A Proposal to Die For (17 page)

Alkmene studied his profile. ‘Probably, but their opinion does make sense.'

‘Oh, come on,' Jake said, giving some more gas.

‘Really. Consider. If you are raised a certain way, you have certain expectations hanging upon you. This brother of Silas Norwhich had friends, acquaintances back home who would expect him to present a certain type of wife to them. If the woman was not…in their league, as you put it, she would have been treated with disdain, perhaps not invited to parties, or if she was invited, people would stare at her and whisper. She'd feel outcast, unaccepted, unworthy perhaps.'

‘And what nonsense that would be.'

‘Perhaps, but she would sense it and suffer from it. Could her husband's love compensate for what she would be missing? Her family at home, her simple life, the lack of pressure on her to be a certain way.'

Alkmene held her hands tightly together, staring ahead where a group of houses appeared with a church tower rising over them. ‘You keep saying my position is easy and privileged. But I have never failed to remember what people expect of me. You can never just do what you want, or your father will hear of it, or the people will talk about it.'

‘Tough,' Jake said with a ridiculing click of his tongue.

Alkmene gave up for the moment. He obviously didn't understand what she was trying to explain to him, but dug his teeth, like a terrier, into his prejudice against her class.

The road declined now and dragged them by a sharp angle into a narrow passage between the stone walls of neat little gardens of modest homes, ending in a village square, with a post office dead ahead, beside the church, and the inn with the sign ‘The Hunted Boar'.

The animal in question was pictured pursued by two dogs that snapped at it with large yellowish teeth.

Jake parked the car and got out, stretching his long limbs. Alkmene had to agree the ride had made her as stiff as an ironing board. She was happy they were there at last, even if they seemed to have ended up in a deserted town. Nothing was stirring behind the windows, no lace curtains moving as hands lifted them and curious eyes peeked out at the visitors.

The square itself lay empty, just some dead leaves rustling as the wind from the moors came to move them. It carried a hint of damp earth like a cemetery.

Thinking of the woman who had run in despair and vanished, Alkmene shivered. Jake had rounded the car to stand beside her. ‘What is wrong?' he asked.

‘I am not quite sure. There is a bit of a…sinister feel to this place.'

He laughed. ‘Just a few minutes ago it was all so idyllic and authentic and you'd go out to paint and see excavation sites.' He leaned over closer to her. ‘I bet that if you did and some animal stuck its head out of a ditch, you'd think it was some dead body coming back to life and you'd run screaming.'

Alkmene sighed. ‘Don't be ridiculous. Shall we go in to see if they have rooms?'

Still, she pulled her coat closer around her and didn't look at the one oak again that was just a dead stump with a few branches clawing at the skies. Why had nobody bothered to cut it down? It had to be ill or something to die like that. It ruined the look of the entire square with its other healthy green oaks.

Jake opened the door into The Hunted Boar for her and she went in.

The place was crammed with people standing closely together, shouting and raising beer glasses. Alkmene barely managed to squeeze past the last of them to reach a reception desk where a woman with reddish hair and large coarse hands was leafing through the ledger.

In front of the room a man with a leather apron stood holding up something that looked suspiciously like…

Bleeding meat.

Chapter Sixteen

Alkmene stared, willing her eyes to adjust the scene. Her uncomfortable thoughts must have influenced her vision and changed something perfectly innocent into something grisly.

But no, it actually seemed to stay bleeding meat, which the man slapped onto a table in front of him, wrapped into paper and handed to someone who cheered like some Norse warrior carrying off loot.

‘Meat division,' Jake Dubois said as if it were self-evident.

‘What?' she asked, leaning over to him to hear him above the roar.

‘Well, these villagers apparently have a communal herd they tend. Once in a while they slaughter a beast or a few and then everybody comes in and according to their share in the herd or the amount of time they put into it or the pasture the beasts grazed on they all get some share in it. They do the same with cheese in the Swiss Alps.'

Alkmene pulled a face. ‘I think cheese would make it look less disgusting.'

Jake grinned. ‘Still thinking it's sinister here?'

She straightened up under his tone and approached the woman with the ledger. ‘Good day. We have just come down from London and we'd like some rooms, if they are available.'

The woman looked up. ‘Married are you? Single room, double bed?'

Alkmene leaned back on her heels. ‘I thought I said rooms plural.'

The woman held her gaze unperturbed. ‘Married or not? We don't encourage liberal behaviour here at our inn. If you are not married, you have to take separate rooms.'

‘We actually want separate rooms,' Alkmene said.

Jake smiled as he leaned on the counter. ‘We are not married, fortunately.'

The woman looked him over, then shrugged and turned away to study the board that held the keys to several rooms.

‘How do you mean fortunately?' Alkmene asked Jake close to his ear.

‘You would not want to be married to me, would you?' he retorted.

‘That is not the point. You make it sound like the idea I could be your wife is insulting to you or something.'

She realized as she said it that it might look like she was fishing for a compliment and waved her hand. ‘Never mind. It was a long drive.'

The woman had turned back to them with two keys, labels on them reading 12 and 18.

‘Can we also eat here?' Alkmene asked. ‘We are famished.'

‘They finished it all before the division started,' the woman said with a shrug. ‘I can find you some bread and cheese maybe, but it will cost you.'

Alkmene glanced at Jake, who nodded.

‘And everything must be paid in advance,' the woman said.

Alkmene wanted to reach into her purse, but Jake stalled her and pulled out his wallet. ‘Please take the food up to our rooms if you will. Lady Alkmene will also want some hot water I suppose.'

Alkmene could have kicked him for using her title. She expected the woman's jaw to drop and a flood of apologies to break loose. Even worse, if she called it out loud, the whole room might turn and start having more interest in her than in the dead cow being divided.

But the woman just gave her a dirty look from squinted eyes, grabbed up the money Jake had put on the counter and shuffled off, leaving them to find their own way up the stairs, to their rooms.

Jake unlocked Nr. 12 first and peeked in. It was not large but had a fine double bed and a big window with a view of the moors. The sun was just sinking, putting everything in a golden glow. ‘You have this one,' he said. ‘I'll go get your bags from the car.'

Leaving the door open, he walked off. His footfalls pounded down the steps.

Alkmene pulled the key from the lock and held it in her palm as she walked to the window. It looked out over the village square with the sad dead oak among the live ones, down the road they had followed coming here, and then across an unending stretch of moor.

The sunshine over the moor made the greys and greens look more cheerful, almost warm. Still something lingered in her system, a hint of malice conjured up by the empty square, the bleeding beef, the look of hatred in the woman's eyes. These people lived in their own world, not welcoming strangers into it.

Certainly not fancy strangers who had come down from London.

She leaned on the windowsill as she stared out, scanning the land for as far as she could see it from left to right. Where was the infamous marshland where the woman whom Silas Norwhich's unfortunate brother had loved had found her death? Maybe it was further away from here, or it was at the back of the inn? There was a bustle behind her and the woman came in, clanking a tin plate on the table with a chunk of bread and cheese on it. She held a knife in her hand. Pointing it at Alkmene, she asked, ‘What you be wanting here?'

‘Just sightseeing,' Alkmene said with an innocent smile. ‘Birdwatching. And rare plants on the moor, you know.' Her befuddled brain searched for some species her father was always raving about.

The woman shook her head. ‘No, you come from London. If you are here about that old business again, asking questions and opening up old hurt, you'd better leave again at first light. We don't want to hear no more about it.'

Alkmene opened her mouth to say she was not here to hurt anyone, even to set old injustices straight, but the woman was not waiting for a response. Waving the knife, she continued, ‘You'd better leave again, at first light, unless you want something to happen to you.'

‘Anything wrong here?' Jake stood in the door opening with her bags in his hands.

The woman spun to him. She hissed a moment like an angry tiger, then tossed the knife on the table beside the plate and brushed past Jake, who moved sideways to let her through.

Hitching a brow at Alkmene, he asked, ‘Did she mention something happening to somebody?'

‘Yes, me,' Alkmene retorted, ‘or rather us unless we are smart and leave again at first light. They don't welcome strangers who are digging into old hurt or something. I tried to say birdwatching and rare plants, but she didn't buy into it for a moment. It is all your fault. You should not have mentioned my title.'

Jake dropped her bags on the floorboards beside the bed. ‘You had already said we were from London. Birdwatchers carry field glasses and cameras. Botanists wave the local “What grows where?” in the air.'

‘My father never waves “What grows where?” in the air,' Alkmene protested. ‘He goes to places where he writes the “What grows where?” because before he came out, there was none.'

But Jake already said, ‘Besides, if you had wanted to travel incognito, you should have chosen less conspicuous clothes to wear.'

Alkmene glanced down. ‘These are my less conspicuous clothes.'

Jake rolled his eyes. ‘You still have a lot to learn. If you go undercover, you must look the part.'

‘You have not told me anything about going undercover.'

‘Well, what do you expect me to do? Go downstairs, stand next to the guy handing out the cow bits and say: By the by, we think somebody died here, say twenty-five years ago, or maybe she was murdered, or maybe it was just an accident, but in any case we'd like to know more about her and the baby she might or might not have borne.'

Alkmene saw his point. ‘That would probably get you lynched.'

Jake lifted a shoulder. ‘Maybe not that bad, but I would be taking a bath in that horse trough outside this inn. One authentic detail of Cunningham that I am not eager to get closely acquainted with if I can help it.'

Alkmene frowned. ‘That woman was hostile enough, but we can't be sure all people here are the same. It seemed those folks downstairs had eaten their fill, had some beer and were happy with their meat. Maybe if you mingled and started up some conversation, you'd be getting somewhere.'

Jake nodded. ‘Maybe.' He picked up the knife and skilfully sliced off a chunk of bread, covering it with two slices of cheese. ‘You can feed yourself without cutting off a finger?' he asked.

Alkmene made a hitting gesture at him. ‘Will you go now?'

Laughing, he trotted off, carrying his meagre dinner with him.

Chapter Seventeen

While Alkmene was chewing on some of the very heavy bread, the woman brought her hot water. It was in a low porcelain basin with a crack in the edge. She put it on the table, still carrying that hateful look.

Alkmene said round the bread, ‘I'm sorry if you take offence to questions being asked about things that happened here that were not…right. But not everybody has the same opinion about everything. And not everybody is after a sensationalist tale, you know. Maybe we are here in the interest of someone who was treated unfairly and who should, after all those years, be vindicated.'

The woman stared at her as if she didn't understand what Alkmene was talking about. ‘Just remember what I said,' she snapped and left the room, dragging the door to a resounding close.

‘It was too obtuse,' Alkmene said out loud in the empty room. She felt again like she had felt when in school, where the girls had all been well-bred but none had the extensive vocabulary – full of outdated words – that Alkmene had, being raised by her widowed father with his love of ancient textbooks and botany volumes from ages of old. The girls had laughed at her and avoided her.

This situation was just like it. The people downstairs had studied her like she had come from another era. Jake had said she knew nothing about being undercover.

And of course he was right. She knew nothing about that. She had thrown herself into this adventure with her usual careless idea it might be fun and she'd cross each bridge as she came to it. But the atmosphere in this village was hostile and not just because Jake and she were from the city: strangers, outsiders.

No, these people all remembered a past, something that had happened to one of them, one of whom they had been protective, because she had been one of their own. How would she have felt if somebody she had known for all of her life had died ruined, because of a man who had cared more for his reputation than for her life and that of her unborn child?

Letting the hot water sit on the table unused, Alkmene stood in front of the window and stared out over the darkening moors, watching how the golden sunshine changed to orange and blood red, how the skies became purple, then a deep velvet, full of stars. It would be a clear night, with a half moon giving its cold silver light.