Memory and Desire (16 page)

“Doing what?"

“You hand me another demand and then play stupid? Come off it."

“Sarita gave me that letter to give to you,” Claire retorted. “If it has something to do with Melinda then you'd better fill me in, and now."

He threw the letter at her and fell back into his chair, arms crossed, face averted. Time plummeted onward, filled with hammering heartbeats.

The paper crinkled in Claire's hand. “Lacey,” read the typed text. “Time to ante up again and keep that secret safe. Cash this time. One hundred quid. You know the drill. Affectionately, an admirer."

“Blackmail,” Claire said.

“Snap,” returned Richard. “Blackmail it is."

“You opened one of these in the pub, didn't you? And you had some last summer—I, ah, I got that out of Sarita. You think Melinda sent those? You think I'm sending the ones now?"

“I have a clue, don't I?” he said tightly.

“Oh yeah, right! Like I'm going to just give you the letter, here, alone with you...” She veered away from that. “You think Melinda told me something to blackmail you with, don't you? Well she didn't. And if I'm not sending the letters, then Melinda wasn't, either."

“She was working with someone else, then."

Claire had to let that one go. “Why Melinda?"

“The letters told me to send small antiques from the house to an address in London. I sussed it out—it's close to Nigel Killigrew's office. He collects antiques. He's a trustee of Somerstowe Hall. Melinda worked for publishers in New York and London. The letters stopped coming when she disappeared. Until you arrived.” Richard's accent was migrating north, away from the Oxford-Cambridge axis toward a Highland hillside covered with thistles, diphthongs, and glottal stops.

The cool, damp air from an open window at Claire's back made the nape of her neck crawl. The warmth of the fire on her face made her cheeks burn. Yes, Nigel was a trustee of Somerstowe Hall. That was why Melinda chose it for her summer's project. But ... “You were taking things from the house?"

“Of course not. I bought items in antique shops and posted them."

“Oh. Good move."

“Melinda had a motive to blackmail me,” Richard went stubbornly on. “She was in a position to—well, to know how to go about it."

To know your secret, Claire added to herself. Or anyone else's, for that matter. Melinda was very good at smelling out buried embarrassments, sensitized as she was by her own. No wonder she'd become a journalist. “The blackmailer threatened to publicize your secret, right? I guess you couldn't exactly say ‘publish and be damned.’”

“No."

“You haven't gone to the police with the letters?"

“Melinda's blackmailing me seems to give me a motive to kill her, doesn't it? If I started helping the police with their inquiries in a murder case, then I'd hardly be keeping up appearances with the Trust."

“You think she was murdered, then?"

“Don't you?"

“Yes, I do,” admitted Claire.

“I didn't kill her.” Richard glared at the fire, his expression repeating that of the lion on the stamp. It would have helped if the innkeeper had appeared at that moment carrying thumbscrews, but she brought only fresh scones and hot water for the teapot.

Richard uncrossed his arms, refilled his cup, and scooped blood-red jam onto his plate. He ate another scone, doctoring each individual bite with jam and cream. Even though his teeth glinted between his lips, his incisors didn't seem to be any longer than usual.

Claire refilled her cup, halved her scone, and smeared each side with cream and jam so that the colors mingled into a rosy pink. She took a big bite of the rich, sweet, buttery treat. Richard could be lying up one side and down the other. And yet his story hung together. As far as it went.

Melinda's sense of humor would every now and then run a stop sign and leave skid marks. She joked and teased to keep everyone except Claire at arm's length, frightened of intimacy even as she looked for intimacy in various love affairs. And in a marriage that failed miserably. With that much pain distorting her perceptions she could well have gone too far. And that come-hither sketch suggested why.

“Okay,” Claire said. “Melinda played jokes. She didn't do anything illegal. Especially not for Nigel. And he's not the only trustee. What about Elliot? He likes antiques, and a spot of blackmail sounds just like his idea of fun and games."

“I've thought of him, right enough. But he had at least one letter, too. I saw Sarita hand it him."

“So he sent one to hims...” Claire stopped. “Wait a minute. Yours weren't the only ones?"

“You didn't ask Sarita, whilst you were prying into my affairs, if there were any others?"

“No, I didn't.” Rats, she added to herself. “That makes it even less likely Melinda was sending the letters. She might have had a motive to play a joke on you. She might've somehow fallen over a secret of yours. But how does that translate into her going after other people, too?"

Richard's jaw twitched. “All right. Like Alice in the looking glass, I try to believe at least one impossible thing every day. Today I'll believe in your innocence. In Melinda's innocence, if you like."

“You're acting as if it's up to you to decide. It's not impossible, though, it's a fact."

“I'm sorry, Claire. It's the best I can do.” His bright golden-brown eyes were fixed on her face again. Looking into those eyes was like looking into twin fireplaces, shape after shape forming and re-forming in the flames. He wanted her to believe him. Claire wanted to believe him. Not that that was at all logical. But her coming to England to begin with hadn't been logical.

“If Melinda was blackmailing you or anyone else, she meant it as a joke,” Claire said with a sigh. “She would've apologized, given you back the antiques, and treated you to dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in London. But she didn't have the chance, did she?"

“It wasn't that I disliked Melinda,” insisted Richard. “We actually got on quite well. She pushed my buttons a bit, no harm in that. Even if she'd confessed to being the blackmailer, I'd hardly have killed her."

Time hiccuped. The room was faintly smoky, more from their own friction, Claire thought, than from the fire. “I try to believe at least one impossible thing every day, too. So today I'll believe you didn't kill Melinda."

“You're acting as though it's up to you to decide."

“I won't be sure I can trust you until you trust me. And I suppose you're not real motivated to do that."

His eyes fell at last. He looked down at his cup and slopped the tea back and forth like a do-it-yourself lava lamp. “Claire, I'll tell you what I can. Not what my secret is, though. Because it's not my own."

Oh.
Claire heard Susan repeating Melinda's description of Richard: “He's too honest.” Honest with himself. Sparing himself nothing. Demanding honesty from others even as he honorably protected someone else's secret ... Which only made him even more appealing, damn it all anyway.

Averting her eyes from his chiseled profile, she said, “Richard, you've got to go to the police with your blackmail letters. They must be tied in with Melinda's disappearance. For all you know, she was getting letters, too."

“Sarita might know,” he returned, obviously trying to be helpful.

So either he didn't know about the letter beneath the carpet, or ... He didn't know, Claire told herself, trying the concept on for size. She warmed up her tea and his, and gave him the last scone—she had enough to chew on. “So why did you make a date with Melinda the night she disappeared?"

“I'd decided she was the blackmailer. I wanted to sort it with her."

“But you had a fight instead."

“Alec and I were having one last look round the house, making sure everyone was away. She leapt out at us in the upper great chamber still wearing Elizabeth's gown and all, trying to frighten us. And I did jump. Alec went dead white and then told her in no uncertain terms how little he appreciated her winding him up like that."

“Alec has a temper?"

“When he's stressed. He simply doesn't stress as easily as most."

Alec had snapped at Elliot in the pub last night, hadn't he? Nothing like an unsolved murder on your beat. “I guess The Play is stressful on everyone,” Claire said neutrally.

“Oh aye, that it is. For whatever reason, Alec told Melinda off and then went on down the stairs, leaving me alone with her. And we rowed."

“Did you accuse her of blackmail?"

“I never had the chance. She told me she was breaking our date, she'd made other plans. I assumed she meant Elliot, though she put every man in the village through his paces. I said something about keeping commitments. I should've remembered her divorce and put it some other way, but I didn't do."

“Being stressed out yourself,” Claire said dryly. “Yeah, that was hitting below the belt. She tried to make that marriage work."

One of Richard's brows annotated that statement. All he said was, “Melinda came back at me, saying I had no—well, she called me a eunuch."

“Oh boy. I figured we were going to get around to that sketch. What happened? Not that I want to hear any gory details,” she added hastily.

“There are no gory details, that's just the point. It wasn't until I was actually making the sketch I realized she'd misinterpreted my intentions. I ended by having to refuse her advances, as they say in Victorian novels. I thought she'd shrugged it all off, more fool I."

“You rejected her?"

“I wasn't in the mood."

“She wouldn't have wanted a relationship, you know."

“If you're having sex, you're having a relationship.” Richard stared at Claire as though daring her to make something of it.

What Claire would have liked to make of him was a bronze statue for posterity—a man who realized there was no such thing as free sex. “Somebody said you'd just broken off a relationship,” she hazarded.

“Can't hide from your past in a village, can you?” Richard asked, dry in turn. “Yes, I'd broken it off with a woman in London. She was quite like Melinda in some ways, caught up in her work. She wouldn't come with me to Somerstowe, I wouldn't miss out the job at the Hall. The relationship was dying in any event, Somerstowe simply put the nails in the coffin."

“Yeah, I just ended one of those, too."

“Oh?"

“Things were starting to come unglued anyway, and when Melinda disappeared, well, that was it.” Her view of Melinda, and Richard's view, or Elliot's, or Nigel's, or even Steve's, for that matter, shifted kaleidoscopically each from the other. Melinda probably intended it that way. “You didn't mean to hurt her. She didn't mean to hurt you. Or Alec, either. Even if she was the blackmailer, she meant it as a joke."

“I suppose so.” Richard tried a smile, but it didn't quite work.

“Why,” Claire went on, “did you keep that postcard I sent her?"

“She gave it me as an example of American pretentious architecture. I bunged it onto the mantel and forgot about it. Housekeeping's not my forte. Melinda would joke about that, too."

“She'd joke on the way to her own funer...” Claire stopped. “I came here to find Melinda and her murderer. Now I want to find the blackmailer, too. I bet they're the same person."

“Not a bit of it. The killer is someone else who thought Melinda was the blackmailer."

“I don't like that version. That would mean the blackmailer is trying to set the killer on me, too."

“You've already called more than a little attention to yourself,” Richard told her. He swallowed the last morsel of scone and ran his tongue between his lips.

The sight was as unsettling as his words. Of all the things Melinda could've called him, Claire thought, asexual was as far from the truth as calling him a Martian. And yes, he was too damned honest.

He looked up at her. “Are we allies, then?"

“I think a mutual cooperation treaty is called for, yes,” she said, and stopped before she said something about strange bedfellows.

The innkeeper strode across the floor, beat sparks out of the fire, raised the window further, and turned to the table. “Anything else? Sherry?"

“No, thank you,” stated Claire.

“We'd better be away,” Richard said, his voice regaining its usual crisp Oxbridge inflections. He produced several coins and threw them on the table, not protesting when Claire chipped in a few of her own and then jammed the blackmail letter into her billfold. Not that she had any coherent plans for dealing with it. Their chat had raised more issues that it'd settled, but then, raising issues
was
Richard's forte.

Outside the rain had stopped. The world was filled with the scents of damp earth, grass, and wool. Brilliant shafts of sunlight broke through the clouds like Jacob's ladder joining earth to heaven. The wet highway hissed beneath the wheels of the car. Funny, Claire thought as the miles passed in silence, how neither of us has anything else to say. Now.

By the time they made it back to Somerstowe the countryside was steaming softly in the sunshine. Two police cars and a van sat in the car park beside the shop. Rob Jackman stood outside the Druid's Circle, the smoke of his cigarette drifting straight upward in the warm, humid air. “At the church,” he said to Richard's query. “Opened the crypt."

Together Richard and Claire double-timed it up the street and around the corner. “The crypt?” he asked.

“Alec,” she returned. “Looking for Melinda's body."

Between the quick and the dead, the churchyard was swarming. Villagers and tourists milled among the tombstones and stood outside the fence. The locals muttered to one another. The day-trippers took pictures of dusty, shirt-sleeved policemen moving like ants in and out of the church. Priscilla Digby carried a basket from kibitzer to kibitzer, hitting each one up for some charitable fund. Alec and Trevor stood at the lych gate as awkwardly as an old married couple who'd just had a tiff. With them was a rotund man in an expensive dark suit, inspecting his fingernails.

“Well, well,” Richard said. “It's the second coming of DS Arnold Pakenham."

Now Claire understood Janet's reference to “Pakenpork.” The detective sergeant looked, unfortunately, like Porky Pig. When Trevor motioned to Richard and Claire, Pakenham pulled his attention away from his manicure and turned toward them too, his colorless eyes taking vital statistics.