Unholy Rites (25 page)

“Mrs. Ellison,” Kevin said gently. “As I've told you, we will do everything we can to track down your husband. In the meantime, it's best for you to be at home, in case Stephen, or anyone else, tries to contact you. I'd like
PC
Peniston to go with you. Do you have a good friend who would come and stay too?”

“I don't want your
PC
Peniston,” Alice said. “I want Corporal Dranchuk and Liz Hazelhurst.” She turned towards Danutia. “If you're willing, of course.”

Danutia ran her fingers through her hair. Needing a cut before her presentation, and curious about Eric's family, she had made an appointment with Alice the week before. They'd chatted pleasantly enough, Alice steering around sensitive topics with an unexpected wit.

“Corporal Dranchuk,” Kevin asked formally, “are you willing to accompany Mrs. Ellison? You're aware of what will be required?”

“Of course,” she said. Searching the house for Stephen's body or clues to his disappearance, he meant. He must have been fairly certain there was nothing to be found.

“Very well then.” He turned to Alice. “What about a doctor? You may need a sedative to help you sleep.”

“How could I even think of sleeping? I don't want a sedative.”

Kevin nodded. “It's your choice. As for Ms. Hazelhurst, she'd headed home before I knew Stephen was missing. As soon as I've had a word with her, I'll send her along.”

While Alice fetched her jacket, Danutia explained the plan to Arthur, and then the two women made their way outside through a crowd of well-wishers.

The rain had settled into a steady downpour, so they sprinted to Danutia's car. Alice was silent on the drive up the hill, peering out into the inky darkness as though Stephen's blond head might suddenly appear. The heater blew warming air against the foggy windshield, the wipers thwacked back and forth.

Danutia turned into the station entrance and parked in front of the tall, narrow row house with the Cut 'n Curl sign. The house was dark and empty except for a gerbil scrabbling inside an exercise wheel in the boys' small upstairs bedroom. Across one of the twin beds lay the white shirt and black pants Stephen had worn for the maypole dancing. No sign that he'd been in the house since then. She phoned Kevin at the Reward to let him know. Then she returned to the kitchen with its battered cupboards and chipped porcelain sink. The electric kettle was boiling, the back door ajar. She filled the teapot and stepped out.

Alice was huddled on the covered stone steps, a cigarette cupped in her hand against the rain. She didn't look around.

“I quit these when I was pregnant with Stephen,” she said. “Now it doesn't seem to matter. The smoke bothers you, doesn't it?” She crushed the stub against the stone, which Danutia took as an invitation.

“I'll get our jackets,” she said. When she returned, she also brought two mugs of tea, Alice's with milk and sugar; hers, more for show than for drinking, black. While raindrops spattered on the slate roof and overflowed from the eaves, she listened as Alice talked about Stephen, Bob, Eric, the mess she'd made of her life. Stephen. And running through it all, the guilt at the heart of being a mother:
if only I hadn't been working tonight, if only I hadn't told Bob to shove off, if only
 . . . 

Danutia thought about the tadpole swimming around inside her, tadpole or octopus, already wrapping its tentacles around her heart and her life. Would she too be full of regrets in a few years' time?

The front doorbell rang, startling them both. Alice jumped to her feet.

“Let me go,” Danutia said. “It could be a reporter.” It could also be Kevin bringing bad news.

It was neither, Danutia discovered. It was Liz Hazelhurst, wrapped in a long hooded cloak and carrying a wicker basket that smelled of lemon.

“Sorry to take so long, my dear,” Liz said to Alice, who had followed Danutia into the draughty hallway. She hung her wet raincoat on a hall hook, adjusted her shawl around her shoulders, and gave Alice a hug. She'd changed from her Morris dance costume into black yoga pants and a black sweatshirt with her Celtic knot pendant. “After the sergeant finished with me, I went home again for my first aid kit.” From the bag she removed a small scented pillow and handed it to Alice.

“Hops, valerian, and lemon balm to help you relax, and a little mullein to repel bad dreams,” she said, “sprinkled with bergamot, hyacinth, and lavender oils. I know you made a dream pillow in our circle once, but that was some time ago. This one is freshly made.”

“But I don't want to sleep,” Alice protested. “What if—”

“If there's a reason to wake you, we will, won't we?” Liz looked to Danutia for confirmation, and Danutia nodded. “Think how worried Stephen would be if he came home and saw you looking like a hag.” Liz paused, and her dark eyes softened. “He will come home, you know.”

Alice clutched the dream pillow to her heart with both hands, her body wracked with sobs. Liz folded the weeping mother into her arms and rocked from side to side, Alice's blond head tucked under her chin, her tears mingling with the scent of lemon, purifying and cleansing.

When Alice's sobs turned to hiccups, Liz gave her a brisk pat on the back. “There now. A little chamomile and lemon balm tea to calm down, and then you'll be ready to sleep.” She bustled off to the kitchen with her basket, leaving the others to follow. After three cups of the herbal concoction, Alice was noticeably calmer.

“All right, then,” Liz said, “a couple of these tablets and you're off to bed.” She must have noticed Danutia's troubled gaze, because she turned and said, “Perfectly harmless. More valerian, hops, and passion flower, to reduce anxiety.” She turned to Alice, who was washing the tablets down with water. “You trust me, don't you, Alice. You've been taking my remedies for years.”

Alice nodded and stood up from the kitchen table where they'd been sitting, an uneasy threesome. Liz shepherded her friend upstairs. In a few minutes Danutia heard the sound of running water, the toilet flushing, a shoe hitting the floor. Silence, then a warm alto voice singing “All through the Night,” the words becoming softer and softer until they fell on Danutia's ears like a soothing balm.

She roused herself to prowl the front room, quiet as a cat. Parting the curtains, she peered out into the night. The rain had stopped; the waning moon shone behind drifting clouds. No police cars, no media vans.

At a noise behind her she turned to find Liz at the bottom of the stairs.

“I think we need to talk,” Liz said.

Danutia followed her into the kitchen and made herself a cup of instant coffee while Liz produced cheese, cold sliced ham, and home-baked bread from her basket. Even a small jar of Branston pickle, a spicy relish Danutia had found herself craving of late. She filled a plate, knowing she would likely learn more by listening quietly than by demanding answers.

Liz poured herself a cup of hot water, then lost no time getting to the point. “You and Arthur believe I had something to do with Ethel's death. I can see it in your responses every time something about my herbal remedies comes up. I think I know why. Like Alice, Ethel was a client and had taken my remedies for years. So why, you wonder, did I remove all trace of them, if they had no bearing on her death?”

Danutia spread Branston pickle on a slice of bread. “That did seem curious.”

“Did Stephen tell you about mixing a potion for Ethel, and adding too many drops?”

“He mentioned the potion,” Danutia said, adding ham on top of the Branston pickle. “Not the number of drops.”

“I thought not,” Liz said. “As soon as he heard that Ethel had died, he came to me, full of guilt. He told me about squirting many more drops into Ethel's water than he was supposed to. He was sure that's what had killed her, even though I tried to reassure him. To make matters worse, she had asked him to call Dr. Geoff, and he hadn't. He'd been thrown off by the message on the answerphone and intended to tell his mum when he came back, but he forgot.” She sipped hot water. “Stephen is a very sensitive boy. Can you imagine what it would have been like for him if there had been an inquest and he'd had to face questions about what he'd done, and failed to do?”

“You're saying you tried to protect Stephen by removing any evidence that might suggest she'd died from anything other than natural causes?”

Liz sighed. “So you do see my point.”

“If, in fact, Mrs. Fairweather died of natural causes. But what if she was murdered? Then you remain a prime suspect, or at least an accessory. Stephen knows what happened. Now he's disappeared.” Danutia took a bite of her sandwich, waiting to see what effect her words would have.

The lines on Liz's face deepened and she drew in upon herself. “I'd never harm Stephen. He's like the grandson I'll never have. There's something else, isn't there.”

“Yes, one of Mrs. Fairweather's scrapbooks had some pages cut out just after a piece about Violet Roberts's bereavement group. Only you had access to that scrapbook. We talked to Violet. She had a nervous breakdown in that group, and the leader was criticized for not having the qualifications to lead it. She told us you were the leader.”

Liz picked at a crumbly bit of cheese. “This is real Cheshire cheese, from the next county over. You should try it. You need the calcium, in your condition.”

Danutia blinked, then resumed her line of questioning. “What was on those pages?” she asked. The reply wasn't what she expected.

Liz drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders. “After Violet's breakdown, I wrote Ethel a long letter saying I shouldn't have tried leading the bereavement group, and explaining why. I lost a child of my own when I was very young, you see. Stillborn. Only I was an unwed mother, so everyone pretended it hadn't happened, and that drove me crazy. Until I found Wicca, and a woman who did a ritual of giving back that spoke to me.”

She fell silent, and Danutia tried to imagine giving birth to a stillborn baby. The thought scared her.

“When I took on the bereavement group,” Liz continued, “we began with a series of meetings about our lost children, whether the loss was through abortion, miscarriage, illness, or accident, as in Tim's case. When the time seemed right, I proposed the ritual of giving back. Violet was the first woman to speak, and she seemed fine until she tried to say, ‘I give my son back to the waters from which he came.' She began crying uncontrollably. When I tried to calm her, she went berserk.”

Danutia's stomach ached from the agony of it all. She choked down the mouthful she was chewing and, pushing the rest of her sandwich aside, tried to reclaim her objectivity. “What happened then?” she asked.

“Another woman called an ambulance. We all downplayed what had happened, Violet included. I resigned as leader, knowing I'd made an error of judgment. Though I thought I'd come to terms with my own loss, there was still some darkness lingering in me. If I had spoken first, let the ritual heal my darkness, I think Violet would have been able to let her suffering go too.” Liz breathed in deeply, and then spoke more matter-of-factly. “I didn't want anyone raking up that old story and blaming Ethel's death on me.”

“Do you still have the letter?” Danutia asked.

“That's the other thing I went home for. When Sergeant Oakes said you were with Alice, I knew the time had come for this conversation.” Liz took the yellowing scrapbook pages from the bottom of her wicker basket and handed them to Danutia.

The letter was as Liz had described it. On the next page Ethel had pasted a short article on confession. “Good for the soul!” she'd written beside it. As Danutia skimmed the piece, she heard a soft knock on the front door. Kevin, she thought.

Again she was wrong. Dr. Geoff stood on the front step, an old-fashioned black medical bag in his hand. “I was tied up at the hospital and just heard about Stephen a few minutes ago. I thought I'd pop around and see whether Alice needs a sedative, poor woman.”

“No, she's sleeping,” Danutia said. “Liz Hazelhurst is here; Alice is getting the care she needs.” Geoff looked skeptical. “Everything's fine,” she said, closing the door before he could protest.

That wasn't true, of course. She stood in the hallway, reconsidering the web of suspicion she'd woven around the Wiccan herbalist who sat at the kitchen table. Kevin had vouched for the fact that Liz hadn't left the procession. Stephen, if asked, would no doubt corroborate her story about the potion. Liz had voluntarily brought the pages she'd cut from Mrs. Fairweather's scrapbook. On a deeper level, Liz's confession had touched a place of suffering that Danutia could share. She had seen how tender Liz was towards Alice, surely beyond the capacity of the person who had taken her child. So, yes, Alice was getting the care she needed. And no, nothing, nothing at all, was fine.

Winded and discouraged, Arthur
trailed after the Chee Trail search party as they made their way back to the church hall to report in. He'd joined the gathering at dawn, villagers mostly, but also Police Support officers and strangers with Mountain Rescue badges, like the one on Hugh Clough's jacket. Clough strode ahead of Arthur, his head bent. Their party had combed both sides of the river from the main road to the footbridge below the station and back to the fishing club. They'd found nothing—no Stephen, no traces of him even.

As he neared St. Anne's, the Rev Pat propped open the heavy oak door and called out, “Any luck, Arthur?”

“No, nothing,” he said. “Maybe one of the other search parties had better luck.” He took in the fact that she was in full vestments. “What are you doing here? I mean, isn't Marple the vicar now?”

The Rev Pat stepped to the wrought-iron railing that separated the church from the road and lowered her voice. “James phoned last night and asked if I'd take the service today. An emergency with his sister.”