Memory and Desire (41 page)

Raindrops drummed on the taut fabric overhead. When she took Richard's hand she felt his pulse beating in his body almost as fast as the one beating in hers, compelling as a rock band in full cry.

No one spoke as they hurried from the church, across the green, and along the high street. Rain streamed off the eaves, setting the gutters awash. Their footsteps made dull splats on the pavement. A car passed, its tires swishing. Two familiar figures waited in front of the shop. Blake was enveloped in a bedraggled trench coat that made him look less like Sam Spade than a flasher between shows. His colorless eyes blinked out from behind his rain-spattered glasses. “Mrs. Jackman's gone into the pub."

“What's all this about her being the murderer?” asked Pakenham from the depths of his expensive Burberry.

Claire started with the smell of the greasepaint and Diana's initials. Then Alec, Kate, and Richard took up the tale. It sounded even more twisted and sick in their voices than it had in Diana's.

“I see,” Blake said with a nod. “Moncrief told us he was asleep when Mrs. Jackman arrived at his house the night of the murder. Said he'd had an early night. Went on for a good five minutes about the heavy mantle of the director—how tiring and so forth—and for another five about provincial villages with no nightlife. It never occurred to him that she changed the clock. Never occurred to us."

“This is all well and good,” said Pakenham sarcastically, “but Diana can't drive, can she?"

“Of course she can,” Richard said. “She's just not allowed to. She had her license lifted for driving drunk."

“She told me she drove Melinda's car,” added Claire. “What more do you want?"

Pakenham stared. “Oh, for ... She said she couldn't drive, her husband said she couldn't drive, the Digbys said she couldn't drive."

“If you don't ask the right bloody question you don't get the right bloody answer, do you?” demanded Blake. “Come along, Sergeant. PC Wood, PC Shelton. The lads are waiting outside the pub. Let's take her in charge."

“Me?” Alec asked.

“Are you a police constable or not? Off you go!"

“Yes, sir.” Alec started off at a run, heading for the back of the pub.

Kate sprinted after him. “Wait for me!"

The others followed at a brisk walk, Pakenham muttering, “Diana Jackman, eh? The bitch. Of course it was her. Wants her head examined, doesn't she? I knew there was something wrong with her, knew so all along."

Nigel stood on the corner beneath the expanse of his own umbrella. “DCI Blake? We had an appointment..."

“Sorry, Mr. Killigrew,” Blake told him as they swept by. “Later."

Claire paused. “We've just found out Diana Jackman murdered Melinda."

“It wasn't Moncrief after all?” asked Nigel.

“She did for him, too,” Richard said. “If you'll excuse us..."

“By all means.” Nigel stepped aside. “Shocking! Simply shocking!"

The rain slackened into what Kate had once called a mizzle, heavier than mist, lighter than drizzle. Somerstowe and its surrounding fields and hills were, literally, a watercolor. The delicate shades of earth and sky blurred one into the other. The contours of Hall, church tower, and houses were defined by a few strokes of stone.

Richard furled the umbrella and tucked it like a swagger stick beneath his arm. His fingers entwined with Claire's were warm, damp, and rock-solid in spite of that beating pulse. Because of that pulse, the same as her own, vital, angry, stubborn as hell.

Britain didn't have the death penalty any more, she thought. Good. Diana was pitiable, why would her death make anything right? And yet ...
Please, let's get it over with.

The pub was bright only by comparison with the shadowed day outside. The dark wood of the bar absorbed the light and the horse brasses managed only a sullen gleam. Across the TV screen moved the ghostly images of an old black and white movie. The actors spoke in Elliot's priggish accent.

Only a few people were scattered around the room. When Blake and his invasion force burst in the door every face turned toward them. Behind the bar Rob stood holding a dishtowel and a glass. His troll-like form was repeated in the mirror behind him so that he looked like a pair of bookends. “Where's your wife?” Blake asked.

“Kitchen. Why?"

Pakenham and a uniformed constable dived through the swinging door to the kitchen.

“Here!” protested Rob, and went after them.

“Are you after taking her in charge?” called a reporter from the corner table. Several of his colleagues reached for cameras and notebooks.

Blake strode over to the table where Susan, Fred, Janet, and a couple of others sat over sausage sandwiches. “Yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Jackman left the Hall to fetch the food for the party. How long was she gone?"

“At least an hour,” said Janet. “Rob was bummed out, was just about to go looking for her when she came rushing back in with the stuff."

“Mrs. Zielinski,” Blake went on. “Miss Godwin says you saw the Jackman's Alsatian running loose the night Miss Varek was killed."

“Well, yes,” said Susan. “I sure did. Odd, they never let it out by itself...” Her face went chalk-white. “You mean—of course—if it was out, one them was—oh my God. The murderer's not Elliot. It's Diana. She killed him too, yesterday afternoon."

Fred put his sandwich back on its plate as though suddenly wondering what kind of meat was in it. He shot a truculent look at Janet. “So it was safe to stay here after all, huh? The case was over, huh?"

“She could've killed me, too!” Janet's eyes bulged.

“No,” Claire said, “she damn near killed me. Three times."

From the rear of the building came an explosion of barking and shouting. Rob burst back out of the kitchen, swearing, his mouth a shell crater in the thicket of his beard.

Blake leaped with surprising agility for the door. It swung open, missing him by inches. Kate stood poised in the opening. “She threw hot water on the dog and it went for us. She's out the back, Pakenham and the others are after her."

Blake wheeled and charged out the front door. Kate whisked back into the kitchen. The reporters jostled each other out the garden door. With one last paroxysm of profanity, Rob threw a vicious punch at a beer spigot.

Through the swinging door Claire saw Alec, one hand wrapped in the huge German Shepherd's collar, the other resting on its head. He murmured in a singsong voice, “You're all right, old boy, just a bit singed on the nose, all that nice thick fur protected you, didn't it? No fear, I've some salve that'll set you to rights, but you'll have to wait a bit.” The dog stopped whimpering. With a caress Alec released the animal and loped past the cookers and refrigerators to the back door.

Richard and Claire piled out the front door. Through the thick air Claire saw human shapes converging on the Hall. Muffled cries echoed off the stone walls.

They raced up what seemed like a mile and a half of the high street, past the Lodge, into the gates. Ahead of them the façade of the Hall reverberated with a large crash and several smaller ones. A door slamming followed by frustrated knocking, Claire guessed, peering into the murk ... She couldn't see because the mist had gathered on her glasses. Impatiently she took them off and folded them into a pocket.

Of course Diana would run here in the end. She'd probably spent hours dreaming the house was hers. Maybe over the last year she'd come to believe it was, that somehow her passions and her crimes had earned it. For what? Claire asked herself. Not to bask in its beauty and its memories but to buy her way out of her own self-hatred.

The blurred shapes of Blake, Pakenham, Alec, and a couple of constables clustered together in the portico. Kate came running down the driveway toward Richard. “She's locked herself in. We need the key."

Richard pulled the keys from his pocket, wrenched one off the ring, and handed it over. “Ta,” Kate said, and ran back toward the door. She wasn't even breathing hard, Claire noted. Richard was, though. So was she, and not necessarily from the dash up the street.
Can't we just get it over with?

The bleachers still surrounded the forecourt, the workmen taking Sunday off. The windows of the Hall looked dark and blank into the wet afternoon, like a sleeper suddenly awakened. A couple of constables trotted around the side of the house. “All the doors are locked, Sir. Should we break a window?"

“No!” Richard shouted.

“Not yet,” said Blake. He worked with the key, took it out, inserted it again. He and Alec threw their shoulders against the door and pushed.

“She's thrown the bolt!” called Richard. “Try the kitchen door. Here.” Again he pulled out his keys.

Claire seized the umbrella as it fell from his grasp. His damp dark hair was waving like the tendrils of a sea anemone above his pallid forehead and a corner of his mouth was painfully cramped. Was he thinking the same thing she was, Claire wondered, of a woman frenzied with hurt and hate running through the darkened halls—if she can't have her life's desire, then...

“Look!” Alec pointed upward.

Something moved in one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the high great chamber. Claire squinted. Diana? No, it was an indistinct shape, a wraith wavering in the distortion of the old glass. Elizabeth?

“Smoke,” Richard moaned. “No. Oh, Jesus, please, no."

Smoke crept up the glass. Light flickered inside the room. Claire's chest seemed to turn inside out with horror. “No!"

A low murmur of anticipation and dread swept across the forecourt. At least a hundred people had apparently sprouted up out of the ground, Claire saw. Some faces she recognized, some she didn't. More than a few people were settling down in the bleachers, as though the scene was the third act of The Play ... Well, it was, in a way. Every face was turned toward the window and the glow inside. Hands pointed. Cameras clicked.

“Lacey,” Blake shouted, “is there anything flammable in there?"

“Oh aye. Paint thinner, lacquer, varnish. Chemicals for cleaning—benzene, potassium p-p-permanganate. Muckle old dry wood and a box of matches ready to hand in the kitchen.” The light in the window was nothing compared to the blaze in Richard's eyes, bright as a blacksmith's forge.

Pakenham had his cell phone to his ear. “Fire brigade. Somerstowe. Get a move on."

Nigel's crest of silver hair appeared at one end of the bleachers. “You and you,” he announced in the tones of a regimental sergeant major, “go round the village, collect all the pails you can find. And you, bring the garden hose from the shed..."

“We'll bring the hose from the back yard of the pub.” Susan took Janet's arm and dragged her away.

“There's a tap there, in the portico,” Richard shouted. “Another by the garden wall. Another ... Ah, bloody hell!"

A bedroom window well down the façade from the high great chamber suddenly flared with light. The drapes, Claire's mind said slowly but clearly. Diana's splashed the drapes with something flammable and set them afire, too.

First one, then two smoke alarms started to shriek. Richard sprinted for the kitchen door, shoving Blake and Pakenham aside. He pounded on it, kicked it, and stabbed it with a key. “If you can't have it no one can, is that it? Bloodyminded cow!” The door swung open. He plunged inside. Blake seized his jacket and pulled him back.

Alec ran by them both and disappeared into the house. “Wood!” Blake cried. “Come back here!"

The unmistakable odor of smoke wafted from the doorway. Kate and an assortment of people including Fred and Roshan ran across the forecourt with a hose. Flame leaped in the windows of the high great chamber thirty feet above.

“The house'll be burnt to ruins if we wait for the fire brigade!” Richard twisted away from Blake and dived inside.

Claire didn't stop to think. Throwing the umbrella down, she ran. Her feet rose and fell as though she was weightless. In slow motion she saw Blake reach toward her. She spun aside and plunged through the door into the house. “Richard!"

Through the dim haze she saw him stop and turn back.
If he tells me to wait outside like a good girl I'll spit at him.

“There's my Claire. Come along then,” he said, and led the way out of the kitchen and down the corridor to the room where the chemicals were stored.

The door gaped open on a mess of cans and bottles. Diana must have swept them off their shelves and onto the floor without waiting to see how many broke. A fierce but tiny blue flame burned in a spilled puddle of varnish, fortunately on stone, not on one of the wooden shelves. Richard and Claire took a canvas drop cloth and smothered the fire.

A constable appeared in the door behind them. “Get this lot outside,” Richard ordered him, and with Claire beside him ran on into the depths of the house.

The corridors swallowed themselves, the stairs buckled beneath her feet. Time dilated, so that they spent a week groping their way through just one doorway. The smoke thickened. Claire's lungs burned. Tears of irritation ran down her cheeks. Richard's hand pushed her head down, into the clearer air near the floor. Crouching, they burst into the high great chamber.

Flame danced along the floor and cast diabolic shadows along the plaster friezes as though the room had become an inquisition dungeon. A screeching smoke alarm added just the right sound effect. Richard threw himself at a window, yanking open the latch and slamming the casement upward. Smoke gusted around him. “Here!” he shouted. Answering cries rose from outside and a stream of water hit him in the face.

Wiping his face on his sleeve, he leaned out. “Send up the hose!"

Claire leaned out beside him and gasped for air. Cool air. Damp air. The surging mass of people below looked like berserkers besieging the house.

The nozzle of a hose cracked suddenly against the windowsill beside her, tied onto a long board with numbers painted on it. Oh—one of the boards of the bleachers. Between them she and Richard wrestled the hose in the window. “Switch on!” Richard shouted hoarsely. Water spurted.

Somewhere in the house glass was breaking. No telling how many fires Diana had set. She could be anywhere. So could Alec.... Claire's eyes burned and she blinked. The flame before her sank into a dismal puddle of water and charcoal.