by Cathy Ace
Martha Gray’s expression told me she knew she’d been put in her place, and that she didn’t like where that place was.
Jean Jones looked livid. ‘Mother your own kid,’ she snapped at Martha. ‘Oh, no, I forgot . . . you can’t, can you? Because you gave it away. Well boo-hoo for you. Your bed, lie in it.’
Martha and Joe Gray’s faces both drained.
So the Grays had once had a baby? Meg must have told her mother about that during one of their very few mother/daughter chats.
‘I’d always heard there was a child.’ It was Dan James, speaking excitedly from his prime position leaning against the fireplace. ‘One hears so much on the literary grapevine, of course,’ he swaggered, ‘but a good deal of it is complete tosh. So, Martha – was it Joe’s, or was it Julius’s? I mean – everyone knows your “breakdown” happened right after Julius had been killed; he took a bullet meant for you, didn’t he Joe? I wonder what else of yours he took. So, do tell, Martha – who was the father? I have to know.’
With Martha and Joe still reeling from Jean’s comments, I wondered how they’d react to Dan’s. There were many puzzled faces around me, most people not knowing who ‘Julius’ was, but I suspected they were working hard to put two and two together.
‘I won’t stand for this sort of talk.’ said Joe. His voice had lifted half an octave.
‘Oh Joe, what’s to become of us?’ cried Martha Gray. She was beginning to unravel. I’ve seen it before, and once it starts, sometimes it just won’t stop. ‘Has everyone always gossiped about this? I thought we’d been so discreet. Joe, I can’t go on, I can’t . . . it’s all too much for me, help me. Tears were streaming down Martha’s face.
‘Now look what you’ve done – you unfeeling bastard!’ Joe Gray was incandescent. ‘Think you’re so goddam clever, don’t you, Dan? You swan around as though you’re some sort of literary genius, eh? Well you’re not. Meg told me about all those poems you wrote . . . together. The ones you published without giving her any credit. She told me what you said to her when she asked you why her name wasn’t attached to them; telling her she was just an unschooled barmaid, that she had no place having her name on them alongside yours was just about the worst thing you could have done to her, Dan. If she hadn’t waited tables and worked in bars, you’d never have been able to sit around in Greenwich Village on your fat backside all day, playing about with the words she’d written and shoving the odd bit of Greek in there to tart it all up . . . just so it would pass some phony ‘literary litmus test’. You’re a fake, Dan James, and if they find out about it at Harvard I don’t care how watertight that tenure contract is, I bet they could break it, and you’d be out. Fraud is fraud, that’s that.’
I was annoyed that my powers of persuasion hadn’t wheedled this little nugget out of Joe when I’d had him on his own. I wondered if anyone else had held anything back; I was beginning to suspect they might have done.
Now it was Dan’s turn to glow with anger; it suited him better than it suited Joe – Dan had the right coloring and shape for it. There was a very real possibility he might explode . . . he was so close to it already, with his shirt buttons straining.
‘Look to your wife, man,’ replied Dan James, trying to deflect the barbs thrown at him, ‘can’t you see she’s distressed?’
‘Distressed?’ replied Martha Gray, obviously feeling she was now capable of sticking up for herself. ‘I’m not half as distressed as I will be if this all comes out at synagogue. Oh Joe, you’ve got to stop them from telling anyone.’
Having spoken her piece, Martha Gray dissolved into tears again. Her husband looked at her sympathetically, but didn’t move to comfort her physically, which I found interesting.
‘Dan – and all the rest of you lot – listen up.’ Joe’s tone had changed; he was about to try to take control, I could see it in every move he made, in every glint of his eyes. ‘There’s a deal to be done here, people. If our secret is out, and if it’s the only one – or one of only a few – then someone . . . anyone . . . here could hold that over us, forever. I say that everyone here should share their secrets with the whole group. That way, no one person has the upper hand. Right now some of us are exposed, some aren’t. Let’s level the playing field. Right Adrian? Right Dan? And what about you, Luis? You know what I know about you; I don’t want to hold that over your head. Are you in?’
I couldn’t fault Joe Gray’s logic, nor could I fault him for, inadvertently, assuring my own safety; if everyone knew everybody else’s secrets, then there’d be no point in the murderer targeting me. And I felt better knowing that.
‘I’m in,’ I said, as brightly as one cup of coffee, no gin and tonic, and a growing suspicion that anyone in the room might have killed Meg would allow me to be.
My inner being called Save Yourself, and she’s usually worth listening to.
‘My secret . . .’ I continued, immediately drawing everyone’s attention, ‘is that I didn’t, and I emphasize did not, kill my ex-boyfriend, Angus, who I found dead on my bathroom floor one morning some years ago, in Cambridge, England. I emphasize that I didn’t kill him because the photographs of me being led to a police car which were splattered across the morning newspapers, and the Internet ever since, have led quite a number of people to quote the old adage “no smoke without fire” to my face, despite the fact I was completely exonerated. Of course the police hauled me in – why wouldn’t they? As a professor of criminology I am only too well aware that most murders are committed by a spouse or partner, ex-spouse, family member or someone close to the victim. And only Angus and I were on the premises when he died. Of course they arrested me. But they let me go. They actually proved I couldn’t have done it.’
I gave my comments a moment to sink in.
Suspicious glances flitted around the room.
I added, ‘So there – my “secret”, here in Canada, not back in the UK where everyone seems to know about it, is that I was once held on suspicion of murder. But, no, I didn’t kill Meg. To be honest, I have no idea how Meg was killed. I can’t think how anyone did it. Whoever killed Meg was very clever.’ As I spoke my last sentence I tried to make sure I cast my eyes over everyone in the room; would anyone give themselves away by looking smug?
‘I have something to say about how Meg might have died,’ interrupted Peter Webber. All eyes turned from me to him. ‘I’ve been thinking about the power panel, and I reckon somebody did something that involved the electricity last night, and that’s why we blew a bunch of fuses all at once. It might not have been anything to do with Meg . . . but, just like you’ve been trying to find out our secrets, Cait, so I’ve been asking everyone about their power usage last night after dinner. People all did the usual stuff, in fact everyone did just about the same stuff as each other. The only possible overload condition was when both Adrian and Jean had their in-room fan heaters turned on at the same time. Those things drink power.’
‘We haven’t got a heater in our room.’ Sally Webber sounded a bit annoyed.
‘No, dear, I know,’ replied Peter to his wife, patiently. ‘I think that Adrian and Jean have them in their rooms because they both have a room that only has an aspect to the north, like Meg’s did. Everyone else’s room has at least one aspect to the west or east. The rooms with north-facing windows would probably be colder than all the other rooms, and that’s likely why those rooms have the extra heater. But –’ he returned his attention to the room in general – ‘as I said, it seems that we were all able to use as much power as we liked throughout the evening. From what I can gather it seems Martha was the last one to use the power last night, and to find that it was still working just fine. Unless you used anything and it worked after four a.m., Cait?’ I shook my head – I’d been sound asleep by then. ‘Okay, that’s final then – when Martha used her curling tongs at four a.m. they worked, so that’s all I know.’
I was somewhat puzzled by why Martha would need to be using a curling iron at that time of the night, but I was m
ore interested in the fact that – if electricity had somehow been involved in Meg’s murder – then Peter Webber had just narrowed her time of death to between four and six a.m.; Meg’s body wouldn’t have been in the state of rigor and lividity it had been in when I’d examined it if she’d died after six, and now it looked as though it might have happened after four. His inquiries had been most helpful.
‘So there you are then,’ continued Peter Webber, ‘no one’s told me about any weird power-usage that could have caused what I saw at the panel, so I have to assume someone’s lying. A simple power outage doesn’t cause a panel to arc like that.’
‘Who knew we had two sleuths in our midst? Way to go, Peter.’ It was Adrian. He began what I suspected was a sarcastic round of applause. No one joined in.
‘Well, that’s not the secret Meg told me about you,’ sniped Jean Jones, looking right at me. I could feel my eyebrows rise. Both of them. I thought we’d successfully got past my being the center of attention.
‘What do you mean, Jean?’ asked Adrian. Maybe he was sleuth number three.
‘Cait said that her secret was about that boyfriend of hers being found dead. I knew all about that, of course. The talk of Swansea it was, when it happened. But that’s not what Meg told me about you. She told me you cheated at school. All the time. She said it wasn’t fair, but that you always got away with it.’
I was flummoxed . . . which is not something I get the chance to be very often – who does? Frankly, who wants to be?
‘I don’t know what you mean, Jean – nor what Meg meant. I never, ever cheated – at school or anywhere else for that matter; not in my whole life. Never.’ I was trying to make sure I was being clear. I also knew I sounded hurt. Because I was.
‘You used that photographic memory of yours – but you never told anyone you had it. That’s cheating.’ Jean’s harsh tones were now benefitting from a liberal dose of venom. But at least now I knew what she meant.
‘Yes, I do have a photographic memory,’ I admitted. ‘Not that such a thing actually exists, but I won’t go into the technicalities right now . . . suffice to say I have an unusual ability to recall things I have experienced in great detail, at will. When I was in school I didn’t even know I had the ability; I honestly thought everyone was just like me, and genuinely didn’t understand why people couldn’t remember things the way I did. When Meg and I studied together I would recite whole chunks from lessons we’d had weeks earlier; she told me I was weird more times than I care to remember. It was Meg herself who brought me a book from the library about memory that helped me understand how I was different, and how to begin to train my gift. By the time we hit the Lower Sixth I was quite good at it, and I used it to help both Meg and myself to get through our A levels. But that’s not cheating – that’s just me. I can’t not remember things. To be honest, sometimes it’s a curse; imagine walking around with all the experiences you’ve ever had right there in living color, playing on your internal movie screen. In fact, Meg’s initial research on my behalf was to find out how to help me forget, not remember. Believe me – a person doesn’t want to remember everything.’
It was clear the people in the room thought that my ‘revelations’ weren’t terribly interesting; Dan, whose greedy face had lit up when I’d said I’d share my secrets, looked especially disappointed.
‘Well, it sounds exactly like cheating to me,’ concluded Jean, acerbically.
Frankly, I didn’t give even one hoot, let alone two, how Jean felt – but it did hurt that Meg had mentioned my ‘gift’ to her mother in such a way. Despite her closeness to me at school, and her seeming to understand about my memory, had Meg really thought that my using it was ‘cheating’? Was that why she’d been trying to help me to forget? Meg had always been good at all the creative things at school, like writing essays, and poems, and doing art; I’d been good at all the ‘remembering’ things. Being gifted creatively and using it to create isn’t cheating – why should me using my memory be characterized that way? I was still stewing on this when I realized Adrian was speaking again.
‘Well, thanks for those insights Cait, and Jean, but how about you, Peter? How about you stop your electrical sleuthing for a moment and do something really useful? Confess about your past problems? I’ll tell you right now Meg confided in me about you – so if you don’t tell them all, then I will . . .’ Adrian’s twinkling eyes were more malevolent than I’d seen them before. ‘Or doesn’t even the little woman know?’ he added, pointedly.
‘Peter?’ Sally Webber choked back tears, and held her husband’s arm close to her little body.
‘I’m sorry, Sally.’ Peter Webber held his wife close, hugging her. He was looking deep into her eyes as he spoke. It was quite touching. ‘I hate to say it, but Joe’s right. It’s a good idea if we all tell everything. Then no one’s on their own; none of us will tell, because we’ll all have something to lose. I might as well do it. I believe Adrian when he says he’ll tell them if I don’t . . . and I’d prefer them to hear the real story.’
Peter turned his attention from his wife to the group. He cleared his throat, as if for a public speaking engagement. ‘Before I tell you what I did, I want you all to know I’m not proud of what happened, and I’ve tried hard to make up for it ever since. But there’s no question it was wrong. However, I have confessed it directly to my Lord, and know I am saved – so it doesn’t matter what you think of me. But it does matter that no one finds out, because there are circumstances under which I could be deported from the US to Canada, and possibly put in jail for a long time.’
‘But we’re in Canada now,’ snapped Jean. ‘Will they put you in jail just because you came here for this weekend? Why would you come if they would?’
Fair questions.
‘Because, Jean, the Canadian authorities aren’t looking for me. They don’t know, or care, who I am. They never found out who hit a little girl crossing the road one night in Chilliwack, BC, so they don’t know it was me. I’d only had one beer after I’d left the set that day, but I panicked, and drove off. I wanted to give myself up – but Meg wouldn’t let me. We were trying to get pregnant, and she didn’t want to lose me. So I didn’t go to the cops. Instead, I sat and watched the parents cry their faces raw on TV. I noted how the story moved from the newspaper’s front page, to its inside pages, and then I saw how it disappeared from the news altogether. But the guilt never left me. Yes, this is the first time I’ve come to Canada since I left in the 1980s, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. You see, even if they knew it was me who’d done it, they’d be looking for Peter Webster born January 9th, not Peter Webber born September 1st; I managed to fiddle around with a few bits of paperwork so I got my Green Card as a slightly different person than I was in Canada, and I became a US citizen as that “new” person. I’ve been “Webber” for so long now that “Webster” doesn’t usually bring a response from me at all . . . though it was tough to start with. Not as tough as it must have been for those parents, losing their little girl, of course. My Lord has forgiven me, but for my entire life I must make amends. That, I believe, is the only secret I have. And now you all know. My fate on this earth lies with the people in this room; I’ll be in my Lord’s arms after that, and I will face His judgement then.’
Peter Webber had spoken eloquently; I couldn’t have been the only one in the room knowing his secret was something none of us would have wanted to bear. But one of the things that struck me most about Peter’s story was that – once again – Meg was the person who’d insisted the matter shouldn’t be revealed at the time. Interesting.
‘I love you Peter,’ said Sally Webber, looking at her husband with eyes that glowed. ‘We are all sinners. The Lord forgives us all. He sent his only Son to save us. I am proud of you, my darling.’ She kissed her husband on the cheek. Peter smiled at her, and she at him.
I thought I might throw up.
‘Good for you, Peter,’ called Adrian across the room. ‘Your version varies a little
from the one Meg told me – but then I’m guessing that’ll be the case for all of us. Maybe it’s good that we all get a chance to put our own stories out there; Meg had a talent for making it seem like nothing was ever her fault, didn’t she? So . . . who’s next?’
I admired the way Adrian was managing the situation – though I did rather wish he’d remember his offer to bring me a drink.
‘What about you, Dan? An outsider might think that the Grays have got it in for you; Joe’s accused you of fraud and Martha was hinting at something else this morning. What about it, Dan? Are you man enough to confess?’
Dan James seemed to be shrinking as I looked at him. The bombast was deflating, to be replaced by a person with a much smaller ego. The phrase ‘taken down a peg or two’ wriggled into my conscious mind, and stayed there.
‘I can understand why Meg thought she had a hand in creating my best-known works,’ began Dan, ‘and she did . . . in a way. She was an intuitive writer, but she was no poet. We’d sit and talk about themes I wanted to explore and she’d tell me her thoughts, and jot down little notes about a topic; it was like a parlor game for us. But she didn’t construct the works – she didn’t even understand most of the layers beneath their surface. They weren’t her work – they were mine. But I never told her she was an unschooled barmaid, Joe. I would never have said that. I loved Meg. She’d been on her own for a couple of years since you guys had split up.’ Dan nodded toward Adrian. ‘She didn’t mention a child to me. The first I heard about that was today – which is an odd discovery to make about one’s ex-wife . . . about whom one thought one knew everything. I thought we’d never conceived because we were being careful; we’d both agreed that children weren’t for us. She was fun, she inspired me, she helped me in so many ways, and I hadn’t grown to despise her – not when my poems were published. That came later.’ Dan James was a good speaker. Maybe his lectures would be more interesting than I’d originally suspected; he was holding our attention, and his body language spoke of earnestness . . . seemingly unforced. Or maybe he was just a wonderful actor.