The Secret Anatomy of Candles

by Quentin Smith

  She nodded.

  “Were you a close family?”

  Jasper hesitated.

  “For a time I was close to my mother, but once I left London to study law in Durham we drifted apart. My father and I were not close,” he bit on his lower lip, “regrettably.”

  “And your brother?”

  Jasper sighed. He did not like discussing personal matters and felt as though he was on the couch, being emotionally eviscerated. But he also knew he had to persevere and tolerate the consequences.

  “He fell in front of a train about… three years ago.” Jasper said with downcast eyes before pausing. “Some said he was pushed by the surging crowd.”

  Giordano knitted her fingers together beneath her fine boned chin. She wore a simple gold wedding band and her short, unpainted fingernails completed elegant, olive-skinned fingers.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “He became very strange towards the end,” Jasper shook his head and pulled his arms tighter around himself, “he was a doctor, and consequently despised what I did for a living.”

  Jasper could feel his shoulder muscles rippling beneath his clothing, threatening to distort his posture at any moment, and he knew he was powerless to stop it. As his neck twisted to one side he sensed Giordano’s perceptive eyes studying him.

  “How long have you been aware of these… movements, Mr Candle?”

  Jasper’s shoulders shrugged involuntarily and then his left arm writhed like a charmer’s snake.

  “Quite some time now.”

  She made brief notes on her desk with a stylish Mont Blanc pen.

  “Are we talking months, years?”

  Jasper rubbed his brow as it twitched under her scrutiny.

  “At least a year, maybe two… but it wasn’t this bad at the beginning.”

  “Have you ever had a convulsion?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever fallen or hurt yourself?”

  “No.”

  She made notes.

  “Which movements are most common?”

  Jasper looked up as he considered this, his left eye twitching shut several times in the process.

  “My left eye and the side of my face, my neck twists sometimes and my left shoulder does too.”

  “And the tremor?” she said, pointing the Mont Blanc at his hands as they lay quivering in his lap.

  Jasper smiled – he could not hide anything from her.

  “That’s probably been there the longest, I have become very used to it.”

  She studied him reflectively and gently rubbed her upper lip to and fro with her flexed index finger.

  “Have you noticed any memory lapses?”

  Jasper paused.

  “No.”

  “Concentration difficulties?”

  He chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “I’m a solicitor, Doctor, I was in court just last week winning a case on very flimsy evidence.”

  “So you must work pretty long hours?” she said.

  “Oh yes,” Jasper nodded, hiding a series of contortions of his neck.

  “How much do you drink, Mr Candle?”

  She didn’t miss a thing, he thought. So, just how perceptive had she been when Jennifer came to see her? Had she penetrated through to the deeper motivation behind Jennifer’s request for contraception? Did she indeed know what was behind it all?

  “By your standards, Doctor, most likely too much.”

  She shrugged nonchalantly.

  “How many units per week, would you say?”

  Jasper chuckled and folded his arms once again.

  “I don’t do units, Doctor, but I go through a couple of bottles of Chivas a week, sometimes more.”

  “Do you drink when you’re alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you drink during the day?”

  “Yes.”

  He could see her eyebrows rise almost imperceptibly as she wrote a few words down.

  “Do you think it’s… a problem?” Jasper asked, inclining his head slightly to one side and ignoring the successive, tugging pouts around his mouth.

  “Have you had a drink today, Mr Candle?”

  Jasper felt his eyes wince and the tics betray his intentions as he maintained eye contact.

  “No,” he lied.

  He couldn’t tell whether she believed him, or whether she could detect the odour of alcohol on his breath. Giordano inhaled deeply and sat back in her chair.

  “Yes, most certainly, Mr Candle, I will be honest with you and say that it is a problem. Have you tried therapy?”

  “You mean AA?”

  “That’s one, yes,” she said.

  “I have. But it was before my wife… er… and it’s been pretty damn hard since then.”

  Dr Giordano frowned and then put her pen down with a resounding clunk.

  “I will need to examine you now, Mr Candle, then take some blood tests. Even before we get any results back, we do need to discuss a strategy for reducing your alcohol intake… before it’s too late.”

  THIRTY FOUR

  Lazlo sat motionless behind the steering wheel of his dirty white Ford van. His great hands rested on his knees and the only indication of a life beating within his bloated frame was the rise and fall of the binoculars that rested on his mighty belly.

  In the background, Radio Five reverberated through tinny speakers. Lazlo reached absently for the remnants of a sugary doughnut amongst an untidy mess of empty food packets on the passenger seat, while glancing at his watch. This was usually the time that her shift finished on a Wednesday.

  Lazlo was about to bite the lump of doughnut when he caught sight of her. His heart jumped and he hesitated a moment before pushing the quarter doughnut into his waiting mouth. Then he heaved himself out from behind the confines of the steering wheel, dripping sugar from his mouth, and slammed the door shut as he began to advance on his quarry.

  She had exited the building on her own, still wearing her dark blue matron’s uniform and carrying a floral motif book bag.

  “Billie!” Lazlo called out, raising his right arm as if to hail her.

  She saw him, lowered her head towards the pavement and carried on walking.

  “Billie, wait up, please.”

  She stopped as Lazlo’s waddling frame caught up with her.

  “I know what you are, Lazlo,” she said, stabbing her index finger at the binoculars hanging around his neck. “I know about Edward Burns and I don’t want to talk to you.”

  She spoke in short, breathy bursts.

  “Please, Billie, just listen for a minute.”

  Lazlo was also out of breath, his great stubbly cheeks flushed in the cold afternoon sunshine. A broad pewter ear ring danced about beneath an elongated ear lobe as he spoke.

  “I trusted you, Lazlo, and now I…”

  Lazlo stepped closer, raising his arm to touch Billie, but thought better of it.

  “I’m sorry about how we met, but that’s my job.” He shrugged apologetically. “But it doesn’t change anything that has developed between us, does it?”

  “I’m scared of you now,” Billie interrupted, looking at him with trepidation in her eyes. “You could ruin my life.”

  Lazlo shook his head in dismay and quickly re-established eye contact. He was bent over at the waist to accommodate her short stature.

  “Look, I’ll be honest with you, my guv’nor is progressing this case; Edward Burns’ son is demanding action and I’m really concerned about you. I want to make sure that you’re not implicated. You do not deserve to be in the firing line here.”

  Billie’s eyes widened and she paled visibly.

  “How can I trust you anymore?” she said in a faltering voice.

  Lazlo’s eyes searched around the pavement for something, then returned to Billie’s face.

  “Do you think my guv’nor would look kindly on me speaking to you like this, discussing a case? These legal matters are… sub judice.”

&n
bsp; He wanted to sound authoritative with the legal jargon, but his delivery was less than convincing.

  “What?”

  Lazlo’s forehead furrowed and he scratched at it with his sausage fingers.

  “I don’t know, secretive or something, certainly not for general discussion anyway. I want to help you, honest I do. Please, give me five minutes so I can tell you what I need.”

  “What more could you possibly need?” she said.

  Lazlo grabbed her gently by the shoulders and pulled her round to face him squarely.

  “I just found you, Billie, I want to keep you. So I need enough to help my guv’nor, but I want to protect you at the same time.”

  She nodded but he could tell her mind was in turmoil.

  “Trust me, please. I really am your friend,” Lazlo said, giving her shoulders another gentle shake with his meaty hands.

  Billie’s plump profile looked like a cranberry between Lazlo’s huge arms as she stared deep into his eyes, trying to decide which way to leap, which instinct to trust.

  “Five minutes?” she said, raising her eyebrows and sighing.

  “Good girl, you will not regret this, I promise.”

  Lazlo’s smile split his face from pierced earlobe to pierced earlobe. He looked immensely relieved.

  THIRTY FIVE

  Charlotte was waiting when Jasper’s midday train pulled into York station, standing with her arms folded beneath the large black and gold Victorian clock. Jasper stepped onto the platform wearing a long, black greatcoat with the collar turned up to ward off the bitter north-easterly wind that was funnelled through the elongated red, brick building.

  Charlotte was dressed in a long, red coat and calf length black boots, her tousled mass of blonde curls being blown asunder by the wind above a black cashmere scarf. They embraced with the minimum physical contact that was necessary.

  “Lottie,” Jasper said as he lightly kissed each of her powdered cheeks.

  “Jasper,” she said, giving his shoulders the slightest of fraternal squeezes.

  They quickly shrank back from the cordial embrace. Jasper was immediately struck by how much she reminded him of Jennifer. The little features on her face that he had never paid much attention to before, the curl of her smile, the glint in her blue eyes, the delicacy of her nose: they were all Jennifer’s.

  “I’m so sorry, Lottie,” he found himself saying, immediately questioning whose prerogative it should be to commiserate.

  She smiled painfully, but did not reciprocate.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” Charlotte said, turning and walking off the busy platform. “Shall we do lunch?”

  Jasper nodded, feeling the tug of his neck angling his head awkwardly to one side.

  “Taxi?” he said.

  “No, let’s walk, York’s apparently beautiful in the sunshine. Jennifer used to tell me about her shopping trips down here.”

  They crossed the River Ouse on Museum Street, heading straight for York Minster, its tall spires resplendent in the autumn sunshine. Outside the Minster a large group of rowdy school children on an outing ran around boisterously amongst the dried leaves on the grass. After a brief appreciation of the Minster’s Gothic architecture, Jasper and Charlotte turned away from the noise and began to walk down the cobbles of High Petergate.

  “Jennifer’s greatest sadness was not having children.” Charlotte said, her eyes taking in the quaint fudge and gift shops that lined the mediaeval street. “She was desperate to be pregnant. She told me that she would come to York for retail therapy after some of her failed fertility treatments.”

  Jasper masked his reaction to this and remained silent for several minutes, before pausing outside a golden sandstone church.

  “This is the church of St Michael le Belfry, where Guy Fawkes was baptised. He was born right here in Petergate, you know.”

  Charlotte stared at Jasper in bewilderment.

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  Jasper felt his facial composure eroding as a barrage of tics tore at his left eye.

  “Do you know why she did it?” Jasper said, establishing eye contact despite his twisting musculature.

  Charlotte looked away. God, she reminded him so much of Jennifer, he thought, except for the mole on the left of her upper lip and a set of teeth crafted to perfection by expensive dentistry. They walked on slowly, Jasper clasping his hands behind his back.

  “Not because she couldn’t have children.” Charlotte said, shrugging her shoulders before looking up at Jasper questioningly.

  Jasper studied the cobbles beneath his black brogues, sucking his cheek as he pondered.

  “Did you know that she was pregnant?”

  Charlotte’s face dropped, the beauty draining from it in an instant. She remained frozen like a mime artist for several seconds, until a passerby bumped into her. “Sorry.”

  “I didn’t know either. The pathologist told me,” Jasper said.

  “What?” Charlotte said with a pained look on her face. “She didn’t tell you?”

  Jasper shrugged.

  “Did she even know?” Charlotte said.

  “The pregnancy was about twelve weeks, they say, so she should have been aware. But we’ll never know.”

  “God, that’s awful,” Charlotte said, her face a deathly pale colour.

  Hearing these words from Charlotte didn’t in any way help to ease Jasper’s pain, serving instead to underline the bizarre and unusual circumstances surrounding Jennifer’s pregnancy.

  They had reached a small square at the junction of Low Petergate and The Shambles, where a crowd was gathered around a group of street artists who were performing tricks with buckets of water atop ladders.

  “This is very difficult for me, Lottie, and I want you to think really carefully now,” Jasper said, turning to walk down The Shambles. The narrow mediaeval Butcher’s Row with its overhanging wooden buildings and redundant meat hooks funnelled the pedestrians together, as Jasper and Charlotte were jostled constantly.

  “I have reason to believe that Jennifer was seeing another man.”

  Charlotte stopped abruptly and a tall man in a tweed coat bumped into her from behind. Charlotte apologised and turned back to Jasper.

  “No, not Jennifer. I don’t… no, she would never.”

  “Lottie, we had been to so many specialists for fertility advice and they all told Jennifer the same thing – you will not be able to have children.”

  “Yes, but these things happen, all of a sudden one day… bingo!”

  Jasper shook his head, feeling the contortions in his left shoulder beginning to ripple.

  “She was seeing someone, she must have been.”

  “What a cruel thing to say about your recently deceased wife. She loved you, Jasper, despite your faults, she loved you,” Charlotte said loudly, as people pushed between them and the quaint shop fronts.

  Jasper continued to shake his head, trying to shut out her words.

  “We hadn’t spent much time together for months…”

  “It only takes one… brief, indifferent, even forgettable, encounter…”

  “Friar Tuck, Lottie, she was taking contraceptives!”

  “What?”

  Jasper drew a breath and sighed deeply, his eyes drifting down to the ancient, well-trodden cobbles. Charlotte’s brow furrowed and she seemed lost for a moment.

  “No, no she wouldn’t have needed them. You’re wrong.”

  “It’s no mistake, she was on the pill and she had been for quite a while, probably for as long as we were having so-called fertility problems.”

  As he said this Jasper felt a rod of steel coring its way through him, filling him with renewed strength and resilience to face the corroding uncertainty surrounding Jennifer’s pregnancy.

  “Did you know?” Charlotte said.

  “Of course I didn’t know. She kept it secret from me. The question is why would she have hidden this from me, unless she had a…”

  “Jen
nifer would not have cheated on you, Jasper, she loved you. That much I know. She was dying to have a family with you.”

  Jasper rubbed the left side of his face with the palm of his left hand, closing his eyes and burying his turbulent emotions. His hand trembled and his face writhed its wormlike ritual, all the while Charlotte stared at him.

  “Are you all right, Jasper?” she said softly.

  “No, I’m bloody well not all right,” Jasper said from behind his hand. “I need to get to the bottom of this, Lottie. I must know why she… did it, and why else unless the child she was carrying… was not mine.”

  He lowered his hand and studied her face. She looked crestfallen, her beautifully made up eyes now bleary and smudged.

  “Can you think of anything out of the ordinary, any comments she may have made, any confidences? Who was she seeing in London, for instance? There’s nothing much to go on in her phone records, or her diary. I need a trail to follow, any clue might be helpful.”

  Suddenly Charlotte shrank back from Jasper, her face transformed into one of revulsion.

  “Listen to yourself, Jasper. You’ve turned Jennifer’s death into an investigation, one of your cases. She was your wife, for God’s sake. If you want a reason, look in the mirror. She was lonely, neglected, and sad…”

  Charlotte began to sob, but as Jasper moved forward to comfort her she shook him off.

  “What about the baby, Lottie?” Jasper said. “She didn’t even leave me a note.” He winced involuntarily, but it was not a tic, it was hurt.

  “She’s not even buried yet and you’re snooping around her private affairs, accusing her of infidelity. This was not her fault. How dare you.”

  Charlotte turned and began to walk away, blowing her nose into a tissue. Soon, half a dozen people had occupied the space that had opened up between them.

  “Lottie wait, I want to know more about Jennifer,” Jasper said, stumbling after her through the crowd.

  She turned and shot an icy stare in his direction.

  “I used to wonder how you could be a compensation lawyer, how you could live with yourself and how my sister could live with you. But now I see exactly what makes you tick,” she said.

  “Please Lottie, I simply want to understand more about Jennifer; I want to know why this happened.”