed and shuffled to the window, easily avoiding the furniture in the familiar surroundings of the dimly lit room. The blue-white light of a street lamp painted deep shadows as she opened the curtains a fraction. “Night.” She had been correct. “Another night,” she mused. Another day successfully completed. Another day of punishment, bringing me closer to what? Ten years of what? Waiting for what? There must be something at the end. Some reward. Forgiveness perhaps.

Who is there to forgive
?

Me?

Who can ever forgive me
?

Myself?

Never
.

Melanie then?

Melanie could. Melanie, still alive in her mind, still six years old — forever six years old. “Forgive me Melanie,” she implored, knowing inwardly that it was not enough. It would take more than Melanie's forgiveness to wipe away all her sins.

It wasn't just that Betty-Ann had devoted part of herself to the memory of Melanie in the way that other bereaved parents might, a corner of their minds forever
blackened by the loss. Betty-Ann had become the lone member of a devout religious sect formed solely to perpetuate and worship the memory of her daughter. Everything must remain exactly the same, she had decided within days of Melanie's death, fearing that any change might cause Melanie's spirit to flee. In the beginning she had concentrated all day, every day, on thoughts of Melanie. In this way the flame of Melanie's life was not extinguished by her death, but was merely reduced to a glowing ember that only waited to be rekindled. Initially she used a photo in an ornate gold frame as a focal point for her hushed deliberations. Then, almost subliminally, she began muttering incantations: “Melanie, grant me, I beseech thee, pardon and peace, that I may be cleansed of all my sins and may serve thee with a quiet mind,” she would recite, sometimes aloud, but often silently, in what was left of her mind; over the years she developed an accompanying set of eccentric gestures and postures to match the words. Before long each day, and most of each night, was filled with devotions. Like a fanatical follower of a charismatic religionist, Betty-Ann attended her pious ministrations at precisely the same time each day, staring into a candle's flame, reverently fingering Melanie's clothing with as much devotion as a Christian might caress the Pope's cassock or the Shroud of Turin.

The candle at Melanie's sepulchre was flickering precariously close to extinction now. Betty-Ann left the window and shuffled to the dressing table where Melanie's remains were precisely arranged. She poked a few shards of wax into the flame, until it burned steadily with an ochroleucous light. The candle was, she knew, her greatest achievement.

Martin had tried to stop her at first, confiscating her supply and ordering the staff to lock away all the candles
at the end of each evening. But she had beaten him; making nightly foraging raids on the dining room, scratching even the tiniest of wax drips off the candelabra to feed her habit. And every now and then a careless waiter would accidentally leave a partly consumed candle on a table; she would seize these treasures with the gratitude of a starving man finding a potato. She was proud of her achievement, proud of her self-determination, and proud of the fact that, in some strange way, she had defeated Martin. She had robbed him of his power; her actions were beyond his control. I decide what to do, she thought, I make the decisions in my world — in Melanie's world.