The Secret Anatomy of Candles

by Quentin Smith

  “So they broke the law by not having their children vaccinated?” Debra said.

  “That’s one of the problems,” Jasper said, pausing, “they have not broken any laws. However, that is not to say that they have not, by refusing to follow the widely recommended and accepted MMR vaccination, unreasonably put at risk the lives of others.”

  Debra’s face was creased with concern and the worry lines etched into her pale complexion did not flatter her.

  “You sound awfully… uncertain.”

  They had stopped outside the Count’s House, a diminutive stone dwelling of peculiarly ostentatious architectural design.

  “Do you know the story about this little stone house and the dwarf?” Jasper asked, digging his fingernails into the palms of his writhing hands, in the hope that inflicting pain might prevail where sheer willpower had failed in diminishing the insolent movements.

  “Do you mean Count Joseph Boruwlaski, the Polish dwarf who fell in love with Durham in the eighteenth century? You forget who I married.”

  Jasper nodded and felt his mouth pout several times as his neck twisted to the left in a slow and agonising cramp.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Debra, this is one of my most challenging cases ever. There are no precedents in this section of law, there have not been for about a hundred years. I have to convince a jury that the Mallorys owed a duty of care to society by ensuring that their children were vaccinated. I have to show that by refusing the MMR they breached this duty and that this breach of duty caused Ollie’s… death.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Jasper pulled a face and shrugged slightly.

  “To you and me, perhaps, but in law we have to convince a jury that gross negligence has been perpetrated. Without precedents, that is never simple.”

  Debra’s eyes began to fill with tears and her creased chin wobbled with emotion. She sniffed away her embarrassment and wiped her eyes with a balled up tissue.

  “Can you win this case?” Debra asked with a thick voice.

  Jasper paused, turning to face her despite the display of tics and spasms engulfing his body.

  “There is a powerful lobby of support for this amongst many influential medical professionals who see compulsory vaccinations as the only solution. With the spectre of political backing in the wings, anything is possible.”

  “It sounds like such a long shot, Ollie deserves more than that,” Debra said with a blocked nose and a shuddering chest.

  Prebends Bridge appeared around the corner of the river, through branches languishing just above the surface of the water. Jasper stopped and held Debra firmly by her shoulders.

  “I agree with you, but we do have a good case. Now think of it this way, Debra, Ollie could be immortalised. There is a measles epidemic spreading across Britain; if as a result of our case laws are changed to ensure the safety of millions of children out there, what a laudable outcome that would be.”

  “You mean his death would not be for nothing, if we won?”

  Jasper nodded. “Just imagine – Ollie’s Law.”

  Debra managed a cautious glimmer of a smile as they walked in silence past Prebends Bridge and then on towards Fulling Mill.

  “Can I ask a favour of you, Debra?”

  “Of course,” she replied without hesitation.

  He walked in silence a little longer, trying to organise his thoughts into words.

  “I am hopeful that the coroner will release Jennifer’s body in the next day or so and I have arranged the funeral for Friday.”

  Debra nodded as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

  “I feel that… that you… understand what has taken place,” Jasper said, as tics ripped apart his dignified countenance.

  He cast his eyes downwards, slightly embarrassed and self conscious, apprehensive at revealing his vulnerability.

  “Would you please come to the funeral… for me?” he asked, looking up briefly into her green eyes before averting his gaze to the cascade of white water over the Fulling Mill weir.

  FORTY

  It was a beautiful bright day, the sun shining low in an unbroken powder-blue sky as the little huddle of mourners stood in lengthening November shadows. The frosty ground had thawed wherever the pale sunlight warmed it, leaving shrinking icy patches visible only in north facing shadows.

  Even Lazlo was wearing a black suit as he stood beside Jasper. Charlotte was the only person wearing a hat, an ostentatious creation with a black veil that, were it not for the colour, might not have looked out of place at Ascot. She stood next to Jasper, but more than an arm’s length away, protectively embracing her two young boys, Jack and Charlie, whose tear streaked faces required constant wiping on their sleeves.

  A little distance behind Jasper stood Debra, maintaining a discrete presence, biting her cheek and lips continuously as she reflected on her own recent and still painful losses. Her fingers twisted around each other as she sought physical outlets for her inner torment.

  Jasper could not help himself from scanning the faces of all the male mourners not known to him, searching for something, a facial sadness, a clue, a sixth sense even, that they may have been more to Jennifer than merely friends. Then a pang of guilt would leave him reeling from a wave of nausea, as he realised that no other man had been responsible for impregnating his wife, that no other man could be held accountable for a pregnancy that, for reasons yet unknown to him, drove her to the ultimate depths of despair.

  He alone could fill those shoes, yet he still had no idea why such an elusive and joyous event should have lead to him standing beside an open hole in the frosty ground, bidding farewell to the only woman he had ever loved.

  The turmoil in his soul seemed to be rising and closing around his throat. How could he methodically seek out and find the culpable party responsible for his wife’s untimely death, when with every advancing step all fingers seemed to point back at him?

  Were all the mourners staring at him, regarding him as responsible for Jennifer’s death? He was in no doubt, not only from his recent encounter in York, but also from her reproachful glare, that Charlotte most certainly did.

  Jasper spoke only twice. Once to thank Debra for being there, recognising the personal difficulty she must have experienced being at another funeral so soon, and once to Lazlo as the mourners began to disperse.

  “The Swan, Lazlo? I have never needed a gay and frisky so badly.”

  Lazlo nodded his great head sombrely.

  FORTY ONE

  Three years previously

  Evelyn Candle struggled to keep her eyes open as she lay struggling for breath beneath the starched, white sheets. Her shrivelled mouth remained slightly open, unable to shut even momentarily between desperate gasps for air.

  “Has she gone?” Evelyn asked, with an urgency that she appeared incapable of mustering.

  Jennifer sat down on the bed beside her mother-in-law and took hold of her skeletal hand, purple from bruises and with barely a morsel of flesh covering the protruding bones. The pale blue hospice room decorated in floral decals smelled pleasantly of lavender. It was not a bad choice for one’s last breath, Jennifer thought.

  “Yes, mum. The nurse has gone out for a coffee break, she said to call her if your pain returns.”

  Jennifer looked sad, her normally sparkling eyes dark and subdued, like a grey sky.

  “Where’s Jasper?” Evelyn asked, casting her wide, anxious eyes around the room.

  “He’s in court today, mum, but he said he would be here as soon as he could. He is on the late afternoon train.”

  Evelyn thought for a moment, as her little chest heaved up and down ineffectually beneath the thin bed sheets.

  “He’s definitely… not here?” she asked, pausing for breath.

  Jennifer shook her head in puzzlement.

  “No, but he will be soon, he promised.”

  “I haven’t long, Jennifer,” Evelyn said and then stopped to catch her breath. “My time is near.”
r />   Jennifer squeezed her bony hand comfortingly. There was nothing to say, it was not a statement that she could refute.

  “Have you and Jasper… ever thought… about children?” Evelyn said, looking intently into Jennifer’s face through watery eyes that were sunken into her bony skull.

  Jennifer managed a sad smile and nodded her head with some enthusiasm.

  “Oh yes, mum, we are very keen to have children, probably quite soon I should think, I can’t wait forever.”

  Evelyn did not return the smile and appeared to become more agitated, shaking her head from side to side.

  “There’s a letter… top drawer… for you,” she said between sharp intakes of breath, inclining her head towards the bedside cabinet.

  “For me?” Jennifer repeated, frowning and holding the palm of one hand across her chest.

  “Please get it… before Jasper…”

  Evelyn lifted her stick like arm and gestured for Jennifer to retrieve the letter. On the bedside cabinet a clear glass vase of mixed summer blooms, bright yellows, pinks, reds and violets, tried their best to cheer the atmosphere.

  “This one?” Jennifer said holding a white envelope in her right hand and reading from it. “Private and Confidential. For Jennifer Candle only. To be opened immediately after my death. Evelyn Candle.”

  Evelyn nodded and licked her lips in agitation as she patted the space beside her where Jennifer had been sitting.

  “Are you sure… Jasper’s not here?” Evelyn said, her edgy eyes darting about the room.

  Jennifer frowned, still distracted by the cryptic wording on the envelope.

  “He’s not, mum, but I’m sure he will be soon, don’t worry.”

  Evelyn shook her head and patted the bed for Jennifer to sit down. Then she grabbed Jennifer’s hand in both of her bony claws and looked at her intently.

  “Listen, please Jennifer.”

  Jennifer frowned and felt her heart beginning to beat faster.

  “I am so sorry… I never had the… courage…” Evelyn had to pause.

  “Please, mum, don’t make yourself so out of breath. You should rest.”

  “No!” she said with as much tenacity as she could muster in her failing little voice. “Listen, it’s… very important.”

  Jennifer sat quietly, unable to take her eyes off her mother-in-law’s desperate face.

  “Are you pregnant yet?”

  Jennifer was taken by surprise and looked away.

  “Are you?” Evelyn repeated.

  “No, no mum.”

  “Good.”

  Jennifer frowned. Evelyn nodded her head and breathed deeply several times, licking her dry, cracked lips with a tongue that looked as rough as pumice.

  Jennifer was both stunned and puzzled by her response. Was it the medication perhaps? She was after all on morphine. Was she getting confused as her body and mind inevitably began to wane?

  “I failed as a mother,” Evelyn breathed heavily, “Failed. I could not… tell Jasper… could not… tell you. The letter… you must read…”

  “I will, mum, I will,” Jennifer said, her face deeply furrowed with incomprehension.

  “Not until I die… promise me.”

  “I promise, mum.”

  Jennifer stared at the envelope in her right hand, and at Evelyn’s spidery handwriting in HB pencil. The envelope wasn’t excessively thick and contained perhaps two or three pages at most.

  “Put it away,” Evelyn said, gesturing with her emaciated arms, “and promise me…”

  “I promise, mum, I will wait,” Jennifer said, tucking the envelope into her black, leather clutch bag.

  “Promise me… you won’t ever… tell Jasper.”

  Jennifer’s composure began to melt and she felt sobs breaking through her anxious, confused tension.

  “What is going on, mum, you’re scaring me?”

  Evelyn slumped back on the pillows and closed her eyes, exhausted.

  “Read the letter… I’m so… so sorry.”

  Jennifer began to sob. She was frightened. She was alone, and she had just promised to keep it that way.

  “Won’t it help you to talk about it, mum?” she said, with desperation in her faltering voice.

  Evelyn did not open her eyes and as she spoke she barely moved a muscle.

  “Call the nurse… I need morphine… please dear…”

  Jennifer stared at the shrivelled old lady, feeling pity, confusion, a sense of unease. What a bizarre and unexpected few minutes with her mother-in-law. She was about to leave the room and call a nurse when she heard a soft whisper escape from Evelyn’s inert face.

  “Forgive me.”

  Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

  Martin Luther

  FORTY TWO

  It was not a wake in the traditional sense, but this did not seem to bother either Lazlo or Jasper. They sat side by side at the bar on padded high wooden stools, because their usual brass table at the window overlooking the tranquillity of the River Wear was occupied by a couple who seemed unable to keep their passionate hands off each other.

  Jasper had stopped glancing in their direction. Watching the hunger and mutual appreciation in their eyes only intensified his guilt and remorse for opportunities lost, for permitting the banality of his prosaic marriage to become entrenched.

  “I can’t even remember it happening,” Jasper said as he tilted his tumbler this way and that, clinking the three ice cubes against the glass.

  Lazlo finished a deep gulp of Black Sheep ale, before flicking a subtle glance in Jasper’s direction.

  “What happening?”

  Jasper sighed with irritation.

  “She was pregnant, Lazlo, with my baby,” Jasper accentuated the word ‘my’.

  Lazlo nodded thoughtfully.

  “Why would she kill my baby? Why would she do such a thing?”

  Lazlo turned his bloated head towards Jasper’s downcast frame and tried to make eye contact.

  “You don’t know that she was thinking of killing the baby, guv.”

  Jasper snorted and took a warming mouthful of amber Chivas.

  “I’ll never know that she wasn’t. I wanted a child just as much as I thought she did.”

  “Why would she want to kill your unborn child and herself, guv? It makes no sense. She could not have known that she was pregnant.”

  Jasper stabbed the bar counter with an extended index finger.

  “Exactly, Lazlo, it makes no sense. She must have thought the baby wasn’t mine. Perhaps the fear of all that inevitable shame and indignity was just too much?”

  Barely audible above the jovial murmurings of The Swan’s clientele, Louis Armstrong croaked his way through the timeless melodies in ‘What a Wonderful World.’

  “Mrs Candle was a good wife, guv, an honourable and faithful partner to your good self. As much as I have loathed digging into her private affairs for you, I have found nothing to indicate otherwise.”

  Jasper’s eyes drifted down to the floor, focusing between his polished brogues on the peanuts and crushed crisps scattered on the rich, red pile carpet.

  “In the early years Jennifer and I… we were very close. But with time, as everything became stale and no family was forthcoming… well… it was like she became more of a bread knife to me, you know, than a hugs and kisses. I had my clients, the demands of my work, but if Jennifer was lonely who is to say that she didn’t find herself an artful dodger?”

  “But, guv, I haven’t found a shred of evidence that there was anybody else in her life.”

  Jasper dropped several peanuts into his mouth before pulling a small notepad from the pocket of his starched, white shirt.

  “Let me show you something, Lazlo. Do you know how many unaccompanied men were at the funeral today?”

  Jasper flicked through the notepad pages as Lazlo looked at him with a furrow in his brow. He studied his boss’s flickering eyelids, the
twitches, the distortions, the uncontrolled roll of his left shoulder about once every minute, the occasional spasmodic pout of his lips, and he felt a deep stirring of sympathy.

  “I looked into each of their faces as they stood, assembled around the coffin, and counted them – thirteen, excluding you, the vicar and me.”

  Lazlo looked down dolefully into his glass of Black Sheep.

  “Your missus played the cello in a chamber group, guv,” Lazlo suppressed the urge to say ‘remember’. “Most of the musicians are men. I checked.”

  Jasper shook his head defiantly.

  “But think of it, Lazlo, does a chamber group of men not provide opportunity?”

  “But she didn’t have motive, did she, guv?”

  Lazlo regretted this remark as soon as the words were cold on his lips and he saw the hurt on Jasper’s tormented face.

  “You’re wrong, Lazlo, I just know it. There has to have been someone. If not one of the chamber group then what about all those secretive journeys down to London?”

  “The infertility specialists?” Lazlo said making a face.

  Jasper twirled a hand in the air as he shook his head.

  “No, not them, the other recent visits. Did you find out who she went to see?”

  Behind them a salacious giggle pierced the pub’s background noise and both Jasper and Lazlo turned around instinctively on their stools to trace the libidinous emission. The young woman, bursting out of a dress several sizes too small, was now draped across the young man’s lap. Their faces said it all as they cavorted suggestively. Lazlo groaned.

  “There was only one,” Lazlo said as he turned around again, exchanging a look of disapproval with Jasper.

  “One?” Jasper looked disappointed. Then his brain moved on sluggishly through the malted euphoria and he asked the only question that seemed important in his quest. “How long ago? Did she see this person around two, maybe three months back?”

  Lazlo paused and sought solace in his Black Sheep. He could not bring himself to meet his boss’s searching eyes, the eyes that pinched and squeezed like a puppet on a maniac’s string.