Burden of Memory (16 page)
Moira tossed and turned in her bed. Unable to get a minute’s rest she had lain there, watching the sun play on the wallpaper. One would think she would be able to sleep at any time, used as she had been to sleeping in impossible conditions: wartime canvas tents, crowded nursing barracks, tossing hospital ships, hot dusty back rooms behind refugee camp hospitals. An hour snatched here, two precious hours there.
When she was young her father would take Ralph out camping, sometimes for as many as three or four days at a time. Moira begged to be allowed to accompany them (Megan and Maeve cringed in horror at the idea) but it was never permitted. Camping was a manly endeavor, her mother explained (her father never explained anything) and unsuitable for a young lady with good prospects.
She wrote a long, agonized letter to her mother only once. She was working with the International Red Cross. Late in 1968. They were in West Africa, a tiny province called Biafra—an insignificant place no one had previously heard of—which had horrifically, but briefly, burst into the consciousness of the world.
Who today knows, she thought, watching the dust mites play against the morning sun, or cares what had happened there? Probably not a person in a thousand.
Her letter described in great detail the dirt and the heat, the flies crawling through the noses and eyes, thick with mucus, of the starving children, the overpowering odor of unwashed and dying bodies, of desperation, absolute poverty and decay, the closeness of the medical personnel, the lack of facilities for personal hygiene, how her menstrual periods had stopped under the combined forces of bad nutrition and continual stress.
Even now, all these years later, she cringed in embarrassment at the memory.
When she wrote that letter Moira had been spinning in the eye of anger as raw as a hurricane. Not at the poverty and desperation, but at the French doctor who had charmed her effortlessly and made love to her in the tiny tent with the sounds of death and dying all around them, and then returned without a word of farewell to his wife and estates in France. In her rage, she wanted to shock her mother with how absolutely unsuitable she had become. And all she had accomplished was to distress her fragile, cosseted mother into a near breakdown.
Mary Margaret died shortly after receiving that letter, while Moira was still in Africa grieving over her lost love.
And her daughter, Moira, had never forgiven herself.
Moira watched the sun sparkling on specks of dust and she firmly pushed aside thoughts of her mother. Instead she worried about the cottage that made up the beating heart of her family, her mother and grandmother’s letters, so carefully preserved all these years, their collection of art, as valuable in sentiment as a good deal of it was in money.
She could tolerate lying here no longer. “Ruth,” she shouted, knowing that the humiliating baby monitor was turned on. To her horror the words emerged from her throat as a scarcely recognizable croak. She coughed. “Ruth.”
Much better.
A few minutes later, Ruth stumbled into Moira’s room, rubbing sleep out of her eyes and clutching her peach negligee around her thin bosom.
“Time to get up. I must go and see what is happening downstairs.” Moira struggled to push the heavy covers off. The bed was ridiculously soft and she felt like she was drowning. It took some effort but she managed to get to a sitting position. “Help me to get dressed.”
Elaine and Phoebe were hard at work, crouched on the kitchen floor in front of a roaring fire. It was a pleasant day, but the fire had been stoked so high the room was sweltering. They were sorting through the boxes, laying some of the papers out to dry before the fire and drying wetter ones with a handheld hairdryer.
Moira’s heart leapt at the sight of them. Working so hard to save her precious papers. “Let me help,” she insisted. “I can at least hold that hairdryer for you. My grandmother’s letters mean the world to me.”
Elaine scratched at her scalp. Her blond hair stood up in a mop of wild curls and she was dressed in an unseasonable outfit of light T-shirt and khaki shorts. Deep circles outlined dark eyes in a pale face. The fine lines around her mouth and eyes, the ones that showed her age, were etched deeper than before. Moira assumed that Elaine had not slept much either. Her biographer touched the fragile papers with reverence as she sifted through the boxes, her long, educated fingers feeling for damp.
Moira thought of Donna, who had been in her employ for less than a week. She couldn’t imagine Donna going to so much trouble. Perhaps passion was a good thing after all.
“Don’t get too excited, please, Moira,” Elaine said. “I’ll have no idea what’s been lost until we can get back to the storage building and size up the damage. I hadn’t even inventoried the boxes, which should have been my first task. I’m sorry, I was so excited to dig into them.”
“No matter, I’m sure. Why can’t you go in there? The fire’s out, isn’t it?”
Elaine looked at Alan.
“The fire department won’t let us, Moira,” he said. “Not until an inspector comes around and declares the place safe.”
“How bad is it?”
“Not too bad at all. I’ve called a roofer to have a look. A good portion of the roof either isn’t there anymore or is about to collapse.”
“Any damage to the cottage itself?”
“A whiff of smoke, but nothing more.”
“The paintings are safe?”
“Everything is fine. The smoke barely touched the main building.”
“I meant your work?”
“No damage at all, I’m pleased to say. Not even a touch of smoke.”
“I’m glad. But if you need to, call an art restorer. And see to it that you get the best. I’ll pay, of course.”
“Fortunately, that won’t be necessary.”
Moira noticed Elaine looking back and forth from herself to the groundskeeper, struggling to understand the threads of conversation.
“I need a cup of tea. Haven’t had a drop yet, I’m simply parched. Is Lizzie up?”
“Not yet,” he said with a grin, “but I think I can manage to make a pot of tea. Ladies.”
The women all watched him cross the room. His tight rear moved under the rough jeans. Moira saw a spark flicker behind Elaine’s eyes, and she stored the observation away for further consideration.
“Totally humiliating,” she said, once Alan busied himself with the kettle and tea things. “I would have expected you to defend me a bit better, Ruth Czarnecki. Allowing me to be packed into that ambulance like a sack of potatoes. Indeed.”
Ruth gaped. “They were only concerned with your best interests, Miss Madison.”
“Humph. Those young people. They see an old woman and assume that she belongs in the hospital. That’s why I have you, Ruth. To defend me. Don’t you know that?”
“I’m sure she does, Moira,” Elaine interrupted. “The emergency personnel are highly trained. If they think they saw something amiss, then it was for your own good that they decided to check you over.”
Moira harrumphed. Elaine was right, and she knew it. She hated it when other people were right. “I want to see what’s in that box. If my grandmother’s letters have been destroyed, I will quite simply die. Ruth, pass me the letter at the top. Not that one, the one beside it.”
***
The fire inspector arrived as the family was settling down to lunch and spent what seemed like an eternity tramping about the old guest house. They sat around the dining room table, no one talking, everyone wondering what he would find. Alan and Brad had gone over with him.
Amber excused herself, saying she needed to get some air and would go for a walk. No one broke out of their contemplation of what the inspector would find upstairs long enough to consider her actions odd: Amber had never once been known to walk anywhere, unless it was through a mall.
“The boathouse wasn’t cleared out properly at the end of the summer,” Alison said, desperate for words to break the solemn silence that had fallen around the table. “There’s a bed made up in one of the rooms, or rather not made up. Sheets and blankets scattered all over the place and stacks of dirty dishes. Someone had better see to cleaning it up, or we’ll have mice living there in no time.”
Lunch served, Lizzie pulled up a chair, uninvited. Charles arched one eyebrow at her, but she stared him down.
Megan peeked between the slices of foccocia on her plate. “Strange bread, this.”
“But nice,” said Moira, who wasn’t having any. Moira had insisted that Ruth take a nap and in her place Phoebe had taken Moira up to her room earlier and helped her to get washed and dressed and have a cup of tea and slice of toast. Moira herself refused to go back to bed until she heard the fire investigator’s report.
The door opened and Alan escorted Hal Weiss, the investigator, in. Brad followed.
Charles pushed his chair back. “Why don’t you join me in the library, Mr. Weiss. Lizzie will bring some tea.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Charles,” Moira snorted. “I am the head of this household, Mr. Weiss. You may speak to me. Alan, get the man a chair.”
Alan pulled two vacant chairs up to the table. Charles resumed his seat, almost admitting defeat. But not entirely. “Perhaps we should excuse the young people, Moira?”
“Whatever for?” she snapped. “They were all here last night. So they have the right to know what is going on. Tea, Mr. Weiss?” She smiled at her guest. He sat down in the chair Alan provided, under no confusion as to who was in charge here.
Moira nodded to Lizzie and the cook slipped out.
He was a huge man, tall and massively overweight. The chest and underarms of his blue uniform shirt were heavily stained with perspiration, old and new. He pulled a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped off the moisture running in rivers off his glistening bald scalp and down his cheeks and temples.
This fascinating display was scarcely over, the handkerchief returned to its pocket, before Lizzie returned with tea for all, a plate full of cookies, and another pile of fresh sandwiches, one of which she placed beside Weiss’ elbow. Brad leaned across the table and helped himself, almost knocking his arm into his mother’s face.
“Looks like arson to me,” Weiss announced, chewing a huge mouthful of the sandwich and gulping down the scalding tea, all at the same time.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ve a lot of experience in this sort of thing, Miss Madison,” he said. “I’ll have to ask you folks to continue to stay out of that building for a while, until I get a full investigation going. But right now I’d swear that fire was set deliberately.”
Elaine looked at the startled faces around the table. With the exception of Hal Weiss’, every cup of tea sat abandoned. Alison held a sugar cookie half way to her mouth.
Ever practical, Alan asked, “We can’t leave the roof with a gaping hole in it. What if it rains?”
“Well, the upper level is pretty well soaked as it is, from our hoses, but if you want you can get temporary protection up. Work on the roof but don’t go inside.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Megan fluttered her hands in front of her chest. “Who ever would do such a thing?” Under the thick makeup she was as pale as the proverbial ghost.
“Perhaps you should lie down, my dear,” Charles said to his wife.
“No. I’d rather not. I want to hear what Mr. Weiss has to say.” Lizzie added a few heaping spoonfuls of sugar to a teacup and guided it into Megan’s shaking hand.
“Surely it must have been an accident,” Elliot said.
“I don’t think so. It was set on purpose, and a darned clumsy effort it was too. You folks are lucky for that, anyway. I’d say the fire was set with the help of a fire starter. The type people use on barbecues.”
“We have plenty of those around,” Alan said. “I use them all the time, to start fires in the fireplaces in winter, the grill in the summer.” He had taken a sandwich off the platter, but it sat untouched on the table before him.
“Do you keep them all in a safe place?”
Alan sighed and grimaced, his face showing his thoughts. “No, they’re where anyone can find them. In boxes by all the fireplaces, out in the hut where I keep the firewood.”
“Not your fault, young man,” Charles said. “No one wants to have to go running to you if they want to get a fire going.”
“A stack of loose papers was placed on top of one of those old boxes you keep up there, with a piece of fire starter underneath. And then lit.”
The family gasped.
“Fortunately, packed paper burns badly, very badly. A smoldering toilet roll will make a nice cooker, but it needs attention. No air circulation, you see. Fire would have gone out as soon as the loose papers were all burned up. Lots of smoke, a bad smell and that’s all. Excepting that one of the papers must have blown off the stack. I suspect it landed by the window; some old draperies stored there are pretty well destroyed. And once they caught you had enough heat to start on the walls and reach the roof.”
“Surely, you can’t be serious, Mr. —” Alison said. She pushed her chair back and paced the room. Her normally faultless blond hair was flattened down one side, presumably the side she slept on, and sticking up in all directions at the back, where she had earlier been scratching at her scalp with vigor. Her tailored shirt was wrinkled and awkwardly stuffed into cream wool slacks, and the belt around her thin waist had failed to thread through several of the loops at the back of the pants. Her nail polish was chipped. “Someone left an electric heater burning and it over heated, that’s all there is to it.”
“I didn’t leave the heater on. Why do people keep saying that?” In contrast to Alison, Phoebe was back to her normal self. When upstairs with Moira she had taken the opportunity to reapply her Count Dracula makeup, drench her hair in lacquer, and slip on an outfit of unadulterated black. But under the shock of Weiss’ revelations her complexion had turned paler still.
“I believe you, Miss,” Weiss said. “’Cause the heater is badly scorched, for sure, but it wasn’t the center of the blaze by any means. In fact, it isn’t even plugged in.”
Phoebe tossed a triumphant smile around the table.
“All right, something else then,” Elliot said. “Have you been smoking, Phoebe?”