Blackthorn Winter (18 page)

"Whatever you like, Ivy. If your mum agrees."

Mom shrugged, and her smile was wan. "I'm just not hungry. But I suppose the children do need a meal, and I haven't started cooking anything. What do you think, Jule?"

I wasn't hungry, either, but I didn't want to sit in the cottage all day, just waiting for bedtime to roll around, knowing that stain was up there in the sunroom. "Sure," I said. "Why not? A nice hot curry will be perfect."

Kate phoned her mother to ask if she could go with us. Mrs. Glendenning gave Kate permission to eat with us—but invited herself as well. She would meet us at the restaurant, she said. So we all piled into Quent's other car—not a sports car but a van—for the ride to Lower Dillingham. Mom sat up front with Quent, and I could tell she was making an effort to be cheerful and sociable. I tried for the same lightness with Duncan and Kate.

I couldn't tell about those two. What sort of relationship did they have with each other? Maybe they were just buddies from way back in kindergarten (
reception class,
Mom said it was called here), but maybe they were something more to each other. It seemed to me Kate watched me a lot—sort of like her mother did. But in Kate's case, I wondered if she was watching me to tell me "butt out" or "he's mine." I couldn't tell.

It was a relief to arrive at the Indian restaurant and stop chattering, and just let the smells of pungent spices and
fresh bread wash over me. Those smells masked the other smell—the salty, fetid one that had seemed to follow me out of our cottage and into the night.

Kate's mother had arrived before us and secured a large round table in the far corner of the restaurant. We all seated ourselves, and I was not pleased to find myself right next to Celia. Duncan was on my other side, so at least
that
was good.

"What have you been doing today?" Celia asked me briskly.

"I had a lot of algebra to work on," I offered.

"But Kate tells me you aren't in school." Celia looked puzzled.

"I'm doing homeschool for now," I explained, and Mom took over for me and clarified the whole situation. Celia pursed her lips as if she didn't approve of home-schooling, and she was just opening her mouth to tell me, when Edmund spoke up.

"We found a stain at our house," he said. "The police are checking to see if it's blood."

This news had a profound effect on Celia. She let her menu drop out of her hands, and it slid onto the floor. When she and I reached for it at the same time, we bumped heads with an audible crack.

"Ouch!" I clutched my forehead.

"Ooh." She did the same. Her cheeks were drained and pale.

"Oh dear," said Mom, standing up and coming around the table to me. "Are you all right, honey? And—Celia?" I let Mom rub my forehead.

"Where's the ice?" demanded Edmund. "We can wrap it up in the napkins and make compresses—"

"Drinks in England don't have ice," Quent said. "But I'm sure the kitchen has some. Shall I ask?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"I shall be fine," Celia said, but she was still looking alarmingly pale. "It's nothing."

"It's just that Mum hates blood," Kate informed us. "It always makes her feel faint."

"It's so silly...," said Celia. Color was returning to her face.

"Dad always had to bandage my scrapes," Kate added. "Mum was useless."

"I'm afraid that's true." Celia sounded back to normal now. "Since her dad left us, Kate has had to bandage all her own scrapes. Poor wee child!"

We all settled back down and the waiter arrived and took our orders. When he had gone off to the kitchen, Celia leaned toward Mom. I was surprised to hear her bringing the subject up again: "Now what was this about a ... a
stain?
"

"It's probably nothing," I said, and at the same time Ivy assured her: "I think it's an old stain. Mead spilled in ancient times!"

Quent and Mom explained about our discovery. Celia listened. Sitting next to her, I could see her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap.

"It sounds dreadful," she said. "I can't imagine what it would be. I'm sure it couldn't be—you know—blood. Perhaps there's some sort of mildew or rising damp. These old houses are prone to such things. In fact, Kate and I had to move out of our place for a whole week last year while we had a damp course done." She then explained in droning detail about damp courses, and what they were—apparently
the old plaster had to be removed from the walls and reapplied. Sounded like a messy job, and wasn't really very interesting dinner conversation, but it had the effect I think Celia wanted, which was to get us talking about other things instead of weird stains. Which was fine with me.

The adults talked on and on about home repairs and how costly they could be. Kate rolled her eyes across the table at me, and we were glad when our food arrived. It was delicious, and for a while there was no talking except for requests to "pass the chutney, please," or "I'll take some more of that
raita,
thanks."

Before we finished, Celia Glendenning started asking Mom where she'd been born, and where she'd grown up.

"In Wolverhampton," Mom answered. "In the Midlands."

"Oh! My ex-husband grew up in the Midlands as well—near Birmingham," said Celia. "Same area, basically. I grew up in East Anglia, in Norwich—have you been there?"

Mom said she'd only been once or twice, to the seaside, as a girl. Celia shrugged. "I wondered if maybe you had family there. Relatives?"

"None that I know of," said Mom. "Where is your family from, Quent?"

And the adults were talking ancestors and genealogy. I tuned out and turned to Duncan instead. Genealogy isn't exactly one of the hot topics for most adoptees. I didn't have anything at all to add to a conversation about ancestors. Ivy liked to fantasize that, since my birth mother may have been from England, I was somehow descended from royalty. Secretly a princess! Every girl's dream! But the shadows in my memory were so dark, I didn't think they were hiding anything so romantic and exciting.

Duncan was playing tic-tac-toe (
noughts and crosses,
he called it) on his paper napkin with Edmund. Duncan won easily. I drew a grid on mine and challenged Duncan next. He won, and gloated, and pressed my foot under the table.

The waiter brought another basket of
nan
to our table. It was late when we finally finished our meal and left the restaurant. This time Kate rode with her mother, which was fine with me since it left me to sit alone with Duncan in the middle seat of Quent's van. As the rest of us piled in, Celia called to me, "I hope your forehead feels better, dear." Her voice was normal, quite pleasant, but her gaze was piercing.

Why did she look at me like that—as if she were trying to see through my bumped head, right into my brain?

"Thanks," I said. "I hope yours is okay, too." I sat back and fastened my seat belt.

Celia came to the window on the passenger side where Mom sat. "Let me know what happens," she said in a low, urgent voice. "About the ... stain." Then her eyes rested on me again, sitting behind Mom.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, very early, Detective Inspector Link knocked on our door to bring us the terrible news: the stain
was
blood; it was, in fact, Liza Pethering's blood. Now the detective wanted to interview Mom again. Mom invited her in and offered tea, which she declined. She seated herself in our sitting room after breakfast, opened her notebook, and started firing off questions.

I guessed it was obvious that the police would have questions; I had a million questions myself. It was bad enough to know that Liza had been attacked, but to have it confirmed that the attack had happened right here—in
our own house—made me feel sick. And I know Mom felt the same way. But I couldn't see where Detective Inspector Link was going with all her questions for Mom—asking for all sorts of details about her relationship over the years with Liza Pethering, about her movements the night of the party, about when she last saw Liza. I didn't think the policewoman really suspected my mom, but she seemed to think Mom would recall some detail that would be useful in proving that Simon Jukes had attacked Liza in our cottage. Mom had been, after all, the one to report the stain, and she had known Liza for years.

The questioning went on and on. Had Simon Jukes
ever
been to our cottage? Mom said he had not, at least not as long as we had been living here. But we had found the door to our house unlocked when we returned after the party, so maybe Simon had entered while we were gone. Was Mom
quite
sure that Simon Jukes had not been at the party? Mom said she hadn't seen him anywhere. Simon wasn't part of Blackthorn's art scene, so he had not been invited. "He's not exactly the sort of company Quent Carrington keeps," Mom added drily.

Detective Inspector Link questioned me again, too. She wanted to know what I had been doing at the party. Had I seen Simon lurking anywhere around the place? No? Was I
entirely certain?
I definitely had not seen him, but I
had
seen a light on in our sunroom when I looked out the window from Quent's house during the party. But the light was off when we came home.

The detective inspector made a note of this. Then she asked what I had done at the party, and with whom, and what had we talked about? She seemed determined to find a link to Simon Jukes.

I didn't have much to tell her, really. I told her that Duncan gave me a house tour, but I didn't mention that we had danced together in the ballroom, and held hands, and I didn't say that we'd talked about our families. Some things were private, after all. What had I eaten? With whom had I chatted? And when,
exactly,
had I last seen Liza, and what had she been doing
exactly?

I tried to remember. "I saw her last at the Old Mill House, in the dining room," I said. "She was having an argument with Celia Glendenning. She was being sort of—well ... I think she had already had too much to drink."

"She seemed drunk?" pressed the officer.

"Well, I guess so. I mean, Liza was being loud and rude and wild ... and her husband wanted to take her home, but she wouldn't go. So Quent and Oliver took her off to the kitchen to make some coffee. I think that was to, you know, sober her up."

"And that was the last time you saw her?"

"Yes," I said. "Wait—no, I guess not. About an hour later, Duncan and I saw Quent carrying her down the hall after she'd passed out from drinking."

"Quent left her sleeping in one of the bedrooms," Mom added.

The detective made a note on her clipboard. "Yes, I've talked to Mr. Carrington. And he said that when he looked in on her later, Mrs. Pethering was gone. Just left the house without saying good-bye."

"So that's when she could have come over here to our house," I murmured, trying to picture Liza walking over from the big house, through the garden, with Simon Jukes at her side—or sneaking in the shadows behind her. "But why would she be coming to our house? She knew we were
all at the party. What did she want here? And why bring Simon Jukes? He wouldn't have had a key, would he? But—did Liza? She already had given back our key, Mom."

"She might well have given you back
a
key, but still kept a copy for herself," said Detective Inspector Link. "She might have let Simon Jukes inside."

"It didn't have to be Simon Jukes, anyway," I ventured to suggest. "There were loads of other people who didn't like Liza—"

But the detective shook her head impatiently. "We are quite convinced he is guilty. Our task is to find the proof. And discovering how he and Liza Pethering ended up together in your sunroom is crucial to solving this case."

"But that's what I can't figure out," Mom said. "Simon is the
last
person Liza would bring here—or anywhere. Why in the world would she? She didn't like him in the least."

"In my job," replied Detective Inspector Link sagely, "we are constantly surprised by what people do. But it doesn't mean they didn't do it." She stood up to leave, thanking me and Mom for our help.

 

M
OM DIDN'T GO
up to her sunroom that day but instead stayed downstairs, helping me with my algebra chapter. "I know I should be up there, either working on something new or at least selecting the paintings I want to put in the Springtime Art show," she told me. "But, frankly, I doubt I can work up there anymore, knowing that's where Liza was killed."

"No—she
wasn't
killed there, Mom," I corrected her. "Remember? The police report said she drowned. So the
worst thing that happened to her here was getting bashed on the head, somehow."

Mom shivered. "Thinking about it makes me feel sick. Head bashing..." She curled up on the couch and started sketching the view from our front window. I sat at the kitchen table and put the algebra aside. Instead, I took out a fresh sheet of notebook paper and started writing a letter to my dad. I missed having him around, and I missed having e-mail for quick communication since he wasn't around. I wasn't used to writing letters.

Mom had phoned him already with the news of Liza's death and funeral, and he had called back while we were out. I listened to the message twice, just to hear his voice. Now I wrote him, updating him about the bloodstain in the sunroom. I was getting writer's cramp after about two minutes, but there was still something satisfying about writing to him. It made me feel connected—almost like an Internet link. My words would go from my thoughts through my hand, through the ink, onto the page ... and then fly across an ocean and a continent, right to my dad's pile of mail. He would sit at our table in the kitchen just as I was sitting here, and he would open my letter. It would be like an umbilical cord of words stretching between us. I told him about the bloodstain, and how scary it was not to know what was going on. I told him the police were sure it was Simon Jukes who had killed Liza, but I wasn't so sure. I told him about Henry Jukes, and his outburst at the wake. Then I tried to write little entertaining cameos about all the people we'd met, and so on—I guess at the back of my mind was the idea that maybe something I wrote would pique Dad's interest so he might decide to come join us
here.
P.S. What would it take to make you come see us here, Dad?
I wrote at the end.
We all miss you. I think even Mom misses you. She came here to paint and be a big artist, but now she can't bear to go up to her new studio with the bloodstained floor, and her artist friend is dead, and things are pretty grim. What I really want to know is: why can't you two just work things out?