Grave Consequences (20 page)

The next morning, Sunday breakfast was a rather more elaborate affair than usual. It took my mind off my worries and also made up for another round of early morning nightmares, just the same as the ones that had greeted me each dawn for the past couple of days. Jane had gotten up and
made strawberry crepes for us, complete with a rich filling that I suspect was at least half sour cream, half cream cheese, and half crème fraîche. Better than that, Jane brought out the Bodum coffee plunger again and I was as content as I could be. For the moment. No sooner had we finished, lingering another few moments over the empty dishes and a lazy, show-offy argument about a crossword clue in the Sunday paper, than Jane announced that she had to get right to work.

I expected Greg to speak up at this point, but he didn’t. So I did. “On Sunday too? I was—”

“Afraid I won’t be able to make it out to the site tomorrow,” Jane broke in, her voice brittle, avoiding my glance. “It’s back to the station for me, I’m afraid, and another bloody round of questions. So I’d like to get things sorted today, try not to lose too much time.”

I dropped the fork I’d been toying with with a clatter. How could she do this, prepare a breakfast like the one we’d had, make pleasant and erudite conversation, and then casually announce that she was going in for a second round of questioning about a murder? It was clear to me that Jane was unhappy about the situation, but her capacity for compartmentalization was nothing short of miraculous. I would have sent everyone off to the pancake house and then retired to a hot bath with a bottle of whiskey. No, that wasn’t fair to Jane: when I had been in a similar situation, I’d behaved almost as—what? Coolly? Competently?—when I’d packed up the field school and decamped Penitence Point. Except that I remember losing my cool a little more often, letting the ragged veil slip a little more noticeably.

What’s more, did I, as a house guest, need to refrain from asking too many questions about one’s session with the cops? As a friend, was I obliged to? And I couldn’t help but wonder what the police made of an interviewee who was so cool, so self-possessed. “What do they want now?” I asked.

“Trying to confirm a few things, is all they’ll tell us,” Greg answered. “Though if you ask me, I think they’ve a lot
of cheek.” He turned to his wife. “There’s absolutely no reason for this, not even circumstantial evidence to link you to Julia’s death. And I think it’s time we called the lawyer who was recommended to you by Sabine.”

Jane nodded agreement and pushed back her chair. “You can look after yourself, right, Emma? I feel awful about not being able to spend more time with you, but I’m afraid it’s just bad luck.” She made as if to shift the dirty dishes to the sink, when I stopped her.

“If you want to get to work, go straight ahead. I’ll take care of these. Greg, what are you up to this morning?”

“Actually, after I get done tending to Hildegard’s tank, I thought I’d see if Aunty wanted to go to church. She was very blue yesterday, I’ve never seen her so down. I’ll take her in for one of Sabine’s shockingly liberal sermons and see if that doesn’t fan her up a bit.”

“Is she coming for dinner tonight?” Jane said. “Mads often comes for dinner on Sunday nights,” she explained to me.

“I shouldn’t plan on it,” Greg replied. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get her to go to church with me.”

“Off you go, then,” I said. “I’ve got this under control, and I’ll just go for a bit of a stroll later, so we’re all set.”

“Thanks so much, Emma. I knew I could rely on you,” Jane said.

I looked up from clearing the table. My friend’s words had been perfectly level. Not a break or a hitch or a hesitation or any emotion of any sort whatever. Her face was hard and I thought I saw a peevish look vanishing as I watched, as though my own self-reliance was some irritation, some threat to her. She went upstairs, followed by Greg.

I shrugged and put the rest of the dishes in the sink, looking around for the dish detergent. I found a heavy white bottle marked “Fairy Liquid,” strangely industrial looking for its purportedly ethereal contents, and squirted some of the green liquid into the hot water. If my friends were going to slide so comfortably into their accustomed roles, Jane the workaholic, Greg the St. George in search of a lady to de
fend, then I could at least be graceful enough to get on with the one I’d assumed, which was—what? Nosy Parker? Optimistic, can-do American? I didn’t know. But apparently I did. Even before I knew that I had a plan, even before the dish liquid had risen up in a steamy froth of bubbles, I realized that I was going to use the newspaper article about Julia’s death and disappearance and retrace her steps as closely as I could.

I borrowed Jane’s map of the town, Marchester A–Z (momentarily confused when she’d pronounced it “aytozed”), and found where Julia’s apartment had been. It was on the other side of the river from the site, in a part of town that was busy during the week, with small shops and a local market nearby. It was in a run-down block, but not worrying, more like “cheap and cheerful.” After mustering a little courage, I went up to the front door and looked at the names next to the buzzers on the intercom: “Whiting, J.” was on the third floor. I went back across the street and looked up at the third—no, fourth floor—Jane always referred to the first floor as the “ground floor.” There were curtains over the two windows. One was made out of a large piece of cloth, a dark blue Indian-looking print, and the other was also dark blue but not matching otherwise; they hung askew. It would have been walking distance to the university from here, with the site even closer. It might have been Julia’s first place on her own, after a lifetime in her parents’ home, school dormitories, and university housing. The hopefulness of place made me unbelievably sad. To someone on her own for the first time, it would have seemed a palace, all the necessities at hand.

Next I checked the map to see where 375 Green Cross Road was. Although it was quite a piece away from the apartment, back over the bridge and to the east of the site, the new church, and Julia’s house, I didn’t mind the walk. In fact, I found myself walking more and more slowly toward
the Whiting residence, my stomach knotting itself until it sent tingles up my spine.

The Whiting house was in a cul-de-sac that appeared to be secluded from the rest of the town, hidden by a cleverly maintained stand of trees. The metaphorical distance between Julia’s apartment and this place could not have been greater. In fact, the difference between number 375 and the other places in this upscale neighborhood was striking. Number 375 was older than most of the houses in town, but was still only of 1920s vintage, an elephantine mock-Tudor in superb condition: no flaking paint, no shabby, lived-in gentility, none of the relaxed, benign neglect that characterized the rest of the street. The lawn and shrubs I could see in the front were maintained with a precision that I found off-putting. The grass was as smooth and green as a cut emerald, the half dozen evergreen shrubs that hid the foundation were topiary mounds, their bottom branches trimmed a uniform six inches from the ground, so that the effect was one of a row of hoop-skirted ladies coyly showing their ankles. There wasn’t a stray leaf or branch lying underneath the trees, not a flower that leaned out of its rank, and crabgrass would have been ashamed to consider showing itself there. I began to think that there were undergardeners who remained concealed until a pine cone dared fall, and then ran out to scoop the errant vegetation up in a fluid motion, like the ball boys on a tournament tennis court. The notion that a child’s ball or a pet dog would have been prohibited from this space sprang to mind. The whole facade announced: we are immaculate, we are respectable, we have arrived, and you will never see the seams where we snuck in.
Noli me tangere.
I thought longingly of the happy mess I’d left at home and experienced a profound pang of homesickness.

The windows were darkened and there was no sign of life anywhere on the grounds. I walked past and tried to peer into the back yard—
garden,
I corrected myself. From the small patch I could see through the wrought-iron fence, the back mirrored the front. No patio for parties, no much-loved
garden shed housing the noisy old lawn mower, no deck furniture in this eerie place. I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up in such an inhospitable house and suddenly could see how, if it had not been born in this place, Julia’s quietness had stood her in good stead here. Such an inhuman precision would drive anyone to find quiet corners and unobtrusive amusements. It seemed to me that even the birds didn’t bother to nest anywhere near here, or maybe it was just the rain that prevented me from hearing their song.

The next stop was the pub Julia had visited the night of her death. The Grub and Cabbage was nothing like either the Prince of Wales or the Fig and Thistle. On the edge of this tony district, it was of new construction that looked as though it had been poured from a bottle of “Acme Instant Public House.” It wasn’t open yet, so I headed for the next stop on my grim pilgrimage: the construction site.

A little farther on, away from the center of town and the dig, was Leather Street, a place that was full of new houses and the blank gaps where old buildings had been torn down to make way for new ones. In the middle of it all was a huge area fenced in with chain link that reached ten feet into the air, barbed wire around the top. There was only one gate, a massive sliding thing on wheels that reminded me of Hollywood evocations of medieval castles, fastened with a massive chain and padlock. I walked all the way around, just to make sure I wasn’t missing some other entrance, and couldn’t even find a hole where kids might have crawled through to play on the dangerous site or rob scraps or whatever kids might have done. There was no way in except for that gate, and there was no way through the gate without a key. As his house had demonstrated to me, there was nothing sloppy about the way that George Whiting conducted himself, but I didn’t recall the police stating the construction site had been broken into. How had the murderer gotten in with a body? Or had Julia reached the construction site under her own power?

Having spent some time near construction sites—archae
ologists are often called in to investigate what they uncover—I could tell that this was extremely well organized. Trailer for plans and meetings, sheds for storage of tools, piles of raw materials, cranes hoisted compressors into the air to keep them hanging safely out of reach. Foundations poured, rebar jutting up like claws into the sky. Dust making everything a uniform color, save where bales of brick sat like a thick, angry scar on the ground. There were two skips or Dumpsters, new ones, it seemed, off to the side of an older one, still festooned with the blue and white tape that warned a police investigation was taking place here. I wondered whether work had been allowed to continue here and made a note to ask. If it hadn’t, it struck me as a double blow to the man: kill his daughter, then rob away his livelihood. Which seemed to me to be an incredibly dangerous thing to try with George Whiting. But what if that had been the goal in the first place…? Who would want to hurt him so? Palmer sprang easily enough to mind, but I made myself think the next fearful thought: Jane? Both had their reasons for hating him. He had never shied from hurting either of them when it suited him.

I walked around the construction site again, as much to make certain that I hadn’t missed another entrance as to give myself time to think. I also tried not to look as suspicious as I felt; it was ghoulish, what I was doing, but as far as anyone else was concerned, I was only out for a walk. But as I walked, any worries that I might have been watched slowly dissolved, and between that and my growing confidence, I began to relax, not move so skittishly. There were very few people on the street, and most of these seemed to be hurrying, nicely dressed, to church at ten o’clock. The other noises that I could hear from the street, strangely muffled roars, I soon identified as the sounds of a televised soccer match. The fact that these were occasionally overwhelmed by anguished cries or violent cheering confirmed this for me. Good. With any luck, for the next hour or so, I might just be left largely unnoticed.

I was on my way back around to the front gate when I saw her. She stuck out as much as I did on that deserted street; more so, because her behavior was so erratic. At first I thought it was Morag, but it wasn’t. I was fooled by the raincoat that reminded me of her dark, flowing clothes. This woman was taller, and had graying hair, and was dressed in street clothes that grew more distinct as I moved closer: skirt, blouse, shoes, stockings, all quite ordinary, upper-middle-class wear, well made but badly fastened and worn. The thing that was extraordinary was the woman’s face—suffused with loss and grief so pervasive that it should have been a model for the theatrical tragedy mask, so openly emotional that I was automatically uncomfortable, more so, now, in this place where self-restraint in certain matters was a matter of national pride.

The other thing that was so alarming was her posture. She clutched at the fence, her arms out wide, and whether she was thinking of climbing up or tearing the fence down, I don’t know, but her grip on the fence was so intense that I could feel the faint vibrations as they traveled through the cold aluminum links to where I’d stopped. Arms outstretched, she wept in agony, sobs that wracked her body and were communicated down the fence in increasingly loud waves. The fence was sturdily built—it had to be—but the woman succeeded in making that uncaring metal hum with her emotion. The hulking machinery on the other side, the bulldozers and cranes, remained unmoved.

I watched this, hoping that she would wear herself out, calm down, but it only seemed to build as she went on. I was closer now, moving much more slowly, wondering what the hell I should do, when I began to hear the words she was saying.

“…Quiet now, it is quiet now, and there’s no more strife, but I’ve lost my little girl and she’s not here. She’s so lost and I am lost and the quiet is horrible—”