All Things Undying

by Marcia Talley

‘Well, sure, but he’s been on the wagon now for almost ten years, Alison.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about dementia, Hannah. Maybe even Alzheimer’s.’ She paused, and I saw that she was gripping the handle of the trolley so hard that the veins stood out, bold and blue, on the back of her hands.

  My father spent his so-called retirement designing sophisticated missile tracking devices for the US Navy, so I presumed he was still operating with a full complement of brain cells.

  Alison frowned. ‘Dad’s accident the other day?’

  ‘That would worry me, too.’ Her hand felt cold under mine, and it wasn’t from the air conditioning. ‘When we get older, our reflexes aren’t what they used to be.’

  ‘It’s not just that, Hannah,’ she rattled on. ‘Those people from Manchester showed up, all right, but their appointment was for Friday, not Wednesday. He’d got it all mixed up. And when I went back to check on Dad’s car this morning, Tom told me that he’s been worried about Dad, too. He seems distracted, Tom says. Misplacing his tools. Tearing the house apart looking for his keys, only to find he’d left them in the ignition. And last week, he was supposed to take delivery of a shipment of seed, and he forgot all about it. When they got to the farm and found nobody home, the delivery men dumped the bags in the courtyard instead of stacking them in the barn.’

  ‘Gosh, Alison, I’m so sorry.’ We walked only a few more steps before I decided I needed to add to the misery by telling her about the Fairy Liquid, too. ‘It didn’t seem significant at the time, but I discovered he wasn’t out of Fairy Liquid, either. I found a bottle half full of the stuff under the sink.’

  ‘Christ on a crutch,’ Alison said, giving the trolley a savage push to get it going again. ‘Three Trees can’t sell fast enough for me. I want him in that retirement home so someone will be keeping an eye on him. I can’t do it from Dartmouth.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be driving, Alison,’ I said gently.

  ‘Don’t I know it! But Tom says the damage to the Prius was mostly cosmetic.’

  ‘If my face were as bunged up as that car, I’d need the help of a skilled plastic surgeon.’

  ‘Yes, but like that car, you’d still be drivable, or so Tom says. Clever boots put it back together with duct tape and chewing gum.’ She seemed to brighten. ‘Well, if my father wants to drive around in a vehicle that looks like it’s been through the wars, that’s fine with me, as long as he stays on the farm. That way, nobody else is likely to get hurt.’

  ‘If only you could guarantee that he’d stay on the farm.’ I sighed. ‘In the old days, we’d simply remove the distributor cap.’

  ‘Cars don’t have distributor caps any more.’

  ‘Pity.’ I engineered a detour down the aisle where they carried the Hob Nobs and snagged two packets of the chocolate-covered kind. ‘What does your father’s doctor say?’

  ‘He refuses to see one.’

  ‘His vicar?’ I asked, remembering a cute little church in the village.

  ‘Dad? Don’t make me laugh. He hasn’t darkened the door of a church since the day I was baptized.’ She aimed the trolley for one of the checkout aisles. ‘Mum was such a steadying influence. It’s been very hard since she died.’

  My stomach lurched. Been there, done that. ‘Well, as you say, getting him into that retirement home is a number-one priority. Have you thought about lowering the asking price on the farm?’

  Alison tossed a cello pack of tomatoes on the conveyor belt, followed by two heads of romaine and a bunch of radishes. ‘Give it another week. I need to discuss it with Jon. Then we’ll see.’

  The following afternoon, a bright, sunny Sunday, we met Paul and Jon at the Dart Marina Hotel and Yacht Basin. The guys were sitting at a table outside under a blue umbrella, looking fit, tan and full of good cheer, primarily the amber liquid kind.

  On the spot, Alison invited Paul and me to dinner, allegedly to celebrate Biding Thyme’s triumph at Cowes, where our team came in first in three races out of seven, and placed second overall. But as soon as we arrived at the Hamilton home that evening, bottle of wine in hand, I knew that something else was on the agenda. A white damask cloth covered the table, candles flickered in silver candlesticks, a name card sat in front of each place – all that was missing was the paper streamers and party hats.

  While Jon, with Paul assisting, twisted a corkscrew into the bottle of wine we’d brought to the party, I followed Alison into the kitchen, eyeing her suspiciously. ‘OK, what gives?’

  She smiled mysteriously, and handed me a plate of cheese straws.

  When we got back to the sitting room, Jon reached behind the sofa and produced a silver ice bucket draped with a damask napkin. Holding the bucket in one hand, he removed the napkin with a flourish. ‘Tah dah! Champagne all round!’

  Champagne flutes materialized just as magically, and when all the glasses were full, Alison raised hers high. ‘A toast!’ she crowed, beaming in the direction of her father who sat, solemn as Buddha, in a straight back chair. ‘We’ve sold the farm!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Paul.

  ‘Super!’ said I.

  ‘Fools!’ growled Stephen Bailey. By tacit agreement, everyone decided to ignore him.

  ‘To who? Whom?’ I corrected.

  ‘That pair from Manchester,’ Alison announced. ‘Offered the asking price for it, too.’

  ‘Hobby farmers,’ Bailey sneered. ‘Don’t know a bloomin’ thing about farming. Turn up with a copy of Pig Farming for Dummies in their manbags, and think they know it all.’ The way he said ‘manbags’ made it clear what he thought about men who carried shoulder bags. ‘Just wait till winter sets in. They’ll be driving out to Tesco soon enough.’

  Jon raised his glass. ‘Another toast! Goodbye to mud, muck, manure and misery!’

  Alison punched him in the arm. ‘It wasn’t that bad!’

  ‘So, what are they going to raise?’ I asked, thinking that with all that acreage it could be anything.

  ‘Bees or cheese,’ mumbled Alison’s father. ‘Hard to tell with that Mancky accent.’

  Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘Mancky?’

  ‘They’re Mancunian, aren’t they? Manc. From Manchester. Need bleeding subtitles crawling across their chests.’

  I laughed so hard that I spit wine out my nose. Put my cocktail napkin to good use before I asked, ‘So, Mr Bailey, what does a Mancunian sound like?’

  ‘Ever seen Life on Mars? Cracker?’

  ‘Yes. We had them on PBS or BBC America, I think. Enjoyed them a lot.’

  ‘Like that.’

  ‘They mumble, you mean?’

  ‘Sound like they just stepped off the special needs bus.’

  ‘Dad!’ Alison flushed crimson, and shot me a you-can-dress-’em-up-but-you-can’t-take-’em-out look of embarrassment.

  Political correctness aside, I had to laugh. I found myself wondering if any nineteenth-century Mancunians had settled in rural Kentucky where a gas station attendant had once inquired, ‘Youoioh?’ My college roommate-slash-interpreter had informed me that he was merely wondering if we came from Ohio.

  Paul eased the champagne out of the ice bucket. ‘More bubbly?’ As he topped off our glasses he said, ‘So, when do you close?’

  ‘It’s a cash offer, and there’s no chain, so it should happen relatively quickly,’ Jon said.

  Alison grinned. ‘Then, as you Americans are wont to say, it’s a done deal!’

  But as anyone who has ever bought property in the UK will tell you, it’s definitely not over until it’s over.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle.’

  Tunku Varadarajan, www.Forbes.com, 2 February 2009

  The next morning after breakfast, I nipped back upstairs and managed to catch the news on the tiny flat-screen television in our room. Susan’s death was still a major story, but there had been no progress on
the case:

  ‘Police have issued a fresh appeal for information leading to the identification of a hit-and-run driver who left a popular television personality dying on the North Embankment in Dartmouth, Devon, whilst walking her dog. Susan Parker, star of the television show, Dead Reckoning . . .’

  The news reader went on and on, but didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, so I switched the television off.

  I was still sitting on the arm of an overstuffed chair, feeling that I ought to be doing something, but not knowing exactly what, when I felt Paul’s hand on my shoulder. ‘What we need, Hannah, is another medium.’

  I managed to dredge up a smile. My husband, in his own backhanded way, was trying to be helpful. ‘Good idea, Paul, but from what I understand, Susan wasn’t on speaking terms with most of them in life, so I doubt she’d be dying to talk to them now.’ I caught my breath. I’d not intended to be punny.

  If you’re lookin’ for the bloke what done me in, his name is Greg.

  Susan had been joking when she said that, right? And yet, I found myself wondering where Greg Parker had been on Friday morning. Back home in California, presumably. Los Angeles, City of Angels. According to the CNN reporters hanging out at Heathrow Airport, Greg Parker would be stepping off a BA flight from Los Angeles – flying first class on Susan’s dime, no doubt – at any moment.

  ‘If Susan chooses to talk through a medium,’ Paul was saying when I tuned back in, ‘there’s no shortage of them about.’

  Janet kept a pile of daily newspapers on a side table in the dining room. Paul had liberated a copy of the Daily Mirror – the only tabloid Janet would allow in the house – from under The Times and now he handed it to me. ‘Check this out.’

  I scanned the headlines. Susan was already communicating with other mediums, it appeared:

  Ghost Lady’s Ghost Speaks!

  Medium Murder Message!

  ‘Well, they’re both fakes, we can be sure of that.’

  Paul squeezed my shoulder. ‘Basingstoke,’ he whispered.

  ‘Exactly. When one of those charlatans comes up with the word Basingstoke, she’ll have my undivided attention.’

  The following morning, I visited the police station and, once again, found it locked. I seriously swore, using the big F-word. To be fair, solving Susan’s hit-and-run was probably the highest priority on their blotter, so maybe they were all out hunting for Susan’s killer.

  I followed the Dartmouth Chronicle, the local weekly. High crimes that week had included the theft of twenty pounds’ worth of groceries from an elderly lady while she was returning her trolley to its bay, and a woman who was evicted from her home for chronic ‘anti-social behavior’. Playing loud music day and night was a crime that paled in comparison with what had happened to my friend Susan, so I’m sure the police had their hands full.

  There’s a newsagent on the corner near the boat float. On my way back to the B&B, I popped in and bought a copy of each of the tabloids – the Sun, the Mirror, the Mail, the Express, the Star. I do this at home on occasion, too, but for other reasons. Roll ’em up and tie ’em with a bow. Give them as gifts at office Christmas parties, or to patients in the hospital. Hours of entertaining fiction.

  Back at our B&B, I went up to our room and spread the papers out on the bed.

  As usual, sleaze was the story of the day. I learned who had been kicked out of the Big Brother house, what ailing actor hated his wife so much that he was divorcing her on his deathbed, and that Britney Spears was heading for rehab. Again.

  ‘What is this endless fascination with Tom, Katie and Suri Cruise?’ I muttered to Paul as I flipped through the pages of the Mirror. His lanky frame was sprawled on a chaise in the bay window, where he was editing the page proofs of his geometry textbook, Geometric Proof: From Abstract Thought to CGI.

  ‘Dunno.’ Clearly, he wasn’t paying attention.

  If what I read in the Sun was true, competition for Susan’s ITV time slot was already heating up. Two episodes of Dead Reckoning, including the one we’d attended in Paignton, were already in the can, but after that, it’d be reruns from America, starting with Everybody Loves Raymond, temporarily filling Susan’s hour-long time slot. I thought that episodes of Medium, starring Patricia Arquette, might be more appropriate, but network executives weren’t beating down the door in the effort to consult me.

  Perhaps they didn’t take counsel from mediums, either, so candidates were auditioning for the job in the press.

  ‘Look at this one, Paul!’ I folded my copy of the Mirror and held it up. ‘Natasha Madrid. If that isn’t a made-up name, I’ll eat my hat. And check out her getup!’

  The last time I’d seen an outfit like that – white peasant blouse, flowered skirt, oversize gold hoop earrings, and heavy-handed eye make-up that would have made Tammy Faye Baker step back and say whoa!– it was being worn by a volunteer in the fortune-telling tent at the Stoke Fleming village fête. ‘You weel ween big prize,’ she had intoned. She was right about that, too. Hannah Ives, first place in the vegetable art competition for a herd of sheep assembled from cauliflower and black olives. But it didn’t take a fortune teller to suss that fortune out, just a visit to the competition tent.

  The Mail, Express and Star had zeroed in on Greg, who was a fairly attractive guy, if surfer-boys or Nazi youth turn you on. Caught by the camera as he emerged from airport security, he was hatless, his sun-bleached hair cut in a retro buzz. Greg was shaped like a triangle, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and for his debut on the world stage he had selected dark pants and a pale yellow polo shirt that displayed his biceps and pecs to advantage. I flipped from one tabloid to the other, thinking that the photos were so similar that the paparazzi must have snapped their shutters at precisely the same moment. Or maybe the papers were owned by the same company.

  ‘Greg Parker told the Sun that plans are in the works for a memorial service for his wife at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis, sometime at the end of August,’ I read aloud.

  From the chaise, Paul spoke up. ‘You think the WTL Guardians will approve of that?’

  ‘Who gives a flying fig what they think?’ I muttered.

  Wait a minute. Back up, Hannah. Greg said ‘wife’.

  The story in the Star also mentioned the memorial service, but in that article, Susan Parker was described as Greg’s ‘estranged wife’. Had their divorce not been final?

  I got my answer by turning to the Express. ‘My wife and I were separated,’ Parker told a reporter. ‘Susan had filed for divorce, but I never stopped loving her, and had hoped for a reconciliation.’ Greg, pictured standing in front of a white stretch limo, was wearing a little-boy-lost expression that could melt ice at the polar caps. Women were probably already queuing up to comfort the poor, grieving widower.

  ‘Well, damn!’ I tossed the paper on the carpet. ‘It’s an epidemic. Everybody’s shading the truth!’ First Alison, and now Susan.

  ‘Chill, Hannah.’

  I made a face. ‘I’ve never even met the guy, but I already dislike him.’

  The Mail reported that Greg had been playing golf in Palm Springs when news of the accident reached him. As much as I wanted to pin Susan’s hit-and-run on the opportunistic so-in-so staring out at me from the front page of the Mirror, unless he could manage a round trip from Los Angeles to London and back at the speed of light, he had a rock-solid alibi. Or an accomplice.

  Had one of Susan’s readings hit too close to home? In that case, suspects were legion. All they needed was a car. A dark car, I reminded myself. Either blue or gray. Maybe black. A Ford, or a Vauxhall, or a Fiat. Everybody in England seemed to drive a Ford, Vauxhall or Fiat. How do you spell ‘needle in a haystack’?

  SIXTEEN

  ‘There were men shouting, screaming, praying and dying all around them. The cold water was starting to take its toll. The minutes passed into hours and still there was nothing but darkness . . . After three hours he could no longer feel his legs. From the
waist down he was paralysed by the penetrating coldness of the water . . . He also admits, with some candour, that one thing that kept going through his mind all night while he hung on to the raft, was that he had never had a woman, and he could not leave the world in that condition.’

  Ken Small, The Forgotten Dead, Bloomsbury, 1988, pp.46–47

  The rest of the day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Susan’s murder was related to a reading, and that kept bringing me back to the mysterious disappearance of Jon’s first wife, Beth. What if Jon had murdered Beth? What if he believed Susan Parker was getting messages from Beth, his victim, from the great beyond, and what if he thought Susan was going to rat him out?

  There were a lot of ifs in that statement.

  Even though Jon was married to my best friend, and as much as I liked him, Jon had – for the moment, at least – shot straight to the top of my suspect list. The only difficulty with this theory was my husband. Paul was Jon’s alibi.

  Lying next to Paul in bed that night, I said, ‘Tell me about your sailing trip.’

  Paul tugged on the duvet and tucked it under his chin. ‘Well, the first race was Saturday . . .’

  ‘Start before the race, when you left home.’

  Paul turned his head on the pillow and studied me quizzically. ‘We sailed to Cowes . . .’

  ‘No, before that.’

  ‘OK. Wednesday morning I got up, staggered to the loo, showered, shaved, brushed my teeth . . .’

  ‘Not that early, silly.’

  Paul propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What’s going on, Hannah?’

  ‘I was just wondering, is all. After you sailed out of the Dart Marina, was Jon with you the whole time?’

  ‘Of course he was! He was at the helm.’

  ‘Thursday and Friday, too?’

  ‘Where else would he be? We were stripping the boat of non-essentials, getting her ready to race.’

  ‘Jon didn’t slip away, even for a few hours?’

  Paul’s eyes widened, comprehension dawning. ‘If you’re asking me whether Jon had time to get himself from Cowes to Dartmouth and back again . . .’