Memory and Desire (30 page)

“She could have creamed off a tidy commission,” Pakenham agreed.

“If she knew anything,” Blake reminded him. “By the way, her former husband, the lawyer, was planning to stop by Somerstowe this weekend in any event, being a trustee of the Hall and all. Agreed to an interview right off."

Good old Nige, thought Claire.

“Any chance you'll be handing him the same flannel?” Richard inquired.

“No one knows about the fake will except us. And him. He did admit to that.” Blake pointed toward Alec.

Pakenham inspected his nails. “I should charge Wood with concealing a crime. You, too, Lacey..."

“Not worth the effort,” said Blake. “At least, not yet. Miss Godwin, WPC Shelton says you had a chat with Moncrief last night."

“If you can call it that,” Claire said. “He admitted he'd never had an affair with Melinda after all, if that's any help."

Richard snorted. “Elliot? Melinda had too much taste to fancy him."

Especially since she fancied you?
Claire wanted to ask.

Pakenham snickered. “So no one in town wanted to put a leg over the lovely Melinda? There's a turn-up for you."

“Arnold,” Blake said reprovingly.

Pakenham shrugged. “You'd think Melinda would have a string of lovers, is all. But no, that harpy Diana Jackman is having it off with Moncrief, and Janet Harlow ... Ah, yes, I had Rob in again, he corroborates Janet's story. Said she was a proper little tart and no mistake, leaving it lying about in the street like that."

“So what does that make Rob?” Claire demanded. “What's the male version of a tart?"

“Eh?” asked Pakenham.

Richard chuckled beneath his breath. “Rob's no better than he should be, is he? And Janet—well, she's in a state. Probably feels if she was going to have herself an adventure she should've picked someone worth the risk."

Amen, thought Claire, glancing gratefully at Richard. Yes, Janet was in a state. And yet she wasn't the one who'd opened Somerstowe's Pandora's box. Melinda had done that.

“That's how it stands at present,” Blake concluded. “Anything else? No? Come along, then, sergeant.” He stood up, rescued his coat and tie, and strolled off toward the Hall. Pakenham followed. Kate got casually to her feet.

Richard's head was bowed over his hands dangling clasped between his knees. Melinda had wanted him. He'd repulsed her. He could never have been to her what she wanted him to be. If he had, then he wouldn't be so tantalizing to Claire.

The sun brought out the reddish highlights in his hair, which was rippling entrancingly in the breeze. She touched his arm, meaning to ask, “Are you okay?” But it wasn't as though Melinda was a disease. She tried, “Lunch?"

He looked up, his lips curled on a rueful smile. “I'd better be organizing a new needlework canvas and chart for you, before I get carried away by The Play."

And you have some thinking to do, Claire added silently. “See you later, then."

“Later,” he said, and with a cordial nod to the approaching Kate walked purposefully off toward the Hall.

Kate watched him go, then turned to Claire. “Off to your flat?"

“Yes. I have a couple of newspapers to catch up on and some postcards to write. You know, ‘having a very stressful time, glad you're not here.’”

Kate laughed. Together they strolled out of the Hall grounds and into the village.

Several shops now had hard and paperback copies of “An Historie” propped up in their windows, along with costumed dolls, posters, needlework kits, and various quaint olde artifacts. Reporters, identifiable by their cameras and tape recorders, cruised the sidewalks asking questions about last year's murder and no doubt hoping for a reprise this weekend.

Kate conducted Claire through the gauntlet and made her standard inspection tour of the flat. “Thanks,” Claire told her. “The curtain goes up at eight. Costume crunch starts at six-thirty. Meet you here at six.

“Right.” Kate hesitated. “Blake's still watching Richard, you've twigged to that. But I don't think he's guilty of anything more than loyalty. Than love, if you want to go that far.” She turned and went down the steps.

Claire went inside, thinking, yeah, I'd like to go that far. Over the top, all the way ... Kate could only protect physical vulnerability, couldn't she?

Kate was ready at six. “It's a proper tailback out here,” she announced.

Huge tour buses looked like pigs moving through the python of the narrow street. Their belching exhausts filled the air with diesel fumes. Cars wove in and out to the accompaniment of screeching brakes and the occasional shouted epithet, while constables gestured emphatically toward designated parking areas. Customers overflowed the pub and stood on the sidewalk clutching sandwiches and beer, while Giles and a couple of other temporary workers ran back and forth jangling coins and clashing mugs. Down the street at the tearoom a line waited to get in the door.

Claire and Kate evaded the journalistic stakeout at the gates of the Hall and whisked inside behind the police barriers. A couple of workmen sat atop the bleachers, eating fish and chips from a newspaper. Here in the land of real ale they were drinking, Claire saw with a shudder, Budweiser. All the cables were either tucked away or taped to the pavement. The fuse box was closed, but the outlets were presumably live.

An experiment in chaos theory was underway inside the kitchen. Kate and Claire helped Sarita dole out clothing, cosmetics, and soothing noises, and intervened when Janet confused her costume and its “JLH” with Heather Little's costume initialed “HJL.” Fred sat in a corner mumbling his lines to Derek while Trillian gyrated toward the storeroom, earphones clamped to her head.

The dressing room smelled like powder. Claire put on her own costume and applied make-up, starting with the greasy stage base which made her feel as though she'd dipped her face in Crisco. Then the eyeliner, the lipstick, and the blush—her artistically enhanced features in the mirror were much too glamorous to be her own. She thought again of Melinda. One year ago this weekend, Melinda had died.

Claire leaped up and walked so briskly through the dressing room she had to clutch the doorframe and catch her breath. Women had worn stays or corsets to support their weakness, she thought. And yet it was the corset that made them weak. Which was cause and which effect? It was all in the perception.

At a more sedate pace, Kate at her side, she wended her way through the back corridors of the house to the entrance hall. The cast stood in clumps on the tiled floor, their voices echoing, Elliot cruising the perimeter like a shark. Rob moved from group to group snapping photos with his digital camera, the one just like Melinda's.

The sunlight shone almost horizontally through the great windows beside the staircase. Squares of light bleached the paneling, except for one just above the landing. A small dark shape broke the bottom line of the square even though there was nothing there to cast a shadow. “Good God,” said Kate.

It was the shadow of a cat, Claire saw. Which was levitating—no. A lighter, thinner, shadow wavered in the block of light. Elizabeth had picked up the cat and was cradling it against her bodice. If the room had been quieter Claire might have been able to hear it purring. An eerie thought, that the subject of The Play had a front row seat at its performance. Claire closed her eyes. When she opened them again the shadows were gone.

Susan appeared between her and Kate. “Is she up there?"

“Elizabeth? I thought so."

“Have you ever actually seen her,” Kate asked, “or have you just heard her steps?"

“I've heard the steps many times, and more than once I've caught just that bit of glimmer in the air, you know. I'm so disappointed that the figure I saw so clearly last year turned out not to be her."

“I guess you were the last person to see Melinda alive,” said Claire.

“If I'd only known. Of course if I'd known, I could have warned her or something. As it was I rushed off to the church, more thrilled than scared I'd seen the ghost. What startled me was that huge dog running along the street. It's such a softie, though, if you broke into the pub it would lick you to death."

Claire smiled. Speaking of the pub, there was Diana eyeing the tapestry hanging above the fireplace. She'd dipped very heavily into the cosmetics tray. But then, everyone's face looked artificial in this light. And Lettice in particular had to wear war paint on the stage, even though in real life she might well have been plain as unbuttered toast.

Alec moved in a holding pattern by the fireplace, his solemn expression matching his no-frills clothing. Fred and Janet stood near the door, he looking outside, she looking back at Rob. Claire wondered what on earth had prompted her to have sex with him. Admittedly he was more vital than Fred. Maybe there was something to that cliche about the woman choosing the outlaw. Even Richard had his outlaw moments...

Here he came across the entrance hall. His usual lord of the manor posture fitted perfectly with the frock coat and breeches, even if his hair was stubbornly contemporary. He offered Claire a smile that was on the warm side of polite. His teeth didn't look quite so carnivorous when he smiled.

“Here,” Rob ordered. “By the fireplace."

Kate stepped aside. Richard offered Claire his arm. She rested her hand on it—the muscle was set like a steel bar—and turned toward the camera. She didn't have to stand up straighter. She couldn't have slumped if she'd wanted to.
Click.
They were immortalized.

“Are we ready? All for one and one for all?” Elliot wrapped his arm around Claire's shoulders. His smile looked like the wolf's grin at Little Red Riding Hood. His arm felt like rubber. “My dear, I have to tell you what a lovely time I had last night."

“I'm glad you had a good time,” replied Claire, shaking Elliot's arm away. “Solitary pursuits can be quite rewarding."

Richard grinned down at the buckles on his shoes. Diana said, “Oh, good one."

Roshan escorted a giggling Trillian around the corner. Elliot turned to prey on them. The last flashbulb went off, catching three bit players in their severe Puritan outfits. Their grim faces made them look like they were about to behead a turkey. Or hang a teenage girl.

Alec peered out the front door. “We have standing room only tonight."

What Claire had thought was the wind in the chimneys she now realized was the sound of voices, lots of voices. Thank goodness all she had to do was turn her back on the audience and read music.

“Excelsior!” said Elliot, and waved the musicians out the door.

Applause hit Claire in the face. Wearing a manic grin, she scuttled behind Priscilla and the harpist to her post. Long shadows, thinned by the artificial lights, lay across the forecourt. Priscilla turned on the small lamp over the music rack.

The chatter rose again, only to stop abruptly when Richard stepped onto center stage. His voice had an even deeper timbre tonight, his crystalline vowels ringing like vesper bells in the cool evening air.

Once more the bittersweet music rose and died. The words of The Play spilled across the watching façade of the Hall, some sharp, like projectiles, others soft as milkweed. Words, Claire thought. She hid behind them. Richard found himself sabotaged by them. Melinda came here armed with them, only to find her weapons turned against her.

Literary critics wondered why The Play had never been performed in the eighteenth century. Even knowing how The Play had really been written in two separate eras, Claire couldn't tell where Phillip's lines ended and Julian and Dierdre's began. But it was Phillip who had graphed the story as an intersection between the Age of Reason and the Age of Romance. From the doomed alliance between Walter and Elizabeth sprang two different, although not necessarily opposing, trajectories of faith. Claire wondered if Alec had played the romance as tenderly with sophisticated Melinda as he did with innocent Trillian.

She turned to the next page of music, only to discover that it was missing. Rats—it must still be in the box—the pages were only loose sheaves photocopied from various music books ... Claire shot a wild glance at Priscilla. Her hands never faltered. She soldiered on and without too many discords gained the succeeding page.

The now familiar lines and gestures spun into fast-forward. The sun set. The hymn was sung and the Play ended. The audience clapped and cheered. The cast reappeared, linked hands, and bowed. Elliot walked to center stage and graciously waved at his public. “The play's the thing,” he declaimed.

Claire completed the quote: “The play's the thing, to catch the conscience of the king.” Or the murderer? Someone on stage now, she thought, killed Melinda. One of them wants to kill me.

She held the sheets of music to her chest like a shield and stood up.

People clambered from the bleachers and mixed with the cast members. Some asked the performers to sign programs. Others unlimbered their cameras. Reporters and civilians alike surrounded Richard, establishing that yes, he was indeed descended from the character he was playing. The name of Melinda Varek bubbled more than once to the top of the brew of voices.

Released from good manners, children raced across the forecourt and into the gardens. Beyond the glare of the lights the sky glowed a burnished gold, as though reflecting the glow of the Hall rather than the other way around. The evening was fading like lover reluctantly parting from lover, Claire thought, unable to resist one last caress. Tomorrow was June 21, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

Where was Kate? Had she found a seat or was she still in the entrance hall? Standing on tiptoe, Claire peered over the heads of the crowd.

Beneath the portico Blake looked around like a secret service agent at a campaign rally. Pakenham leaned against a pillar chatting up one of the female volunteers. Roshan, Sarita, and Derek formed a protective phalanx around Trillian and carried her into the entrance hall. That blond head, that must be Kate. It'd be easier to go in by the kitchen door, take the back corridor, and meet up with her in the entrance hall. Claire had to put the music away anyway.

She elbowed her way through the throng, coming in for more than one autograph herself. Flashbulbs popped. When she stepped into the shadowed kitchen she was momentarily blinded and blundered against the cardboard box filled with programs and music. It fell off the table. With an aggravated snort she folded herself into a kneeling position. No one else was in the room, she noted as her eyes cleared. Not having Kate underfoot was like walking around with only one shoe.