Memory and Desire (20 page)

“The reason she asked my father to have a shufti round the attics of The Hall to begin with was to see if there was anything valuable she could pass on to her relatives.” Richard's usually velvet voice was rough, brushed against the nap. “Maud Cranbourne was the last of her generation, the last Cranbourne to live at the Hall. She never married. Her nieces and nephews and their children were her family. Miss Maud, as I knew her, wanted to leave a legacy for them—especially the descendents of her favorite brother, Vincent, who'd been disinherited. She had very little cash. What she had was the Hall.

“But the Hall was falling apart. Nowadays an old building such as this one is too expensive for a private individual to maintain unless he's a rich rock star or computer tycoon—not the sort who's usually into historic preservation.

“Maud saw her chance with The Play. The income from it would provide funds to maintain and even restore the Hall. Her relatives, however, made it clear that if they inherited the Hall they'd sell up. A housing developer had already made one of the cousins, Maurice Applethorpe, an offer.” A spasm contracted Richard's face. The prospect of the Hall demolished, the gardens plowed up, the village a yuppie suburb, caused him acute indigestion. It didn't sit too well with Claire, either.

“By the time Maud died, ten years ago, The Play had already been performed five times, bringing people into Somerstowe from far and wide. Elliot had built an entire industry in scripts, recordings, and sub-rights. The Play was proving more lucrative than we'd dared to hope. It made Maud's estate even more valuable. Applethorpe wanted to eat his cake and have it too, have both the profits from selling the Hall and the income from The Play. Not that he needed any cake at all, mind you, he's a wealthy man in his own right."

“But Maud left the Hall to the National Trust,” said Blake. “With the income from The Play as endowment. That left your parents in a bit of a spot, didn't it?"

“Oh aye. Therefore they—we, I was at university then—made the deliberate decision that the end justifies the means. To sell our honor for the Hall and for the village.” He made an abrupt about-face toward the fireplace, hiding his expression. The Lacey stag and leopard gazed benignly down at him, forgiving all. From the ramrod straightness of his back Claire knew he was not forgiving himself.

Julian and Dierdre had had good precedents for their lark. Ireland's “newly-discovered” Shakespeare plays had been laughed off the stage. The jury was still out on MacPherson's “Ossian” poetry cycle, supposedly translated from the Gaelic. The Laceys’ scheme wasn't as blatant as the Hitler diary scam or the fake Howard Hughes autobiography. Their motives for concealing the truth could hardly be faulted. But what a burden for Richard! No wonder he'd been downplaying his connections to—and love for—Somerstowe. “Where's the original?” the librarian in Claire asked.

“In the publisher's safe in London. He knows, but he'll never grass. Why should he? He sells the scripts all over the world. I had a letter last winter from an ex-pat theatre group in Ghana wanting a photo of the Hall to use as a backdrop in their production."

“The truth would cause a proper scandal,” said Blake. “Which might only bring The Play more publicity—hard to say. That's beside the point. The point is whether hiding the truth is a motive for murder."

“Of course it's not,” Richard returned. “I doubt if the—the forgery—had anything at all to do with Melinda's death."

“Do you now? Could that be because if the forgery did have anything to do with her death, you're the one with the motive? You don't want your family shown up as liars.” Pakenham smiled sweetly and drew a flourish on his page.

“No, I don't want my family shown up as liars. My father's dead, but my mother has a full professorship at a university in Canada. This is just the sort of thing that might could cost her her position. I repeat, though, it's not worth a murder."

“Lacey,” Pakenham snickered, “I've seen men murdered for sixpence."

Scowling, Richard spun back around. “Here, Sergeant, I don't care for your attitude!"

“Steady on.” Blake held up his hands like a traffic cop.

Richard's blazing eyes fell on Claire. She wasn't sure whether he was asking her for help or defying her to join in Pakenham's condemnation. But the sergeant was wrong about Richard. He'd better be wrong about Richard. She didn't know what she'd hate more, finding out Richard was the murderer or hearing Pakenham crow about it.

“You said it's not a very well-hidden secret,” she waded in. “I mean, if
I
could guess it—well, you gave me some clues ... What I'm trying to say is that the secret means a lot to everyone in the village. And Elliot, whether you count him as part of the village or not. There were a lot of people with motives."

One of Richard's brows lifted slightly, his way, no doubt, of thanking her for defending him.

“So then,” Pakenham asked, “who else knows about the fakery?"

“I'm quite sure the Digbys suspect my parents’ contribution to The Play was greater than they implied. Elliot's in a good position to have seen the original manuscript. Melinda—well, I thought Melinda knew about it.” Richard looked less like he had indigestion than like he had a knife in his heart.

He wasn't just prodigal son returning to his ancestral home, Claire thought, but the fatted calf, too. His hands were shaking and he clenched his fists. She had to almost sit on her own hands to keep herself from reaching out to comfort him.

Footsteps tapped quietly across the floor of the room above the entrance hall. “Eavesdroppers,” snapped Pakenham. “Wood said the house was empty."

“It's only Elizabeth,” Richard said, flat.

“The house ghost?” Blake's tone was not, oddly enough, sarcastic.

The footsteps came back the other way, light, urgent. Pakenham peered indignantly upward, red-faced.

“Do you have anything more to add tonight, Mr. Lacey?” Blake leaned back in his chair. “Miss Godwin?"

“Are you going to shop me to the fraud squad?” Richard asked.

“Not unless someone files a complaint against you."

“Someone will, if you blow the gaff about The Play."

Blake shook his head. “I'm investigating a murder. If I feel blowing the gaff would help us find the killer, then I will. Right now, though, it'd be much more useful to keep quiet and see who else knows the truth. That threatening letter, now—it was written with lines from The Play, wasn't it? Changed a bit as per last year's production?"

“Any number of people had revised scripts,” Richard told him.

Once more the footsteps passed overhead. Pakenham rolled his eyes. Blake pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “We'll move a formal investigative team into Somerstowe tomorrow. Go home now. Get some sleep."

Yeah, right.
Claire's nervous system was still humming a high-pitched note but her brain seemed empty, as though its gray matter had been sucked away. Dawn would find her wide-eyed, struggling to spell her own name.

She stood up and extended her hand. “You know where to find me, Chief Inspector."

“That I do.” Blake's handshake was firm and dry. Pakenham's was aggressive and slightly damp. The smell in the room, she realized, was his cologne. That figured.

Side by side Richard and Claire fled the entrance hall and stopped under the portico. That tall shape in the shadows at the far end was Alec, his face turned up to the windows above. Several other man-shapes stood by the gate. Somewhere a sheep bawled.

Claire inhaled lungful after lungful of fresh air. It was only a little cheering to hear Blake telling Pakenham inside, “We're trying to collect facts here, Sergeant, not pass judgement."

“They're suspects,” Pakenham retorted. “No need to treat them with kid gloves."

Richard leaned against a pillar, his face a gray mask, his eyes downcast. And she'd thought she was drained. “I wouldn't have said anything about The Play to them. It was just a lucky guess."

“You're the canny one, aren't you?” he asked, but without resentment. “No matter. The truth wants telling."

Yes, Claire thought, and he'd told it pretty darn easily, too, when yesterday he'd given her the impression wild horses wouldn't drag it out of him. She simply wasn't as intimidating as two policemen, was she? “Is there anything I can do? Or have I done enough already?"

He answered with a shake of his head. For just a second his eyes gleamed in the light reflected from inside, then dulled again. “I'm sorry."

For what might've been? she wondered. If only Julian and Dierdre hadn't fiddled with The Play, if only Melinda hadn't come to Somerstowe, if only Richard's ex hadn't left him so badly burned?

For what might've happened between us, if only we'd met some other time and place.
“No, I'm the one who's sorry. Good night, Richard."

“Good night, Claire."

The grounds were pooled with shadow. The stars were like Richard's eyes, distant, blunted gleams, and shed no light on the path. A fragile crescent moon hung low in the west. Claire felt her way to the back gate in the perimeter wall and into the alley, where she tripped over a step and banged into the trash cans behind the pub. Inside the building the dog barked frantically. Rob's muffled voice shouted at him.

A police car, its fluorescent orange stripe a sickly glow, coasted down the main street. Claire waited in the shadow until it passed, then rushed across the street and up the steps to her flat.

She turned on the overhead light and slammed the door. Alone at last. Alone with her thoughts, her questions, her nightmares—she had to call home, spread the news—Melinda really was dead—Melinda, the soft darkness scented with roses, the sudden blow, the twist of the rope...

Propped on her desk was a letter. Even from the door Claire could see that her own name was spelled out in letters cut from a newspaper, the black and white as sharply defined as a slap in the face. In one convulsive movement she leaped across the room, seized the envelope, and ripped. “Go home now,” the letter read, “or rot with Melinda."

The first thing she was thought was,
Richard didn't leave this here, I was with him all evening. He didn't kill Melinda. He didn't.

Only then did Claire realize what else the letter meant. If she stayed in Somerstowe, the killer would be coming for her next.

The afternoon was warm and still. The air in the long gallery seemed too turgid to breathe. But then, in the week since Melinda had at last been found, Claire hadn't exactly been breathing.

The first act may have ended with finding Melinda's body. Or it may have ended with that first interview by the police, when Richard finally told his secret. Or it may have ended with the memorial service, sensitively performed by Trevor, the small church filled from wall to wall not so much with the bereaved as with the curious.

This last week, Claire thought, had been the Intermission, when you cleared your mental palate for the next act and at the same time started anticipating the climax. The quiet of this intermission, though, was more intimidating than her own personal threatening letter. She envisioned plots thickening, schemes coming to fruition, and secret forces marshalling their strengths. She imagined no second act at all, the drama of Melinda's murder trailing off into inconsequence.

With a sigh, Claire polished her magnifying glass and bent over the embroidered cloth panel from the attic room. Through the lens the mysterious fibers she'd wondered about resolved themselves into strands of fine blond hair. Now that was interesting.

She agreed with Richard that the cloth had probably been stitched by Elizabeth Spenser. Elizabeth had embroidered the panel in the church to Lettice Lacey's commission. Maybe Elizabeth did this one as her own offering. But she'd sewn nature and astrological motifs instead of Christian symbols. And she'd included hair in the design, as though she meant the cloth to work magic...

Slowly Claire stood upright.
Good grief.
Was it this cloth—or the beliefs this cloth seemed to symbolize—which had condemned Elizabeth? The witch-finders made no distinction between devil worshippers, who were almost always figments of their own tormented imaginations, and village wise women who clung to the more benign aspects of the ancient nature religions. That was the flip side of the Age of Faith—the Age of Fear.

She'd have to ask Alec's opinion of Elizabeth's belief system, whether she may actually have been, more or less, a witch. Rolling the cloth, Claire wrapped it in acid-free tissue paper and tucked it away in a cardboard box. Just as she fitted the lid on the box and set it aside she heard footsteps tapping briskly across the upper great chamber. Elizabeth herself? What would happen if Claire tried to talk to her—would she answer?

Or was it Elizabeth? Claire couldn't tense any further. Her neck already hurt from constantly looking over her shoulder ... Kate Shelton walked through the door. “Ah—here you are. In the future you'd better be collecting me on your way, not coming up here alone."

“Yeah,” Claire said with a grimace. “I guess so. I will."

Kate had the delicate features, pink cheeks, and carefully bound hair of a Dresden doll, but her solid jeans-clad body owed more to her black belt in karate than to any porcelain mold. She'd joined the volunteers pretending to be a secondary needleworker when in reality she was one of Blake's people, detailed to hover at Claire's elbow and protect the rest of her body as well.

With a searching look up and down the gallery, as though expecting an assassin to pop out of a trapdoor, Kate sat down in her chair at the tapestry frame. For someone who admitted she didn't know which end of a needle to thread, she was doing a nice job mending the linen border of the Venus-and-Adonis canvas, her stitches uneven but unobtrusive. “You've had your lunch, then?” she asked.

“And survived to tell the tale. Richard didn't put rat poison in my sandwich, or bean me with the teapot, and if he has a dungeon at the Lodge, he's using it to store books and drawings ... Sorry. Attempt at humor."

“No need to go about po-faced,” Kate said with a smile. “Richard's the only person in town who couldn't have left you that letter. Alibi'd by Pakenham himself. That's rich."