Memory and Desire (34 page)

“No, I wasn't talking,” Alec returned. “If I'd said I planned to meet her for sex, say, then I'd have been lying. I'd have been lying to tell you I kissed her, because I never did do."

A bulls-eye in the old glass of the window behind Kate made a tiny rainbow just over her head, like an “idea” bulb in a cartoon. Tendrils of hair stuck damply to her forehead and she pushed them back. “Why are you talking now, Alec?"

“As Elizabeth says in Act Two, when she refuses to admit to devil worship, if they're going to hang you in any event, better they hang you for the truth. Pretending I'm something I'm not—or not something I am—is the lie. I'd already made up my mind to put you in the picture today."

“Oh well then, easy enough to say you'd intended coming clean when you're backed into a corner.” Pakenham pushed petulantly at the box. “What's this rag then? What fantasy are you going to tell us about it?"

Alec reached out a long arm and swept the box close to his chest. “It's Elizabeth's shroud. Or so my family tradition has it."

“Your family?” Claire repeated, and went on in a rush, “Of course it was your family, not the Laceys—I was leaping to conclusions...” Richard's elbow landed gently but insistently in her ribs. “Sorry, go on."

“You're quite right,” Alec told her. “This cloth has been in my family for over three hundred years. Elizabeth stitched it in happier days, in her free time when she wasn't working for Lettice Lacey. It was meant to wrap her body when it was returned to the embrace of our mother the earth, so she could be regenerated and reborn. She sewed her own hair into it, enspelling blessing and peace. But Elizabeth died before her time and Walter Tradescant, meaning well, sneaked her body into a coffin in the church crypt.

“A hint of Elizabeth's existence has lingered in the Hall all these years. Only a hint, like a bit of reflected light. I've been fascinated by her ever since I was shown her cloth as a child. One day I insisted that Richard and I follow her reflection up the stairs to the attics. There we found a secret room. Her room, where she could sit and sew and be herself, not what the Laceys wanted her to be."

Like Melinda, Claire thought. Like all of us, searching for our own identity.

“How do you know Elizabeth's motives?” Blake took off his glasses and massaged the bags beneath his eyes.

“She told me."

Blake's fingers stopped rubbing, but he didn't open his eyes. Pakenham's jaw dropped.

“Two years ago,” Alec said, “a heating system was installed in the church. The workmen had the floor up and opened the crypt for the first time in almost a hundred years. I looked out Elizabeth's body. Her bones, all cold and colorless. Isolated. Lonely. I should've left well enough alone, I'll grant you that. But I was a bit lonely myself. My family'd moved house, Richard was living with his fiancée in London."

Alec wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Also I wanted to test my skills—pride going before a fall, as it says in the Bible. I pinched one of Elizabeth's finger bones—and a leg bone from the cat, for good measure—and took them and the Shroud to the secret room. There I called the ghosts of first the cat, then Elizabeth herself."

Pakenham shut his mouth with a pop. The red in his face was spreading to his ears like a valve inching into the danger zone. Blake hid his face in his hand and shook his head. Claire could almost hear him moaning,
all the detective chief inspectors in Derbyshire and this case falls to me.
Kate overbalanced again. This time she extended a leg and braced it on the back of Alec's chair. He didn't notice.

“The cat's ghost is the more substantial, I suppose because the cat is a less complicated being. He doesn't know where he is or what's happened. Elizabeth does. Her rest may not have been easy, that much was obvious from the reflection. Now, though, she's not at rest at all. I woke her to awareness and to pain.” A furrow deepened between Alec's eyebrows. His voice roughened. “I should tell Trevor her bones need burying properly. If nothing else, I should send her away again. But I—I love her. I don't want to let her go."

“And how does she feel about you?” Claire asked gently.

“She's of two minds, I reckon. She cares for me and yet—she's a spirit out of time. She's not at peace.” Alec's forefinger traced the stitches on the cloth, tracing out a flow chart of choice and chance and fate. “That's what I meant by ‘sin.’ Selfishly making Elizabeth's condition worse than it already was. Maybe being afraid to admit to my beliefs was a sin, too. Not that my people necessarily believe in sin, but this is no time to argue semantics.

“Melinda knew I'd used the shroud to call Elizabeth. What I didn't know was whether she'd told you, Claire. When you took the shroud and said you were after cleaning it ... Well, I wasn't sure what to think."

“All this is news to me,” Claire said.

“If not to me,” admitted Richard.

Kate looked from the cloth to Alec's sober face and back again, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Slowly, Blake put his glasses back on. The bags beneath his eyes were like bruises, purplish-green. Either the whirr of the tape recorder was growing louder, or that noise was Blake's brain on overload.

Another sweat droplet trickled down Claire's back. In the still air the aura of cologne was taking on the rotten tuna-fish odor of skunk. No surprise there—Pakenham's face was telephone booth red. “Oh for the love of ... Witchcraft and magic—it's all stuff and nonsense! Everyone knows that! Wood's winding us up, playing silly beggars with us, diverting our attention from the real issue. Which is the goddamned fake will!"

“If I wanted to divert your attention,” Alec said, “I should choose ideas within your range of belief.” He didn't have to add,
narrow as that is.

“Alec could have killed Claire this morning instead of calling us,” Kate pointed out.

“Whose side are you on?” Pakenham snapped.

“The side of the truth.” She turned and with a crash and thud opened the window. A few diesel-scented breaths of air leaked into the room.

Pakenham sneered. “The truth is Wood was hanging about the cellars this morning waiting for Claire."

“So then why did he call round for you, if he wanted to kill her?” demanded Richard. “If he'd killed Melinda why lead you to her body? It was his finding Melinda's body that drew your attention to him to begin with, for God's sakes!"

“There you are! He found Melinda's body, didn't he? If that's not utterly damning, what is?"

“Alec was in front of me when someone attacked me from behind,” Claire insisted. “I saw him with Elizabeth. I saw her so clearly that at first I thought it was Trillian Nair."

“Shagging a ghost, is that right? What sort of fool do you take me for!"

“Would you like me to answer that?” Richard asked.

Wincing, Blake waved them both down.

Alec's mouth turned up in a lopsided smile. “We've come a long way, haven't we? Elizabeth was done over because the authorities believed in witchcraft. I'm being done over because they don't."

“Oh, we're after doing you all right,” Pakenham told him. “And you, too, Lacey, wittering on about honor and literature and such like. The both of you, with your tidy little scheme. Claire, good job you had Kate here or you'd be dead as your flash friend."

“Oooh,” said Kate, “you mean I've done something right?"

“So tell me then, Miss Clever Puss, if Wood's not the murderer, if he and Lacey aren't working together, then who the bloody hell is behind all of this?"

“Elliot Moncrief?” Kate asked. “One of the Americans? Rob or Diana Jackman? Maurice Applethorpe, even?"

“They all have alibis, you stupid cow!"

“Be quiet, the lot of you!” commanded Blake.

A loud rap on the door signaled, Claire thought, the end of the scene. She slumped back in her seat and exchanged a look with Richard that for once hid absolutely nothing.

The uniformed constable peered warily in the door. “Excuse me, Chief Inspector, it's the vicar, he wants a word."

Trevor's halo of white hair angled around the constable's shoulder. “I do beg your pardon. Mrs. Nair dispatched her Derek to tell me you'd taken Alec in for questioning and I thought he might be needing a character witness."

“Oh absolutely bloody marvelous,” groaned Pakenham. “Who else? The butcher? The baker?"

Blake's face was sagging longer and longer, like one of Salvador Dali's painted clocks. “Come in, Vicar. Sit down."

Alec and Richard both stood up. Pakenham waved Alec back down. With a polite smile, Trevor took Richard's chair, leaving him to lean on the back of Claire's. She pressed her shoulders against his hands, wondering vaguely if he did backrubs. Her store of adrenaline, passion, and breakfast fat was dissipating fast. But she couldn't let down, not yet.

“Nothing happens here that you don't know about, is that it?” Blake asked Trevor.

“If I didn't know what was happening on my patch I'd not be doing my job, would I now?” Trevor returned with a smile.

“Wood's been handing us a load of rubbish about witchcraft and ghosts,” said Pakenham. “What do you make of that?"

“I've known Alec's family since I came here in the 1950s. His father and his grandfather were both constables. His mother was the district nurse. His grandmother and his older sister taught at the infant's school. They've all professed what they call ‘the ancient religion.’ I should imagine it's as much modern recreation as tradition, but then, that's hardly my business. What is my business, Sergeant, Chief Inspector, is that there's no malevolence in it. If Alec finds good in it, and practices what he finds, well then, it's not rubbish. On the contrary, more power to him."

“He calls himself a pagan,” Blake pointed out.

“So he does,” replied Trevor. “I'd like to bring him into my fold, most certainly. And yet when I see so many young people without any faith at all—well, who am I to pass judgement? Every so often I lift up my lamp, and every so often Alec or some other Spenser politely declines to step upon my path. We've reached a balance of powers, you might say."

Across the table Alec nodded. “Thank you. Not all of your co-religionists would see it your way."

“Not all of yours would invite me and my wife to his annual midsummer's eve barbecue,” Trevor replied “let alone ask me to offer an Anglican blessing. Yours having already been given, I assume."

Pakenham said loudly, “What a cozy little mutual admiration society! Unfortunately we're a just a bit off the subject, don't you think? Vicar, Wood says he's descended from the Spenser woman in The Play."

“From her younger brother, to be exact. The Spensers have been in Somerstowe longer than the Laceys, let alone the Cranbournes."

“Wood admits to mucking about in your crypt, pinching bones."

“Yes, we had an invaluable opportunity to make an archaeological investigation when the heating system was installed. Alec was drawn to Elizabeth's grave, just as, I suppose, I'd be drawn to the grave of a saint or a martyr. The Christian fascination with relics wasn't invented out of whole cloth. I daresay there's an ancient memory in such reverence, a respect for the physicality of our existence here on Earth."

“Reverence?” Pakenham asked. “He claims to—to..."

“...to have called Elizabeth's spirit?” Sighing, Trevor looked over at Alec. “Yes, I suspected as much. Rather impetuous, my lad, wasn't it?"

“Yes,” said Alec.

“It's a terrible story, that of Elizabeth and all the others like her. It makes me ashamed of my own credo, to tell you the truth. But then, I should hate for Alec to be ashamed of his."

Alec looked down into the box. Interesting, Claire thought, how Trevor could minister to him despite their differences.

“Vicar,” brayed Pakenham, “Wood claims the supernatural is real!"

“Why so do I, Sergeant. Stop in next Sunday morning if you'd like to hear my formal profession. Alec and I simply approach the supernatural from different viewpoints is all."

“Every turnip in this sodding village is a sodding lunatic!” Pakenham hissed.

“I beg your pardon?” Trevor asked blandly.

Blake's mouth relaxed a bit, as though remembering the concept of the smile. A cool breeze teased the tissue paper surrounding the shroud, making it rustle. Smothering a grin, Kate retracted her leg from Alec's chair. “Father Digby, what we're trying to do here is establish a motive for Melinda Varek's murder. Someone has a secret they don't want publicized. If that secret's not PC Wood's belief system, what else is there? In genealogical terms, have we gone so far out on a limb we've forgotten the trunk of the tree?"

“Well put, WPC Shelton,” said Trevor. “What we must remember is that here in Somerstowe the trunk of the tree is the Hall."

“And The Play?” asked Claire. “Or at least the story behind The Play?"

“That, certainly. But—well, I'm sorry Richard, but there's The Play and there's The Play, if you catch my meaning."

Richard's hands flexed on Claire's chair. “I've told them about The Play, Trevor. You knew?"

“Oh yes.” Trevor sighed. “Julian told me before he died. Made his confession, you might say, although only in the ethical, not in the liturgical sense. And so he should have done. It's a fine moral dilemma, isn't it? The story behind The Play is perfectly genuine. Indeed, long stretches of it were indeed written by Phillip. That Dierdre and Julian filled in his lacunae.... Well, I'm splitting hairs, I'll admit. But the donations of the playgoers made the church heating system possible, and that in turn increased the size of the congregation. I'm sure once the Hall is restored we'll have even more funds, perhaps for that new children's playground or the parish food bank or the clinic, wouldn't you say, Richard?"

“I—ah—I hope so.” Richard's hands curled into fists behind Claire's back, making knots behind her shoulder blades.

“Not that proving the truth about The Play would be difficult,” Trevor added. “Elliot, for example, found out by chatting up a secretary in the publisher's office. But then, with his deal to represent the secondary rights, Elliot would be keen to keep the secret."

Oh?
Claire could just hear Elliot's plummy voice, “I simply adore quaint old things, might I see the famous manuscript?” He'd have recognized the interpolated pages for what they were.