Unholy Rites (15 page)

“I suppose. I still don't understand why Mum would keep another boy's cap.”

Danutia shrugged. “Maybe just because it's a tragic, moving story.” She closed the scrapbook. “We still haven't found any direct mention of Marple. What about the other volumes?”

“I haven't looked at all of them yet.” Arthur couldn't go much longer without a painkiller. He shifted his aching leg, trying to find a more comfortable position. The movement stirred a memory. “You know, I had the odd feeling when I hobbled in last night that someone had been in the cottage. I had been making notes about Timothy Roberts's death, and they weren't where I thought I'd left them. I was so doped up I decided it was just my imagination.”

“Don't you lock your house?”

“Mum never did, she said no one in the village does. I guess it's a good thing I took those scrapbooks yesterday, even if we didn't look at them.”

Danutia glanced at her watch. “I don't have the time now. My bus is almost due.” She gathered their dirty dishes and carried them into the kitchen, returning with a fresh glass of water and a tired, troubled face. “I'd like to know why your mother wanted my help,” she said, “and you'd like to be certain that her death was due to natural causes, as it seemed. You think her scrapbooks implicate someone in the death of a boy almost twenty years ago, someone who might have felt threatened by her suspicion. And that's possible, though we mustn't let ourselves get carried away by wild speculation. Examine all the scrapbooks carefully. Call me if you find anything else suspicious. I'll let you know about the brake line. If it was deliberately cut, there's likely a connection.”

She said goodbye and let herself out, closing the door gently behind her.

Thrown into turmoil by Danutia's parting comments, Arthur swallowed a couple of painkillers and stretched out on the sofa, with the half-melted ice pack on his ankle. He eyed his mother's liquor cabinet across the room, torn between his responsibility to read his mother's scrapbooks and his desire to numb the turmoil inside. The doctor had said not to drink while he was taking painkillers, but surely a glass of wine or two couldn't hurt.

Monday morning Danutia felt ill.
Bile rose in her throat and she made a sudden dash to the toilet down the hall, so dizzy she almost fainted. When she finished heaving, she returned to her room and washed her face at the sink, careful not to look in the mirror. She could all too easily imagine her puffy eyes and sickly pallor. She must have caught a bug. An hour later she dragged herself downstairs to the phone, called the station, and told Gloria the bad news. She raced back upstairs to the toilet, not quite in time.

After cleaning up as best she could, Danutia returned to her room. The queasiness wasn't going away, so she'd better prepare. Lining the metal wastebasket with double plastic bags, she put it beside her bed, then opened the windows wide. Late in the afternoon, when her stomach was quieter and Mr. Blackstone was out, she emptied the wastebasket into the garbage can outside the back door. She felt sorry for the garbage handlers, but what was she to do? She didn't have the energy to keep cleaning up after herself.

And so it went for two more days. If her landlord was concerned about his guest, he didn't show it. He had not knocked once on her door. Maybe he thought she'd gone away. She certainly wasn't eating breakfast.

By Wednesday afternoon she was so hungry she nibbled some crackers she'd stashed in a drawer. The crackers not only stayed down but seemed to calm her stomach. That's what her mother had given her when she'd been sick, saltine crackers and watered down apple juice. She hadn't drunk apple juice in years, but now craved it so strongly she knew she must be dehydrated. She made her way to the bathroom and filled her water pitcher. Only a few sips at a time, she told herself.

She found more packets of crackers and put them beside her bed. Thursday morning she ate some before she tried to get up. She wasn't sick to her stomach all morning, though she still felt dizzy. At noon she bathed in tepid water and dressed, then set out for work. After being cooped up for so long, she needed the fresh air.

She'd heard it rain off and on while she lay in bed, but today the sun was out and the newly washed leaves shone. She walked slowly, stopping to lean against lampposts and walls, and still she felt exhausted by the time she arrived. Maybe she should have asked Kevin for a ride. Too late now. Her dad had raised his kids to be tough, and she'd learned the lesson well. Asking for help was a sign of weakness. Squaring her shoulders, she strode inside.

Gloria was busy with a bald-headed tourist who'd lost his credit card. When the man moved aside to fill out a form, she said, “Kevin's line is busy. You can go on back if you like.”

Danutia welcomed the excuse to sink into a chair. “I'll wait.”

The tourist handed in his form, clapped a baseball cap on his bald head, and left. Gloria said, “You're looking in the pink for someone who's had the flu.”

“Me?” Danutia said. “I don't feel in the pink.” She told Gloria about her ordeal.

“Umm-hmm.” Gloria looked her up and down with a smirk playing about the corners of her pursed lips. “Throwing up in the mornings, are you? And the smell of food makes you sick? You know, that's just how I felt when I got knocked up. But then you're too clever to get pregnant unless you mean to.” Her eyes dropped to the switchboard. “Hold on, Kevin's free now. I'll tell him you're here.”

Danutia stood there, fuming. What was Gloria on about? She'd had the flu, for pete's sake. How could she be pregnant? Then, feeling sheepish, she thought, In the usual way. She'd taken birth control pills for years, whether she was in a relationship or not. When her prescription ran out just before she'd come to England, she'd decided it was time to give her body a rest. After all, she wasn't going to get involved with anyone during her short stay.

And she hadn't, until the night of her celebratory dinner last month. Then, carried away by drink and the excitement of Arthur's acting, she'd ended up having unprotected sex. She hadn't told him, of course; he'd assumed that she would take care of herself, and she hadn't insisted on a condom. She hadn't wanted to do the sensible thing and retreat from the brink, she'd wanted to plunge in, plunge over, be carried away by her body, his body, to a distant peaceful shore.

So now she knew how teenage girls ended up pregnant. If she was, of course.

Kevin ambled through the door separating the reception area from the detective division. “Good to hear you're over your flu,” he said.

Danutia caught Gloria winking at her. “Let's hope that's the end of it,” she said stiffly.

He held the door open. “Come on back. The report on your car just came in,” he said.

Danutia stepped through the doorway and started coughing. Her stomach heaved. She hastily retreated. “Too much smoke,” she said, waving at the blue clouds over most of the desks. “Can we go down to the Coffee Cup?”

“Sorry, I forgot about your delicate sensibilities,” Kevin said. “Just give me a minute to grab the report.”

As soon as he disappeared, Gloria said, “You need the name of a doctor, you tell me, know what I mean?”

Danutia, fumbling with a packet of crackers from her jacket pocket, didn't register what Gloria was saying until the receptionist repeated “Know what I mean?” in a conspiratorial whisper. “I can take care of myself,” she said firmly.

Gloria shrugged and picked up a ringing telephone.

A few minutes later Kevin reappeared through the front door, waving a sheaf of paper. “Got it. Let's go. I moved my car around.”

Soon they were basking in the sun trap outside the Coffee Cup, Danutia sipping hot apple juice instead of her usual triple-shot Americano, the barista having grudgingly admitted that steaming the juice was indeed possible. In gratitude, Danutia had tipped extravagantly.

Kevin eyed her for a moment before handing over the report. “Take a look at the last page. The long and short of it is that the brakes didn't fail. The line was cut. Not all the way through, or you would have noticed right away. Just enough to give way the first time you braked hard.”

“Because of the sheep on the road. Otherwise who knows when it would have happened. Or how many people would have been hurt. You know how steep that road is right before the junction.” Danutia studied the diagram showing the severed brake line. “Someone must have cut it while the car was parked at the station. I slammed on the brakes on the way up and they worked fine. Why wasn't Eric watching traffic? Have you talked to him?”

Kevin squinted up at a plane headed for Manchester. “I went out Saturday afternoon as soon as you called in. The lad said he'd stepped off the road to take a leak.”

“And you believed him?”

“I didn't have any reason not to.”

“And now? Eric knew where we planned to park and where we were going.”

“It's hard to see what motive he'd have for harming you or Arthur.”

“As you know, motive isn't everything, especially with young offenders. Clough probably told him we were asking about the burglaries. We know he carries a knife, or has done, because he cut his brother. It wouldn't take any time to slice a brake line.”

“That's as may be, but how would he know which car was yours?”

“Arthur needed to pass on a key, so I drove him to where Clough and Eric were mending a stone wall, maybe half a mile beyond the station. Eric would have had lots of opportunity.”

“Why have you taken against the lad so? So far everything is circumstantial.”

Danutia had been scanning the report as they talked. Now she paused to consider Kevin's question. “He has this terrific chance to make something of his life and he's thumbing his nose at it. You talked to him about the burglaries and he denied being involved, but they've stopped. The sheep slaughters have stopped too. He's mixed up in this, all right. We just haven't figured out how.” She pointed to a paragraph she'd just read. “There's trace evidence from the undercarriage, I see—a few hairs and fragments of cloth. You could have Eric's clothes tested.”

“Could you swear to what he was wearing?”

Danutia tried to reconstruct the scene from Saturday. So much had happened since then. The accident, her illness, and her shifting feelings about Arthur. Concentrate, she told herself.

Gradually she brought the scene into focus. Watching Eric fit the stone and wondering whether his white T-shirt would ever come clean. Making out the band logo: Anathema, and thinking about the meaning of the word, a cursed thing. Jeans with threadbare knees. Tossed aside, a navy nylon windbreaker. She made a list for Kevin, but made no further comments about Eric. Having two boys himself, Kevin was too quick to make excuses. She and Arthur could have been killed. “Lads will be lads” wasn't good enough.

Kevin sighed. “Guess I'd better pick up the clothes and knife, if he still has it.”

He pushed back his chair. “You look like you need a lie-down. I'll give you a lift home.”

“Thanks,” Danutia said, grateful for his kindness. She'd never been laid so low by the flu—or maybe it wasn't flu. “Would you mind stopping at a pharmacy on the way? I need to pick up . . . some aspirin and such.”

“No problem. Do you need anything from the shops? I could pop into the Sainsbury's while you're at Boots.”

“I'm dying for some saltine crackers and apple juice. My mom's remedy for everything.”

Twenty minutes later, her packages in hand, Danutia hauled herself up the stairs of the Temple and to the toilet with the pregnancy test kit. She held a test strip under her while she peed and then waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes. No change of color. She stared blankly at the strip, not sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed. What would it mean to give a tiny being power over her life, she wondered.

After four minutes she wrapped the strip in toilet paper and carried it back to her room for disposal. No point in leaving it to be discovered by Mr. Blackstone or the cleaning lady who mysteriously came and went. The second strip she placed at the bottom of her cosmetics bag. She knew about false positives and false negatives. In a few days she would test again.

In the meantime, she'd better let Arthur know about the brake line. Whether it was a random act of violence or a targeted attack, someone had come close to doing them serious harm. He needed to be on his guard.

Arthur didn't answer his phone that day or the next, and by Saturday she was worried. She called the Reward, where the barman said Arthur had hobbled in for a quick pint on Wednesday before setting off for Manchester. Didn't say why he was going or when he'd be back.

By the time she tracked Arthur down a week later, she had more than the brake line to tell him about.

A wound to the head.
Strangulation. Death by drowning.

As he dug into the soft clay, Arthur found himself remembering the details of young Timothy Roberts's death almost twenty years ago. He imagined the shock as Timothy dived into the water and hit his head. Flailing around, trying to regain the surface. Panicking as the rope wound itself tighter and tighter. All around him, darkness and silence.

To break the spell, Arthur straightened up, his back and shoulders hurting from the unaccustomed exercise. It was unseasonably hot for April, and he wished he'd worn a hat. He leaned his spade against the wheelbarrow and wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand. He was perched halfway down the slippery bank of an out of the way pond on the vast Chatsworth estate. Hugh Clough and three other men were working away around him. A few feet below, the wooden frames for the well dressings lay soaking in the small pond, which had once fed a ruined mill nearby.