An Inquiry Into Love and Death (8 page)

The sound did not come again. I sat there for what felt like hours, my bloody hands pressed to my mouth, trying not to move or breathe. I watched only Sultana, who stared back at me, and we waited in the darkness in silent understanding.

Little by little, eventually the terror began to recede. I took my hands from my mouth. I could feel blood running down my arm from the cut in my thumb, feel blood on my face. I moved one stiff limb, then another. My back ached. The feeling of electricity ebbed, and I thought the thing, whatever it was, had gone.

Sultana felt it, too. Her snarl relaxed, and her ears twitched in interest as she watched me move. Eventually, I pulled myself away from the door and crawled across the floor toward her, trying under my breath to call her to me. She was having none of it; she retreated farther under the cabinet, out of reach. More than anything I wanted the reassurance of another living creature, but I backed away and stood up on my cramped legs.

I limped to the stairs, the relentless wind growing louder in the eaves as I ascended. I briefly considered going to the library to retrieve one of the lamps, but the thought of the library window, even shuttered, was too much to contemplate. So I moved softly in the dark, my hands waving before me like a blind man, and found my way to my room.

There I washed with shaking hands, wrapped my thumb, took off my dirtied stockings and dress. In my underslip I wearily contemplated the bed, and its situation next to the window. Toby’s blocked window came to mind again. I wouldn’t sleep next to a window tonight, listening to those unearthly scratches.

I retrieved an extra blanket from the linen closet—again in the dark—and wound it over the curtain rod, covering the flimsy lace curtains. I had no tools with which to nail it to the window frame, but this would do. The sound of the rain became somewhat muffled as the window disappeared from sight.

Next I took hold of the end of the bed and dragged it along the wall to the other side of the room, away from the window. I put yet another spare blanket on the bed. There: With the window covered, and the bed blanketed and tucked in the corner, I could almost feel safe. Numb with exhaustion now, I pulled my aching limbs onto the bed and lay down.

I had barely arranged myself when, to my tired delight, Sultana joined me. She must have followed me upstairs and watched me ready everything, unseen, and now she leaped onto the bed next to me, fastidiously selected a spot, and curled up. I ran my hand over her matted, gnarled fur, her body heat rising into my palm. She did not purr, but only sighed, as if tolerating me well enough. She smelled of dirt and dead leaves and cat. I had never been so happy to smell anything in my life.

I awoke only once that night. Some sound had roused me, and I saw Sultana’s head raised, her ears twitching as she listened. It may have been a scratch at the window. I waited for a long moment, my limbs still burning from the earlier terror, as if I’d done some great exertion, but no sound came. Sultana put her head back down and clenched her paws open and closed, relaxing again. Keeping my arm around her, I closed my eyes.

I
n the cold damp of morning, I drove through the woods to the neighboring town of St. Thomas’ Gate. The storm had left its mark everywhere, in downed branches, scattered debris, and icy wet puddles that struggled to reflect the thin sunlight. It was as quiet as a place abandoned.

I’m at a hotel called the White Lion in St. Thomas’ Gate,
Inspector Merriken had said,
if you need me.

I had stopped shaking, at least. I had managed to dress myself, in a blue-gray frock, double-breasted with buttons on the front, and stockings to replace last night’s filthy ones; I had found my hat, my coat and its belt, a pair of matching shoes, and my driving gloves. I could pass for a normal young woman on a morning drive. It would have to do.

I was still awash with last night’s experience. I felt what had happened in my nerve endings, as when one first awakens from a nightmare and stares at the ceiling, wondering what is real. Sultana, unconcerned, had forgotten her companionable nature come morning and ran from the house as soon as I opened the door. Perhaps it was for the best; otherwise I would have been tempted to take her with me everywhere I went in smothering affection, for in a way I felt she had saved my sanity.

You were born with good common sense,
my father always said to me.
It’s why we trust you on your own at Oxford.
I wondered now whether he would take back the sentiment. I’d spent the night cowering from ghosts, and my first destination the next morning was straight to a man I instinctively knew was dangerous. Already I could see his face clearly in my mind: the line of his jaw, the angle of his cheekbones, the inquisitive eyes that missed nothing. The image both calmed and excited me, a mix of feelings that had alarmingly little to do with common sense.

I found the White Lion easily, as St. Thomas’ Gate was not much larger than Rothewell. The town was inland, so it did not have Rothewell’s beautiful views, or its steep descent to the water. It did not have Rothewell’s deadly cliffs or, I would wager, its resident ghost. It was a town of a short main street lined with oak and birch trees, and tidy farming cottages tucked on well-kept parcels of land.

A fortyish woman in spectacles greeted me as I entered the inn, but when I told her I was looking for Inspector Merriken, her welcoming smile faded.

“Well, then,” she said with decided ill nature. “Which one would you be?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Let’s see.” She pulled several slips of paper from the pocket of her apron and sorted them one by one. “Are you Edith, Genevieve, or Mary Ann?” She looked me over critically. “You don’t look like any one of those. Cheap, they sounded, and I don’t mind saying so.”

I shook my head, confused. “I don’t follow.”

“So you’re another one, then.” She thrust the slips of paper at me. “Don’t think an in-person visit is going to get you any further than the others. You can give these to him when you see him, and tell him he’s made me sorry I ever installed a telephone.”

“Oh.” I helplessly took the papers. The first one was addressed along the top of the page,
For Inspector Drew Merriken.
I looked away before my curious eyes could go further. “Look, Mrs.—”

“Ebury, but don’t you mind me. It’s that inspector you need to mind, and that’s my advice. Good day.”

She turned away, headed back toward the inn’s small dining room, in which a handful of locals were eating breakfast. I stood abandoned by the door, unsure of what to do. She hadn’t even told me whether the inspector was in.

A few people at scattered tables had turned my way. I was still holding the papers; I must look like a lovesick girl, one of—apparently—many other lovesick girls acquainted with Inspector Merriken.
Cheap
, the landlady had said. I shoved the papers in the pocket of my skirt. To go upstairs and look for the man myself was unthinkably embarrassing. I’d have to find him another time. I pushed the door open and fled outside.

A figure was coming up the walk from the direction of the old carriage house. I recognized the black overcoat and long-legged gait immediately. Inspector Merriken was looking down as he walked, the brim of his hat low as it had been when I first saw him, and I realized he was deep in thought. There was nowhere to go, so I stood where I was, waiting for him to notice me.

He was almost upon me before he did. I had a long moment unobserved to take in the pensive cast of his features, to wonder why he seemed so very solitary. Then he was standing before me, his gaze locked on mine.

“Miss Leigh,” he said, frowning in surprise. “Is everything all right?”

Up close, I could see that his coat was unbuttoned, his tie loosened, his collar open at the throat. I could follow the line of his white shirt down his chest and stomach to his waist. The effect wasn’t sloppy, only a little rumpled. Had he dressed quickly early this morning, or had he not been to bed at all? Embarrassed to even be thinking about it, I snapped my eyes back upward.

“These are yours,” I said, holding the slips of paper out to him.

He took them from me and glanced at them one at a time before putting them in a breast pocket. “I see.”

“You’re rather popular.”

He took a breath through his nose. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”

“Wouldn’t you? The landlady said—”

“Yes, all right.”

“Is Drew short for Andrew?”

Now he was glaring. “Perhaps.”

I tugged off my gloves. For some reason, the thought of the inspector as a ladies’ man needled me, though of course it made sense. He was rather an attractive man. “It’s none of my business, of course.”

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “I was about to go to you myself, as it happens. Miss Leigh—what happened to your hand?”

I had uncovered the makeshift bandage I’d ripped from an old towel and wound over my bleeding thumb. “I had something of a mishap.”

“You’ve bandaged it all wrong.”

“Probably. I had no supplies, and I had to do it one-handed. I’m not much of a nurse.”

He took my wrist and unwound the strip of cloth. “Do I even want to know the story behind this?” he said, talking almost to himself. “Never mind. I have proper bandages in my room. Come with me.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Are you serious? Miss Leigh, you’re bleeding.”

“My name is Jillian.” Since I knew his name, it seemed only fair. “Everyone in there already thinks I’m one of your girlfriends. And I’m bleeding, not dying. It just started up again when you took off the bandage.”

He seemed to grit his teeth. “All right. There is a sitting room upstairs. Will you consent to sit in it while I fetch a bandage?”

He had not let go of my wrist, and I felt that warm grip again through my sleeve, though I did my best not to be affected by it. “Yes,” I managed.

After only the smallest of pauses—I may have imagined it—he let me go, and I followed him back into the inn and up the stairs. There was indeed a small private sitting room, where he deposited me; then he disappeared. In a few moments he returned with a roll of bandages and a pair of scissors. He had removed his hat, overcoat, and jacket, and without the extra layers, in only his shirtsleeves and trousers, he had a particular animal grace. He pulled a chair up to mine and rolled up his cuffs, revealing wrists with dark hair on them. He pulled my hand toward him without ceremony and inspected the bleeding thumb, his dark head bent low.

I sat, crackling with impatience and some kind of wild, excited energy as he deftly wrapped the thumb in a bandage and tied it off. His fingertips on my skin sent jolts up my arm. He seemed not to notice. He smelled of soap and the autumn air he’d brought from outside. His shoulders, under the white shirt, looked impossibly strong.

“You’ll live,” he said as he finished.

“That’s a relief.” I bit my lip as he straightened. “So, who is going to go first? You or me?”

“I will,” he said easily. “I’ve ordered some food to be brought, and some tea.”

“Do I need food for this conversation?”

“You may, yes.” He crossed his arms and slouched back in his chair. He took a leisurely moment to look at me, as I sat with my legs crossed, my spine straight, my hands in my lap. His gaze traveled me as if searching for an answer, and though his expression was carefully impersonal, I felt its warmth.

“What is it?” I said.

He frowned a little. “You look different with clothes on.”

My blush was hot. “I had clothes on when we met!”

“Not many.” He raised his eyes to mine and shrugged. “You puzzle me. When I met you yesterday, you looked like a bohemian type who had just gotten out of bed.”

I could have protested that it had been nine o’clock in the morning, and I
had
just gotten out of bed—but some blessed remnant of common sense made me keep my mouth shut. I also didn’t argue that I had hardly been naked. My legs had been bare, but I’d been wearing my oversize men’s sweater. I kept quiet and let him go on.

“However,” he continued, “when we spoke, I realized that wasn’t quite right. You may not quite be proper, but you aren’t lax in your morals.” He ignored my glare of outrage and continued. “A student, then. A buttoned-up intellectual type, perhaps. But you aren’t that either. You’re neither fish nor fowl.”

“I see. And today?”

“Today you are dressed much like any other young woman, albeit with a bit of money. And you almost pull it off.”

I choked.
“Almost?”

“It’s what I can’t put my finger on,” he admitted. “You wear the clothes of any other girl of your class, as if you’re off to an afternoon of teas and husband hunting. But with you, it’s quite obviously an act. You’re something very different underneath, and I don’t know exactly what that is.”

“So you are simply attempting to put me into a pat little category.”

“Most diligently, yes. And not succeeding.”

“If that is the game, then I could categorize you as a womanizer.”

“You wouldn’t be exactly wrong,” he said, “but you wouldn’t be exactly right, either.”

The barmaid came in and set down a tray of tea and toast. When she had gone, the inspector leaned forward without another word and pulled a small square of newsprint from his pocket. He unfolded it to reveal a white cigarette butt, smoked most of the way to the end.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I found it on the top of the cliffs this morning,” he said. “And this one”—he pulled a second square from his pocket, and showed me an identical cigarette—“was found in the same spot by a local PC the day your uncle died. It was right at the top of the cliffs, where your uncle must have fallen.”

I stared at the cigarette. My uncle had never smoked in any of my memories; I had seen no evidence of it in the house, not a cigarette or ashtray.

“I can see you calculating it,” Drew said to me. “No, your uncle did not smoke. And if he had smoked the first cigarette, then who smoked the second one?”

“But the first one could be weeks old, could it not?”

“It could not. It rained heavily the night before your uncle died. This cigarette was found on the same morning as the body, perfectly dry.”

I felt that sink in with a sick numbness. “Someone was there.”

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

“You knew about this,” I said, angry. “I know what you’re saying. Why didn’t you just tell me my uncle was murdered?”

“Because I don’t know it, not really. This isn’t much to go on. It isn’t proof. But when I went back to the site again this morning and found the second one . . .” He looked tired. “If someone killed him, they may have gone back to the same place. It’s a reasonably common pattern.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “We have to do something. You need to call your headquarters at Scotland Yard.”

“And give them what?” he said. “I have two cigarettes and a gut feeling. They won’t think it’s enough.”

I stood. I was mindlessly agitated. It felt as if something were physically tearing at me, and I began to pace in an attempt to stop it. “So you need to find something else,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I pointed at the second cigarette. “That one is just as dry as the first.”

“And there was a storm last night, yes. So someone dropped it this morning.”

I wondered whether the person had gone right by my back door on his or her way to the cliffs, taking the same path I had walked with William Moorcock. Did William smoke? I didn’t think so. I thought of Rachel Moorcock, dropping her cigarette and grinding it out.

“You need to find out who smokes in Rothewell,” I said.

He watched me as I paced, his look a little wary. “Perhaps. But not only Rothewell. The person could have come from another town.”

“They would have required a motorcar. That would have been noticed.”

“Not if they parked it a distance away. And they could have traveled by bicycle, or motorcycle. They could have walked.”

Or traveled by donkey cart. I blew out a breath. “The cigarette has no lipstick on it. That means it was a man.”

“Does it? You wore no lipstick yesterday.”

He was right. Rachel had worn lipstick, as had Diana Kates, but Diana’s daughter, Julia, had not. “You said my uncle’s body was found at ten o’clock, and he had been dead three to five hours. That means he died sometime between five and seven o’clock in the morning.”

“That’s correct.”

“Daylight, then.” I turned to him. “Or at least dawn. The sun was coming up. Someone could have seen something.”

“I spent much of yesterday afternoon canvassing town,” he said. “It’s why I didn’t get to the cliffs until this morning. No one I’ve talked to saw anything at all.”

“Please,” I said in exasperation. “There must be something you can do!”

“Jillian.” He said my name, softly, for the first time. “He could have jumped.”

I put my hands to my eyes and pressed them. I was not weeping. My eyes were as dry and hot as they’d been the day I’d seen the body, my breath ragged in my chest. “He didn’t jump,” I managed to say from the darkness behind my hands. “You know that, and so do I. I was going to leave today, and never come back to this place again.” The implications were only fully hitting me, and I could barely stand them.
“He didn’t jump
.
”