Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow (19 page)

As the play neared its end I began to be nervous too. Ann had told me we were going to have dinner at The Anchor, a nearby inn that was there in Shakespeare’s day. I didn’t want to sit across a table from him as I had the other night. I understood how the old cliché about butterflies in the stomach had come about, it really felt as if something was fluttering back and forth in mine. I could feel his eyes on me as we made our slow way down the stairs in the crowd and walked along the river promenade in the twilight. Everybody was talking about the play, but I said little. I was conscious of him walking just behind me as we crossed The Anchor’s riverside terrace, its wooden picnic tables all empty on that chilly evening.

Inside, the inn was large, well worn, and comfortable. A table was reserved for us in the main room, where horse brasses gleamed in the light of a steady fire. I made sure to sit farther down the table and on the other side from Quin and Janet. I hadn’t met his eyes yet. Every now and then the butterflies fluttered up from my stomach into my chest and made me gasp for breath.

Everybody was laughing and joking, except for Geoffrey—who was still sunken within himself, looking around with irritation at the general party atmosphere—and, of course, Janet. A waiter took our drinks orders, and when Dorothy said apple cider, I figured that should be safe.

“Strongbow or scrumpy?” the waiter persisted.

I didn’t know the difference, but “scrumpy” sounded cute, so I ordered that.

It turned out to be nothing like the cider we used to buy at roadside stands when we’d drive out to Connecticut to see the fall leaves. “Scrumpy” was hard cider with a real kick—but it was certainly tasty, and after a half pint the butterflies all migrated out of my stomach. I felt so much better that when we ordered our meals, I asked for another one.

The waiter brought green salads and bread along with the dinner drinks.

“Now this is beautiful lettuce!” Ann exclaimed. “Nothing like the tired stuff one gets in some establishments.”

“ ‘It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific,’ ” I announced, a little woozily.

Everyone stared. I looked at Emily expectantly, and after a moment she burst out laughing. I heard a snort of laughter from Quin too and looked around with satisfaction at the flustered scholars.

“Beatrix Potter,
Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
, page one, line one,” I intoned solemnly.

“Of course, I remember!” Ann Aubrey exclaimed, smiling at the three of us. “I read all those dear little books to my boys, long long ago.”

Everyone except the two party poopers had summoned up a sheepish smile at my coup. Cyril laughed and said, “Touché,” and Dorothy said grudgingly, “One sees the joke. Perhaps we do indulge too much in quotation.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “I love it! That line just popped into my head when I heard ‘lettuce.’ ”

“There’s nobody wittier than Potter,” Quin said. “Kit and I had more fun than Emily when we read those books to her, because we were old enough to appreciate the subtleties.” This time, when he looked at me, I returned a steady gaze, my heart swelling with new, scrumpy courage. “You never forget discovering things like that together.”

I knew I was answering his smile, and I took another sip.

Janet was alarmed by the smile. “You just wouldn’t
believe
how witty Quin can be,” she said quickly, assuming the worshipful gaze, trying to get his attention back.

“That’s one author I can quote from anytime,” I went on boldly, “like some people I could name ought to ‘fill their little sacks with nuts and sail away home’—
Squirrel Nutkin
.”

Quin leaned his forearms on the table, and his grin widened, his blue eyes glittering with enjoyment.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said, “okay—with that mud on your dress and shoes, you remind me of that bunch of kittens that got all dressed up and then ‘trod upon their pinafores and fell on their noses.’ ”

“Oh, right,” Emily exclaimed, “and they took off their clothes and the ducks got them! ‘Mr. Drake Puddleduck advanced in a slow sideways manner’ and stole Tom Kitten’s little blue suit.” She was flushed with happiness at what was going on. I had to put a stop to it.

“Or there’s the line I used to remember a lot, about a year and a half ago,” I said, staring him down. “ ‘What do you mean by tumbling into my bed all covered with
smuts
?’ ” I leaned back and waited for him to top that one. “
Tale of Samuel Whiskers
.”

“Yeah,” he said ruefully, “he was a rat, wasn’t he?”

The English people were staring at us, completely nonplussed. Fortunately the entrées arrived just then, and the usual comments broke out, of delight at their appearance and confusion about who got which.

Emily leaned over and murmured, “Maybe you’d better not have any more of that strong cider, Mother. You know you’re not used to alcohol.”

“Don’t worry,” I answered, “I’m not going to disgrace you! I may be dirty, but I am not inconsiderate.”

And then the conversation stopped as Geoffrey suddenly rose and hurried toward the exit, knocking over an empty chair at another party’s table. After only a brief pause the English people resumed talking about the food, as if nothing had happened. Their code of good taste obviously forbade recognizing an emotional crisis in public, but I kept looking after the poor man as he blundered out of the inn, going God knew where. He shouldn’t be wandering around London alone in his state, of that I was sure.

“I’m going after him,” I told Emily. I made my way to the door less clumsily than Geoffrey, although the floor did seem to be shifting alarmingly. Probably needed bracing, old building like that, I thought. Behind me, I heard Quin asking indignantly, “Why’s she chasing after that guy?” and Emily hushing him while the others went on talking, perhaps a little louder.

I found Geoffrey on the terrace that overlooked the Thames and the city. He stood beside the low brick wall, looking out at the river, the full moon reflected in the ripples left behind the sightseeing boats. St. Paul’s dome seemed to float above Ludgate Hill in floodlit serenity. As I came up to him I saw that tears were streaming down his cheeks.

“How can they laugh and talk as if things were still the same?” he demanded, without looking at me. “I don’t think I shall ever laugh again.”

I didn’t know how to answer him.

After a few minutes he burst out again. “She knew I loved her, and she didn’t
care.
When I told her, she didn’t even listen. All the plans I had made for our future—they meant nothing to her. I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

He broke off abruptly and glanced down at me, as if he had suddenly remembered my presence. Then he pressed his lips firmly together and looked away again. If he could have stopped crying, I knew he would have. Such a painfully inhibited Englishman, I thought, had to be humiliated that a mere acquaintance saw him grieve so openly.

My eyes filled with the easy tears of the slightly inebriated. Geoffrey stood impassively while I wiped the tears from his cheeks with the tissue Emily had given me. Then he reached inside his jacket and brought out a grubby piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me.

“I carry it with me always,” he explained in a choked voice.

It was a brief note, in the handwriting I recognized from Perdita’s suicide note:

“In less than a fortnight Edgar, damned Edgar, came into the theater group,” he said, “and I lost her for the first time. But you see, she did love me once!”

I’d seen something else too, and it startled me.

“Geoffrey,” I said slowly, “could you lend me this note until tomorrow?”

“Lend you—Why?” He stared at me in bewilderment.

“I want to show it to the police.”

“The
police
?” His whole expression changed. His body straightened from its hopeless, stooped posture, and his eyes widened with what almost looked like alarm. Then he said, rather breathlessly, “No—no, it’s all I have left of her!” He took the note back quickly and stuffed it into his jacket again.

“Well, all right,” I said, rather jolted by the vehemence of his response. “It’s only that I saw something in it that makes me wonder if she really—”

For some reason I didn’t want to finish the sentence.

Now he was looking at something behind me, and I turned to see what it was. Quin stood in the doorway of the inn, his arms crossed over his chest, his face rumpled in a scowl, watching us. He had his nerve, I thought with a sudden charge of anger, following me around, acting as if he had a right to monitor my behavior.

Defiantly, I reached up and kissed Geoffrey soundly on the cheek. He jumped back, as if I had tried to stab him.

“Oh, I say,” he mumbled, turning bright red. “No need for—I should not have made such a—entirely my fault if you—certainly didn’t mean—”

I was heartened to hear the old, repressed Geoffrey breaking through.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It was only a friendly kiss, and I like people to show some honest emotion. My daughter says the stiff-upper-lip thing causes a lot of neuroses among Englishmen.”

“Best if I return to the group,” he said nervously.

He left me hurriedly, and I stood looking at the boats on the river and the cars moving along Victoria Embankment on the other side. My slightly muzzy mind was working on the new idea I’d got from Geoffrey’s memento, in fact it was working so busily I didn’t hear the quick footsteps crunching the gravel behind me or realize Quin was there until he took hold of my shoulders and turned me to face him. The anger in his face was something I never remembered seeing before, not in the years we’d spent together, not in the bewildering encounters of the past fortnight. We gazed at each other for a few seconds, and then he pulled me against him. A feeling like an electrical shock hit the pit of my stomach. He pressed his lips against mine in a long, hard kiss that left me breathless.

When it ended I wrenched myself loose and fled back into the inn. We didn’t speak again in the half hour or so the party lingered in The Anchor. I was back to avoiding even eye contact. My heart kept pounding wildly as I got back into the Aubreys’ car beside Geoffrey, as they carried me through the night back to Oxford, as I hurried to my own car outside their house. I didn’t say good night to anybody, in fact I seemed unable to speak or even to think coherently and only realized I was driving on the right when a pair of headlights coming straight at me forced me to swerve to the left just in time. I pulled onto the shoulder and sat there until the maelstrom in my head subsided to, at least, white-water rapids. I couldn’t blame my condition on the hard cider anymore, it had worn off long before. It was Quin who had put me in this state. I should have been able to work up some indignation toward him, but I couldn’t, any more than I could stop myself from reliving over and over that kiss, which had felt like homecoming after a long, hard journey.

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.

—Sir Thomas Malory,
Le Morte d’Arthur

I
t was completely different from the one in the suicide note,” I told John Bennett, sitting opposite him in his comfortably messy, antique-filled sitting room. “There, it was a printed
I
—you know, ‘I
killed him
’—and in the note Geoffrey showed me it was a script
I
,—
‘I do love you terribly’
—although all the other letters were written exactly the same in both.”

He sipped his coffee, eyeing me skeptically.

“But Geoffrey Pidgeon’s note was very old, you said. People sometimes change their styles of writing.”

“Why would Perdita only change the way she wrote one letter? If you’re going to change, you just make all your letters lean a different way or something, and anyway, how many middle-aged people fool around with their handwriting? That’s a kid sort of thing to do, isn’t it?”

He smiled indulgently. “A slender reed on which to rest a murder theory, Catherine.”

“If she didn’t write the suicide note, she was murdered too,” I said flatly.

“It
is
possible, isn’t it, John?” Fiona put in. She stood in the doorway between sitting room and kitchen, wiping one of the breakfast dishes. John set his empty cup on a Hepplewhite pie table and stood up.

“I suppose anything is possible. But there was a postmortem, you know, and no evidence was found of drugs, or of bruising, as there would be if she’d been tied or held down. Are you suggesting Mrs. Stone sat there quietly and allowed someone to cut her wrists?”

“Well,” I said weakly, “maybe she was tricked somehow. If the real murderer was somebody she trusted, couldn’t she have—sort of cooperated, until it was too late to fight back?”

“Most unlikely. I’m not prepared to abandon a scenario that makes perfect sense,” John said, getting into his coat, “for one that creates more problems than it solves. And all on the basis of a single vowel.”

“What if I could bring the note to the police station?” I asked. “If I told Geoffrey how it proves Perdita didn’t kill herself, I bet he’d let me borrow it.”

“I would really prefer not to raise false hopes in a man as grief-stricken as you’ve described,” John said with a frown. The telephone started ringing.

As Fiona picked up the receiver he gave her a quick kiss and bade me good-bye. I just sat there, sunk in disappointment. I had hurried over that morning with such excitement to catch him before he left for work. And I still felt sure the difference in those two
I
s was significant. Thinking about it last night, I’d pictured the “suicide note” in my mind, only two lines at the top of a piece of paper: “
I killed him. Some crimes are beyond forgiveness
.” I’d dwelt on that
I
, the way it was squeezed up against the next word, and I’d felt more and more sure it was the end of a longer composition, innocently written by Perdita to the killer and brought to the scene because it could so easily be misinterpreted. The word at the bottom of the preceding page, the one that really came before “killed him,” was no doubt “Edgar,” and the killing referred to the death of little Simon. I’d hardly slept for working out all these details, and John had just dismissed my whole theory out of hand.

“For you, Catherine,” Fiona said.

“Goodness, who’d be calling me here?”

“It’s Emily,” she said, with her hand covering the speaker, and a warning expression on her face. I took the phone, and my daughter started right in.

“Mother, where have you been?” she demanded. “I called you three times yesterday, and every time I got a busy signal! When I couldn’t get you in the evening I was going to drive out there and make sure you were all right, but Peter convinced me to wait and call again this morning, and when it was still busy
then,
he suggested trying Fiona’s. Now I know you weren’t on the phone all that time! Why did you leave it off the hook?”

“Darling, I—I was afraid it would be Dad.”

“Oh. He’s been calling you?” Her voice softened. “What’s happening between you two, Mom?”

“I have no idea.” A scared feeling hit me, and I sat down. “I guess something
is
happening. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Are you—Do you—” She stopped, then murmured, “I’m afraid to ask.”

“Oh yes, I hope you won’t! It’s all getting very, very strange. I don’t think he expected things to be like this, any more than I did. Look, he’ll be going home in a couple of days, so I figure if I don’t see him or talk to him again, everything will—”

“But you can’t miss May Morning tomorrow!” she exclaimed. “I want you to see how lovely it is, and afterward we’re all going to the Aubreys’ for breakfast. And you know, Mom, you
have
to see him again, you have to talk to him—otherwise you’ll always wonder what might have happened.” I started to protest, but she went on, urgently, “Do it for me. Give yourselves a chance, and maybe—Mistakes can be corrected, Mom, people
can
get back what they’ve lost. I’ve seen it happen.”

I could have wept, hearing her beg like that. Maybe, as Quin said, I’d been partly to blame for hurting her. She had a right to ask me to give these untimely emotions a last chance, and deep down inside I knew my misgivings were not strong enough anymore to protect me.

“All right, love,” I said. “I’ll come.”

Emily’s happy sigh floated down the phone line. We said good-bye, and I quickly got out of there before Fiona could throw any questions my way, as she was obviously longing to do.

I hadn’t mentioned that kiss to her or to anyone else. I knew it meant something bigger than taking refuge in his arms after finding Perdita dead, something too big to talk about yet, even with my best friend.

I walked home slowly, thinking about last night, and tomorrow, and the rest of my life. Could it really turn around again and take me back to the world I used to live in, the love I had been sure was gone forever? Did I want it to?

The workmen were hammering at the frame of the new house across the road, fastening the timbers together on the concrete slab, ready to be raised. I wondered if I’d be there when the new people came to live in it, or if the village would be only a memory by then, a dream I’d had before Quin and I came back to our senses.

May Morning in Oxford starts officially at 6
A
.
M
., although a lot of the celebrants have been partying all night when the little choirboys of Magdalen College School sing their Latin invocation to summer from the college tower. High Street and Magdalen Bridge are closed to traffic and packed with people, and this year I was among them, at the entrance to Magdalen’s cloisters, where Geoffrey and I had emerged from Addison’s Walk. I generally hate crowds, but this was such a jubilant group, the students greeting the beginning of their last term before the long summer break, the townspeople and tourists enjoying the spectacle, I didn’t mind being backed up against the college walls by the press of bodies. It was a spectacular morning, the bright sun rising into a blue sky as if cued up by the hymn floating from among the tower’s bristly spires and glistening gold weather vanes.

When the choristers’ sweet falsetto voices had faded away, a cheer went up, and Morris dancers took over the middle of the street, the bells around their legs jingling merrily as they went into their bizarre heel-slapping, stick-batting dance. Mimes and street musicians moved through the crowd, students made boisterous attempts to maneuver past the police stationed at the bridge to keep them from diving off. Peter said diving had been a tradition on May Morning until a student broke his neck a few years before and it was finally banned.

“This is really the only event university people and townspeople celebrate together,” Emily was saying. “The rest of the year the colleges have their boat races and balls, and the regular people have street fairs and city-sponsored fetes in the parks—but everybody comes to May Morning, and the town-and-gown resentments are put aside for a little while. Isn’t that nice?”

I was making my way through the crowd between her and Peter, who carried Archie on his shoulders. I could see the Aubreys ahead of us, accompanied by their two visiting sons, Ann turning now and then to be sure everybody was coming along as we crossed jam-packed Magdalen Bridge. The rest of the faculty were scattered through the mob, all heading for the Aubreys’ little street, just a few blocks along on the other side of the Cherwell. Breakfast at their house on May Morning was a Mercy tradition.

And somewhere behind us, I knew, Quin walked with Janet. I had glimpsed them before the choir started singing, her hands wrapped around his arm as if to keep him from escaping. His eyes had been searching the crowd, and I knew he was looking for me. I’d turned my eyes away quickly. Cowardly, I knew, but there were such contradictory emotions churning inside me, I couldn’t help myself.

“Dad was over last night,” Emily said, as if reading my mind. “He wanted to make sure you were coming this morning. This is his last day in England, you know. His flight leaves tomorrow at—”

“Yes, darling, I know! I absolutely know.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and turned away to tie Archie’s shoe. He was having a wonderful time, seeing the whole show from his perch on Peter’s shoulders and giving a running commentary in his own private language.

We all trailed down the street, through the gate, and into the Aubreys’ house, where Cyril and his sons brought us little glasses of orange juice as we stood around in the drawing room, and Ann hurried off to the kitchen. The two sons, introduced as Eric and Graham, were tall, blond, and strikingly handsome, as well as quite modest about all the good they were doing overseas. They could make a lot of money from their looks, I thought, go into modeling or films or even sales, and instead they devoted themselves to helping children in the poorest countries on earth. Cyril and Ann were lucky to have raised such great kids, and they obviously knew it.

This was where things would get dicey, I knew. I was miserably conscious of Quin’s presence, although I stayed on the other side of the room, making conversation with Dorothy. I knew every time he looked my way, although I wouldn’t look at him. When we went into the dining room and took seats at the long table in front of the window wall, I cast a quick glance at Janet. Her flowered cotton dress looked too loose on her, and her face seemed thinner too, so that the brown eyes looked even larger. Her former sulky look had been replaced by an edgy, almost hunted expression. She and Quin didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. He looked tense as well, but when I sat down beside Emily and finally met his eyes, he smiled, and I felt the uncertain beginning of a smile touch my lips.

“What a beautiful day!” Cyril Aubrey said expansively, beaming around the table like a father with his brood. “One always wishes to have this weather for May Morning, but seldom is such a wish granted in this climate. I believe this is the last full day you and your lady are to spend with us, Quin, and so you will remember sunshine and flowers as your last impressions of our island. Most gratifying.”

“One only wishes poor Geoffrey had joined us,” Ann added, taking her seat at one end.

Eileen bustled in with platters of scrambled eggs, fat sausages, broiled tomatoes, and bacon, and Ann helped herself and started it around the table while the maid returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later she carried in a plate piled high with buttered triangles of white and brown toast, and on her third appearance, a big silver coffeepot. As we ate she came back several times with marmalade, honey, cream, sugar, and the steak sauce the English inexplicably like to pour on eggs.

Archie as usual had no interest in sitting at the table but tottered around the room, exploring. With no breakables in reach, he soon started showing signs of boredom. Emily handed him a piece of toast, and he plopped down in a corner to tear it up.

Ann started telling us about the boating party the whole family was going to at midday, and the sons joined in with wisecracks about another May Day when they’d gone punting and Cyril had inadvertently landed them in the river. They got us all laughing, while he tried to defend his ability with the pole in a half-serious way. And so conversation went on, full of literary allusion as usual, intelligent and amusing. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the two across the table. Janet took a spoonful of eggs and a triangle of white toast, but she didn’t eat them. She only sipped at her coffee, looking from Quin to me to her plate. Ann drew him into conversation, but his eyes kept darting to me while he talked to her. Emily watched us discreetly, her cheeks flushed.

Peter was absorbed in a friendly dispute as to whether Beaumont and Fletcher had been influenced by Cervantes in writing the play we’d seen in London, when Emily suddenly half-rose, exclaiming, “Where’s Archie?” I looked around and saw scraps of toast scattered around in the corner, but no sign of the baby.

“You stay here, love, I’ll go and find him,” I said quickly. I’d been feeling desperate to escape from the tension anyway. I jumped up and hurried into the hallway.

There were four doors on the right side of the hall. The first one was closed. I turned the knob and opened it just a crack, peeking in and calling his name softly. It looked like a pantry, and there was no sign of Archie there, nor in the next room.