Memory and Desire (19 page)

Richard had made Claire a stiff cup of tea laced with an even stiffer dram of whiskey, which scoured away her numbness and left her senses hyper-extended. Then Priscilla Digby popped in with a couple of teabags. “Alec asked me to bring you these,” she explained. “Chamomile and valerian from his garden. Very calming.” Richard brewed up another pot, holding off on the whiskey this time, and Claire drank the herbal tea too.

Now her jangling nerves played accompaniment to a fitfully gurgling stomach. Her glasses cut into her head. She hated to think what Richard's contact lenses felt like. Pakenham's knock on the front door seemed to jar the fillings out of her teeth.

Richard uncurled from his windowsill. The bandage on his arm didn't seem much whiter than his face. “I didn't kill Melinda."

Claire shook her head, unable to answer.

With a lingering look of frustration and pride mingled he went to answer the door.

Groaning, Claire stood up. The cold stone had sapped all feeling from her rear end. Maybe if she beat her head against the sill she'd lose all feeling there, too. But she'd done what she came to England to do.... No. She'd done half of what she came to do. Now she had to find a murderer.

Pakenham's silhouette filled the doorway. “Blake's wanting you, the both of you, for an interview. Now."

“I wasn't going anywhere,” Claire told him.

Richard was waiting in the front hall. Together they followed close behind Pakenham, making a flying wedge through the reporters. Several guardian bobbies closed off the grounds behind them. Susan Zielinski was just leaving the portico of the Hall. “I'm so sorry,” she said to Claire. “I've told them all about it, I'm such an idiot not to have realized."

Realized what? Claire asked herself.

Glowing bulbs dangled from the ceiling of the entrance hall, splashing streaks of light and shadow down the walls. A draft sneaked under Claire's collar and her arms broke out in gooseflesh. The floor echoed like a drum to her steps. An odd smell, gardenia with an afterglow of old socks, teased her nostrils.

Alec, back in uniform, stood at parade rest by the fireplace. His mouth was compressed, his clear eyes dimmed. A stray lock of his hair hung over his furrowed forehead. Claire winced. Now, too late, she understood Richard's “Are you sure it's worth it?” God only knew what sort of guff he'd been taking from his fellow officers. “Thank you for the tea,” she said.

He nodded politely, not even attempting a smile.

Detective Chief Inspector Blake sat in a folding chair at one end of a long trestle table. Papers and photos drifted across the three-hundred-year-old wood. His suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair, the knot of his tie dangled half way down his shirt, and his sleeves were rolled up. With his moustache and his bifocals he seemed as innocuous as a shopkeeper doing his accounts. But his eyes looked like mirrored sunglasses, impenetrable. “Miss Godwin. Mr. Lacey. Sit down."

Richard and Claire sat down on the bench running alongside the table, Claire facing Blake, Richard behind her. Pakenham settled on the opposite side, his tie tight at this throat, his jacket properly buttoned. He pulled an assortment of pens from his pocket and arranged them in a neat row like the leveled rifles of a firing squad.

“So you did find her,” Blake said to Claire.

“Yes,” she replied. “Well, not me personally. I was the catalyst."

“Several people have testified that PC Wood uses his map trick to find lost items. Bits of jewelry and the like. Hardly bodies.” Pakenham shot a suspicious glance over his shoulder at Alec.

“We've never had a body in Somerstowe,” Alec said.

Claire tried to catch his eye again, but he was focussed on the tapestry on the opposite wall.

Blake settled his glasses on his nose. “The body is Melinda Varek's, right enough. We had her dental records on file from last year. Someone coshed her from behind—with a rock, maybe, not a sharp-edged tool—and then strangled her with a cord or strip of cloth."

“Like Elizabeth Spenser,” Alec muttered.

“PC Wood,” said Blake, “I'd be obliged if you'd join the other constables outside."

“Yes, Sir.” Alec marched out the door, Pakenham's beady eyes raking his navy-blue back. Hercule Poirot to the contrary, Claire thought, no detective worth his badge would interview his suspects en masse. And Alec had just put himself at the top of the list.

“If he'd killed and buried Melinda,” Richard said, “why in God's name would he show you where the body was?"

“He's not half looney,” answered Pakenham. “He expects us to buy into this New Age woo-woo rubbish, doesn't he?"

Claire wasn't particularly into woo-woo herself, but she knew there was more to reality than met the eye—music, religion, poetry, quantum mechanics. Why not a village bobby with second sight?

Alec couldn't be the killer, she thought. Anyone else—well, not Richard, either.... A movement on the shadowed landing of the staircase, behind Blake and Pakenham's backs, resolved itself into the calico cat. It sat with its tail wrapped around its front paws, head cocked to the side, eyes shining like gold foil. The detectives wouldn't believe it was a ghost. No need to mention it.

Claire sensed a fluctuation in Richard's gravitational field. He saw the cat, too. Inching a bit further down the bench away from him, she asked, “Chief Inspector, Melinda was dead when she was buried, wasn't she? The way her hand was sticking through the plastic..."

“The bin liners grew brittle,” Blake replied. “The site is well-drained and the body is quite well preserved. Or do you want to know that?"

Once again Claire tried to clear her throat of the sweet smell that neither tea had washed away. The odd odor in the room wasn't helping. “I want to know everything. That's why I'm here."

“Very well then,” said Blake. “To begin, Miss Varek was still wearing her costume from the play production."

“She sent me a picture of herself wearing that dress. She said it made her feel elegant and poignant...” Claire's voice caught in her throat.

“This gives us, at long last, a time of death,” Blake went on. “She must've been killed immediately after the cast party, before she'd had time to change. Her missing car was purposeful misdirection, to make it appear she'd gone away for the rest of the weekend as per her usual habits. What is interesting is that when Mrs. Zielinski was going to the church, just before midnight, she saw the ghost of Elizabeth Spenser walking through the portico of the Hall."

“She said she'd seen Elizabeth in full manifestation,” Richard said. “She never said when, exactly. If it was that very night, then she saw Melinda."

Pakenham snorted. “Even a halfwit could make that out."

“Miss Varek might have been waiting in the portico to meet someone. Perhaps her killer.” Blake shuffled his papers. “Now. The prayer vigil began at midnight, an hour after the end of the cast party. Everyone was supposed to stay until first light. I understand, though, some people slipped out earlier."

“Aha,” muttered Pakenham.

“Surely you can eliminate an older person,” said Claire. “It'd take work to dig a hole large and deep enough for a body. Even a small body."

Richard shifted uneasily. “The beds were prepared to a good depth. The tools were ready to hand."

“I should expect any fit person to be capable of burying the body,” concluded Blake. “Sufficiently motivated as they were."

Pakenham demanded, “Why didn't you point us toward the flower beds last year, Lacey? For all I knew those bushes had been there for years!"

“And for all I knew Melinda was alive and well miles from here and days later!” Richard retorted. “We only just found out she died the night of The Play."

“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” suggested Claire.

Pakenham eyed them both, a leer lurking in his tiny eyes.

No, Claire thought irritably, there's nothing going on between Richard and me ...
Yeah, right.
She went on the offensive. “Your team didn't find that overwrought death-threat letter that was under Melinda's carpet, did you?"

“What?” exclaimed Richard. “You didn't tell me about that!"

You didn't tell me everything, either.
And yet his surprise was—seemed to be—genuine. Looking over her shoulder, she told him about the snapshot and the letter.

“Oh, aye,” he said, “I remember that snap. Alec posted it on the notice board just there, beside the fireplace. Anyone could have pinched it."

“The same someone who killed Miss Varek?” asked Pakenham.

“And buried her in my garden,” finished Richard. “Why here? Because it was convenient? Or to fit me up?"

To frame him, Claire translated silently. The chill draft in the room pushed her toward his warm aura. Tonight was the first time his touch had been comforting ... Don't lose it now, she warned herself.

“Any number of people would've had the opportunity to kill Miss Varek,” Blake went on. “Logically, though, it was someone she knew who lured her into the garden and killed her there. Whether it was to fit you up or not, Mr. Lacey, I couldn't begin to guess. Robbery wasn't the motive, not with that ring still on her finger."

“Have you any enemies?” Pakenham asked.

Claire contemplated the empty maw of the fireplace. Was it a trick of the light or were there several paw prints in the ashes? In the silence faint echoes fluttered in the far reaches of the house, footsteps, ghosts, bats, whatever.

At last Richard answered. “It seems so, yes."

Blake nodded. Pursing his lips, Pakenham started writing. Richard spoke in short, clipped phrases, describing the letters of last year and this and why he suspected Melinda. “I tried to talk to her about it during the cast party,” he finished. “We ended up rowing about—well, about how she wanted to have sex with me."

“And you refused her?” asked Blake.

“Pull the other one,” Pakenham murmured.

“I'd just ended a rather intense relationship,” said Richard, “and at the time had no intention of—of wading into battle again, so to speak."

Blake turned toward Claire. “Was Miss Varek given to blackmail?"

She raised her chin, folded her cold hands in her lap, and said, “I never knew her to do anything malicious. But she was a practical joker. She might've gone overboard."

“Other people in town may have been getting blackmail letters as well,” Richard said. “One of them must have left the letter and the snap beneath the door. Beneath the carpet."

Blake's eyes lost Claire's image and looked through her. “If Miss Varek was sending the letters last year, she must have a confederate who is continuing her—ah—work. And judging by the carpet letter, you're not the only one who suspected her, Mr. Lacey. Although...” His voice trailed away into a “hmmm.” “That letter was put together from newspaper cuttings—no typeface to be going on with. The blackmail letters were typed?"

“Yes,” Richard said. “Not printed out, typed."

“We'll have them at the lab, then. Sergeant, vet every typewriter in town."

Pakenham wrote furiously. “Who else received letters, Lacey?"

“I think that's for them to tell you."

“We'll ask, then, won't we? And what did the blackmailer demand?"

“At first, artifacts from the Hall. I found some items in antique shops and sent them on. Then she—he—wanted money."

“And just what is it the blackmailer is threatening to reveal?” Pakenham asked. “What are you hiding?"

Richard's gravity field rippled and flared. Claire thought of Melinda leaning into that attraction only to find it repulsing her. She'd already been hurt. To be rejected by a class act like Richard must've been a blow on a bruise. Resilient Melinda would've healed in time. But she hadn't had time.

Yeah, maybe she'd decided to play a nastier-than-usual joke on him, using something she'd found out from Nigel. But she'd never actually have published it ... Anyone could publicize a secret. Create a scandal. You didn't have to have a prior connection with a publisher. Unless, Claire thought, the issue wasn't “publish and be damned” at all. What if the secret had already been published, and it was Richard who was damned?

He'd bailed out of the Digbys’ coffee-and-cookies party when Trevor said something about The Play being fictionalized history—well of course it was, Philip hadn't been there for Elizabeth's trial—history was always fictionalized, the best scholars couldn't avoid that—Richard's parents were scholars. Richard's parents had found The Play in the attic of the Hall...

My God, Claire thought. It wasn't just that he wanted to avoid the Trust seeing him involved in a murder investigation. It was that the secret itself had to be hidden from the Trust.

She spun around to face Richard. Their knees touched. He jerked back, startled. If it's not his secret to tell, she thought, then it sure as hell isn't mine. But for Melinda's sake, for the sake of peace and truth and all the usual ideals ... “The Play,” she mouthed, barely even whispering.

He heard. His eyes flashed. He leaped to his feet. Claire waited for him to pluck a halberd from the display beside the fireplace and take a swipe at her head. But no. He stood stiffly on the tiles and faced Blake foursquare, like an English sailor heading into Dunkirk.

“You must understand, Detective Inspector. It's not my secret. It's not, however, a particularly well hidden secret. I'm not surprised that Melinda, with her connections, winkled it out."

“Yes?” prompted Blake. Pakenham scribbled away, not bothering to conceal a smile of satisfaction.

“The Play. ‘An Historie of the Apocalypse as Visit'd upon Summerstow.’ It's a fake. It was written by my parents. That is, my father found several pages of it amongst Phillip Lacey's effects and completed it."

“And he passed it off as authentic?” Blake asked.

“No. He did it as a scholarly lark, never intending to publish, certainly never intending to profit by it either academically or monetarily."

“So who did want to profit by it?"

“Maud Cranbourne,” Richard said. “She published The Play without my parents’ knowledge. She was even clever enough to send only the original pages to the British Museum for authentication."

“A bit greedy, weren't we?” murmured Pakenham.