Burden of Memory (31 page)
At long last Elaine had been invited up to the artist’s studio on the third floor. A recent renovation, the windows stretched from floor to ceiling, pure glass panes filling most of one side of the building. The soft northern light streamed in. Far below, specks of sunlight sparkled gold on the blue lake. The forest stretched to the horizon, brown and naked, its brief splendor spent for another year. Lizzie sat on the dock, her bare feet dangling in the cold water while Ophelia snoozed at her side.
The studio was large and airy, not much in the way of furniture but crammed with blank canvas, finished paintings, sealed crates, and shelves of paint tubes, brushes, and turpentine. A single sink and drying rack lined the back wall.
“Moira gave you all this?” Elaine said, when she finally found her voice.
“She did indeed. She’s a wonderful woman. She knew my grandparents in the war. Over in England. Burt and Betty Jones, my mother’s parents. They owned a shop in the town near where she was stationed.”
“Bramshott.”
“That’s right. My mother was in an accident one day, so the family story goes, in the early days of the war. She was hit by a Canadian soldier driving his motorcycle too fast down the country lanes. Apparently Moira happened on the scene and kept Mom from bleeding to death until they got her to the hospital.”
“What a great story.” A painting off in the corner caught Elaine’s eye. It was a silhouette of a wheelchair from the back, the artist watching the occupant as she watched a group of children and dogs clambering on the rocks.
“My parents immigrated to Canada after the war. My mother was a nurse, and many years later she ran into Moira at a convention of some sort. They recognized each other and there you have it.”
“Where are your parents now?”
Alan smiled. “Still going strong. They were invited for Thanksgiving, but they don’t travel much any more. They’re saving their strength for the weekend of the gallery opening. You’ll meet them then.”
She bent her head to examine the room. This was where Alan had assembled all his work, in preparation for the gallery showing. Most of the paintings were packed into crates, awaiting transport, but a few still lined the walls. As Elaine picked her way among the canvases she realized that the painting in the dark hall represented but a sample of what this man had to offer.
“You love it up here, don’t you?” she said, bending close to examine a watercolor of a young woman caught in the act of diving off a wooden dock, into a lake turned orange by the setting summer sun.
“What was your first clue?” Alan’s deep voice was filled with a smile.
“I’m psychic that way.”
He stepped behind her and wrapped one arm around her waist. He kissed the side of her neck and allowed the other hand to dance down her spine.
She shivered and settled back into the embrace. He turned her around and kissed her deeply. Elaine lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck.
Far across the lake a loon sounded. Hamlet and Ophelia ran through the woods, barking and scattering wildlife before them, and Lizzie pushed herself to her feet, knowing that it was time to go in and start dinner.
***
Moira returned from the funeral spent and drawn. But she got up early the next morning and was immediately on the phone in her study. When placing the call, she shooed them all, even Ruth, outside.
Shortly before lunch Moira called Alan in and told him to prepare for visitors.
Lizzie was stacking the lunch dishes in the dishwasher, while Elaine sipped the last of her tea as she jotted thoughts down in her notebook, when they heard cars pulling into the driveway. The two women wandered out to see what was happening. Moira sat on the back step, Ruth standing stoically behind her chair.
Constable D’Mosca clambered out of the leading truck. His companions were dressed in heavy work wear. They had a dog with them, a huge, drooling German shepherd pulling eagerly at his leash. The men donned plastic gloves, hoisted shovels, and followed Alan down the path to the boathouse and past the end of the flagstone path into the woods. Hamlet and Ophelia were confined to the kitchen, protesting the invasion of their territory, by canine and human, for all they were worth.
Elaine accompanied the men as far as the first white pine, but then she turned and fled back up the path to the house. Ruth was settling Moira into her study. The book of choice today was a Stephen King. An odd choice for the English-police-procedural-loving Moira.
Moira turned to the bookmarked page and didn’t look up. “I think you should be there, Elaine. For your own peace of mind, if nothing else.”
“Is your mind so settled, Moira?”
A bony finger marked the place and the brown eyes stared at her. “Oh, yes, my dear. It certainly is. And I’d like it very much, if you would represent me.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“I should have done this many years ago. I suppose I simply wanted to pretend that there was nothing there. That nothing had ever happened.”
When Elaine arrived at the clearing in the woods, two men were digging as several others stood by in silence, watching. Alan’s face was drawn and tense. He tried to smile at Elaine but the smile failed. The day was cold, it was almost winter after all, but D’Mosca had taken off his jacket and sweated profusely into his uniform shirt.
The men stopped digging. They looked at Alan and shrugged. They watched the dog scratching through the piles of newly decaying leaves and long-resting soil.
Elaine dropped to the ground and snuggled up against the old building, digging her butt into a patch of soft green moss. She felt nothing threatening, and her back needed the support. A hint of cologne lingered on the air, but it wasn’t fresh, not overwhelming. Rather like a distant memory, the way a room would hold the scent of a woman’s perfume or a man’s cigar long after the party was over, and everyone had gone up to bed.
“Not there.” She pointed. “Over there. Alan, the dog is in the wrong spot. Under that jack pine, the big one. Tell them to dig there.”
He directed the skeptical men and crouched down in front of her, taking her face between his hands. “What do you know, Elaine?”
“Nothing. But they’re in the wrong place. I don’t want them wasting their time.”
They had dug down about a foot when every hair along the cadaver dog’s back shot upright. He ran to the excavation, dodging between the shovels, and scratched at the dirt.
“This is it. I think we have something here.” The men bent their backs into the effort.
Minutes passed. The dog alternately dug and paced, caught up in the excitement. Locked in the house, Hamlet and Ophelia howled their frustration. Alan glanced over his shoulder at Elaine. She nodded and he grabbed a spare shovel.
She never saw what they found. But the digging stopped as if by a signal and the men stepped back. Those who had been standing silent, watching, stepped forward. They carried a heavy bag. A body bag. Elaine had heard that horrible expression during a news commentary on the First Gulf War, many years ago.
Alan stood in front of her, blocking her view. “Can I take you back to the house, Elaine?”
She raised one hand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. “Yes, please. I think we should tell Moira, don’t you?”
Alan touched Elaine’s forehead with his. “Yes, we should.”
***
Moira Madison looked out the study window at the view she loved most in all the world, but for once she scarcely noticed it. She’d never sensed anything unusual near the old servants’ cabin, but she knew that some did. On the day after the family received the news of Ralph’s death, the day her husband, Augustus, died, Moira’s grandmother, Elizabeth, had issued firm orders that the cabin was to be permanently sealed and the building and grounds left unattended. Rumor and superstition grew in the family, as they were sure to, and almost sixty years after Elizabeth’s death, her instructions remained enforced.
Until today. When the men had finished their work, Moira would have the old building torn down and the woods cleared. And in the spring they’d build a new cabin on the spot, something welcoming and cheerful, with wide windows and a wraparound porch and a nice woodland garden. A guest house for the next generation of Madisons. Or maybe a summer place for Alan and Elaine.
Moira thought about her grandmother, and wondered what the old woman knew. Or what perhaps she merely suspected in the dark recesses of her mind.
For Moira was sure that Augustus Madison had killed Amy Murphy, and used the guilt-stricken Ralph to help him cover up the crime. Before the war, when they all learned far too much about death and dying, Ralph would have been unlikely to be aware that when the heart isn’t pumping blood, a body doesn’t bleed very much. Whether Augustus knew anything about medicine or not, he would never have trusted his fate and his reputation to a country coroner or village family doctor.
Moira’s grandfather was a tough old man, none tougher. Ralph’s death would have been a blow, but how much of a shock could it have been: all over Canada, all over the world, for many long years families were constantly braced for tragic news. Moira wondered why Augustus’ heart, as unbending as the rest of him, had given way so quickly.
When he was walking in the woods.
Alone.
Perhaps Amy Murphy wrote the end of Augustus Madison’s story after all.
From the hallway she heard Alan’s voice, followed by Elaine’s light murmur. They had come to tell her what the men had found.
Moira bent her head over her book and prepared to look surprised.
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