Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow (7 page)

When I walked into the parking lot it seemed like a hundred years since I’d left it. That was the thing, I went on musing as I got into my car, that logical, lawyer’s mind-set Quin had, that had made his collapse before the power of love so incredible. All our friends, his colleagues at the law firm, everybody we knew back in New York had told me he was the last man they’d have expected to do such a thing. And I had trusted him completely for thirty years, ever since I’d met him at the foot of the Washington Monument, surrounded by cherry blossoms and hippies, at the big anti–Vietnam War march of 1971.

I had come to New York from Cincinnati just in time for what everyone calls the sixties even though much of it, my part anyway, took place in the early seventies. I never got into the wilder aspects, the drugs and promiscuity, but the idealism, the faith in people’s underlying goodness, the abhorrence of war, were part of me before I ever got to New York. I had my master’s in library science and easily got a job in the public library system, made some friends, and positively wallowed in the city’s cultural riches. I hadn’t been looking for a man at all, so it was amazing to realize, a few months after we got back to New York from the march, that I was falling in love with this young public defender with shoulder-length hair and a passion for helping the poor. It was even more amazing to realize that he was falling in love with me.

We had married and found a Manhattan apartment that we shared first with a stray dog called Charley, and then with our little girl. Quin had worked his way up, over the years, from the public defender’s office through bigger and better law firms, and finally into the high-powered one where I assumed he still worked. I had gone on in the library system and never risen above my original position, because I hadn’t anything like his ambition. I’d thought my life was pretty close to perfect, and though I missed Emily when she left us, I was proud of her Rhodes scholarship, happy when she found the right man, and quite prepared to move on into old age right there on West Eighty-third, beside Quin.

I pulled up in front of my cottage, turned off the headlights, and sat there for a few minutes just looking at the place. It had taken me sixty years to learn that you can’t really plan the future, especially when it involves other people. There was no way I could have imagined, two or three years ago, that Manhattan by now would be only a memory, the library’s budget problems and the city’s scandals no longer on my radar, that I would be living alone in a seventeenth-century cottage in England. I couldn’t even have imagined owning a cat, I thought, as I caught sight of Muzzle slinking warily across the yard toward me. I’d never liked cats, but here I was catering to an old black tom that wouldn’t even give me the satisfaction of an occasional petting and purring session.

I heard him slurping water from the bathroom faucet while I got into my nightgown and slippers. He had started doing that soon after he moved in with me, and after lifting him out of the sink a few times, I’d given up and now left it dripping for him. Since he spent most of his time wandering outside, picking up who knew what organisms, I didn’t feel like sharing a faucet with him, so I’d begun drinking and brushing my teeth in the kitchen. The bathroom sink had become Muzzle’s property pretty quickly, and I only wondered what he would claim next.

I had formed the habit of listening to
Book at Bedtime
on the BBC every night. A very good reader was currently making her way through Mrs. Gaskell’s
Cranford,
and it was wonderfully comforting that night to curl up in the green baize wing chair in the parlor and listen, sipping a hot cup of Horlicks.

When I got into bed I heard Muzzle settling himself in a corner of the bedroom, on a cushion I’d put down for him. He’d only go there after the light was out, and if it went on again he would be gone in a second.

I was thinking about Peter as I settled into my pillows. Poor boy, spending this night in a jail bed! They couldn’t be very comfortable, and even if they were, the knowledge of what was happening to him would be enough to keep him awake. I tried hard to think of another way to clear him, since my first try had been such a spectacular failure, but my weary brain refused to cooperate, and soon I was asleep.

The cloudy day my discontents records,

Early begins to register my dreams

And drives me forth to seek the murderer.

—Thomas Kyd,
The Spanish Tragedy

Y
ou can never trust English weather for long. We’d had a three-day spell of beautiful spring days, so I wasn’t surprised to wake the next morning to the patter of rain on my slate roof. I looked at the clock on the nightstand and swore when I saw 6:00. It would have been lovely to turn over and fall asleep for another hour, but I had been wakened, as I always was these days, by Muzzle’s plaintive meowing from the floor beside my bed. I knew if I didn’t give him breakfast and let him out, it would just go on and on. Really, I should put his cushion downstairs somewhere and shut my bedroom door, I thought as I emerged from the covers into the damp, chilly air. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. There was something comforting about having a living creature in the room with me at night.

He shut up once he had me on my way to the kitchen, and followed at my heels, even brushing quickly across my legs for encouragement while I opened the cat food can. Once he was settled to his bowl I could start boiling the water for my steel-cut oatmeal and for instant coffee. I would still have to let him out before I carried my breakfast into the dining room, or I’d be eating it to another chorus of meowing. Even on rainy days he had to do a quick patrol of the area, but I’d have to remember to let him in again before I went to Oxford. As he stepped warily onto the doorstep, I brought in the pint of milk the roundsman left every morning, and the
Oxford Times
that lay beside it.

The murder of Edgar Stone dominated the front page, with a mercifully blurry photograph of Peter being led, handcuffed, into the police station. I argued with the newpaper story while I ate breakfast, furious at its neutral tone. People reading it might actually think he was guilty! Which was absurd—although that phone call to 999
was
a problem. If it weren’t for that, I would have no trouble coming up with other suspects, because everybody who knew him seemed at least to dislike Edgar Stone.

I washed up my few dishes, took a shower, and got into slacks and a sweater, trying all the time to figure out why Stone would have fingered Peter instead of the real killer. By the time I was into my raincoat Muzzle had had enough of the wet outdoors and was back on the doorstep, reaching up to paw at the doorknob ineffectually.

“It’s never going to work,” I told him as he scooted through the door. “Not without an opposable thumb.”

I turned the heat up a little, to keep him comfortable, and hurried out to the car. Driving into Oxford I heard the radio weatherman cheerily predicting a full day of rain, not even offering the hope of “sunny intervals,” as they sometimes did. I passed Stone’s house, closed and dark, and wondered how his poor wife was coping. She was well rid of her sadistic husband, but such a shock couldn’t have done her mental condition any good.

Emily had given me a key to their apartment, and I used it in case she was sleeping, although it was almost eight-thirty now. As soon as the door swung open I realized how dumb it had been not to call first. Quin and his woman were already there.

Archie jumped up from the sofa where he’d been sitting between them, ran to me, and threw his arms around my legs, immobilizing me in the doorway.

“Nana,” he said happily.

I knew better than to confine him in a hug. I just rubbed his curls and said, “Archie.” He responded, “Ow!” and backed away, and I realized his head was still tender from the bump yesterday.

Emily came across and gave me a kiss, murmuring, “I should have called you when they came. I just didn’t think.”

“Neither did I,” I whispered back. “Don’t worry, I’ll be good this time.”

Her face was pale and strained, her eyes pink-rimmed. I put my arms around her and for a moment we stood there in a three-way hug, before Archie bounced back to Quin.

“Nana, taypay!” he announced, waving his arms at Quin, so I was forced to look at him. He was holding a small portable tape player on his lap.

“Hi, Kit,” he said, smiling. Of course I didn’t answer. I glanced at the girlfriend and saw with satisfaction that she looked sulky and was obviously, as he had said, not having much fun.

Archie started punching every button on the little machine at once.

“No, no,” Quin said, taking hold of his hand. “You don’t get any music that way. This is what you do,” and he set one small finger on a button and pressed it down. A shrill, saccharine voice came from it, singing, “Oranges and lemons, Say the bells of St. Clemens, You owe me four farthings, Say the bells of St. Martin’s—”

Archie’s eyes got bigger, and he stared at the player as if it were magic. When the singer paused at the end of the song he breathed reverently, “Taypay!”

“It’s yours,” Quin said, putting Archie’s hand around the machine’s handle. “When the music stops I’ll show you how to hear the other side.”

The girlfriend grimaced when Archie leaned against her leg, examining the tape player. She moved a little away, out of contact with him, and didn’t see Quin’s brief frown as he noticed her distaste for his grandson.

Archie ran over to Rose, his shy young nanny, making herself as inconspicuous as she could in a straight chair at one end of the room. “Vofe, taypay!” he informed her.

“Ooh, isn’t it lovely?” she said, glancing furtively at Quin. Rose, I knew from past experience, was highly susceptible to older men with dominant personalities, and she appeared to have developed a crush on her employer’s father. “Isn’t your granda kind to give you such a nice gift?”

Archie plopped down on the floor with his new toy. That irritating voice was now singing about the Duke of York’s pointless sortie up the hill.

“We’ve got a CD player now, of course,” Quin said, “so I brought the old tape player for the kid. More fun for him than CDs, with all the buttons to push. It ought to keep him out of your hair, Em, with all that’s going on.”

“Either that, or drive me round the bend,” she answered, a little irritably. “But thanks, Dad. It does seem to be a hit.”

“I wish you’d tell me something I can do to help too,” I said. “Maybe cook dinner? Or run some errands for you?”

“I can’t eat,” she answered shortly. “Rose will look after Archie’s meals. I can’t think of anything just now, Mom. Dad and I have an appointment in about an hour with this solicitor he found who’s supposed to be really good. Maybe he’ll represent Peter.” She was twisting a strand of her blonde hair around her finger, tighter and tighter, as she used to do at tense moments when she was a child.

“I could go too,” I said and was annoyed to catch a glance exchanged between her and Quin. “I will
not
get excited, or insult the man, or—any of the other things you’re thinking. I might even come up with some questions that wouldn’t occur to you.”

“I’d be willing to bet you would,” Quin said. He laughed, and Emily even smiled a little. “I think I know what to ask another lawyer, Kit, even over here. It’s going to go better if Emily and I handle it.”

That familiar condescending tone was more than I could take.

“Listen, mister,” I burst out, “I had thirty years of that superior attitude, the same amount of time you had of my jumping to conclusions, and I thank God I don’t have to put up with it anymore! Save it for Big-eyes there.”

That actually got a rise out of her. “Are you going to let her go on calling me names?” she demanded of Quin in a voice that was still quiet and steady, but a few octaves higher than I remembered. “I told you I didn’t want to come to England. You said we’d all be friends, but she won’t let us be, and I knew she wouldn’t.”

“So why
did
you bring her?” I joined in. “Just to rub our noses in it? Just to humiliate me and make life a little harder for Emily and Peter?”

“Mother, don’t say another word!” Emily cried out. “You promised me only minutes ago you wouldn’t do this!”

Archie ran over and threw his arms around my legs again. “Shup, Mummy!” he piped at Emily.

She stared at him, and then, as if the last straw had been laid on her back, she gave way and burst out crying. Quin got up and enfolded her in his arms, and Janet went into the powder room and slammed the door.

Archie looked on in amazement at the effect his newly acquired word had created, and I whispered to him, “You see, matey, that word’s bad news, just like we told you. You’d better go give Mummy a kiss and tell her you’re sorry.”

He trotted over and did his leg-hug, and she picked him up. He patted her wet cheeks, saying unhappily, “No, no!”

“Don’t worry, darling. Remember what I told you? It’s okay to cry.”

Archie shook his head, not buying the psychological jargon, while she tried to pull herself together. In the background the tape player shrilled, “Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea, Silver buckles on his knee—”

“I’m sorry, Mom—” Emily started to say, but I interrupted.

“No, you’re quite right, I just can’t be in the same room with those two peacefully and I won’t try it again. I’ll check every time to be sure they aren’t here.” I heard Quin give a big, exasperated sigh, but I didn’t rise to the bait. “You interview your lawyer, and I’ll go down and talk to Peter. I haven’t heard his side of it yet, and if nothing else, he’d probably like to see a friendly face.”

“Tell him I love him,” I heard her say as I opened the door, and I knew she was still crying because I heard Archie scold, in a scared little voice, “No, no—bad Mummy!”

“How is Emily?” were the first words Peter said to me when we faced each other on either side of a plastic mesh barrier. He looked as haggard as I’d expected. I’d had to wait until noon for visiting hours, so I’d had a long walk, and when I returned they told me a couple of visitors had beaten me to him. About half past, two of the men I’d met last night came out, nodding to me as they passed. I’d forgotten their names already, but I recognized their faces, solemn now and worried.

“She’s doing very well,” I answered, doing my best to keep my feelings out of my voice. “She and Quin are interviewing a lawyer this morning. He’s supposed to be really good. And she wanted me to tell you she loves you.”

A momentary spasm of anguish crossed his face. “Tell her the same when you see her again. I keep thinking what this must be doing to her, and that’s as hard to bear as imprisonment.”

“Tell me what happened, Peter. Maybe there’s something I can grab hold of, something that will point a way out of this nightmare. What about the other people who were in the Senior Common Room last night?”

“Yes, Cyril’s been here this morning,” he answered, misunderstanding my meaning, “waiting outside when they opened the place, he and Geoffrey. They can’t understand this any better than I can.”

“Right, Cyril Aubrey’s the chair of the department, isn’t he, and Geoffrey was your mentor?”

“Yes.” He brushed his hair back with a trembling hand. “I keep wondering why Stone would stage his own death like that? Calling me, calling the police—”

“Is
that
what you think happened? Do the police think it could have been suicide?”

“No, they say that’s unlikely, from the way the knife—” He broke off, shuddering. “When I saw him, Catherine, all that blood, the look on his face—Do you know, I wasn’t even aware of the police until they were pinioning my arms? I hardly knew where I was.”

“Okay, we’ve got a new possibility,” I said, grasping at straws. “However unlikely, he could have killed himself and schemed to lay the blame on you.”

“It’s hard to credit. He always disliked me, disliked all the younger scholars who were coming up and displacing his generation. Claimed we were degrading the science of literary research, and when my book was so successful I came to symbolize all that to him. But isn’t it pretty ridiculous to think he’d have gone to the length of killing himself, just to destroy me?”

“Maybe he had a fatal incurable disease. Did you ever see
Rebecca?”

He rubbed his forehead in distraction. “
Rebecca?
That Hitchcock film—oh, yes, I see what you mean. But that’s only fiction, Catherine.”

“You can learn a lot from old movies. It’s the only reason I can think of to stage it himself. Well, if it’s true, it will come out. They’ll surely do an autopsy.”

“An—Oh, a postmortem. I’ve no idea how these investigations work, but it seems logical that they would.”

“I’ll find out. I’d been thinking of other possible suspects, but this is a more likely scenario, if they’re sure it’s his voice on the 999 tape.”