He went to the bath. Rita called his name a second time. He made no reply. He shoved his hands through to the rear of a stack of towels that sat on one of the recessed shelves along with cleanser, scrubbing rags, two kinds of disinfectant, a half-torn print of some Lady Godiva type standing in a clam shell—covering her privates and looking coy—and a pottery toad.
Somewhere in the lodge there had to be something. He felt the fact’s certainty just as solidly as he felt the lumpy green linoleum beneath his feet. And if it wasn’t the tools, whatever else it might be, he would be able to recognise its significance.
He slid open the mirror of the medicine chest and rooted through aspirin, mouth wash, toothpaste, and laxatives. He went through the pockets of a terry bathrobe that hung limply on the back of the door. He picked up a stack of paperback books on the top of the toilet’s cistern, flipped through them, and set them on the edge of the tub. And then he found it.
The colour caught his eye first: a streak of lavender against the yellow bathroom wall, wedged behind the cistern to keep it out of sight. A book, not large, perhaps five by nine inches, and thin, with its title worn from the spine. He used a toothbrush from the medicine chest to force the book upwards. It flopped onto the floor face up, next to a balled-up washing flannel, and for a moment he merely read its title, savouring the sensation of having his suspicions vindicated.
Alchemical Magic: Herbs, Spices, and Plants.
Why had he thought the proof might be a trowel, a three-pronged cultivator, or a box of tools? Had she used any of those, had she even owned them in the first place, what a simple thing it would have been to dispose of them somewhere. Dig a hole on the estate grounds, bury them in the wood. But this slim volume of incrimination spoke to the truth of what had happened.
He flipped the book open haphazardly, reading chapter titles and feeling each moment ever more sure. “The Harvest’s Magic Potential,” “Planets and Plants,” “Magical Attribution and Application.” His eye fell upon descriptions of use. He read the warnings appended as well.
“Hemlock, hemlock,” he murmured and riffled through the pages. His hunger for information grew, and facts about hemlock leapt out as if they’d only been waiting for the opportunity to sate him. He read, turned more pages, read again. The words flew up at him, glowed as if rendered in neon against a night sky. And finally the phrase when the moon is full stopped him.
He stared at this, unprepared for memory, thinking no, no, no. He felt rage and grief make a knot in his chest.
She’d been lying in bed, she’d asked him to open the curtains wide, she’d watched the moon. It was the bloody orange of autumn, a lunar disc so huge it looked within grasp. Harvest moon best, Col, Annie had whispered. And when he turned from the window, she had sunk into the coma that led to her death.
“No,” he whispered. “Not Annie. No.”
“Mr. C. Shepherd?” Rita’s voice, calling imperiously from below, closer than before. She was near the stairs. “You having a bit of fun with me undies?”
He fumbled with the buttons of his woollen shirt, slipped the book inside, flat against his stomach, and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers. He felt dizzy. A glance in the mirror and he saw the high colour smearing palm prints across his cheeks. He removed his spectacles and bathed his face, holding the icy water against his skin until, from out of the pain of the chill, anaesthesia spread.
He dried his face and studied his reflection. He ran both hands through his hair. He looked at his skin and examined his eyes, and when he was ready to face her with equanimity, he went to the stairs.
She was standing at the bottom, and she slapped the banister. Her bangles rattled. Her triple chin bounced.
“What’re you up to, Mr. Constable Shepherd? This a’nt about shed doors and it a’nt a social call.”
“Do you know the signs of the zodiac?” he asked her as he descended. He marvelled at the calm of his words.
“Why? Want to see if me and you’s compatible? Sure, I know’m. Aries, Cancer, Virgo, Sagi—”
“Capricorn,” he said.
“That’s you?”
“No. I’m Libra.”
“The scales. Nice one, that. Just the thing for your line of work.”
“Libra’s October. When does Capricorn fall in the calendar year? Do you know, Rita?”
“Course I know. Who d’you think you’re jawing, some yobbo on the street? It’s December.”
“When?”
“Starts the twenty-second, runs for a month. Why? Is her up the lane more goat than you thought?”
“It’s just a fancy I had.”
“I’ve one or two of my own.” She trundled her enormous weight around and headed back in the direction of the kitchen where she positioned herself at the door to the service porch and wiggled her fingers at him in a come-to-mama gesture made awkward by her care to make certain that the still-tacky nail polish didn’t smudge. “Your half of the bargain,” she said.
The thought of what she might mean made his legs quiver unexpectedly. “Bargain?” he asked.
“C’mere, luv-bunny. Nothing to fear. I only bite fellahs whose sign is the bull. Give us your palm.”
He remembered. “Rita, I don’t believe in—”
“The palm.” Again, she gestured, more come-hither than come-to-mama this time.
He cooperated. She was, after all, blocking the only reasonable access to his boots.
“Oh, nice hand, this.” She ran her fingers the length of his and crossed his palm with a feathery touch. She whispered a circular caress on his wrist. “Very nice,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed. “Very nice indeed. A man’s hands, these. Hands that belong on a woman’s body. Pleasure hands, these. They light fires in the flesh.”
“This doesn’t sound much like a fortune to me.” He tried to pull away. She tightened her grip, one hand on his wrist and the other holding his fingers flat.
She turned his hand and placed it on one of her mounds of flesh that he took to be her breast. She forced his fingers to squeeze. “Like some of that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Constable-person. Never had anything quite like it, have you?”
There was truth in that. She didn’t feel like a woman. She felt like a quadruple batch of lumpy bread dough. The caress had the approximate appeal of gripping onto a fistful of drying clay.
“Make you want more, luv-bunny? Mmm?” Her eyelashes were painted thick with mascara. They made a crescent of spider legs against her cheek. Her chest rose and fell with a tremulous sigh, and the odour of onions whiffed into his face. “Horned God make him ready,” Rita murmured. “Man to a woman, plough to a field, giver of pleasure and the force of life. Aaahhi-oooo-uuuu.”
He could feel her nipple, huge and erect, and his body was responding despite the revolting prospect of the two of them…himself and Rita Yarkin…this whale in a turban of scarlet and pink…this mass of fat with fingers that slid up his arm, cast a blessing on his face, and began a suggestive descent down his chest…
He pulled his hand away. Her eyes popped open. They seemed dazed and unfocussed, but a shake of her head cleared them. She studied his face and seemed to read what he couldn’t hide. She chuckled, then guffawed, then leaned against the kitchen work top and howled.
“You thought…You thought…Me and you…” Between the words, more laughter spewed forth. Tears formed in the creases near her eyes. When she finally controlled herself, she said, “I told you, Mr. C. Shepherd. When I want it from a man, I get it from a bull.” She blew her nose on a grimy-looking tea towel and held out her hand. “C’mere. Give it. No more prayers to get your poor little bowels in an uproar.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t you, though.” She snapped her fingers for his hand. She was still blocking egress, so he offered it to her. He made certain his expression telegraphed how little to his liking this game-playing was.
She pulled him to the sink where the light was better. “Good lines,” she said. “Nice indicati
on of birth and marriage. Love is—” She hesitated, frowning, absently pulling at one of her eyebrows. “Get behind me,” she said.
“What?”
“Do it. Slip your hand beneath my arm so I can get a better look at this right side up.” When he hesitated, she snapped, “I don’t mean no funny business. Just do it. Now.”
He did so. Because of her girth, he couldn’t see what she was doing, but he could feel her fingernails tracing his palm. Finally, she balled up his hand and released it.
“So,” she said briskly. “Not much to see, after all your grumbling. Just the regular bit. Nothing of importance. Nothing to worry you.” She turned on the tap in the sink and made a project out of rinsing out three glasses on which a residue of milk had formed a skin.
“You’re keeping your part of the bargain, aren’t you?” Colin asked.
“Wha’s that, pretty face?”
“Your mug’s shut tight.”
“’S nothing, is it? You don’t believe in it anyways.”
“But you do, Rita.”
“I believe in lots of things. Don’t mean they’re real.”
“Given. So tell me. I’ll be the judge.”
“I thought you had important stuff to do, Mr. Constable. Wasn’t that you in a rush to be gone?”
“You’re avoiding the answer.”
She shrugged.
“I want it.”
“You can’t have everything you want, sugar pie, much as you’ve been currently getting it.” She held the glass up to the light of the window. It was nearly as dirty as when she began. She reached for some liquid detergent and poured a few drops in. She returned to the water and used a sponge, exerting some rather serious pressure.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t ask ninny questions. You’re a clever enough bloke. You figure it out.”
“That’s the reading? Convenient for you, the phrasing of it, Rita. Is that the sort of thing you tell the twits who pay you for their fortunes in Blackpool?”
“Steady on,” she said.
“It all follows the same pattern, this mumbo-jumbo that you and Polly play at. Stones, palms, and tarot cards. None of it’s anything more than a game. You look for a weakness and use it to benefit yourselves with money.”
“Your ignorance a’nt worth the effort of response.”
“And that’s a manoeuvre as well, isn’t it? Turn the other cheek but still score a hit. Is that what the Craft’s all about? Dried-up women with nothing to live for but the thought of damaging others’ lives? A spell here, a curse there, and what does it matter because if someone gets hurt only another member of the Craft will know. And you all hold your tongues, don’t you, Rita? Isn’t that the blessing of a coven?”
She continued washing one glass after another. She’d chipped one nail. The polish was scarred on another. “Love and death,” she said. “Love and death. Three times.”
“What?”
“Your palm. A single marriage. But love and death three times. Death. Everywhere. You belong to the priesthood of death, Mr. Constable.”
“Oh, quite.”
She turned her head from the sink, but her hands went on washing. “It’s on your palm, my boy. And the lines don’t lie.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ST. JAMES HAD BEEN AT A LOSS THE PREVIOUS night. Lying in bed and gazing through the skylight at the stars, he thought about the maddening futility of marriage. He knew that the slow-motion, running-towards-each-other-along-the-beach-for-the-passionate-embrace-before-fade-out celluloid depiction of relationships led the romantic in everyone to anticipate a lifetime of happily-ever-after. He also knew that the reality taught, inch by merciless inch, that if there was a happily of any kind, it never came for an extended stay, and when one opened the door to its ostensible knock, one faced the possibility of admitting instead grumpily, angrily, or a host of others all clamouring for attention. It was sometimes extremely disheartening to have to contend with the messiness of life. He’d been at the point of deciding that the only reasonable way to deal with a woman was not at all when Deborah moved towards him from across the bed.
“I’m sorry,” she had whispered and slipped her arm across his chest. “You’re my number-one bloke.”
He turned to her. She buried her forehead against his shoulder. He put his hand on the back of her neck, feeling the heavy weight of her hair as well as the childlike softness of her skin.
“I’m glad of it,” he whispered in return. “Because you’re my number-one bit of fluff. Always have been, you know. Always will be.”
He could feel her yawn. “It’s hard for me,” she murmured. “The path’s there, isn’t it, but it’s the first step that’s difficult. It keeps messing me up.”
“That’s the way of things. I suppose it’s how we learn.” He cradled her. He felt the sleep start to take her. He wanted to call her back from it, but he kissed her head and let her go.
Over breakfast, he’d still maintained caution, however, telling himself that while she was his Deborah, she was also a woman, more mercurial than most. Part of what he savoured about life with her was the unexpected. A newspaper editorial alluding to the possibility of the police manufacturing a case against an IRA suspect was enough to send her into a fury out of which she might decide to organise a photographic odyssey to Belfast or Derry to “find out what’s what for myself, by God.” A report about cruelty to animals took her to the streets to join in a protest. Discrimination against sufferers from AIDS dispatched her to the first hospice she could find which accepted volunteers to read to patients, to talk, and to be a friend. Because of this, from one day to the next, he was never quite certain what sort of mood he might find her in when he descended the stairs from his lab to join her for lunch or for dinner. The only certainty about life with Deborah was that nothing was particularly certain at all.
He generally revelled in her passionate nature. She was more alive than anyone he knew. But living completely demanded that she feel completely as well, so while her highs were delirious, infused with excitement, her lows were correspondingly empty of hope. And it was the lows that worried him, making him want to advise her to rein herself in. Try not to feel so deeply was the counsel he always found himself ready to voice. He’d learned long ago to keep that prescription to himself, however. Telling her not to feel was as good as telling her not to breathe. Besides, he liked the whirl of emotion in which she lived. If nothing else, it kept him from ever being bored.
So when she said, finishing up her grapefruit wedges, “Here’s what it is. I need a direction. I don’t like the way I’ve been floundering about. It’s time I narrowed my field of vision. I need to make a commitment and go with it,” he made a vaguely supportive reply as he wondered what on earth she was talking about.
He said, “Good. That’s important.” He buttered a triangle of toast. She nodded vigorously at his approval and, with gastronomical enthusiasm, tapped her spoon against the top of her boiled egg. When she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with any additional information, he said, in a tentative reconnaissance of her meaning, “Floundering makes one feel as if there’s no foundation, don’t you think?”
“Simon, that’s just exactly it. You always understand.”
He mentally patted himself on the back, saying, “A decision about direction gives the foundation, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” She munched happily on her toast. She was looking out the window at the grey day, damp street, and bleak, sooty buildings. Her eyes were alight with whatever obscure possibilities the icy weather and dismal surroundings promised.
“So,” he said, walking a fine line between expansive conclusion and information gathering, “what have you narrowed your vision to?”
“I haven’t entirely decided,” she said.
“Oh.”
She reached for the strawberry jam and plopped a teaspoonful onto her plate. “Except just look at what I’ve been doing so far. Landscapes, still lifes, p
ortraits. Buildings, bridges, the interior of hotels. I’ve been eclecticism personified. No wonder I’m not developing a reputation.” She smeared jam on the toast and waved it at him. “It’s this. I need to make a decision about what sort of photography gives me the most pleasure. I need to follow my heart. I’ve got to stop striking out in every direction whenever someone offers me work. I can’t excel at everything. No one does, really. But I can excel at something. I thought it would be portraits at first, when I was in school, d’you know. Then I got sidetracked onto landscapes and still lifes. Now I’m just dabbling in whatever commercial assignment comes to hand. But that’s no good. It’s time to commit.”
So during their morning walk to the common where Deborah took the ducks the rest of her toast, and while they examined the World War I memorial with its solitary soldier, head bowed, rifle extended, she chatted about her art. Still lifes presented a wealth of opportunity—did he know what the Americans were currently doing with flowers and paint? had he seen the studies of metal scored, heated, and treated with acid? was he aware of Yoshida’s depictions of fruit?—but on the other hand, they did seem rather distant, didn’t they? Not much emotional risk involved in shooting a tulip or a pear. Landscapes were lovely—what a treat to be a travel photographer and go on assignment to Africa or the Orient, wouldn’t that be smashing?—but they demanded only an eye for composition, the skill for lighting, the knowledge of filters and film, all of it technique. Whereas portraits—well, there was an element of trust that had to be established between artist and subject. And trust required risk. Portraits forced both parties to come out of themselves. You took a picture of a body, but if you were good, you captured the personality beneath. Now there was real living, didn’t he think so, engaging the heart and mind of the sitter, earning his trust, capturing his realness.
Something of a cynic, St. James wouldn’t have put money on most people having much “realness” under their surface personae. But he was happy enough to be involved in Deborah’s conversation. When she first began chatting, he tried to evaluate her words, tone, and expression for the likelihood of their being avoidance. She’d been upset last night with his intrusion into her territory. She wouldn’t want a repeat of that. But the more she talked—weighing this possibility, rejecting that, exploring her motivations for each—the more he felt reassured. There was an energy to her that he hadn’t seen in the last ten months. Whatever her reasons for entering into a discussion of her professional future, the mood it seemed to engender in her was a far sight better than her previous depression. So when she set up her tripod and Hasselblad, saying, “The light’s good right now,” and wanted him to pose in the deserted beer garden of Crofters Inn so that she might test her regard for portraits, he let her snap away at every possible angle, for more than an hour despite the cold, until they received Lynley’s call.
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