Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow (15 page)

“Do you remember the Thalia?” I heard him say.

That was a question I couldn’t have predicted. Befuddled, I had to look at him.

“All the classic movies we saw there,” he went on, “when we were young and poor, and that was the only entertainment we could afford? I feel like we’re in the middle of one of them now, one of those early Hitchcocks about murder and train travel—
The Lady Vanishes, The Thirty-Nine Steps
.
”

He laughed. I didn’t.

“Remember,” he persisted, “the night we sneaked in some cheap champagne and drank it while we watched
Notorious,
to celebrate how I got that kid off, that cop killer?”

“I thought you proved he didn’t—” I began, then caught myself and turned my gaze back to the window where now fields and houses rushed by. “No, I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything!”

He said softly, “Being young together—I know you remember that.”

Anger boiled up in my chest at the lowdown nerve of him, but I held it back and laid a steady gaze on his face. For the first time I noticed a faint, healed scar on his cheek that hadn’t been there last year. I started to wonder how he’d got it but then remembered that I didn’t care.

“I like being old alone,” I said deliberately.

He frowned and leaned forward earnestly. “But I don’t want you to be old alone, Kit. I want to stay in your life and help you out. I know, I know,” he said quickly as I started to protest, “you don’t need help. But when that changes, and it will, I want us to be on speaking terms. It scares the hell out of me to think of you needing money, or advice, or just friendship, five or ten years down the road, and not asking me for it.”

Suddenly I saw something clearly for the first time. “Yes, you
are
scared, aren’t you? But not for me—for yourself. You’re afraid of being old. Having a gray-haired woman around reminded you of it, but Barbie makes you feel twenty years younger, doesn’t she? Twenty years further from the end.”

He sat back again, looking uncomfortable. “You’re saying
you
aren’t scared?”

Times I’d forgotten my keys, or left my purse behind, or searched my brain for the word that wouldn’t come, rose up before me. Of course I was scared. Everyone over fifty nowadays lives with the fear of Alzheimer’s, that empty-skulled specter that beckons us down the path to our future. But I wouldn’t let him checkmate me.

“Don’t you equate my feelings with yours!” I retorted. “I could never be so scared of anything that I’d abandon people who trusted me.”

“I don’t know, what you said—it mght have been somewhere in the back of my mind,” he said brusquely, “but it wasn’t the big reason. You and I weren’t the same people we’d been when we started out together, and after Emily was gone it didn’t seem like there was much between us anymore. You must have felt it too.”

“No, I never felt that!” What was he talking about? I’d felt only what the vicar had described—“the comfort of a long-lasting partnership”—and never had a hint that he was feeling anything else.

“Come on—I’d finally made it into a top firm, my work was the biggest part of my life, and you weren’t interested. I’d try to tell you about a case, maybe a strategy I was working on, and you’d either look bored and change the subject, or tell me I shouldn’t have taken it! You were more interested in those damn charity groups of yours than in what I was accomplishing.”

“Don’t you dare try to put the blame on me!” I exploded. Passengers looked at us nervously, and I forced my voice lower. “You poor baby, didn’t I gaze at you adoringly and tell you how great you were ten times a day?
She
did, didn’t she? She knew how to get herself a successful lawyer with plenty of money, instead of the low-profit husband she had—just flatter that old male ego. Well, I’d never put myself on that level with you or anybody else.”

“You’re wrong about her,” he said, with the first trace of irritation he’d shown.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that was the
only
trick in her bag.”

“You know, it’s kind of nice for a man to hear that his work’s interesting, that he’s good at it. It’s kind of nice to know a woman thinks you’re worth some time and attention.”

“Anne Stinson told me that woman used to sit and gaze at you as if you were the second coming, and run to the ladies’ to do her makeup over if you called her in for dictation!”

His lips curved into a little smile. “Yeah, the whole office used to pull my leg about it. But down inside I liked it, and when they sent her to a different branch, I missed it. Missed her. Then I ran into her on the street one day—”

“Did I say I wanted to hear your sordid reminiscences? No, I did not.”

He stopped talking as the train pulled into another station and people got off and on. As it started again with a jerk, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You never wanted to know about my ‘damn charities,’ either, and they did the world a lot more good than your ‘strategies’ for getting rich people off the hook!”

He looked at me silently for a few moments and then said, “I wonder, if we’d had this fight a couple of years ago, would things have turned out differently?”

“You always left the room when I tried to talk about feelings or problems or—anything deeper than what’s-for-dinner. We never had a fight, don’t you
remember
?”

“Yeah, I guess I’ve never felt comfortable talking about—all that stuff women want to talk about. You’re not the only one who complains about that. But it’s just how I am. My dad was the same way.”

“He was worse,” I said. “He’d duck if I tried to kiss him good-bye. And even when he was dying, if you asked him how things were he’d tell you everything was great, fine, couldn’t be better. There was no way to get near him.”

“He always liked you, though. He told me once, ‘She’s a feisty broad. You’re lucky.’ ”

I started to laugh at his imitation of his father’s gravelly voice but caught myself with a start and turned my eyes to the window again, furious with myself for that slip. The houses outside were going by more slowly, the brakes started hissing, and in the next minute we were pulling to a stop beside a platform with a sign that said
TYNEFORD
.

Once we stood on that platform, I realized my plan had run out. I was sure Perdita had come here, but this was no village of thirty cottages, like Far Wychwood. The station building was large, snack kiosks and newspaper stands lined one side, baggage carts and scores of passengers pushed past us. I heard traffic sounds beyond the exit doors. I had no plan for finding a fugitive in a large town.

“Have you got an address or something?” Quin was saying. I shook my head. “So why did we come here? Is this where her people live?”

“No. She lived here with her husband when they were first married,” I answered grudgingly. “But—I don’t know where their house is.”

“Wait here.” He walked over to the information booth and spoke to the young man behind the counter. I saw a lot of head shaking going on. Quin turned away, then turned back quickly and spoke to the fellow again, and this time he started pointing, ahead, to the left, to the right. Quin came back with a big grin on his face.

“He’s never heard of the Stones, but he gave me directions to the town hall. That’s where the records will be. Let’s go.”

So I had to follow him, out of the station, straight down to the next corner, left onto a busy boulevard dominated by a Sainsbury’s supermarket, and right after two blocks onto High Street. Halfway down we walked into a little Beaux-Arts beauty with
TOWN HALL
carved into the stone above its door.

We stepped up to a counter where a bespectacled middle-aged woman sat behind a computer. She leaned forward, her arms crossed on the desk, with a questioning smile.

I spoke up quickly, determined not to let him take over the investigation, as he was so obviously trying to do.

“We’re looking for the former address of a couple named Stone, Edgar and Perdita, who moved to Oxford at least a decade ago. You do have house listings by name, don’t you?”

“Of course. All on the computer now. S-t-o-n-e? If you’d like to have a seat over there, it will take just a few minutes.”

But the few minutes passed, and she hadn’t come up with an address. In fact, she hadn’t found a single “Stone” in the property database.

“You’re sure you got the town right?” Quin asked me. “Okay, okay, calm down! Is there maybe another Tyneford around here?” he asked the woman.

She shook her head. “I don’t believe there is another town of the name in England. I
am
sorry, I wish I could help you. Perhaps the name is a bit off?”

“No, it’s not,” I said in mounting frustration. “I know they lived here, I heard her say so! All right, I’m going to walk around and ask any old people I see if they knew the Stones. Eventually I’m bound to meet one who did. Law of averages.”

Quin was starting to give me his opinion of that plan when the clerk burst out, “Oh yes, old people! Wait just a moment,” and nipped behind a wall, to return a few minutes later with an incredibly thin, bald, but very upright old man in tweeds, who looked at us suspiciously through cataract clouds.

“This is Mr. Folke,” said the woman loudly. “He’s near ninety and still working, isn’t that wonderful? His memory for the long ago is amazingly sharp, although”—she lowered her voice drastically—“not so good for the short term, you understand.”

“What’s that?” Mr. Folke bellowed.

“I’m just telling them how well you remember things. These people are looking for some people who left Tyneford a decade or more ago, and I thought you might have known them. Stone, their name was. They had a house here, the lady says, but I can’t find any record of it.”

Mr. Folke pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it, drawing the smoke into his lungs avidly while he shifted mental gears.

“Stone? Stone?” he finally shouted. “I knowed a Stone, yes—taught my boy Francis at Branton School.”

“Yes, he was a teacher!” I exclaimed. “Edgar Stone, right?”

He peered at me with some hostility. “Yank?” he demanded. “I remember them doughboys well. Randy lot they were. Well, they do say it takes all kinds to make a world.”

“But where was the Stones’ house?” I asked impatiently.

“Stone never owned a house here.”

“But Mrs. Stone said—”

“
Rented
a house!” he cackled triumphantly. “Old McCreary’s place, outside of the town. Then when they moved away, people named Howard lived in it, and after they left, and McCreary died, his daughter left the place without a tenant.”

“Oh, I know the place you mean, Mr. Folke,” the woman said, with great relief. “I was so afraid I shouldn’t be able to help you,” she went on to us, “but it’s quite all right now. Mr. Folke never fails when it’s a matter of Tyneford’s past. I can give you directions to the old McCreary place. Although, mind you, it’s been untenanted for years, and the owner never comes near it, so it’s in no sort of condition.”

“That’s all right,” I assured her. “How far is it?”

“Oh, at least a mile and a half. You can use my phone to ring up the taxi.”

“I don’t mind a little walk—” I began, but Quin cut in.

“We’ve walked eight or ten miles already, Kit. I’m calling the taxi.”

“If you’re too big a wuss to walk a mile, go back to Oxford! I’m looking to take her by surprise. If she sees a taxi coming to the house she’ll lock herself in, or run for it.”

“Run for it?” said the woman behind the counter, her eyes widening. “You mean there’s somebody hiding in the old McCreary place? Oh, dear—what are you planning to
do?”

“We only want to help a poor homeless woman,” I assured her, and she seemed to believe me.

“Oh, my yes, the homeless problem! Do you know, they sit begging right in our town square? How kind of you.”

“All right,” Quin said grimly. “We’ll walk.”

The woman told us to follow the High until we saw the sign for Upper Barrow Farm, follow that road to the bottom of the hill, and then look back among the trees for the old McCreary place. She said it was called The Lindens, but there was no sign, nor lindens either anymore, only a tangle of briars and ancient oaks around it.

Mr. Folke came out onto the front steps to see us off and startled us by singing the first verse of “Over There” at the top of his cracked old voice, waving his cigar in the air until his kindly coworker came and led him back inside.

“Thirty years,” said Quin. He grinned when I looked over at him, wondering what he was on about now. “You and I’ve got about that long until we turn into Mr. Folke. Well, it’s a pretty good stretch.”

“Yes, a nice thirty-year downward spiral,” I answered gloomily, more to myself than him. “And people would say that man’s lucky—he’s still doing a job, at least.”

“Do you think he does a job? I’ll bet they only keep him on because the welfare state’s outlawed age discrimination. He probably just wanders around boring everybody stiff with his long-term memory.”

“If you get plenty of exercise and eat right and keep challenging your mind, you don’t end up like that,” I said, stepping out briskly, ignoring my aching calves and toes.