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All Things Undying

Page 11

by Marcia Talley


  We shared another long cry, during the course of which the box of tissues became empty and the second bottle of wine magically opened itself. Janet topped off our glasses, slopping a bit of wine on the oriental carpet. ‘Never mind. It’s the same color as the rug,’ she said, rubbing it into the thick pile with the toe of her shoe.

  I don’t remember much after that, except declaring emphatically to Alan when he wandered in from the Cherub somewhere around midnight that no matter what the police had to say, I was in complete agreement with the woman in the pink warm-up suit. Susan’s death had been no accident.

  Janet, bless her, had the presence of mind to stumble to the kitchen and fetch me a tall glass of water and a packet of liver salts. She watched while I dumped the contents of the packet into the water, waited for it to fizz, then drink the mixture down before sending me upstairs to bed, like a good mother.

  Janet should have taken some liver salts herself. Although I was in rough shape the following day, I managed to crawl out of bed, shower, and show up for breakfast around nine o’clock, only to find that Janet was so hungover that Alan was manning the kitchen, cooking breakfast for the guests.

  I slid into my chair and made it easy for him by ordering hot tea and a slice of wholewheat toast.

  While I nibbled on the crust, I could hear Sam and Vicky playing with Bruce in the kitchen. Their delighted squeals made my head hurt. I hoped the girls would get to keep the dog, and that the little fellow didn’t get tied up – like Susan’s estate was likely to, considering what she’d said about her ex-husband – in a lawsuit.

  After breakfast, I decided to take a walk, hoping the fresh morning air would clear my head. I stopped at the boat float, the artificial harbor where several dozen wooden boats bobbed in postcard-perfect perfection, struck by the way the sky and a scattering of clouds were perfectly mirrored by the water on that calm, windless day.

  On the off-chance that somebody would tell me something about the investigation into Susan’s death, I headed for the police station on the corner across from the Flavel Arts Centre. In contrast to the modern, but thoughtfully designed cinema/theater/art gallery/library, the police station was part of a relentlessly ugly, glass and concrete, post-nuclear style building, housed in a corner storefront tacked on like an afterthought, having all the style of, say, a Tandoori takeaway. Although a police car was parked in a reserved spot nearby, I found the door to the station locked. Shading my eyes, I peered though the window at a short row of chairs opposite a closed door and a ticket booth-style window. Nobody was home. When I stepped back, I noticed a sign on the door that informed me of the number I should dial in case of an emergency.

  ‘Damn!’

  Back home in Maryland, I had an inside track with law enforcement. Paul’s sister, Connie, was married to a Chesapeake County police lieutenant. In England, though, I was on my own.

  Trusting that all of Dartmouth’s Finest were out investigating Susan Parker’s death, I turned my back on the empty police station and took a stroll through the lush, sub-tropical beauty of Royal Park Gardens, ending up at the bandstand. I plopped myself down on the top step and closed my eyes, turning my face toward the sun. Somewhere behind me, a busker began playing ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ on a harmonica, the instrument making the tune sound so plaintive and haunting that I fought back a fresh flood of tears.

  As much as I had wanted to cry on his shoulder, I hadn’t called Paul. I knew he’d put on his Supportive Husband hat and insist on rushing back to Dartmouth, but the last thing in the world I wanted was for him to abandon his adventure – man against the sea – to rescue a damsel, no matter how keen her distress. I must have been sending out melancholy vibes, however, because my cell phone picked that moment to ring.

  ‘Hannah! I just heard about Susan Parker. Dreadful news!’

  So I got to cry on his shoulder after all, but had the surprisingly great presence of mind not to mention that I’d actually been at the scene of the accident. That would have brought Paul back to Dartmouth with a rocket tied to his tail.

  After we said goodbye, I found myself inexplicably drawn to the Embankment, to the place where it happened. When I got there, barely twenty-four hours after Susan’s death, the spot was already covered with mounds of flowers, everything from single buds to elaborate bouquets from Smith Street Flowers, even a wreath which someone had apparently liberated from a local cemetery bearing the inscription ‘RIP Mother’. Stuffed animals, photographs of Susan torn from fan magazines, letters of condolence encased in plastic spilled out over the pavement. I flashed back to the floral tributes at Kensington Gardens following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, then to the impromptu memorial on the banks of the South River at the spot where the body of my friend Melanie Fosher had washed ashore. Overwhelmed with sadness, I made my way to the nearest park bench and sat down on it.

  And I watched them come. Middle-aged women, young twenty-somethings, girls in their teens, even the occasional man showed up to pay their respects to the late medium and clairvoyant. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, warming Kingswear across the Dart until its buildings glowed as if lit from within, I sat glued to the bench, watching the pile of floral tributes grow.

  Would Susan’s murderer return to the scene of the crime?

  Spookily, just as that thought entered my head, I noticed someone familiar loitering at the fringes of the crowd. It was the red headband that first caught my eye, the same headband she had been wearing outside the Palace Theatre in Paignton: Olivia Sandman. Today she was dressed in a long-sleeved cotton top, and I could see the shadows of thin legs through the lightweight fabric of a flowered skirt that swished about her ankles.

  I remembered the brochure Olivia had given me and fished it out of my handbag. WTL: Way, Truth and Life. I unfolded it for the first time, and scanned the contents.

  Like Mikey from the old Life cereal advertising campaign, the WTL Guardians seemed to hate everything. Animal cruelty, abortion, gays, witchcraft, Muslims, wi-fi networks, the rock star Lady Gaga, and the Bishop Administrator of the Anglican Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham in particular. It was a peculiarly comprehensive catalog. As far as I could tell, the only thing WTL loved was Jesus.

  Could one of the Guardians have run Susan down? Susan had always blown the group off, and yet fanatics of any religious persuasion could prove dangerous. Perhaps Susan’s flippant dismissal of Alf and his band of tiny-minded men (and women) had been misguided. On the BRNC episode of Dead Reckoning, she’d seemed more concerned about her ex – what was his name? Greg? – than about the demonstrators.

  So how about Greg Parker himself? But he was in California. Or was he?

  I decided it wouldn’t hurt to talk with Olivia, shake her tree, and see what fell out of it, so I wandered ever-so-casually over to the palm tree planter where the young woman was sitting and plopped myself down on the warm stones next to her. ‘Hi, Olivia. I’m Hannah. Remember me from the other night?’

  Olivia considered me through the lenses of a pair of rimless eyeglasses. ‘In front of the Palace Theatre, right?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘It’s terrible what happened, innit? That accident.’ Olivia nodded in the direction of the floral memorial.

  ‘Very upsetting,’ I agreed.

  ‘Someone driving drunk, I bet.’

  ‘I’m sure the police want everyone to think it was one of your garden-variety hit and runs, but I understand that they’re looking into the possibility that someone ran Susan Parker down intentionally.’ I was making it up as I went along.

  Olivia’s eyes widened. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’

  ‘Put yourself in their shoes, Olivia.’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘Think of all the people who might have wanted Susan Parker dead. The Guardians, for example. You.’

  ‘You’re barmy.’

  I shrugged. ‘How about that sign you were carrying the other night. Suffer not a witch to live.’

  Color drained from her face.
‘Is that what it said? Bloody hell!’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  Olivia grimaced, produced an exasperated click of her tongue. ‘I don’t make the bloody signs, do I? I just carry the signs my uncle tells me to.’

  ‘Your uncle?’

  ‘Yeah. Alf. He’s my mother’s brother. Took me in an’ raised me after me mum died.’

  ‘I take it you’re not completely on board with your uncle’s mission, then.’

  ‘WTL? Course I am! But look here. Nobody in WTL would have anything to do with running that medium down. That would be murder!’

  ‘Well, exactly.’

  ‘And another thing . . . what did you say your name was, again?’

  ‘Hannah.’

  ‘Look, Hannah. It’s like this. We don’t kill animals, not even for food.’ She stuck out a foot. ‘See these sandals?’

  I nodded. The soles appeared to have been cut out of spare tires and were attached to her feet by six criss-cross straps, a style that had been popular back in my peace-now, flower-power youth.

  ‘They’re plastic,’ she pointed out. ‘You have to kill a cow to get leather.’

  I was reminded of Alf, leathery and cadaverous, his white hair streaked with yellow or vice versa. I thought of the description of the driver given to the BBC reporter by the woman in the pink jogging suit. It could fit Alf, or . . . I sighed. It could fit millions of people – my father’s girlfriend, Cornelia, for instance.

  ‘Where were you yesterday morning?’ I asked, hoping to catch Olivia off-guard.

  Next to me, I felt Olivia stiffen. ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Olivia. Practicing for what you’ll say when the police turn up and ask you the same question?’

  She took a deep breath, exhaled through her mouth. ‘Glastonbury High Street. We want the town to pull down the wi-fi masts. Everybody knows that EMFs are dangerous.’

  ‘EMFs?’

  She gave me one of those how-can-you-be-so-stupid looks. ‘Electro-magnetic fields. Headaches, dizziness, rashes, respiratory problems.’ She took another deep breath. ‘Ever wonder why there’s so many cases of autism these days?’ She nodded sagely. ‘EMFs.’

  Childhood vaccinations, mercury, paracetamol, frigid moms . . . what didn’t cause autism? I wondered. As much as I wanted to pin Susan’s death on creepy Alf or one of his minions, if the WTL Guardians had been picketing in Glastonbury the previous morning, there was no way one of its members could have been driving a – Ford? Vauxhall? Fiat? – recklessly in Dartmouth.

  While Olivia rattled on about the effects of EMFs on the fertility of women in their middle years, I pulled a notebook out of my handbag, tore out a sheet of paper, scribbled down my name and cell phone number and handed it to her. ‘Susan Parker was my friend,’ I told her. ‘If you think of anything, Olivia, please, just call this number.’

  Leaving Olivia to perch on the planter like a pigeon with something to think about – or so I hoped – I power-walked my way to the Castle and back, but instead of defogging my brain, the exercise only made me hungry. By the time I reached The Apprentice, the tea I’d had at the Castle had long worn off, so I popped into the restaurant – formerly St Barnabas Church – climbed the stairs to the second level, and sat down by myself at one of the ultra-modern tables next to a stained glass window. At a table nearby, a man had a laptop open and was checking his email. My server – one of a dozen or so apprentices who lived and worked at the converted church, preparing themselves for jobs in the hospitality industry – materialized out of nowhere on little cat feet, took my order for panna cotta and coffee, and disappeared just as quietly.

  The best of all worlds, I thought. Christ on His Throne of Glory on my one hand, the Internet on the other, and a cappuccino – the finest Dartmouth has to offer – on the way.

  Too bad Susan Parker wasn’t there to share it with me.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Looking now at the two brass monuments set in the floor, the one nearer to the altar is considered to be the largest and finest church brass in the whole of Devon, being that of John Hawley II and his two wives, the first on his right Joanna, by whom he had a son. Joanna died in 1394 and was buried in the chancel. Later he married Alicia of the famous, very rich, Cornish family of Tresilian, who died in 1403. John Hawley II died on the 30 December 1408 and all are now buried together under the brass. John Hawley II is considered by some to be the model for the ‘Shipman’ of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.’

  St Saviour’s Church: an Illustrated Historical Guide, pp.14, 16

  According to the morning news, the police were still appealing to the public for information about the hit-and-run driver who had killed Susan, but otherwise, over the past several days, the airwaves had been strangely quiet on the matter.

  I was stretched out on a lounge chair in Janet’s garden enjoying the sun and the latest Andrew Taylor novel when the bells of St Saviour’s Church began chiming the hour. I checked my watch. It was noon on Tuesday. If I hurried, I could just make the Christian Aid luncheon. Some of the volunteers, I remembered, had been members of St Anthony’s Church before it was made redundant, repurposed by a prominent architect, and Susan Parker moved in.

  It might be interesting to hear what they had to say.

  St Saviour’s Church is nestled in the center of town at the crook of the lane where Anzac Street meets Smith Street. The faithful had been praising God on that spot since the early fourteenth century, and for almost all of those years, the first thing worshippers saw upon entering the sanctuary was a magnificent iron door, decorated with two leopards of the Plantagenets, their rear legs forming the hinges, superimposed over the Tree of Life. It was one of the finest church doors in all England, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and who was I to argue with that?

  According to the clock in St Saviour’s gray stone tower, it was only five minutes past noon when I breezed through the south door with a nod of greeting to the two splendid leopards, then climbed the wooden staircase on my left that led up to the gallery.

  People were already eating lunch, seated in small groups at folding tables covered with clean, crisp tablecloths in a patchwork of patterns and colors. I was alone, feeling at loose ends. I surveyed the gallery, but didn’t see anybody I knew, so I headed straight for the buffet table which was set up on the north end of the gallery under a rose window commissioned in Victorian times by a former governor of Dartmouth in honor of himself.

  I selected a variety of crustless sandwiches, a dab of cabbage and carrot slaw, four carrot sticks, a lemon bar and half a slice of chocolate cake, then took my plate to a chest-high window. In the room beyond – a combination parish office and makeshift kitchen – the church ladies were busily keeping the tea coming. I paid for my lunch, chucking an extra pound in the jar for the poor, as was customary, then went in search of a place to sit.

  Most of the tables were already occupied by groups of two or three engaged in animated conversation, but one Old Dear seemed to be lunching alone, so I homed in on her. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  She looked up from a bit of bread and cheese held daintily between thumb and forefinger, smiled invitingly and said, ‘Please, do.’

  ‘I’m Hannah Ives, visiting from America,’ I said as I sat down in the folding chair across the table from her.

  ‘And I’m Liz Talbot. Didn’t I see you here last week?’ She polished off the sandwich and considered me with serene gray eyes.

  ‘You did. I was with my friend Alison Hamilton. She couldn’t come today.’

  In point of fact, Alison had taken to her bed, still so distraught over Susan Parker’s death, she’d sobbed over the telephone, that she’d rummaged through her medicine cabinet, found two tablets remaining in a five-year-old prescription bottle of Valium, and – while I was talking to her – took them both. ‘She was friends with Susan Parker,’ I explained, ‘the woman who was killed on the Embankment the other morning. She’s taking it a bit hard.’

>   Liz tut-tutted. ‘I heard about the accident on the telly. Terrible business, that. Sometimes I wonder what this old world is coming to.’ She picked up a fairy cake, slathered with thick, pink frosting, and pinched off a small piece. ‘I chatted with Susan a couple of times when she helped out with the lunches here. She seemed like such a nice, normal person, in spite of what some said about her.’

  ‘I understand she lived in old St Anthony’s Church,’ I said, polishing off a carrot stick. ‘I gather not everyone at St Anthony’s was happy about that.’

  Liz shrugged. ‘Making flats out of the church was better than pulling it down, I suppose. Not that I’d want to live there, you understand, not with that graveyard in my back garden!’

  ‘Yes, but St Anthony’s is a spiritual sort of place, isn’t it? I can see why a church, graveyard and all, might appeal to someone like Susan Parker. After all, people have been praying there for over a century.’

  Liz had finished her cupcake and leaned back in her chair. In spite of the summer weather, she was dressed in a brown wool suit and an old-fashioned white blouse with a flounce at the neck. If I peeked under the tablecloth, I was sure I’d find stocking feet laced into sensible, brown shoes. ‘There’s a difference between being spiritual, as in religious or devout, and spiritual, as in ghostly,’ she chuckled.

  After a moment, I said, ‘I read somewhere that around thirty churches close each year in this country. Makes me wonder if England is losing its faith.’

  Liz’s eyes grew wide. ‘Dear me, no. Stay here long enough and you’ll learn one simple truth: the Victorians have a lot to answer for. They simply built too many churches! Even in Victorian times, the churches were only half-full, but money was pouring into Britain at the time, and a regular building frenzy was going on.

  ‘St Anthony’s came very close to being preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust,’ she continued, ‘but after a buyer was found – Susan Parker, as it turned out – well, you know what happened after that.’

 

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