Memory and Desire (38 page)

On the village green, Priscilla Digby and a couple of other women wearing bright yellow raincoats dismantled the well-dressing panel. They piled a wheelbarrow with the now decayed leaves and flowers and trundled it into the vicarage gardens. Earth to earth, thought Claire.
Compost to compost,
as Elliot had come close to saying in his letter. The return of every prodigal child to his or her roots.

Elliot, she thought, as she stepped up into the church porch. It was like him to make the dramatic gesture, yes. And yet...

The weathered wooden door opened soundlessly to her touch. Her shoes made only a slight scuffing noise on the worn stone. The faint creak of the door into the nave was more like a musical note. Closing her umbrella, Claire walked into the dimly lit interior. That faint odor of flowers, candle wax, and mildew seemed an intrinsic part of any church, even a brand new concrete and fiberglass one.

The candles on the altar were burned-out stubs. She tried to dredge up an appropriate quote, the lines from Shakespeare about life being as short as a candle flame, but what she came up with were the much more comforting words of the service this morning.

Then the candles had burned brightly, making little haloes in her glasses, while Trevor preached a sermon about faith. His voice had faltered as it delivered cliché after cliché. His eyes pleaded sincerity to the faces ranged before him. Almost everyone in town had been there, Richard and the volunteers, Nigel, the Jackmans, the Nairs, Blake, Pakenham, Kate, and the police contingent, plus several reporters probably hoping for a scoop between the wafer and the wine.

Alec had stood in the back listening respectfully, his somber face angled not toward the altar but to the floor beneath. He'd been exonerated, Claire repeated to herself. So had Richard, for that matter, although only Pakenham ever thought he and Alec were conspiring.

The killer had paid the wages of sin. Melinda's life and death had come full circle. It was time to move on. Wasn't it?

Claire looked around her. The latticework of the ceiling was lost in shadow. The windows were pale arches in the darkness of the walls, their colorful images shrouded. The effigies along the aisles dozed, beyond rain, beyond death. The silence of the church wasn't like that of the Hall. The Hall brooded on old passions and time past. The church was aloof from time and passion alike. Its fabric was woven with hymns, prayers, comfort, and hope. Claire could almost hear its music. Maybe that was the song Alec had been singing yesterday morning in his own church among the stones.

It was Richard she saw when she looked at the ceiling and the tombs. He'd stopped her after the service, his eyes still reflecting the light of the candles even though the lines bracketing his mouth were cut deep. “I have to lay on a lunch for Nigel and a couple of other trustees at the Hall."

“A man's work is never done."

“I'll see you later this afternoon, then? I'm thinking it's time we defined our terms."

“I'm thinking that, too. Let me know when."

Claire had made her way back to her flat, where she fixed herself a sandwich and watched Kate and Pakenham argue in pantomime in one window while Blake sat with his cell phone pressed to his ear in the other. When Trillian had delivered Richard's note she'd been ready to jump. More than ready to jump. To run screaming down the stairs and along the high street. She'd cut herself too deep a rut of nervous tension, it seemed, and now she was in over her head.

She forced herself to sit down in a pew toward the front of the church. The wooden seat was so icy she almost shot up again. She set the umbrella down beside her, pulled the note out of her pocket, and spread it across her denim-covered thigh.

Richard and his fine architect's hand, she thought with a smile. Not only was her name printed on the envelope but the note inside was printed, too, its letters looking like the ones on the map of Somerstowe Alec had used to find Melinda's body. “Meet me in the church at two, R."

The church? Why not the Lodge? Was the official delegation camped out there?

Claire heard a creak, as though another door had opened somewhere in the building. A slight stirring of the air brought a whiff of brass polish to her nose. Richard? She looked up. No one was there. Just the old structure settling, she told herself.

Like Alec, she eyed the stone flags surrounding the altar. That one with the iron ring in it, that was the opening to the crypt. Had Walter known the truth about Elizabeth, or, believing that witchcraft was the equivalent of satanism, had he stoutly refused to believe anything of the sort? Well, faith was pretty much wishful thinking in any event. But wishful thinking—perception, desire—could be more important than fact. Especially when it came to something that transcended fact.

In his benediction Trevor had spoken of “God's peace which passeth all understanding.”
Amen,
Claire said to herself. In spite of her peaceful surroundings, though, she didn't feel at peace. Maybe she simply hadn't processed everything yet. The future was far from certain, not for Alec, not for Richard, not for her.

The air stirred again, almost imperceptibly. Flowers, polish, wax—the church smelled a bit like the Hall with its lingering odor of potpourri. Except for the candle wax. That was sort of like the scent of stage base, also known as greasepaint. Claire grimaced, feeling again the cloth around her throat, cruelly tight, and her heart bursting from her chest. She'd smelled sweat and greasepaint on her attacker ... Elliot, she thought. He was the director. He hadn't been wearing stage base. And yet he'd confessed. She must've smelled her own paint exuded in her rush of terror. Weird.

She shifted uneasily on the hard wooden bench, built before people regarded comfort as an inalienable right. She could have sworn she wasn't alone in the church. And she didn't mean the place was suffused with the Holy Spirit, either. She'd gotten used to being paranoid, was all.

You're not paranoid, she told herself, if someone really is out to get you. And Elliot had been out to get her. Claire had been a burr under his saddle since the day she arrived. Everyone assumed she and Melinda had been, somehow, one mind in two bodies—even Richard ... No. Elliot had searched her room, hadn't he? If he'd plowed through all her notes and all her letters he'd realize she hadn't known what Melinda knew. Which meant his motive had been revenge, pure and simple.

Shaking her head, Claire looked again at the note. Two. Her watch said two, right on the dot. It wasn't as though she had anything else to do, though. Except to think about Elliot making the dramatic gesture even though he knew damn well he wouldn't be around for the applause. About fastidious Elliot killing himself in one of the messiest possible ways.

Claire heard a slight scraping sound. Mice beneath the organ? She peered toward the altar. The dangling end of the embroidered cloth was swaying just a bit, as though in some ghostly draft. Something emanating from the crypt, maybe? Not that she'd ever really believed in ghosts before. Or that magic worked. She'd just enjoyed the stories and thought that there, too, faith transcended fact. That wishful thinking....

Suddenly she went skin-prickling cold. With Elliot's death they were all indulging in wishful thinking, weren't they? They were seeing what they wanted to see—an end to the case. A staged suicide would get the real killer off the hook. It would separate Claire from her faithful bodyguard and leave her sitting alone in the village church.

“Shit,” she whispered. Slowly she stood up. The shadows were thick behind the effigies and in the corners, but nothing moved, not even the air. Still the hair rose on the back of her neck.

Someone had held Elliot's own gun on him while he wrote a confession, his hand trembling with fear. People would confess to just about anything under duress. And then—well, it would've been easy enough to shoot and then close Elliot's hand around the gun.

Claire could buy Elliot as a co-conspirator. He had the jug and box. He made regular trips to London, where the blackmail letters were postmarked. And yet the threatening letters had an edge of hatred and resentment that seemed too harsh even for Elliot and his malicious ego-masturbating sense of humor. An edge of hatred and resentment of the status quo that had led—someone else—to murder not once, but twice.

So whom had Elliot thought so harmless he'd agreed to play a game of blackmail with them? Someone he'd not only let into his house yesterday afternoon, he'd let get the drop on him? And as clearly as if he sat beside her Claire heard Richard's voice saying, “He'd rather have guests of the female persuasion."

Of course. She could just see Elliot trying to impress female prey by posturing with the gun, mocking the cliches of machismo even as he bought into them. And not just any female prey, either. If Diana Jackman alibi'd Elliot for the time of Melinda's murder, then he alibi'd her.

Good God. Claire crushed her hand to her mouth. Was it another puzzle, simple once you saw the solution? But she hadn't solved the puzzle. She was back to the one thing that had bothered her—had bothered everyone—all along. Motive. And Pakenham's glib explanation of the income from The Play as the primary cause just didn't go far enough.

The Play, Elizabeth's story, was inextricably part of the Hall. The Hall, Trevor had said, was the trunk of the tree, like a genealogical tree ... Claire sat back down, landing on the spike at the top of the umbrella. Impatiently she pushed it away. With a small thunk the umbrella's curved handle bumped the armrest at the far end of the pew. Claire barely heard it. She didn't see it. The cascade of words and images doused her mind like a bucket of cold water.

The genealogical tree that mattered wasn't that of the Laceys or the Spensers. It was the family tree of the Cranbournes. Because she'd seen the lupins laid in front of the Cranbourne mausoleum in the back yard of the pub.

Diana's pink dress was initialed “DCJ.” A woman often used her maiden name as her middle name after she married. On the way to Bakewell Diana said her family had been in Somerstowe a long time, not all of them in service, either—her grandfather had been a gentleman. But Trevor said Diana was from Leeds and only moved to Somerstowe when she married Rob.

So where had Vincent, the gray sheep of the Cranbournes, gone when he married a maidservant and was cut off from the family? Leeds?

Maurice Applethorpe, from Leeds, had come to Somerstowe for genealogical lectures. He had to know Diana was his cousin. And if he didn't, all he had to do was sit down in the pub and start talking about his connections and she'd be onto him like a duck onto a June bug. And if he started going on about how the Cranbournes had been cheated out of their inheritance by Julian Lacey, about how there must be something wrong with Maud's will, about how much the Hall would bring, sold to a developer...

Melinda's letter to Richard. Had he sat down with his mail in the pub then, too? The pub, where you sat and chatted away, your tongue lubricated by alcohol, and assumed your conversations, not to mention your letters, were private. Where the public phone connection at the end of the bar was custom-made for Melinda's laptop, so she could e-mail Claire and tell her she'd learned some interesting things by asking questions in Somerstowe.

Rob and Diana had catered the cast party last year, too. One of them would've had to stay late and clear up. Had Diana been waiting inside the entrance hall when Susan saw Melinda walking through the portico? No, she hadn't. She'd been here, at the church.

Claire looked up, not quite focussing. Ceiling, altar, windows, effigies—all were indistinct, as though she'd taken off her glasses. Damn it, she thought, Blake was right. If any of the Cranbournes, even Diana, thought Melinda knew the truth about the will—even if to them the truth was only wishful thinking—the last thing they'd do is kill her....

One of the effigies moved. Claire blinked. No, effigies didn't stand upright and walk. They didn't emerge from door behind the altar that opened onto the vestry. The vestry, where Trevor kept the old typewriter that had typed the blackmail letters.

“Hullo, Claire.” Diana strolled out of the shadow into the dim light of the center aisle.

Slowly Claire stood up. Maybe she didn't yet know Why, or even How, but as surely as she knew her own name, she knew Who.

Diana's blond frizz stood out from her head as if electrified. Her oversized jacket gaped lopsidedly over a shapeless sweat suit. Dark smears of eye shadow and lipstick made her face look like a skull. She'd probably been up all night, her mind racing like a rat through a maze. Claire would've felt a pang of sympathy if she hadn't instead felt a pang of fear.

“I see you got me note,” Diana said.

Claire opened her mouth. It was dust-dry. She swallowed and tried again. “The—ah—note I thought was from Richard? You copied his printing from the map, right?"

“Right.” Diana took a step closer, blocking the aisle end of the pew. “Seemed only fair, that was the map Alec used to witch up Melinda's body. Takes one to know one, I always say. It's not right, the likes of Alec playing Walter. Walter was a good man, he protected Elizabeth when everyone was getting at her."

“It's a good story,” Claire said, taking a step back.

“Dead brilliant. About how the toffs like you and your pal Melinda, all set up proper with your lolly and your posh clothes and your flash manners, how you make the rules for the rest of us. We're good for nothing but fetching and carrying and bowing and scraping. I know how Elizabeth felt when everyone save Walter turned against her."

“Melinda didn't start out with money. She worked hard. She earned it."

Diana's voice was thick, as though her throat was clogged with bile. “Yeh, on her back, I reckon. She had the men queuing up to get into her knickers, didn't she?"

“No, she didn't,” Claire said, keeping her own voice even. Getting mad wouldn't help.

“Elliot now,” said Diana. “He told me I could've been a great actress. But Melinda took Elizabeth away from me. She'd sit there pushing Elliot to slag me off. ‘Our Diana, not two brain cells to rub together.’ Men always have to have the young ones, don't they? More ballocks than brains, men are."