by Dana Cameron
“Because I think we’re working toward the same end. Look, I’m sort of…camping out while I’m here. I don’t particularly want to make my presence here known. If you find anything, leave me a note in the cemetery at St. Alban’s. You know the place? There’s a big oak tree by the river side of the churchyard. Leave me a note under a rock at the base of the tree. If I find anything, I’ll let you know too. Same way.”
“I’m not making any promises,” I said, backing off in the direction of my escape route. This was getting surreal.
“Me neither.” He turned away. “The best day’s work Julia ever did was to leave here. I’d like to find out what it was that brought her back. And then got her killed.”
As the stranger ducked down an alley, I turned and started jogging back toward the center of town, putting as much distance between me and the Fig and Thistle as possible. I didn’t slow down until I was just outside the Prince of Wales and then paused just to catch my breath. The rapidly lengthening shadows cast an unwholesome cloak over landscape that was more happily familiar to me. It was nearly seven, though I was surprised to realize that it was as early as that still. It seemed clear to me that the young stranger was probably the person who was sleeping rough in Sabine’s churchyard. Now I was left asking myself, not so much about his curious lodgings or his desire to avoid notice and the police, but as to what his interest in Julia Whiting’s death was.
Chapter 11
THE SCENE THAT MET ME UPON ENTERING THE PRINCE of Wales was so far removed from the one I’d just left as to leave me stunned and speechless with relief. I was back where I belonged. The wooden paneling that had struck me as so dark before I now realized glowed from polish and care, adding not light but luster to the room. The glances of the habitués were passing and idly curious rather than suspicious. And best of all, there were faces that I recognized and that welcomed me.
Jane and Greg both cried out “Emma!” simultaneously and waved me over. They were holding hands, practically sitting in each other’s laps, a vast change from the barely polite silences and obvious avoidances of the morning. Even as I walked over, I wondered how they had reconciled—and over what, exactly.
I sat down with more of a sigh and a bump than I meant. Looking at my friends, I started to laugh and they joined in.
“Long day?” Jane asked.
“Way too long,” I answered.
“What will you have, Emma?” said Greg, as he pushed back his chair.
“No, no, it’s my round, I believe,” I said hurriedly. I had never bought a round the last time, and suspected that it was my turn. “You’re having two bitters?”
“Learns fast,” he replied. “Yes, please.”
“And two bitters for me too.” Jane giggled.
I looked at her. Giggling? “And a bitter for Jane.”
It took me a moment to get the attention of the bartender, Ian, but only because it was a busy Friday. “Half a tic.” He handed a whiskey and two gins to a young woman dressed in a business suit, who was being teased from a table on the far side of the room to universal laughter. “Now, what can I get for you? Wait, a moment, you’re with the professors, right? Then that’s two bitters—and what else?”
“Just another one of those, please. And one for yourself.” I’d learned from watching Greg that this was the proper way of tipping in a pub.
Ian beamed. “Well, ta very much indeed. You’re from the States, right? Do you watch the American football, then? I love it, myself.” He began to pull the pints. “Huge place, America, you don’t know till you’re there. My brother was in Texas, a year or two after he left school, the late seventies, it was. I went to go visit him on the holidays, just a tyke, I was. I didn’t know nothing. I got to New York and called him from the airport. Asked him which bus I should take to get to Houston! When he ever told me it would take four days to get there, did my jaw ever drop! I was gobsmacked! You ever been to Houston?” He handed me the drinks, and I paid up.
I shook my head. “Never. Like you said, it’s a big country. I live on the East Coast, Massachusetts.”
“Oh, yeah? The Patriots, right?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“Right but…I’m afraid I’m not much for football.” I looked down at the beer. All these pints were perfectly drawn, the amber body still settling in the glass. I’m sure Brian could have described how and why the minute bubbles were moving up from the bottom, leaving an exact quarter inch of foam at the top, with an elegant physics equation or perhaps a concise statement about the reaction between the carbon dioxide and the air pressure outside the cask, or something like that. All I knew was that these drinks were about as far away as one could get from the Fig and Thistle without actually heading back again.
“Thanks very much,” I said, and moved back to the table. The bartender waved even as he hurried to another patron waiting at the other end of the bar.
Those drinks went down quickly and were followed in rapid succession by another round, but by this time, I’d learned to order half-pints of beer or cokes. It was with some exasperation that I realized that Jane showed no sign of starting the talk that she’d promised. Worse than that, my stomach was empty; I’d had no dinner before I’d gone chasing after Trevor and got entangled at the Fig and Thistle. It didn’t seem that Jane and Greg had eaten either, but they didn’t seem much bothered by the fact, chatting as they were about everything under the sun but archaeology, Julia, or Marchester. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
“I’m starving,” I said. “Let’s go out and get something to eat. Someplace quiet.”
For a moment Jane looked at me with a calculating clarity that seemed quite out of place in the giddiness she’d shown all evening. She glanced away, and I watched her face change again, to relief. “Look, there’s Simon. Oi, Simon! Over here!” A short, fair bloke started with recognition, waved back, and hastily joined us.
Simon was a friend of Greg’s from school, I was told, and appeared to be every bit as affable as Greg. After yet another round, courtesy of Simon, I was starting to get fidgety and Jane saw this, I’m sure, because she kept launching into anecdote after anecdote, so that no interruption was possible. I noticed that Simon was equally frustrated, because he was trying to get Greg’s attention by raised eyebrows and the like, getting more and more anxious as another half hour went on. Finally, when Jane stopped to draw breath—and another three ounces of beer—Simon jumped in.
“Greg, would it be possible to have a word at the bar? It’s about the, er…thing.”
Greg blinked and then shock registered as he understood what his friend was talking about. Neither Jane nor I knew, that was for sure. “Oh, certainly. Ladies, if you would excuse us for just a moment?”
“Why excuse you? What are you talking about?” Jane said. “Why can’t I hear?”
Long pause. “It’s a surprise, Jane.” He kissed her very tenderly on the head. “We’ll only be a moment, and then we’ll go out for Chinese, or a curry or something, okay?”
His wife rolled her eyes, unmollified. “Well, go ahead, keep your grotty little secret, but I’m not about to—”
“I need a breath of air anyway,” I said immediately. “You guys take the table and Jane and I will take a little stroll. Come on, Jane.”
Jane got up reluctantly and then snagged her foot around the stool, falling. After another five minutes of checking her ankle and assuring her that she was fine, I was pleased that Simon and Greg shooed us from the pub, but wondered greatly what the “thing” was that needed to be so urgently and privately discussed.
The quiet outside the pub was as immediate as a blow. Not wanting to lose my momentum or my chance, I began walking briskly eastward, past the site, and down toward the new church. Jane was forced to keep up simply because I refused to slow when she asked me to. I kept going until I reached the field where I’d seen Sabine and young Tedman playing football and found a bench facing the river. I sat down and patted the space next to
me. Heaving a great sigh, Jane sat down, as far from me as she could.
The moonlight shone on the water, still as sluggish as ever. I sat for a moment, watching the lights on the other side of the bank winking through the low clouds, and the humidity around me suggested that a low front was just starting to edge into Marchester.
“Jane, I’m really worried about you. You seemed so distraught this morning. Why don’t you tell me what happened between you and George Whiting—it was he, wasn’t it? Tell me that, tell me what went on at the police station, too. You’ll feel better if you can talk it out, I promise you.”
Jane made a face. “God, ever since Princess Di. Talk it out, get it out, and you’ll feel better.”
“Yeah, well it’s true.”
“Perhaps.” She set her jaw and looked away from me. “I rely on myself to get through these things. I take responsibility for myself and I don’t need anyone else.”
I half-nodded, noncommittally. “You don’t even need Greg?”
Jane looked scornful. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean I expect him to look after me.”
“Greg seems to be the type who likes to look after people,” I said. “I mean, look at the way he thinks of his Auntie Mads, at the cafe. He is very thoughtful of her—”
“Oh, well, he would be, wouldn’t he?”
“—But when she started to say something that was in the slightest bit negative about you, he shut her down. I mean, it must be very hard for him, to have picked the only person in the world who won’t let him help her.”
Jane shook her head vehemently. “Oh, I let him help me. I do. You saw me tonight, not a word about work, paying all that attention to him? What more does he want?”
I thought that Jane’s attention to Greg might have served many purposes and it was a Band-Aid, maybe, but no solution to the sort of problems they had in their relationship. Greg probably was also interested in something a little deeper than flirtations at the pub and I hoped that he never figured out that he was, at least from my point of view, just another entry on Jane’s to-do list.
“He doesn’t mind your work,” I said. “He just wants to be a part of it, to help.”
“Every time Greg tries to help, he only makes it worse,” she said stonily.
“I find that hard to believe.”
She canted her head decidedly. “It’s absolutely so. Our house, for example. It’s really his house, and he thought it would save money if we stayed here, but it really just narrowed down my options, tied me to this part of the world.”
I looked around Jane’s part of the world, thinking that a house and a job was a far-off dream for many of my teaching friends. “And what’s so bad here?”
“Well, the university’s nice, but not really first rank.” Jane was all but pouting. “It’s too far from the center of things—”
That’s what e-mail is for, I thought. That’s why you make the department into something special. It’s the department, more than the school, after a certain level.
Jane continued. “And the people. Everyone’s too much in each other’s pockets. And they hate me—”
“You mean like George Whiting.”
“Oh.” Jane started, then snuck a guilty peek at me. She slumped. “This isn’t the first time we’ve butted heads. He’s been annoyed with me since I slowed down his work. Why the bloody man couldn’t realize that you just don’t go plowing through a medieval smithy, largely intact, mind you, is beyond me. So he retaliated by having some of the Unit’s money pulled by the council. Later on, when he proposed another site for a launderette, I was very pleased to stand up at the council meeting and explain why the site was inappropriate, seeing as it was up for nomination for protection. So it’s been like this forever; he’s mad, his wife’s worse.”
“I was wondering whether you couldn’t, I don’t know, smooth things out through her—her name’s Ellen, right?”
“Not a bit of it. Bloody cow had the cheek to fly in my face, try to get me to drop Julia. Said it was a disruption to the family. I ask you!”
We were getting off the track, I thought. “But this morning, he was blaming you for Julia’s death. Why would he say that? How is that possible?” Even as I asked, I could feel my hands growing colder and clammier. Maybe it was the night air on the river, maybe it was what I was asking Jane.
There was a long silence between us, only partially filled in by the night noises on the river. I could hear something rustling in the weeds, and farther away, a frog croak seemed to echo, intensified by the still air.
Jane stared in front of her, chewing on the inside of her lip, her face drawn with fatigue. She said quietly, “The man is distraught, that’s all. Julia and I…we both generally behaved badly around each other, for all the reasons people do. I’m so sorry for that now, because I’m sure there was nothing really wrong there. It was just so easy to be tricked into thinking she was more mature than she actually was. It’s no more complicated than George wanting to find some reason for the death of his daughter. I’m not surprised he looked to me; he blames me for everything. I’m responsible for Julia going into archaeology, I’m responsible for Julia’s death…” She waved her hand about, frowning; Whiting was just one more wart on her imperfect life.
“And do the police believe him? Where’ve they left it with you?”
“I don’t know what to believe.” She snorted. “The police ‘have no further enquiries at this time,’ and I mustn’t leave town. That’s all they’ll tell me.”
“What did they ask you about, then?” I picked a long blade of grass and began to tie it into knots.
“Just things like timing. Where Julia was at certain times, what her relationships were like with the rest of the crew.” Pause. “Where I was the night of the murder.”
I paused in my grass torture. “That was your birthday dinner, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, the night I stormed out on Greg,” she said, and began scuffing a deep rut into the ground underneath the bench. “They were terribly interested in that. I was just walking around that night—”
“Whereabouts?” I thought of the newspaper article describing Julia’s last known movements.
“Just all over the place, even as far as the university. I told you all this before. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular.” She looked up sharply and stopped kicking at the dirt. “Not near the construction site on Leather Street, not near the Grub and Cabbage, if that’s what you’re asking me, Emma. I just walked and thought. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t meet anyone, just like the afternoon I was done at the station. I didn’t see anyone, didn’t run into anyone I know.”
The more she said it, the more I went cold: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. “What were her relations like with the rest of the crew?” Even as I changed the question, Jane was getting more and more impatient with me, I could tell.
“I don’t know.” Jane dismissed the question, then, after a bit of hesitation, tried to tackle it, unable to resist the challenge. “Julia wasn’t well liked. Certainly not by the girls. She was always a bit shy, which puts people off, and once she came out of her shell, she came off as too much the brain, which doesn’t often sit well.”
She shrugged restlessly. “Some of the blokes had crushes on her, probably. She could be very intense and people seem to be attracted to that. Until they realize it has nothing to do with them, as they inevitably found out.”
I wondered whether this wasn’t something that had also characterized Jane’s life and then thought again of the pictures of Julia in the darkroom.
“Was she involved with anyone?”
“Emma, I really don’t see what any of this has to do with you!” She stood up now, very angry. “Why do you persist so?”
I threw the knotted blade of grass away from me. “Come off it, Jane. All I’m trying to do is help, if not Julia, then you, at least. Why is that so hard to understand? What are you so scared of? Me? What am I going to do to you?”
&
nbsp; Jane got up a little unsteadily; she hadn’t been drinking halves. “I understand, I do. Of course you want to help. But it’s all under control, thank you.”
I was angry now; how dared she patronize me like this? “Jane—”
“Emma, you simply don’t understand it’s not how we do things here.” She turned and headed back down the river path toward the site. I sat, really feeling the chill of the damp air now, and pulled my coat closer around me. So much for England in June; I had been hoping for the springtime the poets wrote of—blue skies, warm grass, sweet strawberries, and cool cream—but was beginning to suspect it was mythological. I hadn’t had dinner for the second night in a row and was starting to feel the effects of the night’s excitement and beer. It was a nasty feeling, being alone in an empty part of town, between two graveyards, arguing with my only friend here.
A splash and another rustling down in the tall grasses by the side of the river startled me, and I jumped up and hurried back up toward the main road. I didn’t want to run into Jane on the river path and I didn’t want to stay put. Once I got onto the road, well lit despite the creeping fog, I also began to worry about my indiscretion about talking with Jane in so open a place. Yes, it was quiet and lonely, but only this evening I’d learned that there was a lot more traffic, indeed, residence, behind the church than anyone expected. Thinking about the splash again, and now unable to recall having heard the sound of a fish or bird before or after, I hurried down Church Street, back to Jane and Greg’s house.
Where there was no one home, of course. Presumably, unless she’d gone for another one of her long, unattended, and unthinking rambles, Jane had met Greg and Simon back at the pub, where they were presently debating the virtues of Indian versus Chinese food. Confident that Jane would make some excuse for my absence, I overcame my habitual reticence about making myself at home in someone else’s house and started looking into putting together some dinner for myself. A lump of brie—I don’t think Jane would have had anything so common as cheddar—an apple, and a piece of bread, with a nice glass of orange juice, and my spirits rose considerably. I felt much more my old self, much more where I belonged.