Deadly Thyme

by R. L. Nolen

How dare her mother use the past tense. Ruth wanted to yell, but she whispered, “Takes, not took!”

  “I’m not here to fight.” Her mother kept scrubbing. She was using a dish rag to wipe her face. Her shoulders were jerking.

  “I know.” Ruth took a deep breath. She realized her mother was crying. “It feels like it’s all part of the same discussion. We used the same language ten years ago.”

  Her mother shook her rag at Ruth. “Everything I said made it worse. You told me to mind my own business. Then you went and married the bastard.” She was sobbing without sound, and scrubbing.

  Light filtered hazily into the kitchen. Strong gusts of wind pushed against the window. All at once, Ruth sensed what her mother must have felt when her daughter left. “I was an idiot.”

  “Ruth-Ann,” her mother rubbed her face dry, “I need to speak mother to mother. I realize that you needed to move here then. But now … with this? And Bubba dead? His folks don’t care about you; they’ve got enough worries on their plate with Bubba’s youngest sister.” Her mother’s red-rimmed eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Ruth-Ann, why don’t you just pack up and come home? You can do it now. There is no court case against you. There will be no problems. I can arrange everything. We can leave—as soon as all this is settled.”

  “It sounds as if everything’s settled already.” Ruth stood. Nothing changes does it? Another world existed parallel to hers—the hot, muggy world of a childhood that circled her like a merry-go-round, constantly casting her back into the guilt from leaving.

  Here in Cornwall, she had found a life that meshed differences into familiarities. She had never been brave enough to admit that she had left the flat landscape of the Gulf coast not only to escape an abusive husband, but to escape her mother—her take-no-prisoners, controlling mother. It had been her attempt to make familiarities from differences.

  “I’m not ever going back,” Ruth said.

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

  “This is my home. Annie and I were—are—happy here.” She paused to think about it. There are places in the heart, geographic places the heart knows nothing about—like rare art hidden in an attic—until one fine day, a day of exploration, those places are discovered in the real world and recognized, as if the heart had found its true home.

  Her mother gripped her arm. “But you can’t stay here, Ruth-Ann. There’ll always be bad memories.”

  “There’ll always be the best memories, too. I can’t leave that.”

  “But dear, your family is in Texas.”

  “My friends are here. My family can visit.” And until the words left her mouth Ruth had never been so certain she wanted to remain in Cornwall.

  Annie Butler lay on her side. The mattress beneath her smelled like the time she forgot to tell her mother she had spilled the milk in the pantry. She remembered what the button was that dangled by her face. It was an old mattress button. She had taken it and kept it tightly clutched in her free hand. Something about it gave her comfort. She didn’t know anything about where she was or what was happening to her, except that now she smelled bad all over. How long had she been here and why was it so cold? How long was she supposed to be here, and why wasn’t she allowed to move? Her brain couldn’t think. That was it. It was as if she couldn’t wake up.

  The rag on her eyes wasn’t tied tight, so she could slip it to the side enough to see. There was the pale blue ticking of the mattress above her and the spotted mattress below her. It was hard to make out. A pale light came in through the cracks around her cocoon. She could bring one hand to her face and see her fingers, like she was under covers and the sun hadn’t come up yet.

  But no, she wasn’t home. This was no place she knew. She remembered that she had been on the beach with Dot but nothing after that. She knew how to get away from a stranger and how to defend herself, so how did she end up here?

  13

  Thursday, 6:17 a.m.

  The bedsprings squeaked and groaned as Charles shifted his weight, setting off a cacophony of gaseous outlays. He couldn’t sleep. Thinking too much didn’t help matters. Next to him, The Wife lay on her stomach pretending to be asleep. He lay as still as he could, and listened. She was awake, breathing through her pillow in order not to smell him. He smiled to himself. Damn her efforts.

  He’d best rise up and get out of here before she started her insistent demands for sex. She’d been like that since their wedding day ten years before. He no longer touched her. How dare she think he desired a thirty-one-year-old bag o’ bones like her? After all, with each new batch of blood, he was getting younger.

  He rolled onto his side and sat up. Breathing deeply, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He rubbed his face.

  She must think he didn’t know about her dalliance—the two-faced, self-righteous whore. She told him she had gone to Penzance for the day with her pals. She called it her “little fling with the girls.” But he wasn’t stupid. Penzance and the next farm over were entirely different locales, weren’t they? She went to cavort with the gypsy who ran the stables. Did she know he knew? Did it matter? As for the dark-haired heathen, the fool never realized his prized horse didn’t die of colic. The perfect result had been achieved. The heartbroken young fellow hadn’t had anything to do with The Wife since, had he?

  Charles shrugged. She had driven him to it.

  He wondered if The Wife had been her usual blabbing self, because something wasn’t right. There was a change in the atmosphere around the village. He felt the unease at The Spider’s Web on Tuesday. The censorious looks, the sudden quiet conversations, and the subdued laughter didn’t fool him. In the Seaside Restaurant where he ate alone yesterday, the sideways glances and smirks of the other patrons didn’t escape his notice. They were whispering behind his back.

  He tied his velvet dressing gown tightly around his ample middle. His soft, tattered slippers were a comfort. He slipped into the bathroom as quietly and quickly as he could.

  “Not happy in your little village, Chubby?”

  His toothbrush slipped out of his fingers, bounced across the sink and into the toilet. He had not expected Mother to give her opinion. Holding his breath, he fished the toothbrush out of the toilet and threw it into the bin.

  He shuffled into the kitchen to boil water for some decent tea, not like the usually watered-down stuff his German wife considered tea. He set the kettle on the porcelain hob to boil, then took down the tin of loose tea from the cupboard. Teabags were for infants and foreigners.

  Water sputtered with a hiss into the fire. He poured a tad into the Royal Albert teapot, swished it about, then dumped the steaming liquid down the drain. He pried the lid off the tea, put three heaping spoons of it into the pot, and tipped in more hot water. He set it aside to steep. Steam rose from the teapot’s spout like prayers to a god. He stared at it a moment, satisfied, then set the timer for four minutes.

  He hummed to himself. He thought of words to his tune: Some like it strong. Some like it weak. Some like it in the neck. Tweak! Tweak! Tweak! That was good.

  Timing meant everything.

  Now the American woman had brought everyone down to this stinking village. Police of every kind and description. He wished he could snap his fingers and take care of the bitch—bend her to his will. In the old days women followed orders. There were real knights, cut-throat pirates, and honest-to-God kings. Men needed to be men. That’s the problem with women.

  That American woman looked exactly like his mother had looked in the good times. Exactly like his mother. Snapshots flashed across his memory of his mum after his father left—pictures in his mind, his mother with all of her men friends she called them—but he knew the truth. A familiar pain stabbed at his abdomen. His mother told all of them that she loved them, everyone who came and everyone who went—everyone but the one who stayed by her and did everything she asked him. She never told him that she loved him. And now the American woman had brought her back to him, so he would make her say
it, if he had to chase her into eternity to do it.

  Charles shuffled back into the bathroom. All he wanted was peace. He had to continue his experiments in peace. He would be successful in his quest for youth. And he would win Cecil back.

  The white stomach tablets were in the medicine cabinet. He caught his countenance in the mirror, and began to straighten and flatten his silver hair. It’s good hair, he thought to himself, glorious hair. He should be a king with hair like his.

  “Chubby!”

  He jerked, bumping his elbow against the cabinet mirror. The stainless edging peeled back a flap of skin and his elbow started to bleed, the blood dripping into the sink. He mopped the bright redness away and plastered a bandage to the wound. He wiped the mirror of condensation and his face of perspiration.

  Her dead voice made ice run in his veins. He hated when mum interrupted his thoughts.

  He shuffled back to the kitchen to drink his tea.

  Jon watched the flat-screen monitors like a fiend. He had set the video analysis software from America to search automatically for specific types of objects: the black car, the girl, DCI Trewe. The software could spot patterns that he might not notice. Fantastic stuff, this software. But again, he had come up with nothing.

  This was one boring little village. He’d already been to the hospital where his sergeant, though still a bit green, was able to answer his questions. He had learned exactly nothing further. His mobile buzzed. He flipped it open. “Jon Graham.”

  “Jon?” Bakewell’s voice. “I’ve not received the video that you wanted analyzed.”

  “It was sent Monday morning by overnight delivery. This is Thursday. You should have gotten it by now.”

  “You sent it by post?”

  “The postmistress assured me on the delivery.”

  “And I thought you’d be back by now. Didn’t we agree?”

  “I’ve learned nothing new about Trewe, sir.”

  “One more day. We need you back here. There have been more developments with the officer in Lancaster.”

  “I realize the Lancaster case is more prominent …” Jon’s ear rang with the click of a closed connection before he could finish.

  Why hadn’t Bakewell received the package? He walked through the village. The post office was one of the oldest buildings in the village, over four hundred years old, with only the slate roof replaced within the last two hundred years. A fine example of well-built simplicity, strategically positioned above the bay overlooking the rest of the village, it had originally been a local official’s house. The woman behind the counter had a white eye-patch type bandage across her eye.

  “You’re the postmistress I spoke with on Monday, last?” Jon asked.

  “I’m not the greengrocer. Wot-cher want?”

  “Look, I’m on holiday but I’m police—”

  “Natur’ly. You’re standin’ in the way of a payin’ customer.”

  “The package I asked you to mail—”

  The postmistress poked a finger at him. “Go-on then. Wot-cher sayin’?”

  “It hasn’t arrived. Was there a problem?”

  “Problem is police bullyin’ the innocent and don’t know what they’re doin’. E’en when a chile goes missin’ from under their own noses. An’ ’ave yer looked into them other murders?”

  “Other murders?”

  “Yer can’t see yer own face despite yer nose.” She laughed at her own joke.

  “What do you mean?” Everyone else in the post office, which meant about three others, avoided his eye as he glanced around. He wondered if he should read the woman the riot act. He wondered what she knew of the other murders. Did anyone else know of the other murders, and was there a general feeling that there was a serial murderer on the loose? “And where’s my package?”

  “I sent it an’ thet’s all thet matters to you now. End o’ discussion.”

  “But it hasn’t arrived.”

  “It’ll get there now, ne’er you mind. Get a-bootcher business and leave us decent tax-payin’ volk in peace.”

  14

  Friday morning

  Day six

  Jon watched the pale light of dawn filter through the trees and twist into wisps of fog that floated along a stream of water, then poured like lava over the cliff.

  The stream’s babbling rush was lost to the thunderous waves below. Far out at sea, a boat bobbed like a black cork on the pewter sea. Jon wondered if past wreckers had stood where he stood with their ill-guiding lanterns, waiting for ships to crumble on the straggles below.

  Scruffy bushes lined the edge of the ravine. He knew his plants, having accidentally fallen in love (Can one accidentally fall in love?) with gardening after his mother begged him to plant vegetables for her. He never did things halfway, so he’d delved into all the gardening manuals and books he could get his hands on and created a whopping good plot for her at the bottom of her garden. She was quite proud of the resulting flower and vegetable beds and even the plum he kept espaliered across one wall. His knowledge came in handy sometimes. Just now he had identified the scruffy plants amongst the gorse along the cliffs as wild thyme.

  The ever present wind coated his tongue with salt. The vast area of openness around him left him feeling as if he were standing at the edge of the world. Below, pockmarked walls of rock lined the cliffs as far as he could see. The earth beneath his feet was rough and hummocky. The sea stretched before him, unbroken to the horizon. Behind him, the land dropped upon a meadow, beyond which hills rolled along forever. Trees grew tall only in the dips between hills; such was the wind all year long that it scraped the rounded humps bare of anything taller than a sheep.

  From this vantage point, he could see Detective Chief Inspector Trewe’s family dairy sewn into the windswept, patchwork quilt of other farms and estates. He’d viewed all the footage from cameras near Trewe’s farm and his office at the police station in Treborwick. It had been like watching grass grow. He’d gone over records and interviewed his own sergeant, finally drawing no conclusions. Why did the man continue as if he had no more than his regular salary in his deposit account?

  How safe would it be, he wondered, to climb down to the beach from here? He knew he probably shouldn’t get too close to the edge. Signs everywhere warned that it was unstable.

  He had risen at five that morning. He’d used the time to look up details of missing persons in Cornwall. Despite what Bakewell said, he couldn’t stop being curious. Obviously, if the postmistress was connecting the missing girl to the other missing girls, word was out.

  Two females had gone missing in recent years between Devon and Cornwall, with the fifteen-year-old girl’s body having been discovered recently. The other had been missing for six months. She was twelve and about the same size as Annie Butler.

  He turned at a snuffling sound. What appeared to be the same dog he’d caught on tape at the beach Sunday morning and Sunday evening was now romping toward him. His heart flipped over and beat double-time. He didn’t have any time to run before the sizable dog was next to him. He flinched. All the dog did was sniff his hand. The plumed tail sailed back and forth. “You seem to get around. Did you see what happened that day, dog?” He rubbed its warm head.

  “Chelsea!” The stern voice, seemingly next to his ear, startled Jon and he jumped to his feet. An old man wielding a walking stick stood not four feet from him. He spoke again, “Errr … A bit o’er friendly is Chelsea.”

  “A fine dog,” Jon managed to sputter.

  Wisps of beard framed the man’s wide, square jaw like an early morning frost. His chin sprouted a smooth length of snow-white beard that was tucked into his shirtfront. He said something that sounded like “Newfoundland.” Then he cleared his throat with a loud “Aurrrrugh!” and spit.

  The dog, whose mouth spread into what looked like a wide grin, sat at the old man’s feet, occasionally glancing around to look at Jon. The gaze was nothing short of intelligent, and Jon wouldn’t have been surprised if the creature had
communicated exactly what it meant to the man. The way she kept glancing up at the man, it was as if she was saying, “Why don’t you move?”

  Jon wondered aloud, “I suppose you don’t observe too many people out here this time of year.”

  Ramrod straight from the waist to a slight stoop at the shoulders, the man bent toward the sea, leaning against his staff. His prominent nose and red cheeks jutted from under a floppy felt hat that had seen better days. “Seen enough fer a lifetime. Just walkin’s one thing. Falling off the side’s another.”

  “Falling off the side?”

  “Tourists don’t read the signs, do they?”

  The old man must think Jon a tourist. And that was what he was supposed to be. He wondered how many tourists had fallen off the side lately. “Walk out here often, then?”

  “Often enough. Gettin’ too crowded,” the old man muttered.

  “I’m curious,” Jon said. “You’re aware, no doubt, a child has disappeared. I was just wondering where she might be. Have you seen anything?”

  The man stirred, mumbled some response, and then, as if he realized another human stood next to him, said, “Seen the mum walkin’ ’ere.” He tapped the ground with his stick.

  “Here?”

  “Here.” He tapped his stick again. “Sure as sure.” Then silence.

  Jon turned. “There’s a pub not far, open for lunch. If you like, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  The man nodded assent and pushed off with his walking stick, as if the land were a great sea and he the ship pushing away from the dock.

  The dog followed them, darting back and forth, nose to the ground, then ran ahead.

  Jon tried to keep up with his silent human companion. He kept himself in the best possible physical condition, but the old gent battled forward at a pace that left Jon puffing.

  The dog kept leaping down to the water’s edge when the land dipped and would scramble back up to them as they passed. The way seemed impossibly steep in Jon’s eyes, but then, he wasn’t a dog. They had gone another five hundred yards when, with a low growl, the dog slid over the cliff’s edge to a tiny beach below and barked twice. Jon’s new companion stopped abruptly. The dog climbed to a rock shelf that jutted into the surf. Waves crashed over and sank, only to roll up and splash down again. The dog zigzagged its way toward the waves.