An Inquiry Into Love and Death (15 page)

“Send a boy?”

“Yes, you’ve a telegram. It just came in. Would you like to come in and get it?”

I followed her into the quiet post office, where a teenaged boy sat behind the counter, reading a movie magazine. “Did you catch her then, Gran?”

“I did,” said Mrs. Trowbridge, “and she’s here. Find her the telegram, won’t you?”

The boy promptly dropped his magazine and rifled through a pile of papers. I turned to see the older woman watching me, nearly staring, a curious expression on her face.

She shook her head when I caught her looking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that you resemble someone.”

“Oh? Someone you know?”

“Someone I used to know, yes. But I haven’t seen her in years.” She gazed at me again, moving a little closer, unable to hide the avid interest in her eyes. “My goodness. You really do look like her. It’s quite something.”

“Who do you mean?” I asked, taking the folded message the boy handed to me.

“Oh, she died a long time ago. I’m not even sure you’d have been born. Her name was Elizabeth.”

The entry in Toby’s journal came back to me like a chime. “Elizabeth?”

“Gran, you’re embarrassing her,” said the boy.

Mrs. Trowbridge shook her head. “I’m sorry. What foolishness. It’s just that she was dear to me; that’s all. Do you have your message? Well, then.”

She paused, smiling at me expectantly, and I thought perhaps she wanted me to say something, or open the message as she stood there watching. By instinct I put the envelope in my handbag, unseen. “Thank you,” I said.

She hid her disappointment gamely and turned away. I left and headed to Rachel’s shop. I wondered who Elizabeth was, but the telegram overshadowed my curiosity. I meant to read it once I got inside and had a moment of privacy, but the second the bell tinkled over the closing door behind me, I knew something was wrong.

Rachel’s son, Sam, was on his stool behind the counter, alone. This time he didn’t slide off the stool and run away, but only sat watching me from eyes with dark shadows under them. His gaze tracked me as I wandered the aisles, looking for a few tins of cat food I could take back to Sultana, as if I were a predator closing slowly in on him.

The shelves hadn’t been restocked. Over the usual musty smell of a dry-goods store was another odor, something sour that was difficult to place. I came to the counter, smiling at the boy, who looked even more terrified as I approached. There was something very wrong with a store that left a frightened nine-year-old boy in charge alone.

“Hello,” I said gently, putting the tins on the counter. “It’s Sam, isn’t it?”

The boy bit his lip and nodded.

“My name is Jillian,” I said. “I met your mother the other day.”

He squirmed, obviously wishing he could escape as he had the first time I’d seen him. “Mother says I mustn’t go to the back,” he explained.

I wondered why in the world she would say such a thing. “Well, then. You must do what your mother says, mustn’t you? If you’ll just leave these here, I’ll come back for them another time. Perhaps you could tell your mother I was here?”

“Sam!”

She came through the doorway, harried, her hair escaping from the messy bun she’d tied it in. She was dressed as unfashionably as before, in an off-the-rack dress she’d obviously not had altered and seemed to have just thrown on. She saw me and gave me a smile with some effort, though I noticed her eyes were very tired. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I heard Sam talking to someone.”

“He’s doing a very good job.”

Rachel touched her son’s hair, gently, as he squirmed again. “Thank the lady, Sam, and sit still. She’s just said something nice to you; did you hear?” He said nothing, and she sighed. She looked exhausted, and her shoulders sagged with defeat. “You must think I’m a terrible mother.”

“No, but I’m worried about you. Are you quite all right?”

She dropped her hand from Sam’s hair. “Yes, I’m all right; I’m sorry. Let me just ring these up for you, shall I?”

But she had hardly begun when a sound came from the back—a frightful crash, laced with the sound of glass shattering, and a great, rasping, carrying male voice began shouting curse words I had never heard in my life and could only guess the meaning of.

The three of us froze, and I reddened despite myself, glancing at Sam. He was looking steadily at the countertop. Tired humiliation showed in Rachel’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said yet again. “It’s my father. He’s particularly bad today. I must get back there. Just take these, will you, and pay me later?”

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Oh, no, no—really. I can handle it. It’s just—”

But more sounds came from the back now, and she left her sentence unfinished as she turned and hurried away. I hesitated for only a moment, glancing at Sam again. Perhaps it was a private family problem, but my conscience simply wouldn’t let me leave. No one should have to bear all of this without help. I skirted the counter and followed her through the door to the back of the store.

We came to a narrow hallway lined with a few empty crates and boxes of stock. The end opened into a dark storeroom, where I could see a bare light and chain hanging from the ceiling and shelves piled with goods in the gloom. Rachel opened the only door leading from the hall, and I followed her into a small room, perhaps meant as a second storeroom, now cleared out. It was furnished with a narrow cot, a plain bedside table, and an old sideboard holding a pitcher and basin. Heavy curtains covered the only window.

On the bed lay an old man, thin and withered as a stick. He had pushed the sheet from his body and was dressed only in an old undershirt and a ragged pair of men’s shorts. He was twisted on the bed, his hips and pale old legs lying flat, while his torso and upper body were turned in the direction of the bedside table, toward which he reached his arms. The remains of a drinking pitcher and glass lay broken on the floor, tossed from where they had presumably been placed on the table at the bedside, with water spilled everywhere. The man seemed to be attempting to get up.

“Papa!” Rachel exclaimed. “You’ve broken it! Look what you’ve done!” She tried to calm him on the bed, while stepping over the broken pieces of pitcher, as he flailed his emaciated arms and shouted another string of curses. I stepped quickly back out into the hall and hunted until I found a broom and dustpan. When I reappeared with them, Rachel finally noticed I had followed her.

She reddened as bright as a tomato. “Jillian—it isn’t necessary, really.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Of course I can help. I can wield a broom as well as anyone.”

But she took both the broom and pan from me and started to sweep the wet crockery. This left her father unattended on the bed, and he began to twist again, shifting his arms and legs in yet another attempt to rise. So I moved to the bedside and patted his shoulder. “Please,” I said as soothingly as I could in the midst of chaos. “You must calm down.”

He turned at my voice and looked up at me. His eyes were shockingly sunken in his head, his mouth trembling, his chin covered in spittle and straggling white whiskers. His skin was a grayish yellow hue that spoke of a man very, very ill. But his gaze, when he took me in, glittered. “Elizabeth,” he said.

I froze. “I’m sorry?”

“Elizabeth,” he said again.

“No, Papa,” Rachel said as she stood with the dustpan. “This is not Elizabeth. Do you hear?”

“Who is Elizabeth?” I asked her.

“I have no idea; I’m sorry. He’s been so ill . . . and the pain medications they have me give him . . . His mind wanders sometimes.”

“It’s all right.” How truly awful this must be for her, caring for both a sick father and a young son, all alone with a shop to run. “Your mother . . .” I said.

She bent to the dustpan again. “She died three years ago. Right before Papa got sick. I must empty this. I’ll be right back.”

I watched her go. This was why she lived here in this tiny place, tied here, unmarried. Why she looked older than her years.

“Elizabeth,” said the old man again, this time touching my wrist, his skin hot.

Twice in the space of a few minutes, someone had thought they recognized her in me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not—”

His grip tightened, and he pulled on my arm. He was not terribly strong, but the panic I saw in his eyes gave him a burst of energy. “She’s gone. She’s gone. You must help me.”

“Please. You must calm down, Mister . . .” I realized Moorcock was Rachel’s married name.

“I’m George York. You know that. You know me. You must help me.” To my frozen horror, helpless tears ran down his cheeks. “I know I can trust you. I see them when I close my eyes, Elizabeth. She doesn’t know—my own daughter. I never told her. But I see the men when I close my eyes, drowning in the sea. The men . . .”

He was in such agony, I could only bend down in pity and say, “Of course, of course I will help, Mr. York. What men? What do you want me to do?”

“You always were a good girl,” he said. “You look just as you always did. You’ve been away.”

“All right,” I said, leaving for the moment the fact that I had no idea who he thought I was. “What can I do for you?”

He seemed calmer now, though his grip did not loosen. “Listen. The boat. Just burn it. I should have done it long ago. You can’t do it yourself, I know—you must find someone to help you. I don’t know why I did it—I needed the money, and Ray had enlisted; he went away, and—I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. But I did. Please, Elizabeth, you must burn that boat.”

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I hid it for as long as I could—I should have destroyed it. I know that now. No one can have it, not now.” Tears ran from his eyes, dripped down his temples and onto the pillow. “Don’t tell my daughter. For God’s sake, please, it’s the only thing I ask. I can’t bear it. Don’t tell her. Elizabeth!”

“Papa!” Rachel had come back in the room. “I told you! She is not Elizabeth!”

I straightened from where I had bent close to the old man. My cheeks flamed.

“You mustn’t mind him.” Rachel’s mouth was set, and if she had heard any more of her father’s words, she gave no sign. “You really mustn’t. I told you.” She leaned over the bed now, tucked the blanket around him as he lay looking up at her. “Papa, please relax. I’ll get you another pitcher, I promise.”

The old man touched her hand, then lay back on the bed, his eyes closed. He seemed to sink into the pillows.

We left the room, and she closed the door gently behind us. “Thank you,” she said.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” I said. “I truly am.”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Was that what he was talking to you about? He did love Ray. My husband died in Belleau Wood.” She sighed. “Poor Papa.”

I looked at her for a long moment. I should tell her everything her father had said. I knew it.

Inevitably, she asked, “What else did he say?”

He was an old man in a shadow world—that much was clear—and almost nothing he’d said had made sense to me. Still, I had promised. So I hedged. “He said something about a boat.”

“A boat?” She shook her head. “What a strange thing for him to remember.”

“Why? Whose boat is it?”

“Ours—it’s a fishing boat. Papa used to be a fisherman. When he got too sick to do it anymore, he gave it up.” She shrugged. “It’s strange that he would mention the boat now. We need the money, so I put it up for sale two weeks ago.”

T
he blond man had gone, and I sat on the low wall overlooking the sea. The encounter with the old man had rattled me. I turned the words over in my mind, trying to make sense of them, but nothing came. I simply had no idea what Rachel’s father had been talking about or how I would even begin to untangle it. I watched the boats go by in the distance, unseeing.

Elizabeth.

I took a few deep breaths. Then I dug through my handbag and pulled out my telegram.

It was from the solicitor, Mr. Reed. It stated that he had important information concerning Toby’s will, and he needed to impart it to me in person. He was coming from London the day after next.

I felt ill. Was Toby leaving me money? I had no need of it. My parents had plenty, which Toby must have known. I’d been here for days, and I was no closer to catching his killer. Whatever he had left me, I couldn’t accept it.

Oh, how badly I wanted to leave in that moment. How terribly, disloyally, and childishly I wanted to drive away and disappear. I was afraid. It wasn’t just a physical fear, though I felt plenty of that; it ran deeper: a fear of what lay ahead, of what my life was becoming, of the choices I would have to make. I was painfully, almost paralyzingly afraid.

Mixed in with the fear, I suddenly longed for Drew. I wanted his arm around my waist again, his chest against my back. I could practically hear my mother’s voice:
Darling, you barely know him. He’s handsome, I’ll admit, but God made lots of handsome men. This one is going to hurt you
. And still, I wished for him with an ache that was nearly physical.

I allowed myself this blinding self-pity for perhaps twenty minutes, staring unseeing out over the water. I did not cry, but I wallowed satisfyingly for that short period of time and came out feeling as if I’d quite finished. Then I stood and continued on.

I called at the vicarage, but neither the vicar nor his wife was home. The teenaged day maid who answered the door said they had gone to Barnstaple. When I asked whether I could leave a message for the vicar, the girl’s look turned blank and a little panicked, so I rummaged through my handbag for a piece of paper and a pencil. Crooking my foot on the doorstep, I flattened the paper across my knee and wrote on it, the same way my friends and I always did when we exchanged notes on the common; the maid watched this with what could only be termed a gawp. I wrote the vicar, requesting to see his historical archives of Rothewell at his earliest convenience, folded the paper, and gave it to her.

She took it solemnly, still gawping a little. I smiled. The melancholy that had come over me had now completely drained away, and in its place was a feeling of readiness, almost recklessness. I was the daughter of Charles and Nora Leigh, the world-famous chemist and his glamorous wife, and the only way to face fear was simply to face it.

“Tell me,” I said to the maid. “Is there a path around the headland to Blood Moon Bay?”

•   •   •

The bay looked different in sunlight. Under the bright canopy of sky, studded with clouds making their way one by one across the sun, it almost seemed like a peaceful place. It should have had tourists walking the beach, perhaps, or having a drink at a little hut of a bar. It should have had fishing boats coming in and out, bringing their salty marine smells and the shouts of fishermen. It should have had locals bustling about, bringing the day’s catch ashore, trading quips with the fishermen, laughing and talking and smoking in friendly knots.

But Blood Moon Bay was blank and silent. The water was icy, the waves choppy, daring you to navigate a boat or—God forbid—set your own foot in the water. Through the mouth of the bay I could see fishing boats going by in the distance, but there was no pier here; nor did any of the boats come close. It seemed Blood Moon Bay was too treacherous and remote a spot to risk a landing.

The beach was dark and rocky, cold through the soles of my shoes. The wind stung my cheeks and brought tears to my eyes, howling through the trees that signaled the start of the woods and the slope.

I walked along the curve of the shore, my hands in my pockets. I had not bothered with my hat, and my hair blew wildly in the wind, my curls knotting themselves in the salty air. I found the spot where I had stood the night before, but the beach had been washed smooth by the tide. There was no sign of the marks, of the message scrawled in the sand, as if it had never been.

It had a dark beauty, this place. I looked over the deep, dangerous waters to the entrance to the sea, and it was easy to picture it: a boat slipping silently through as if through an opened doorway, sailed easily and expertly by a man who had done the route many times. It slid through the water, bold as could be, its captain keeping a wary eye on the light coming from the signal house above, telling him the way was safe and clear.

Easy to see it pull up just off the shallow shore and weigh anchor in the last of the deeper waters; easy to see men move out in small rowboats, pushing them off the sand until they were wet to the thighs, then getting in and rowing the last of the way, pulling up next to the boat, practiced experts despite the treacherous current. Easy to see the cargo begin to be unloaded, the well-wrapped packages splashing into the water: rum, tea, silks, spices, the barrels glistening black in the moonlight. Riches beyond most men’s imaginings, all for a night’s work.

Easy to see a small boy, his clothes bravely pulled on over his nightclothes, wanting to follow his father, taking a step too far, unaware of the power of the sea at his feet—a thump, a cutoff cry, his head pressed under one of the unseeing boats, the blood in the water . . .

I turned away, shivering, turned my back to the water, and looked up.

The rocks and driftwood, the detritus of incoming and outgoing tides, ended at the edge of the beach where the trees began. From there I was at the bottom of a gently sloped bowl of woodland, dense and dark green, rising up to my left and before me. To my right, the lip of the bowl sloped off, as if the potter had ruined it on the wheel, and the great line of land continued down the coast, beautiful and tangled. It was impossible to go that way, where the land itself buckled and broke up, where no footpath could go and, even if one existed, it would go nowhere.

No, the footpath—and there was at least one, as I had walked it—went up through the trees, to the left up the side of the angry cliff—or perhaps there were others, dug into the earth straight up the lip of the bowl, where, presumably, the signal house stood. But from here I could see nothing. The paths had been dug deep so they would not show through the trees, and so that men climbing them, carrying cargo, could not be seen from the shore once they entered the woods.

The boat,
Rachel’s father had said.
Just burn it. I needed the money.

And Toby’s words:
I cannot write what I saw.

Walking John had lived in the seventeenth century, and smuggling had died out not long after that lively century was over. What, then, had Mr. York done, sometime after his son-in-law had gone to war, that haunted him so?

I want to know what’s going on in those woods,
Drew had said.
Because something is. Someone was lighting that beacon.

I brushed the stinging water from my eyes in the wind. Was the bay not the ideal place for something outside the law? Both Aubrey and Rachel said they wouldn’t come through these woods at night for anything. Most of the Rothewell locals probably felt the same. What better cover, then, for an illegal operation than a place where no boats could dock, and none of the locals ever dared go?

But Toby had gone into these woods. What had he seen? What, if anything, had Drew found? Would he ever trust me enough to tell me?

A ghost would be ideal cover, but this ghost was not a foolish old legend. He was real, and Mr. York, for one, would have known it. What would have made him go ahead anyway, knowing the bay and the woods were haunted? What happened on those midnight excursions—assuming they existed?

Oh, Toby. What did you walk into?
A few stolen goods would not have rattled him so.
I have no choice.

Perhaps they had been lucky. William said that Walking John had quiet periods. Perhaps whatever an old ex-fisherman raved about had nothing to do with Rothewell’s resident ghost. But I couldn’t help but feel that somehow the two were related—and that all of it somehow circled back to Toby and the way he had died. If only I could see all the pieces of the puzzle.

Seabirds flew in lazy turns overhead, their cries echoing off the cliffs. Far out to sea, another tiny boat inched by, intent on its own business. The sun climbed in the sky, indifferent to another day on Blood Moon Bay. The cliffs looked down, unspeaking.

Whatever had happened here, the bay had nothing to tell me. I shook the circulation back into my chilled feet and began the return walk over the headland.