Memory and Desire (8 page)

The door opened and several more people came in, including Richard. Rob started rapping glasses onto the bar and glared daggers at Diana.

“Enjoy,” she said to Alec and Claire. Tossing her head, she thrust her bosom out like the figurehead of a ship and turned to the table where three of the newcomers were sitting down. They greeted her with several raunchy comments. She upped the ante with some of her own and took their orders.

Richard ordered a bitter from Rob. As he walked by Claire and Alec's table he offered them a reasonably affable nod.

Claire smiled warily back. Alec said, “Sit down, Richard. Have a natter."

“Thanks, but I've some letters that need seeing to just now.” He found a chair by the fireplace and pulled several envelopes from his pocket.

You know,
Claire thought toward him,
if I was the suspicious type I'd think you were avoiding me.
She turned to her plate and started forking up the meat and potatoes. The pie could have used more pepper, but the vegetables were nice and fresh. She waited until Alec was mopping up the last of the gravy with his bread before prodding him into conversation again. While the ghost stories were fascinating—would she have some good tales to tell in the faculty lounge!—right now Melinda was more important. “So you talked to a lot of people about Melinda's disappearance. You didn't know it was a murder then, so I guess your procedures were different."

“We're still not positive it's a murder,” he warned. “The first rule in any case is to talk to the people closest to the victim. So we talked to the Nairs, the volunteers at the Hall, the cast and crew of the play. Blake even sent his sergeant to London to interview her ex-husband. No one admitted to anything."

Someone who wasn't a cop, Claire reflected, would have said no one knew anything. “So you have records of everyone's alibi, then."

Alec shook his head. “We need a time of death to establish alibis. We need a cause of death to search for weapons. We need a motive before we can consider suspects. We don't have any of those."

“No. You don't. A body would help, wouldn't it?"

“Oh yes, it would indeed. Although after all this time....” He let the sentence evaporate, like Elizabeth's ghost had evaporated this afternoon.

Not just anyone's body, but Melinda's. Melinda's physical shell, ripped untimely away from her humor, her intelligence, her spirit. Was her ghost, too, wandering around the Hall? Claire hoped not. If anyone deserved to rest, it was Melinda.

Suddenly Richard's chair crashed back against the wall. He stood up. His scowl of rage and resentment hit Claire, and only Claire, like the slap of dueling gloves. His hand crushed the envelope he was holding, one with a big red and yellow commemorative stamp.

Claire felt her eyebrows and mouth constrict from bewilderment into a frown.
What the hell is it now?

The spigots for dispensing beer and ale peeked over the counter like a row of spectators. Rob counted change into the cash register, each chink of coin against coin ringing loudly. Diana leaned forward, every glass on her tray quivering with eagerness.

Richard wasn't about to oblige anyone with explanations. His expression slammed itself shut and barred its door. Cramming the letters back into his pocket, he stalked out of the room without looking again at Claire, even though she turned around in her chair to watch him leave.

The door slammed. One of the customers said, “Didn't know the pub did cabaret, Diana."

Pursing her lips, Diana sashayed over to the table of customers and distributed the glasses. “Our Mr. Lacey's always been something of a nutter, him and his old house."

Alec looked more worried than puzzled. He stood up. “I'll have a quick word with him, see what he was on about. Half a tick."

“He's not so keen on American lasses, is he?” Diana went on. “That one last year, they didn't half have a row at the cast party, did they? And now this one's got up his nose as well."

Alec walked away. Her chair, Claire decided, was the most uncomfortable piece of furniture she'd ever been associated with. She, too, stood up.
American lasses.
Melinda's year-old threatening letter. Richard flipping out while he was reading a letter. If anger was all he'd been feeling. Claire could have sworn that his resentful glare had something in it of a cornered animal. Or was that wishful thinking on her part?

He'd had a fight with Melinda at the cast party. The last place she'd been seen alive. So much for entente. So much for lulling her suspicions.

She picked up her billfold, thanked Diana, and walked up to Rob and the cash register. Every eye in the place watched her pay the bill and leave.

Claire emerged from the pub to discover the evening had dimmed. Clouds filled the sky and the breeze smelled of rain, just as Alec had predicted.

The bobby was standing with his hands folded behind his back, gazing down the street. Elliot leaned against the hood of his Jaguar, looking curiously past two volunteers of the young and female variety who were either admiring him or his car. Richard was nowhere to be seen.

“Here,” Alec asked, “you didn't pay for the food, did you?"

“Sure,” replied Claire. “No problem."

He reached into his pocket and thrust several pound coins at her. She batted his hand away. The coins fell jangling onto the sidewalk. Alec scooped them up and stuffed them into the pocket of Claire's windbreaker. “There you are. When the new pound coins came out my cousin, a wee lad, thought they were sweeties. We caught him nibbling at them, trying to take off the gold paper and get at the chocolate inside. My mum washed his mouth out with nettle tea."

Claire smiled. “Next time the food's on me. We can skip the nettle tea."

“If it's Richard you're wanting,” called Elliot, “he set out toward the church at a rattling good pace. Shall I put on my boots and spurs and form a posse?"

“Thank you, Elliot,” Alec returned equably. “No need.” His hand in the small of Claire's back urged her down the street like a sail a sailboat.

She glanced back to see Elliot looking after them, hands braced on his hips, head tilted to the side, expression less puzzled than calculating. The polo shirt showed his chest and shoulders to be broader than they'd looked in his Italian-cut suit. Claire knew she was going to have to talk to him eventually. But one suspect at a time.

“Did you get the impression,” she asked Alec, “that Richard was upset over one of those letters he was reading?"

“I did do, yes. Not like him to get the wind up."

She'd take Alec's word for Richard's usual barometric pressure. To her he was like a fall day in Texas—warm and sunny enough for a light sweater in the morning, a navy-blue sky spitting sleet by five. “How did he get along with Melinda? Before the argument at the cast party, that is."

“They were at sixes and sevens a bit,” Alec replied. “He noticed her—who wouldn't? He'd just broken off a relationship with a woman in London, though, and I doubt he was ready to tangle himself up again."

Claire wanted to ask,
don't you have a relationship with someone?
She said, “Melinda wouldn't have wanted him to tangle himself up."

“No, I daresay she wouldn't have done,” said Alec, with a reminiscent half smile which raised Claire's brows. “She wound him up good and proper, but then she wound us all up. Even so, it was Richard who was a bit shirty with her."

“She teased him,” translated Claire, “and he was irritated. No surprise there."

“When she disappeared he was just as baffled as the rest of us."

Was he?
Innocent until proven guilty, Claire reminded herself.

They turned a corner and walked down a street so narrow the sidewalk took a third of its width. Where the street made an acute angle to the right a large mirror was mounted on the building opposite, so the hapless motorist could see how much competition he had for the corner. “Let me guess,” said Claire. “This used to be a medieval gutter."

“That it was."

Dodging three children on skateboards, Alec and Claire stepped out onto a wide grassy area. Ahead rose the church, its spire reaching heavenward like a hymn in stone. To its left was a grove of trees, foliage rustling in the cool breeze. The well below them was capped by a tangle of Victorian metalwork. Judging by its weathered and chipped stone, its base was considerably older. Next to it was a painting propped on an easel and surrounded by several camera-toting tourists.

Claire squinted. No, it wasn't a painting. It was a picture formed of leaves, petals, moss, berries and beans, outlined by dark twigs and strips of bark. She turned toward it.

“It's the well-dressing,” Alec explained. “The custom probably goes back to ancient Celtic ceremonies of blessing the wells and is peculiar to Derbyshire. One picks out the pattern in damp clay and fills it in with flowers, seeds—the first fruits tradition goes back a long way. Supposedly the custom died out in the Middle Ages, then was revived with a Christian theme during the seventeenth century."

“Between the Civil War and the plague in the seventeenth century,” Claire said, “I would've wanted all the help I could get."

“Even though the well's capped now, we still do up the picture. Elliot wanted to adjust the date to coincide with The Play, but Rob pointed out by spacing the events two weeks apart we get the tourists twice, and twice the quid."

“Commerce meets tradition?"

“Uneasy bedfellows, I expect."

Claire looked up at him. “Alec, when you were searching for Melinda, did you check the well?"

“Yes, we had the lid up and poked about. Got a right pile of muck and a fair number of coins we put in the collection box at the church."

“Oh. Okay.” The picture showed an old man greeting a ragged youth. Tiny botanical bits provided amazing detail, the folds of the men's garments waving in the breeze, the dark eyes of the calf in the background rolling piteously. “The return of the prodigal son,” said Claire. “I always felt kind of sorry for the fatted calf."

“A guiltless victim,” Alec agreed. “Like Elizabeth Spenser."

“Is this the well she was accused of poisoning?"

“Yes. And the gibbet was just there. Grass won't grow on the site."

Claire followed his gesture and saw a cement post emerging from a patch of bare ground. “Superstition? Or the feet of tourists?"

“Evidence that Elizabeth was innocent. Just as the many thousands—tens of thousands—of witches done horribly to death across Europe were innocent.” Alec's face went hard as the stone coping of the well, mouth thin, jaw set. “They murdered her cat, too. Said it was her familiar."

“Now that's sadistic,” said Claire. “Although why killing a cat would be any worse than killing a young woman...” So this was where Elizabeth died, the victim of a judicial murder. And yet if her ghost walked, it walked at Somerstowe Hall, where she'd stitched away the long summer afternoons, foolish bumblebees and the scent of roses wafting in the window. “She's haunting the Hall? And the cat? It's a ghost, too?"

“I know it looks like a real cat, but many's the time I've seen it vanish into thin air. Whereas Elizabeth...” His face softened. “She has more complex emotions than the cat, I reckon. Her image is not always distinct. She's sad and lonely, not frightening."

“No, not frightening. Just—unusual. And cool, too. I mean, I can suspend my disbelief. The ghosts are probably appearing to me anyway because I'm such a soft touch for ghost stories. They wouldn't be so quick to appear to Melinda. She'd laugh...” Claire looked sharply up at Alec. “Is that what she teased you about? Your believing in the ghosts?"

“In a way.” Alec cleared his throat. “Well then. The first church was built here in 732 or thereabouts. This one is late Gothic. It's had its modifications over the years, of course. Richard calls it a ‘slow growth’ church. Ah, there's Trevor. Hello!"

An elderly man in a black coat and dog collar was just stepping out of the wide western doorway of the church. He looked up at Alec's call and waved vigorously.

That was a quick change of subject, Claire thought. So Richard wasn't the only one who had a bone to pick with Melinda. She filed those factoids away and turned to the church.

The churchyard was surrounded by a stone wall. Its base was overgrown by white and pink blooms that might have been either wildflowers or weeds. Its gate was a wooden one, below a shingled roof supported on four posts. One of the tourists started adjusting a camera on a tripod, determined to capture the charming scene.

“This is a lych gate,” said Alec, opening it for and closing it behind Claire. “Or a resurrection gate. Where the pallbearers would rest the coffin and wait for the vicar to arrive."

The vicar came bustling up to them. “Hello, you must be one of the new volunteers."

“Claire Godwin."

“Oh yes, yes, of course. Melinda's friend. I'm Trevor Digby.” His handshake was light and dry. His smiling face was creased like fine parchment and his pale blue eyes danced behind his glasses like angels dancing on heads of pins. His fine white hair made a perfect halo around his head, his bald spot as tidy as a monk's tonsure.

“I'm very pleased to meet you,” Claire told him, and she was, having always had a soft spot for the otherworldly—clerics, scholars, artists—and village bobbies with ghosts on their beats. “Alec was just starting to tell me about the church."

“Well then, come inside.” Trevor shooed Alec and Claire up the gravel walk. Behind them the camera clicked.

The grass in the churchyard was a deep, translucent green, like some ideal of green rather than the ordinary palette color. From the turf sprouted a multitude of gravestones, the old ones weathered to featureless lumps, the new ones sporting shiny gilded letters. This silent congregation was no doubt larger than the living one.

“Jackman” read the name on one stone dated 1832—ancestors of Rob and Diana, Claire guessed. Other grave markers read, “Brandreth, Little, Stafford, Hardinge.” She could only imagine living in the same town where her ancestors had lived and died.

In the far corner of the churchyard was a squat stone mausoleum adorned with vases, statues of angels gesticulating heavenward, and several plaques of no doubt maudlin Victorian sentiments. The name incised over the door was “Cranbourne.” The last private owners of the Hall stooped to occupy the same sacred ground as the peasantry, but still made sure they were set apart, entering heaven with suitable dignity.