Memory and Desire (14 page)

The chair at Claire's elbow scraped and she spun around. Elliot Moncrief folded himself gracefully into a seated position. He was wearing a tweed jacket and an ascot. The tooth marks of a comb were visible in his thinning hair. Claire expected him to launch into a Monty Python routine. Instead he shed a charming smile on her and Diana both. “Bring me a Bristol Cream, Diana, that would be lovely."

“Right,” Diana said again, and ducked behind the bar.

“You may be playing the detective just now,” Elliot said to Claire, “but I hear in civilian life you're a librarian."

Another suspect—good. She smiled. “My title is media specialist, which translates into librarian."

“Thought we should have a bit of a chin wag—I'm dying to know if what I've heard about librarians is true."

“You mean,” Claire said, “that librarians are uptight, upright, and inhibited creatures? I'll have you know that sometimes I lose all sense of decency and go two days without flossing my teeth."

Elliot brayed with delight. “And yet you're Melinda's pal, and she such a tearaway. How can this be?"

“Oil and vinegar make a tasty salad dressing."

“May I assume, then, you and Melinda have similar tastes? I mean, she was quite the original—in many ways. We grew to be very good friends indeed.” Elliot winked and his elbow nudged Claire in the side.

It was all she could do to keep herself from groaning aloud. So Elliot was volunteering for the role of the mysterious lover. No, Melinda's taste wasn't infallible, and yes, she had a touching faith in the benefits of recreational sex. Elliot was safer, emotionally speaking, than anyone else—an amusing lightweight compared to Nigel, her husband ... Why believe Elliot's version of events any more than anyone else's, Claire asked herself. “What do you think happened to Melinda?"

“Fluttered away, as butterflies eventually do.” He shrugged.
Who me? Care about someone other than myself?
“I hope the dear girl didn't harm herself. I made it very clear that it was all for grins."

Melinda wouldn't have given herself a hangnail over a poser like Elliot. “Did you have a fight?"

“Oh, no, no. But I was her director. Most of these well-meaning amateurs simply haven't a clue. Melinda had her own little ideas about how the part should be played. We—shall we say—had our disagreements?"

“I'm sure you did.” Especially since Melinda's ideas had probably been very good ones. “Why did you choose her to play Elizabeth?"

“The bones found in the church were of a small woman,” replied Elliot. “Isn't that so, Alec?"

Alec was leaning on his elbow, looking at Elliot the way you'd look at a television sitcom in its third rerun. “Some say people were smaller in the seventeenth century."

“Ergo, we need a small woman to play the part. And not before time, may I add. That's why I chose Trillian Nair this year. Willowy sweet young thing and close to the right age, for once."

Diana materialized at Claire's elbow and slammed three glasses onto the table. Ouch, Claire thought. She'd played Elizabeth herself, hadn't she? And she probably hadn't been a small woman since puberty. But Elliot held his sherry to the light as though inspecting it for impurities, indifferent to Diana's glare on the back of his neck.

“Fine draught of ale, Diana,” said Alec, the peacemaker.

Diana nodded truculently and turned away. Claire considered her own glass of what she would have called 7-Up. It was cool enough to condense on the outside, but without a shred of ice. She drank.

“I say, Diana.” Elliot beckoned her back with a hailing-a-taxi gesture. “I've decided to add an extra dimension to The Play this year. Instead of simply implying that Elizabeth was involved in witchcraft, we're going to stage a real Black Mass.
Pater noster qui es in coelis, maledicatur nomen tuum, destruator regnum tuum
—and so forth and so on."

Whether or not Diana understood the Latin of the bastardized prayer, she certainly caught the drift of Elliot's—it was a joke, wasn't it? Her eyes widened. “Oh, Elliot, you mustn't. You never know what you might call from out that stone circle."

“You named your pub the Druid's Circle,” Elliot riposted.
"In nomine diaboli et servorum suorum...."

Alec's voice was like a lid clamping down on a grease fire. “Elliot, don't be stupid. The name of the pub is for the tourists, you know that. There's nothing evil in the stone circle, despite what Cecil says in The Play when he sees Elizabeth picking flowers there. Witchcraft was the last survival of the old nature religions, whilst the Black Mass is Satanism, an invention of the Middle Ages. They're not the same at all. He's only winding you up, Diana. Don't pay him any mind."

Diana's features puckered. “Bugger off, Elliot,” she said, and flounced away.

Elliot laughed. “Not two brain cells to rub together, our Diana. Witchcraft, Satanism—it's all rot, only good for a giggle. You know that, Alec, there's a good chap."

“You wouldn't have thought it was rot three hundred years ago, if it had been you in the dock and not Elizabeth. She was innocent of all charges and yet they found her guilty and killed her even so."

“Well excuse me, Constable,” Elliot returned. “Didn't mean to cast aspersions on your Elizabeth."

Alec did have a thing about Elizabeth, Claire thought. He himself had said witchcraft was rubbish, but he was right—Elizabeth was just as dead. Was it worse to die for an illusion than for a cause?

Alec looked down at his glass. His cheeks were slightly flushed. If the cliche librarian was an inhibited spinster, then the cliche cop was a just-the-facts tough guy. Alec, though, spoke more like a scholar. More like Richard, who was certified a scholar—and yet who had a yen to be an artist and craftsman, like Claire herself.

Suddenly she thought of the little room at the top of Somerstowe Hall, Elizabeth's hideaway in life and in death as well. Alec had come strolling along the gallery just seconds after Claire first saw Elizabeth's ghost. He'd lived here all of his life. Richard said he knew the Hall better than anyone else.

It was Alec who was caretaking the room—and Elizabeth's innocence as well. Melinda was right, Alec was sweet. In a very masculine way, of course. Claire smiled at the top of his head. But she wasn't going to say anything to him about the room. His feelings were his own business. Which Richard was respecting, to let her think he was the one tidying the room. Yeah, there was a sensitive guy lurking inside Richard's crust. Go figure.

“Diana made quite a good Elizabeth, once,” Elliot was confiding in Claire's ear. She winced at his alcoholic breath. “Then she lost her girlish figure and peaches and cream complexion. She could hardly outrun time's winged chariots, could she?"

“None of us can,” Claire returned tartly.

Elliot raised his chin, tightening the wattle hanging beneath. “The play must go on, mustn't it? Diana wasn't best pleased, mind you, to be replaced in the role. Especially by Melinda. It took Miss American Pie perhaps five minutes to see how solemn Diana is wont to be—positively grim—and to start winding her up good and proper."

“Melinda wound us all up.” Alec's mouth softened into a wry smile. “We all have chinks in our armor. She didn't mean anything by it."

“Every now and then she'd go a little bit too far,” Claire conceded. “She was never malicious.”
Like you,
she added silently to Elliot.

He was neither sweet nor sensitive, was he? A lightweight, but with a cruel and callous edge. Yes, Melinda would've thought he was a hoot. She might even have gotten a kick out of sleeping with him—Claire couldn't be positive one way or the other. If not, though, then she'd caught Elliot in a lie. Unfortunately it was one so typical of the male sex she couldn't count it against him.

Elliot continued his monologue. “This year's production of ‘An Historie’ is scheduled for June 20 and 21. We've been rehearsing for ten days already. I know three weeks is a dreadfully short time, but I'm a professional, I can move mountains and aging actresses as well."

Diana strolled by, murmuring, “We're so lucky to have a big name toff like Elliot to help us along."

“I'm even thinking of purchasing my humble abode here in Somerstowe,” Elliot went on, with a cheery wave at Diana's departing backside. “I do so like quaint things—antiques, old houses, two hundred year old plays."

“Elliot's been one of the trustees of Somerstowe Hall since the Cranbournes willed it to the Trust,” said Alec.

“Has he,” Claire returned, wondering whether that gave him a chance for any cozy financial deals.

“So, Claire,” Elliot went on. “How can we get you involved? Richard is reprising his role as Phillip—our blue-blooded narrator and chorus. Alec is faithful Walter once again. When Diana gave up the role of Elizabeth Rob went from playing Walter to playing Cecil, the villain, and he's back as well."

“And Diana played Cecil's wife Lettice?” Claire dimly remembered seeing her name on Melinda's playbill.

“Grudgingly, letting us know she was much too good to cut off her nose to spite her face. Although in her case that would be an improvement.” He laughed. Claire and Alec didn't. “If you ask me—and you did, didn't you?—Diana was born for the part of Lettice. As for you, well, we have a few small parts you could play quite nicely. Those lovely curls would look a treat in a period cap.” Elliot reached out to touch her hair.

Claire, with visions of casting couches, evaded his hand and said quickly, “I'm no actress. Didn't Sarita say she was wardrobe mistress? I could help her. I wield a mean needle."

If Elliot was disappointed at her not rising to his bait, he didn't show it. “Just so. Sarita would be delighted. And you could turn the pages for Priscilla, who provides musical accompaniment during the show itself. If you read music, that is."

“I can read music, I play at the piano now and then. I'd like to help. Thanks for asking.” Claire drained the last of her lemonade, congratulating herself for working her way into an inside look at the production.

“This year is the fifteenth performance,” said Alec, half to himself. “I began by playing Elizabeth's young brother. Time's winged chariot indeed."

Claire scooted her chair back. “If y'all will excuse me, Alec, Elliot, I really need to get my beauty sleep.” Not to mention that her bladder was about to burst.

Immediately both men were on their feet. Elliot was the quicker with a handful of change, throwing it onto the bar like a duke distributing coins to the peasantry. With a grimace, as though fondly imagining dukes trundled off to the guillotine, Rob scooped up the money and counted it into the cash drawer.

Claire sighed. Next time she'd slip Rob a few pounds in advance ... On a shelf just below the cash drawer sat a camera. A new digital camera, the same model as Melinda's. No way, she thought. But she had to ask. “Ah, Rob—that's a nice camera you've got there. Melinda had one like that. She tried to teach me how to use it. I never quite caught on, though."

Rob looked from her to the camera and back. “Yeh."

Alec said behind Claire's shoulder, “Melinda showed you some tricks with her camera, didn't she, Rob? That's why you went and bought yourself one."

“Yeh.” Rob's black eyes drilled into Claire's. He knew exactly what she was thinking and dared her to make something of it.

Never mind. Alec vouched for him. “Thanks,” she said, to Rob, to Elliot, to Alec. “Good night."

Elliot gripped Claire's hand and lifted it to his lips. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, and so forth and so on. Until we meet again."

“Yeah. Sure.” Wiping her hand on her jeans and nodding at Fred and Janet, Claire headed for the door. Only to find Alec beside her, every line of his face set in police procedure mode. He was going to walk her home and scare away the bogeyman beneath the bed.
Great.

Don't get fixated on Alec, either, she told herself. He was going along with all her bright-eyed detecting ideas because it was his job, not because he was the bogeyman himself. For one thing, he didn't have a motive for killing Melinda any more than any one else did. Well, Richard resented Melinda for some reason, and Diana resented her for better reason, but so what?

So, Claire answered, what if Diana had written the threatening letter? Or what if Elliot had done it to stir up even more trouble between the women than he already had? That would tickle his sense of humor, such as it was.

The evening was clear, the sun flirting with the horizon and casting long shadows across the street. “Is Elliot always like that?” she asked.

Alec nodded. “Always on stage, isn't he? I suppose we could hire him to play the village idiot."

Elliot is no idiot.
Claire led Alec up the steps and opened the door. It took him all of two minutes to check the place out. “Well, carry on,” he said with a smile. “Give me a shout if you have any more scares."

“I will,” Claire promised.

He hesitated just a moment, then leaned down and brushed her cheek with his lips. The light kiss left a pleasant glow in her skin. Funny how touching Alec was comforting and touching Richard was anything but. “Remember,” he murmured, “I'm keeping an eye on you."

Like you were last night, down in the yard?
He didn't mean that as a threat. Surely he didn't mean any of it as a threat. She offered him a brave smile of her own. “Thanks."

Claire locked the door and stood with her back against it. Alec was no idiot, either. He knew she suspected him. She wondered what else he knew.

Claire walked into the Hall yawning. She couldn't remember what she'd dreamed, only that her dreams had been anxious and left her more tired than when she'd gone to sleep. She resolved to stop watching old horror movies at bedtime, even though she knew darn well what the problem really was.

Outside the sun shone blissfully on village and Hall, but inside Claire needed all the illumination she could get. She turned on the overhead light in the gallery and was reaching for the lamp when Richard appeared. So he hadn't skipped town last night after all. Not that she'd expected him to.

Today he was wearing a handsome Fair Isle sweater whose heather grays, greens, and blues complimented the ivory tones of his clean-shaven cheeks. With a cordial, “Good morning,” he started inspecting the canvas and the completed chart. She tensed. His face cracked into a smile. “Well done.” He started pulling out the tacks holding the canvas to the frame.