Memory and Desire (33 page)

Alec sat at the focal point at the end of the table, a mug of tea resting between his hands. He sent the newcomers not a lowered-head look of resentment or shame but a raised-chin look of stubborn pride.

Blake and Pakenham were seated on either side of him. Blake was pale and worn, his moustache limp. Pakenham was red in the face, his lower lip out-thrust belligerently. He was holding the program with Melinda's note on it down with his pen, as though afraid it was going to make a break for it.

Kate perched on the windowsill. Blake motioned Claire and Richard to empty chairs and said to a tape recorder whirring away on the table, “Claire Godwin, Richard Lacey, WPC Shelton. Please give us your version of last night's events, Miss Godwin."

“I found that program,” Claire began. “I started through the house to meet up with y'all in the entrance hall. I was walking along the back corridor in the dark—I didn't know where the light switch was—and I saw Alec just inside the far door."

Alec's eyes widened, catching her full meaning.

That was another stupid thing she'd said, Claire thought, telling Richard she understood the position he was in. Here she was herself, now, between the rock of telling the truth and the hard place of not betraying a friend. Between the rock of finding Melinda's murderer and the hard place of not making even more trouble for a bystander who was definitely innocent.

“Then I heard footsteps coming from the kitchen, from behind me,” she went on. “Someone threw a cord around my neck and tried to strangle me. Right before I passed out I heard Kate calling for me. I guess that scared the killer away. Whatever, I woke up in the cellars."

“You mean I was standing just there when you were...” Alec blinked. “Claire, I'm sorry. I heard Kate giving a shout and went toward her instead."

Why should you have seen me? You were focussed on something—someone—else right then.
Beside her Richard coiled like a tiger slipping undetected through the underbrush. Wishing she could slip away undetected, Claire concluded, “I was afraid if I stayed by the cellar door whoever attacked me would come back to make sure I was dead. So I made my way to the outer gate. Alec was there. He went to get Richard and the key."

Pakenham's pen hit his notebook with an emphatic tic.

“The killer,” Blake said, “saw you go into the corridor alone and took the main chance on catching you up. Very clever. With several hundred people milling about we've not been able to establish who was in the forecourt and the entrance hall and who wasn't."

“Good job the killer didn't cosh you as he did Melinda. Bad luck neither Wood nor Kate caught him. Or her. Could be a her, what with equal opportunity and women's lib.” Pakenham snickered.

Kate rolled her eyes at Pakenham's back. “It's just as well you were wearing that corset, Claire, and fainted. If you'd put up more of a fight the killer might have finished the job. Which might have delayed him—most murderers being men—long enough for us to catch him out, but..."

“As it was,” said Claire, “my fainting gave him, her, or it a chance to get away. Catch 22."

“Well done, to find your way through the caverns,” Richard said.

“Well done twice over,” said Pakenham, “to catch Wood out for us. Because for once, Kate, you're right. The murderer is a man. And he's sitting at the table with us.” He bowed mockingly toward Alec.

Blake said, “PC Wood has explained..."

“He's handed us a pack of lies is what he's done,” interrupted Pakenham. “I say we keep at him until he tells us the truth."

“Damned if you do, damned if you don't, is that it?” Alec asked. “Keep at the witness until he tells you what you want to hear. Until he names names—any names will do. You'd have made a grand witch-hunter and no mistake."

“PC Wood,” Blake said, biting the words off, “I'm in charge here, if you please."

Alec looked down at his mug, his knuckles whitening. Claire expected it to explode into fragments, but it—and he—were made of sterner stuff.

The door opened. A uniformed constable thrust his head inside and announced, “I have the parcel, sir."

“Bring it here,” directed Blake.

The constable set a cardboard box on the table and left the room. Claire recognized the box holding the embroidered linen panel. “That,” Richard began, “belongs to the National Trust. You don't have permis..."

“I'd suggest you cooperate, Lacey,” Pakenham interrupted. “You're in deep enough shit as it is."

With low growl deep in his throat, Richard desisted.

Blake opened the box, spread the leaves of tissue paper, and tilted it toward Alec. “You said this was important, PC Wood?"

The cloth and its softly colored stitches glowed as though reflecting the sunlight outside and not the sallow fluorescent light inside the room. Its faint mildew smell seemed here, in this turgid air, reminiscent of the fresh herbal scent of the deerskin.

“Yes, it's important. I said I'd tell you everything and I will do. My friends...” Alec emphasized the
S,
“...being kind enough to let me tell it in my own words."

“Let's go over it all one more time, then.” Blake settled back in his chair. With an elaborate sigh, Pakenham turned to a new page in his notebook. Kate considered Alec's profile. Richard braced his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand, possibly plotting the trajectory of a leap.

Alec squared his shoulders and spoke. “I'm a hereditary white witch, a practitioner of the ancient earth religion. A shaman, if you prefer. And yes, according to some definitions I'm a pagan. When Claire came upon me this morning I was performing the solstice ceremony in the ring of stones. The ‘stowe’ in Somerstowe means ‘holy place’ in Saxon, but the stones are much older than the Saxons. So are my beliefs.

“My mother is descended from Elizabeth Spenser's younger brother, who was six years old when they murdered her. Walter Tradescant carried him away to London, saving his life. We didn't return to Somerstowe for almost a hundred years. Where do you think Phillip Lacey got the idea for The Play? From the Spenser who was his gardener. The story wasn't anything the village wanted to remember, not then.

“My father's family is from the Isle of Man, where there's quite a lengthy tradition of witchcraft. My parents and my sisters went back there several years ago to help with a museum of history and mythology, hoping to dispel some of the prejudices. You'd never credit the questions the day trippers ask.” He stopped, swallowing fiercely. “I stayed on here, hoping to give something back to my birthplace. To my ancestral home."

“You have,” Richard said.

“No,” returned Alec. “I let someone murder Melinda. I couldn't stop either attack on Claire even though I cast a protective spell on her. I suppose it was weak because I cast it in the yard outside her flat."

“Or maybe it was weak because it was rot,” Pakenham said.

So that's why Alec had been staring up at her window that night. Claire smiled at him. “Why, thank you. Luck, a spell, whatever—I'll take anything can get."

“Who knows all this about witchcraft and spells and such?” asked Blake. “Lacey, I should imagine. Anyone else? Miss Varek, for example?"

“I told Melinda,” Alec answered. “As for anyone else—well, I've hardly taken a poll of the villagers. Why should I have done? My family and I, we've never tried to be secretive, just discreet. Some people are polite, some aren't. Most don't care. We live in a secular age in many ways."

“And in many ways we don't,” Claire said. Alec made witchcraft sound so ordinary, as though he'd just declared he was a certified public accountant. Not that it was at all ordinary.

Alec frowned. “The blackmailer threatened to expose me not only to the Chief Constable but to the media. The Chief Constable's an old military man, he's made it very clear he expects the officers under his command to have clean noses and spit-polished shoes. He'd ban divorced personnel if he could do, even though that'd mean a depleted force. Last year he demoted a Moslem officer in Chesterfield because he stopped his patrol car to pray during Ramadan. The man was reinstated after suing, but..."

“We'd all like to avoid controversy,” Blake concluded briskly. Kate leaned forward, her perplexed frown easing into a half-smile. Pakenham shook his head in disgust, as though the entire interview was a waste of his precious time.

“And the media. The same tabloids which supported PC Khan would be over the moon with me—‘village bobby a secret satanist’ and such like. And then there are the fundamentalist groups. They'd be demonstrating at headquarters and here as well, demanding my removal.” Alec shoved the mug away and opened his hands against the tabletop—
see, I'm unarmed.
“My people have never been devil worshippers. We don't even believe in a devil. We believe evil is in the hearts and minds of mankind. And that any evil you do is returned to you twofold."

“All through medieval times Jews were accused of human sacrifice, among other libels,” said Richard. “The Irish Protestants and Catholics have been murdering each other for centuries. Cecil had all but one of the stones in the circle behind the hall toppled, saying they were evil."

“The next to last one fell prematurely and crushed a bystander,” Alec said, with a hint of a smile. “That's why the tallest is still standing."

“And Henry VIII's men went roaming about the countryside looting and destroying for God.... Well, we could sit here all day citing chapter and verse,” concluded Richard. “I've never understood why people choose to live in fear of their neighbors."

Then there was Melinda, Claire thought, who simply chose to live.

“Mind you,” added Alec, “there're always folk up to no good—criminals and gangs, or people like Phillip Lacey and Francis Dashwood playing at satanism and black witchery. And whoever put a pin through Melinda's snap, he was playing at a damned malicious game."

Kate overbalanced and almost fell off the windowsill. She caught herself with a quick scramble. Pakenham groaned. Alec reached out a hand to steady her. She got herself seated again without help. “Sorry."

“Alec,” Claire said, “I understand now why you were so startled when I asked you if Elizabeth really was a witch. But why did you tell me witchcraft was rubbish?"

“I did that?"

“When you came by my flat to get the letter and the snapshot with the pin in it."

“Ah, then, yes. I meant what the townspeople say in The Play about witchcraft is rubbish. It would have to be, wouldn't it, to reflect the slanders of the time period. The persecution of witches wasn't outlawed in England until 1736, during Phillip's lifetime."

“Enough of the potted history!” Pakenham's pen tapped loudly on his notebook, like a conductor calling his orchestra to order. “Stop going round the houses, Wood, and get to the point. Why did you murder Melinda Varek?

“Sergeant,” Blake said, making a “down-boy” gesture.

“This playbill. Is it or is it not damning evidence, Chief Inspector? It's Melinda's handwriting, right, Claire?"

“Yes, it is,” said Claire. A bead of sweat formed between her shoulder blades and worked its way down her back like a crawling insect.

Richard leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, eyes bright and unblinking. Blake turned to Alec. “Constable?"

Alec's voice took on an even deeper timbre, resonant with dignity. “Melinda was after writing her novel from Elizabeth's point of view. I knew she'd make a good fist of it, so long as she knew the truth. The truth wants telling, there's enough sensationalism about witchcraft as it is. A popular novel might could reach people in a non-threatening sort of way, in the same way The Play has done. Although The Play, while sympathetic to Elizabeth, doesn't have it right, either."

“When my parents—ah—edited The Play they stayed inside Phillip's parameters, his smug Enlightenment certainty that the supernatural is only delusion and games, even though they knew better.” Richard nodded at Alec—
over to you.

Of course, Claire thought. If Alec and Richard were childhood buddies then their parents must've known each other.

Alec returned the nod. “Melinda knew better. She wanted to know more, so we planned to meet after The Play. The hour was her idea, I suppose because of the belief that midnight is ‘the witching hour.’ Which it's not, by the by. The place was my idea—my garden, not the rose garden behind the Hall where she died. I intended to teach her a minor spell or two and and tell her about Elizabeth."

Pakenham sneered, “Spells. Hah. Pull the other one."

Claire restrained herself from kicking him under the table. Yes, it sounded crazy. And yet.... “When you have eliminated the impossible,” she murmured, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes."

“Who,” Pakenham retorted, “I'll thank you to remember, is a fictional character."

Alec eyed Pakenham and shook his head slightly. Turning the man into a newt would only boost him higher up the evolutionary ladder. “Melinda's Elizabeth would've been a fictional character. But fiction can be true."

“And facts can lie,” put in Richard.

“Get on with it!” Pakenham snarled.

“Just before the cast party began,” Alec went on, “Melinda jumped out at me still wearing Elizabeth's clothes. She gave me quite a turn. She was only winding me up, I reckon, no harm in it. That was her way, wasn't it? But I was a bit nervy with—coming out of the closet, in a way—and I ticked her off for taking it all too lightly. Next thing I knew, she and Richard were rowing. Over me, I thought."

“No,” said Richard, “it wasn't about you. It was about us. About there not being an us."

“In any event, I waited for her at my cottage. She never called round. I thought she was narked at me. The next day her car was gone. You know the rest. Now I'm thinking she went down to the garden behind the Hall to pluck roses, perhaps to bring me as a peace offering.” Alec cleared his throat.

“Miss Harlow told us your house was dark that night,” said Blake.

“I was sitting in the garden trying to collect my wits."

A series of expressions—indignation, disgust, rage—flitted across Pakenham's face as though he was trying them on for size. “Wits? Wits? That's rich. You've been lying to us since day one."