The ruse worked. The family closed ranks over Ophelia Lovelace’s little indiscretion, and the world kept turning. But there was never another baby. The onset of war intervened in the natural rhythm of her young life, and she quickly sloughed off the childlike naïveté of her Shakespearean namesake to take her middle name, Daphne, and become the heroine that Hamlet’s Ophelia never would.
“Your baby didn’t die,” says Isabel plainly and firmly, as she invites the confused old lady to look into her eyes. “And when I saw you lying in that bed I knew straight away that you were my mother.”
“This isn’t possible …”
“My parents never told me I was adopted,” continues Isabel, sensing that she must keep up the pressure. “They just registered me as their baby. I was a Whittaker before I married Marco and moved to Florence. I never knew — would never have known — if I hadn’t found the letter.”
Outside in the street the children are partying on, but clouds are building, a storm is brewing and, with the birthday girl absent, the adults are growing anxious.
“Do you think she’s all right?” asks Trina, and Mavis is eventually pushed in.
“Did you want some tea?” she questions nervously as she taps lightly and sticks her head around the parlour door.
“I think I need a large brandy,” says Daphne, and she hurriedly turns the letter over while she comes to grips with the past and looks for a way into the future.
David Bliss is firmly on another lap of his life’s labyrinth as he heads into the future as an author and grandfather, although as he drove from Westchester to Heathrow he couldn’t help but take a look over his shoulder at the fiasco of the Queen’s visit.
“It’s a classic Orwellian plot, Peter,” he says excitedly, calling his son-in-law while waiting for his flight to Nice. “Straight out of 1984: Big Brother, mind control, constant East/West wars, everybody lying.”
“Why?”
“Power … money … greed. Isn’t it always the same?”
“But why stop the Queen?”
“Think about it, Peter,” says Bliss, having worked out the scenario in his own mind, concluding that religious harmony, however unlikely after more than two thousand years of constant war, could be catastrophic for Western defence industries and oil companies. “If the Queen got them all singing from the same hymn sheet, who would the Americans fight?”
“Do they have to fight?”
“Peter, history — the Nazis did the same. The best way to control the populace, make them obedient to government, and prevent civil uprising is to keep them terrified, keep warning them they are under attack. And if anyone says otherwise or complains about loss of freedom or civil liberties, label them unpatriotic and tell them they’re putting their countrymen in danger.”
“And you think the American government is doing this?”
“Sure. They’ve been doing it for the last sixty years or more,” says Bliss, starting a long list beginning with the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. “And when there was no real enemy, they had drug wars or wars on terrorism, or they attacked their neighbours like Grenada and Panama.”
“I don’t know …” starts Bryan, unconvinced, then he tries to throw a wrench. “Okay. Let’s say I buy that. Why did they drop their objections the second time around?”
“Because,” says Bliss. “By that time they’d realized it caused less trouble for everyone if she went than if she didn’t.”
“Paris on our starboard side,” sings out the captain on the P.A. as Bliss heads to Provence with a clear plan in mind. “Daisy,” he will say, “as much as I love you, it is time that we both moved on.”
The logo for the BBC’s six o’clock news appears on Bliss’s seat-back screen, and he is fully expecting another round of burning mosques and torched churches when the name Westchester takes him by surprise.
“After ten years on the run, Hilda Fitzgerald, wanted for questioning over the deaths of …”
“Well, I’m damned,” muses Bliss as he slots the arrested woman into place in his mind.
“It is believed that as many as forty senior citizens may have been murdered by the couple,” says the national news reporter as she stands outside Westchester Police Station, before explaining that, while apparently unconnected to the original crimes, Patrick Davenport and Robert Jameson are being interviewed in connection with possession of money from the victims’ estates. Then, as the camera zooms in for a close-up, she concludes by saying, “Superintendent Anne McGregor of Westchester Police earlier confirmed that the arrest had come about due to their inquiries into a complaint of abuse at the home.”
“Well, well, well,” laughs Bliss to himself. “Daphne Lovelace strikes again. Will she ever give up?”
It is roughly two hours since Daphne was felled by her daughter’s arrival, and with her mind already overburdened by the traumatic events of the past few weeks, she has been struggling to come to terms with the situation. Perhaps it’s a trick, a dream — or even death.
“Two grandchildren?” she questions Isabel for the fifth time.
“Luigi and Maria,” says Isabel, nodding. “But they are both grown up and married now, Mother.”
Daphne’s eyes begin watering again, and Isabel hands her a tissue, saying, “Is it all right if I call you ‘Mother’? Only I always called my other mother ‘Mum.’”
“Mother?” Daphne muses. Now this must be a dream. But it’s a dream come true. How many times in her life has she heard a child call “Mother” and never once reacted. And how many times in her life has she wished that she could. Now she can.
Isabel is still waiting for an answer, but as much as Daphne wants to say, “Yes, please call me Mother,” she can’t, not yet. Then she has an idea and turns to Isabel.
“Would you mind if we took a walk to the cathedral?”
“Of course — if you want to,” says Isabel, although there is a note of reticence in the reply, and Daphne’s daughter colours slightly as she adds, “I hope you won’t be disappointed in me, but I don’t believe in God.”
Daphne leans in as if she is concerned that she might be overheard, but she doesn’t whisper as she says, “Neither do I. In fact, I never have. I used to look around in church and think I must be the Devil because I couldn’t see God like everyone else. I used to squeeze my eyes shut till I saw stars and force my palms together so hard my hands shook, but it didn’t make any difference. I couldn’t see Him. And I really wanted to, because all my friends kept saying how wonderful he was.”
“Oh, Mother,” laughs Isabel
Daphne smiles — the first time in two hours — and asks, “Can I touch you? Would you mind?”
Red-eyed Daisy LeBlanc is holding firmly onto the crush barrier in the arrivals hall as Bliss arrives in Nice. He has flowers — a parting gift: thanks for standing by me; thanks for loving me; sorry it had to end.
“Daisy …” he starts, but his heart is beating so hard he hears the blood pumping through his temples and he daren’t touch her. They stand in silence, staring longingly at each other for ten seconds that stretch to a week. He knows the rest of the speech — he’s been practising it since Paris — but his mouth won’t take him in the direction he wants to go.
“We should sit over zhere,” says Daisy, pointing to a few empty chairs, when she eventually breaks the silence. “I have somezhing to say to you.”
Now Bliss walks to the gallows. He knows what’s happening and has been preparing for it ever since Daisy pronounced sentence on their relationship a few weeks ago. But now, facing death, he wants life.
“I can’t marry you, Daavid,” she says as she hands back the ring. “I am very sorry.”
“I know,” he replies. “I won’t ask his name.”
“Non!” exclaims Daisy as if she has been stung. “It is not what you are zhinking.”
“Zhen what is it?”
“You should not laugh at me, Daavid. Zhis is very difficult for me.”
“Well, it�
�s not easy for me either. What the hell is going on?”
“Okay. I will tell. I cannot marry you because my mozher — she is totally crazy.”
“So?”
“But, you would not want a wife who has a crazy mozher.”
“Is that it?” he questions in disbelief. “Three weeks driving me nuts — thinking there was another man — and all the time it was just your mother?”
“But, I did not know how to tell you. I hide when you came.”
“So you don’t have a cousin?”
“Non.”
“But I knew your mother was nuts the first time I met her.”
“And still, you did not care?”
“Daisy — everyone is crazy in some ways. Although sometimes I think that the ones who seem craziest are often the most sensible. Prince Philip wasn’t crazy, but he looked it when he stabbed the Queen, and I was sure Daphne was going senile when she said that she was being kept prisoner and they were going to kill her.”
Daphne Lovelace would bristle at such a suggestion as she and Isabel begin to walk the cathedral’s labyrinth. “They were evil people,” she says. “I knew it straight away. Anyone who has to pray for forgiveness twice a day must have an awful lot of sins to repent — deadly sins, as it turned out.”
“So you planned the whole thing just to find out what they were up to?” asks Isabel in admiration.
“I didn’t plan on getting bashed around.”
“Or becoming a great-grandmother.”
The concept of matriarchy for someone who, in her own mind, was childless is too much to accept at short notice, but the journey to the centre of a labyrinth is a time for letting go of the past and preparing for the future. So as the two pensioners slowly navigate the winding path, holding hands, they walk through the sixty-nine missing years, swapping tales of family, friends, places, adventures, and experiences.
“It was only when I saw your picture in the paper and read your real name that I knew it was you,” explains Isabel as they near the end of the first leg of their walk together.
“I didn’t like Ophelia very much,” admits Daphne, scrunching up her nose. “She was a very silly girl. She even managed to get pregnant on a church bicycle ride.”
“Really?” says Isabel, and Daphne laughs in memory of the summer’s day and of the fresh-faced choirboy who wasn’t quite as naïve as he pretended to be.
“I got a puncture, and he reckoned he had just the right thing to pump me up.”
“Mother!” cries Isabel in mock disbelief, and as they laugh they hug, and as they hug they unite — mother and daughter — and step together into the heart of the labyrinth.
“This is the middle,” says Daphne as they stop to admire the intricately patterned floor. “Angel calls it the core. And she says that we should concentrate very hard on what we want before we set off back. Because it’s on the way out that we get to choose the way forward into the future.”
Isabel wants a mother and says so, but Daphne has a word of caution.
“Angel says that you can’t influence other people’s actions or beliefs. You can only change the way you see them.”
David Bliss is singing a similar song as he assures Daisy that her mother’s mental infirmity is of no consequence.
“But I cannot live in England,” insists Daisy. “I must stay here and take care for her.”
“Of course you must.”
“But for us zhat is not good.”
“Then I must move here.”
“But your job. It is impossible, n’est-ce pas?”
“Non. C’est possible,” he explains with a broad grin. “Because I am no longer a policeman. I am now the author of a soon-to-be bestselling historical novel.”
In Westchester, the heat wave has finally broken, the drought is over, and a sharp cloudburst sends mother and daughter scurrying into the cathedral’s doorway.
“What on earth will your friend Mavis think when you tell her?” asks Isabel as they hold each other tightly.
“She can think what she bloomin’ well wants,” says Daphne defiantly. “I shall tell her straight, ‘This is my daughter, Isabel, and I’ve two grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.’”
“And you’re going to Florence to visit them next week.”
Daphne stops dead as reality finally catches up to her. “Oh my God,” she cries. “I have a whole family of Italians waiting to meet me and the only Italian I can remember is arrivederci.”
The previous installment of the popular Inspector Bliss series:
The seventh David Bliss novel is another action-packed mystery filled with nail-biting adventures. When an RCMP officer is murdered in Vancouver, suspicion falls upon Janet Thurgood, a woman in her sixties who appears to everyone, apart from Trina Button, to be completely mad.
Trina is quick to embroil Daphne Lovelace in her efforts to discover the truth about Janet. Dave Bliss, meanwhile, tries to stay out of the way in the south of France, where he encounters problems of his own when, to his utter amazement, he rediscovers his one true love. Can he finally pull the trigger and make a commitment?
Praise for Crazy Lady:
“This is the seventh in the excellent series featuring Chief Inspector David Bliss and it’s one of the best of the bunch. Hawkins is a deft writer and, as a former police commander in the U.K. and a private investigator, he’s good at the details of police work. He also has a penchant for thinking globally, so we have a plot that ranges from a murdered policeman in Vancouver to the international trade in cocoa. … This novel is great fun, in addition to being a solidly plotted mystery. Hawkins is definitely on the right track here.” – Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
“Written to hold your interest, this multi-mystery will keep you reading. Recommended as a well told tale you will enjoy. I did.”
– Anne K. Edwards, New Mystery Reader
Missing: Presumed Dead
Detective Inspector David Bliss has been transferred from London, England, to Hampshire in what appears a move down the career ladder. His first day on the job begins with a murder: Jonathan Dauntsey willingly confesses to murdering his father. It’s an open-and-shut case, until the police can’t find the body. Bliss follows a trail of clues that lead him back to the question: who did Jonathan Dauntsey murder, if anyone at all? As the mystery of the murder begins to resolve itself, so does the mystery of Bliss’s transfer from the big city to a small town.
The Fish Kisser
When a megalomaniac becomes determined to exact revenge on the Western world through a devious plot of global cyber-warfare, he tracks down and kidnaps the experts that can help him accomplish the unthinkable. When his hired henchmen target Roger LeClarc, an English computer expert with a dark secret of his own, the hunters become the hunted. English detective David Bliss teams up with Dutch detective Yolanda Pieters to solve this improbable affair. Together they chase a trail of blood, intrigue, and romance across Europe to Iraq in a desperate search for the kidnapped specialists.
No Cherubs for Melanie
Melanie Gordonstone, a cherubic six-year-old, was Daddy’s favourite in every way. So Margaret, her jealous twelve-year-old sister, drowned her. Inexperience led young Detective Bliss to attribute the girl’s death to accident, but Melanie’s mother drives herself mad believing her husband to be the killer. Margaret taunts her deranged mother for ten years before putting her out of her misery, hanging her from a chandelier in a faked suicide. Now, frightened for his safety, Margaret’s father sends her to live in a remote Canadian community where he believes she can do no further damage — big mistake!
A Year Less a Day
David Bliss teams up with Daphne Lovelace to trace the father of a Canadian woman whose husband is dying of cancer. While Ruth Jackson believes that she was sired by a Beatle, Bliss and Daphne have other ideas. In Vancouver, Ruth’s world falls apart when her dying husband suddenly disappears and she is arrested on suspicion of murder. His substantial life insurance policy and the blood-
stained knife in her kitchen don’t help her case. Detective Sergeant Phillips of the Mounties takes up the case, and Trina Button, a zany homecare nurse, stirs up trouble for everyone in this intriguing international story.
The Dave Bliss Quintet
Inspector David Bliss goes undercover once again, and heads to St-Juan-sur-Mer on the Côte d’Azur. His mission is so secret that even Bliss doesn’t know why he is there: he only knows that he is tracking down a man the force wants in custody for an unstated reason. But the winds of the Mediterranean provide clues that take Bliss off course and lead him to unravel two of the world’s best known unsolved mysteries: the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask and the location of the stolen Nazi gold.
Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.
A bizarre series of suicides by elderly women in England raises the eyebrow of newly promoted Chief Inspector David Bliss, who discovers that all the women had recently sent large sums of money to a Western Union account in Vancouver. As Bliss uncovers the truth behind the deaths, old friends Daphne Lovelace and Trina Button are on a road trip through North America, raising funds to help those in need of kidney transplants. But when their fabulous Kidneymobile is found unoccupied, a perplexed Bliss searches frantically for his friends — and the astonishing secret that links their disappearance with the suicides.
Deadly Sin Page 29