Weycombe

by G. M. Malliet

  It didn’t used to be like this. This cageyness on my part, this wary stubbornness on his, that look in his eyes, as if I’d suddenly become a stranger.

  This was our new normal and I hated it. Every minute.

  Will seldom looked directly at me anymore, so I had ample opportunity to study the changes in him. Most days, he could have been a model for Abercrombie and Fitch, broad and tall and striking. He owned a collection of trendy eyeglasses and that day he wore the round tortoiseshell ones, which cost a cool four hundred pounds—Will always bought the best for himself. With his strong features and mop of hair he was amazing to look at, really, but the grave manner he wore like a second skin was what made him attractive to me. If anything, he had become graver since I was made redundant.

  Why did he care whether or not I went out to work? Will was landed gentry. A minor nob in a land that grew them like turnips, but still. I thought him spoiled, entitled—but perhaps that was my perception as a yeoman by comparison. It had something to do with his upper-class drawl, so it may not have been entirely his fault. But it did seem to me nothing had ever not gone his way. The drawl, which had been a key selling feature in the beginning, began to get right up my nose within a year or two.

  He didn’t notice or care what I did, not really, not anymore, but I certainly noticed him. He’d been up well before I was, despite what had to be a world-class hangover. He’d seen me dragging myself out of the bedroom, knotting a chenille robe at my waist, and he’d turned abruptly to head into the garage, either to retrieve something or just to pretend he was on urgent business. The sight of me seemed to pain him.

  “See you later,” he said now. No inflection, no tone, no look in the eye. I think he was actually talking to the cat. He did not define “later” and I knew better than to ask. Our moment of détente was over.

  “Okay,” I said to his retreating back.

  They say your gut doesn’t lie but it had taken me longer to learn that lesson than it might have taken someone less besotted. Will wanted out. Any fool could see it.

  “Goodbye,” I said to the closed front door. “Have a nice day now.” Part of me wanted to run after him, screaming like a fishwife, chenille bathrobe and all.

  The larger part of me, by then having the upper hand, would never give him the satisfaction.

  5

  Kookie jumped onto my lap as Will left, knocking my notebook to the floor. The cat’s full name was Kookie, Kookie. As in “Kookie, Kookie—Lend Me Your Comb.” Most Brits didn’t get it; Will did. We shared a love of songs with immortally awful lyrics, our favorite being “Leader of the Pack.” We loved to shout “look out!” as his Rover rounded hairpin turns in the wilds of Scotland.

  Nonsense was a real bond between us. Will got me in a way no man ever had. No straight man, anyway. I loved the British side of his nature that was always on the lookout for the ludicrous—that innate ability to see the absurd in everything. And he saw through most of my shit, which really impressed me to no end.

  Now even Kookie looked put out by this frosty new regime. Cats can sense things, you know? Especially when something’s up that might interfere with their food supply.

  I had a return of panic at the thought of Will’s never coming home, which every day felt more like a possibility. Of hearing from his lawyers, of having to live through deep dead space in the aftermath of divorce.

  Of course he could always go home to mummy. She lived in a mansion with so many bedrooms she couldn’t count them all. The pair of them could go for months without ever seeing each other.

  But they’d see each other, all right. They’d have dinner together and discuss my shortcomings at length. And that was so galling I literally couldn’t bear the thought.

  I collapsed onto the sofa and held Kookie tightly against me, hiding my face in his fur until he wriggled free.

  I sat twisting the neck of my robe at my throat, remembering Thomas Wyatt: “They flee from me that sometime did me seek / With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.” They thought he was writing about Anne Boleyn creeping about his chamber, at a time before she had bigger (much bigger) fish to fry.

  Just between us, Anne, was it worth it? The caskets of gold and jewelry in exchange for such a short but glittering career? And of course that gruesome ending …

  She would always be remembered as a sort of poster child for the other woman, but wasn’t it better than being Catherine of Aragon, frumpy, sick, and old before her time, like her daughter Mary? Both of them earnestly clutching their rosaries and moaning over their loss of status? Of all the women in Henry’s life, only Anne of Cleeves was truly sensible. She took the money and ran, glad to get away from him.

  Sadly, I could relate to Catherine’s desperation. There had been an evening with Will that still makes me cringe to think of it, an evening in which I disgraced myself, shrieking like a lunatic, totally losing it. I can’t forget, even now, the look of contempt in his eyes. That was us done. Stick a fork in it; we were done.

  I should have left.

  Still I hung on.

  For Will and me, the days of mind-altering sex into the wee hours, fueled by wine and interrupted only by meandering conversations about our glorious future, our travel plans, the big house we would build, and the extraordinary children we would create together, were long over. At one time I could barely drag my sleep-deprived body into work after one of these marathon sessions. This much I know: Will had worshipped the sight of me. It’s terrible when that goes away, to be replaced by—what? Hatred? Scorn?

  Those carefree days of our early courtship and marriage suffered at first a gradual fading away, then a steep drop-off. But that was only to be expected, or so I’m told. People fall into a comfortable routine with one another, and they leave the house properly rested, combed, and with their shirttails tucked in. And one day they have a child, and then another, and then a grandchild or two to spoil. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  It was hard to let go of the memories, for once upon a time we were Will and Jill, a fairytale couple so perfectly suited our names even rhymed. We rarely argued and we lived our privileged lives on an even keel. Until I lost my job—I’ll admit; my ego took a bruising. I’d also wrecked my ankle not long before, and that had laid me up awhile. So maybe I wasn’t wonderful to be around. I guess before, we didn’t spend quite so much time together. Busy, busy, all the time. Too busy to notice things weren’t quite the same.

  So, knowing exactly where I was—at home—and what I was doing—not much—all the time apparently didn’t hold the same erotic charge. Okay, I got that. But there was more to it, and I started to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t lost my job. Would Will have noticed how unhappy he was? Would he ever have been unhappy or would we just have sailed along, oblivious, until we reached retirement age and noticed we had nothing in common?

  At least these questions gave me something to occupy myself with in the hours I wiled away waiting for him to return from work. Which got later and later, nearly every day.

  That’s the way you boil a frog. Slowly.

  I felt so very alone in those days. It was worse because Will was all I had in the way of family, not counting my stepmother, which I did not.

  Will’s mother and sister also did not count. As a people person, the sister in particular made Princess Anne look like the Dalai Lama.

  I didn’t notice my strandedness so much pre-Will, when I was living in London, a city I still consider to be the center of the universe. I was single, young, and free and had an office to go to each day. It was only at times like Christmas that things got rather strained. People would invite me to their homes for dinner with their families and I’d pretend another engagement rather than be the specter at their feast. More than once I’d had a marmite and cheese sandwich for Christmas dinner—alone, naturally, like Bridget Jones—and told myself that was fine. It was just another day on
the calendar.

  There was no one to visit back home in the US. There was no home, period. No kinfolk waiting hearthside with Tollhouse cookies for my return. I had one cousin who had notified me of her mother’s—my aunt’s—death in one of those photocopied Christmas letters, months after the fact. That’s how close we were. Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like to still have my brother around, if only to have someone to buy ugly socks for.

  No use going down that road.

  I was relieved when the holidays ended and everything went back to normal. When the lights came down and the gift wrappings went into the bin and I could forget the whole thing and go back into work.

  To take my mind off all things Will, I needed a distraction—and learning what could be learned about the investigation into Anna’s death was tailor-made. Knowing what was going on would keep me occupied, keep my anxiety levels down. It’s the not knowing that drives you crazy.

  While there are times when you should leave things well alone—just let the gods of mischief handle it—this was not one of those times. I wanted to—had to—know. If at all possible, I could at least nudge Milo and Co. in the right direction, for cases had a way of going cold after a while. Ask any detective. Half my job at the BBC had been reenacting cold cases, of which there seemed to be hundreds.

  I decided the best place to start would be Weycombe’s gossip central.

  I went to find my gym bag.

  6

  I hated the bloody gym. I really did.

  I regarded it with even more loathing than most people. I had been a pudgy kid with pigtails and glasses and weird friends, and that trauma stays with you. Being shunned by the popular crowd in junior high finally drove me to start exercising and dieting in a fanatical way. Nothing at home was under my control except my weight, so I started to keep a diary of every calorie, every sit-up.

  But in Weycombe, I just walked. If it was too cold and rainy outside, I would drive over to the gym and use one of the treadmills.

  Now it was Anna sent me there. The path I normally would have taken was still taped off with blue-and-white crime scene tape and littered with blue evidence-collection boxes. I lingered a moment to watch the technicians still working the scene before I headed over to Miller Lane. I didn’t see Milo around but that was fine; I did not want to run into him just then.

  The spot where the body had lain would be blocked off for several more days. The bicyclists were particularly upset by this; a lot of them commuted to work on that path and they were forced to return to their old car-polluting ways. The fact that Anna was found on protected land, which technically the path was, added a new investigative wrinkle. I gathered that pagans had lit fires, sacrificed animals, and thrown bodies into the river near the spot where she died. A territorial struggle among the various arms of law enforcement and preservationist groups ensued. Even contemporary pagan groups had their say about the desecration of the area but were roundly ignored.

  It was finally decided to let the local police handle it unless the help of Scotland Yard was needed. The fear was of dirty tricks on either side contaminating the results of the investigation. Certainly that was the way the FBI and CIA would have managed things. It was not unheard of for evidence to disappear or be misplaced—anything was fair game if it could screw up an investigation for the other side. If you’re planning to kill someone, be sure to do it on a spot of land where jurisdiction is at issue and you might just get away with it.

  I walked everywhere in those days, lulling myself into exhaustion. Mostly I would just follow the river, seeing the hours pass and the steps add up on my pedometer.

  FitFull Gym was a poor substitute. It was part of a chain that had spread across England in the past ten years. No pun intended on the word “spread,” but the UK had an obesity crisis to rival that in the US, which helped explain FitFull’s popularity. The top floor held the requisite machines and weights, the middle floor was used for classes like yoga and Pilates, and the ground floor housed the locker rooms. I knew no one in Weycombe Court who was not a member, although some rarely showed up while others, the gym rats and yummy mummies, made the most of their monthly, one-hundred-pound fees. One way or another, FitFull had encroached on the role in village life once occupied by the pub and the Women’s Institute, the locker rooms becoming another center where information and gossip were exchanged.

  The talk in the women’s locker room that Tuesday was naturally about the murder, and I assume it was the same in the men’s. Even the North Cliff woman who routinely spoke with no one outside her social set could be seen chatting with a group of personal trainers, excitedly discussing the case. Once you know that “we live in North Cliff” is shorthand for “we have money, very old money, and we have weekend houses, too; go ahead, envy us, that’s why we’re here”—once you know that, you will understand how Anna’s demise had upset the social order. Possibly forever. Fear truly had gone viral in Weycombe if it had penetrated North Cliff. Once the plague of random murder burrowed its way in, presumably from London, it was a matter of months before desperate housewives would be found with their pearls missing and their throats cut. Or so the reasoning went.

  I did learn that Anna had become a regular at the Pilates classes, part of her sudden devotion to health and well-being. It was out of character and I said as much to Becky, one of the trainers I’d hired for a few weeks last spring to check me out on some new equipment. Anna had gone from drinking red wine for her health to adopting a Hollywood starlet fitness regime.

  “You’re right,” Becky said. “We usually get the sudden converts right after the holidays—New Year’s resolutions and all.” Becky was such an energetic, gee-whiz type I could usually only stand a few minutes in her company. She stood feet apart, one hand gripping the other, flexing her biceps, a stance I knew was second nature. She was a devotee of isometric exercise and wasted no time just standing around like a normal person; she always had to be flexing something. She looked like she wanted to punch me but she always looked like that. She wore her hair in a braid that fell over one shoulder and she’d gelled her thick eyebrows into two dark wings, adding to her warrior princess look. She was rumored to be dating Frabizio, another personal trainer at the club. One could only begin to imagine the bouts of gladiatorial coupling that went on between two such perfect physical specimens.

  “They say there’s a witness,” Becky added. “God, I hope they catch whoever did this. I told Frabizio I’m not going out at night again until they do.”

  Anna had been killed in broad daylight, but I let that pass. Besides, if anyone attacked Becky I had no doubt she could beat them senseless. “Really? Who says?”

  She pulled the Chronic out of her gym bag—actually, a new, stop-the-presses flier with “facts” not yet posted on their website. The intern must have had trouble getting his retainer in or something, making him late for work.

  “I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in what you read there,” I said. “They don’t have a big enough staff to do anything but rehash hearsay.” Some months before, they had rejected my application for part-time work, so I was not their biggest fan, true. But what I told Becky also was true. As mentioned, the police were not going to confide any juicy clues in those guys.

  There had been nothing in that morning’s national tabloids or broadsheets about a witness—I’d already stopped in at the village shop to buy whatever news was going. The bigger news guys had run with a short bio of the victim, with promises of more to come. How strange to hear Anna described as a victim, and stranger still to hear her called a “real property tycooness.” Now here was the Chronic stating that “an eyewitness has reported seeing someone in a blue jacket or short blue coat having words with Anna amidst angry gestures.” Which meant Garvin the tortoise had scooped the hares of London.

  Who uses words like “amidst,” anyway? It sounded like something Garvin would say, although I wouldn’t credit
he’d actually make up quotes. Mishear them, yes. He was notoriously hard of hearing, a fact reflected in some of his weirder stories, a hardship compounded by his scattershot efforts at proofreading. One locally famous headline had announced a reward for a lost doge.

  But who had I heard using the word “amidst” recently? It had been one afternoon in the coffee shop … That’s right: Frannie Pope, the owner of Serendipity, our local little shop of fashion horrors. She was the woman I thought I’d seen at a distance walking her dogs. Surely she had been too far away to see much.

  Frannie was rumored to be in some sort of relationship with the doddering Garvin, which I tried not to think about.

  I took the paper from Becky and read through it all again slowly. It was no use pretending indifference; I was as keen for news as anyone who knew Anna, which was pretty much everyone in the village. Just as I thought: the bit about the eyewitness was probably the purest wishful thinking on Garvin’s part.

  “A woman walking her dogs,” I said. “That could be anyone, of course.”

  “You’re right. The only odd thing around here would be to see someone not walking their dogs. Everyone but me seems to have one.”

  “And me,” I pointed out. “I never had the time before. Maybe I do now.”

  I wandered off to do my routine—a few biceps curls here, and a stomach crunch there, and forty minutes on the treadmill. The dog walker was almost certainly Frannie, and dropping in on her to get her account firsthand would be a breeze.

  Across the weight room I spotted our resident professional beauty, Macy Rideout, staring in the mirror as she lifted thirty pounds over her head. Every male eye in the place followed the way the movement lifted her boobs. Either Macy had adopted a “life goes on” attitude or she’d not yet heard about Anna. I thought I might talk with her at some point. She and Anna had once been close, although something had gone off there.