“You owe us? Owe us what? And who is us? This is serious stuff, Ms. Deacon,” he said. I was as baffled as he was and just shrugged.
“I’ll have our handwriting people compare it to the BritRail form,” he said. “We went to visit that address, but not surprisingly, the place was empty. It was a furnished bed-sit, and the lady who lets it said our Derek Smith had done a flit and owed her a week’s rent.”
“So he could be anywhere by now,” I said. “He could be on the other side of the country.”
“I don’t believe he’s going to give up that easily, actually. Has it occurred to you that this chap, who you think is a random thug, appears to know rather a lot about you?” I didn’t answer, and we continued to sift through the mess in my room. There was nothing missing. Luckily, my passport and travellers’ cheques were in the safe downstairs, and if the thug had attempted to get into it, he’d left no evidence of having been successful. It was still firmly locked, an ancient and black-faced iron thing, capable of withstanding a stick of dynamite, I’d bet. “This Smith knows your name, for example,” Potts went on, “as he asked for you here this morning, and he knew where you were staying, correct?”
This worried me until we went back downstairs and asked Cedric what the flat-capped guy had actually said that morning.
“I think he asked to see my Canadian guest,” Cedric said. Then he blushed. “I’m terribly sorry, but I think I must have blurted out ‘oh, you mean Ms. Deacon?’ or some such. You don’t think, do you? I am sorry.”
“How would he know you are Canadian?” Potts said, turning to me.
“He could have seen the Canadian flag on my backpack at the airport,” I said. Although I remembered that he had confronted me when my back, and my backpack with the flag, were up against the wall. Still, he could have seen it earlier, if he was there looking for likely targets as I was coming through the arrivals gate.
“And he followed you all the way here from Gatwick? You don’t think that’s peculiar?”
“Of course, it’s peculiar,” I said. “Unless you take into account that he lives—or lived—right here in Canterbury, in which case, it was me following him home. But it still doesn’t prove that he’s out to harm me. In fact, if he were, he’d have had plenty of opportunity already.”
“Like when you were alone at the Cathedral?” he said, meaningfully.
“I’m sure that what happened to Alma Barrow had nothing to do with me,” I said. “That was the Right-to-Lifers, I swear, and I wish you’d concentrate on that and stop trying to link me to her. It doesn’t make sense, and you’ll never solve it by bugging me with questions I can’t answer.”
Potts left eventually, and Cedric (who had sobered up pretty sharply after we found Mr. Binterhof) made us a mug of Ovaltine. Then we turned in—me in a new room, not nearly as atmospheric as my attic room-in-a-trunk, but pleasant, nonetheless, and without a mattress soaked in Herbal Essence shampoo. Why on earth had the thug poured out my shampoo? Was he really looking for smuggled Canadian gemstones in the bottle? Maybe he thought it was maple syrup and had an overinflated idea of how much the stuff was worth. I was perplexed as hell about it, but not enough to prevent me from falling asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
My email to Earlie was a ridiculously long one, and I hoped he would appreciate it, and hoped also that he would pass the information on to Becker, who still had not bothered to answer my original check-in thing. I was feeling a tad stubborn about it, actually. If Becker couldn’t be bothered to answer my message, dammit, then I wasn’t planning to send him any more of them. Let him get his news about Polly from his partner, who at least was willing to take the time to write. Yes, I know this was a radical change from the Me who said before I left that I wasn’t planning to stay in touch at all, but people are allowed to change their minds occasionally, aren’t they? Sheesh.
After sending the message, I finished my coffee, gave a cheery wave to the counter person at the Internet café (whose name tag identified her as Susannah, and who already regarded me as a regular), and headed out to the bus station to catch a ride to the university. On the way, I kept an eye out for Smith, in case he’d moved to another anonymous flat on the second floor, and was sitting there like last time, reading a paper. But he knew damn well he was being looked for and had probably absconded to northern Scotland to lie low. Which would be just fine with me.
The seminar that morning, “Choosing Materials for International Performing in Puppetry”, was as wordy and academic as it sounded, but I felt obliged to attend, as I’d skipped off the morning previous. I took notes throughout, not because I was particularly interested in the subject, but to keep myself awake. Halfway through the lecture, Richard appeared out of the darkened aisle and sat down beside me, whispering a hoarse hello. I think he had only just woken up. He had a terrible case of bed head, and he sucked at his coffee like it was the only thing keeping him from passing out.
“Late night?” I whispered.
“There was a party in someone’s room,” he said. “It’s too bad you aren’t in residence. You would’ve enjoyed it. Bunch of people from Mermaid Theatre in Nova Scotia. Jeez. Party animals of the first order.”
“I can’t party these days, Richard,” I said and patted my tummy significantly. Too bad, though. I missed that kind of stuff. The minute the Sprog made her appearance, I was intending to get well and truly loaded with a bunch of friends.
Someone next to me shushed, and we subsided into a kind of bleary silence as the presenter explained to us all that “the theatre of the inanimate transcends the need for language and what is required instead is a universal vocal tonality.” The vocal tonality of the presenter, however, whose name I have since forgotten, was universally soporific, and I must have dozed off for a bit. Next thing I knew, Richard was poking me gently and telling me it was lunchtime, and did I want to grab a bite downtown before we hit the museum?
We grabbed lunch and a pint (yes, I had another Guinness—just a half) in a pub opposite the Roman museum. The little side street was cunningly called Butchery Lane, although there was not a butcher shop to be seen. Maybe a long time ago, the street had been filled with purveyors of animal flesh, with carcasses hanging from hooks in the doorways, like the illustrations in Dickens. Either that, or Butchery Lane was the hangout for Henry II’s four murderous knights. Now it was full of twee little souvenir stores and places where you could buy bone china and Irish linen.
I was happy finally to be inside a real, honest-to-goodness British pub and gazed around with excitement, expecting a bunch of characters from EastEnders to emerge out from the woodwork. Actually, it wasn’t that much different from the fake-o pubs they have in Canada, and I was a bit disappointed. There was the usual brocade red and gold carpet, moulded tin ceiling, and the horse brasses and miscellaneous antiques bolted to the walls.
There was a stunning selection of beers on tap at the bar, though, all with lovely names and decorative handles on the pull-things they use to draw your selection. I asked for a Guinness only because I had convinced myself that it was medicinal, and therefore good for the Sprog.
The tables were thick wooden ones, with matching armchairs, and each table held a nice, deep ashtray, which I suppose at least differentiated the place from your basic Toronto pub, where the smoking section could be found right over there in the dark corner next to the can, or more likely, out back in the alleyway. On the wall opposite the table we had chosen, a bunch of framed Victorian photographs overlooked the scene, probably picked up at a bargain price from an estate auction somewhere. I wondered what Great Aunt Effie would think if she knew her prim mug would end up front and centre in an establishment where liquor was consumed. I toasted her with my Guinness.
Richard had filled me in on pub-iquette the day before. You’re never supposed to tip the barman or barmaid. You may, apparently, buy them a drink, but offering them your change is strictly not done and will brand you as a North American boob. I liked the fact t
hat buying a barman a drink was quite okay—I had worked in enough bars during my theatre school days to know that in Toronto, at least, if you were caught drinking on the job, you were out on your ass. There is rarely table service in English pubs. If you want food, you order it at the bar. We had done so, selecting from a surprisingly extensive menu written on a portable chalk board flourished at our request by the barman [name tag: Harry]. Richard whispered in my ear that ordering fish and chips in a pub (unless it was right on the coast) is never a good idea, nor anything that involved cooked meat.
“Baguettes are safe,” he said and ordered one with tuna salad inside.
I asked for the ploughman’s lunch, a thing that in Toronto would have netted me a stale bun, a limp chunk of cheddar and a couple of pickled onions.
“You’d better help me with this,” I said when it came. On a slab of wood were arranged four kinds of cheese—including a magnificent hunk of Stilton, a pickled egg, some relish and chutney, pickled onions, a wodge of lettuce, two fresh and crusty rolls, a pot of sweet butter and a handful of tiny tomatoes. We demolished the feast between us and deconstructed Professor whatever-his-name-was’s lecture on the materials of international puppetry.
Richard was articulate and funny, and there was no point in pretending that I wasn’t hugely attracted to him. This fact was pretty well established by the time we started arguing over the last pickled onion. (We cut it in half.) I figure I was suffering from the land-locked version of the shipboard flirtation—the kind of thing you indulge in because a person is handy and pleasant and away from home, just as you are. If we’d met in Kuskawa, at the Steamboat Theatre, for example, we’d have been professional and friendly and nothing more. It was just as well I was so hugely pregnant and not at all attractive, or I swear I would have interpreted his vibes as being of the “let’s be pillow buddies” kind. Anyway, he was at least ten years younger than me, and probably thought of me as a nice aunt-substitute.
The Roman Museum in Canterbury is housed in a basement, which I thought was strange until we got down there and saw the excavated Roman house ruin that formed the centrepiece of the place. Once inside, you were invited to “follow the detective work of archaeologists”—through to the excavated Roman house site—and to the hands-on area with all sorts of real artifacts that you were allowed to handle. Way back, the town had been called Durovernum Cantiacorum, and it had been a going concern for about four hundred years. What I didn’t get was where all the soil came from—if a Roman town had existed on that spot, how on earth had the earth piled up, all over the place, so that this stuff was only discovered after a bomb was dropped on the area during the second World War? I never did figure it out, but it didn’t matter. It gave me the same kind of ancient shivers that the cloister had, and this time, I was in the company of someone who liked this stuff as much as I did.
The museum included a time-view of an early Roman town market, with trader’s stalls and set out with real objects and authentic reconstructions. We spent a lot of time at that, because the drawings were so good. When we got to the “House Interior with room settings, including kitchen and dining room”, we found a woman dressed up as a Roman matron and preparing Roman-type-food to amuse the museum-goers. She took one look at me and sort of shrieked, which made me shriek back, as I’d taken her for a wax statue. It was my old friend Maude, from the train.
“Oh, you didn’t half give me a turn,” she said. “I thought you were dead, dear.”
“Did you? Why?”
“Well, the Cathedral. Everybody’s talking about the pregnant lady who got murdered in the Cathedral just like Mr. Becket did ever so long ago, done to death right on top of his shrine, they say. Aaaaawful. Well, they said she was pregnant and had brown hair, and you remember I met you giving out pamphlets at the rally, and then they said you—well, naturally I thought it was you, didn’t I?”
“Well, obviously it wasn’t me, eh?” I said. “But, Maude, you didn’t meet me at the rally. I wasn’t giving out pamphlets—that was another woman who looked a bit like me—the one who died. Did you speak to her?”
“Only to pass the time of day, and I stood with her for the speeches, you know. Are you sure it wasn’t you?”
“I’m sure, Maude.” I introduced her to Richard, who was looking a bit bewildered, and Maude explained that she was a regular volunteer at the museum, “to help give it a bit of life, you know, dear.” She peered through her coke-bottle glasses as if Richard were a particularly interesting Roman specimen. We made polite conversation for a bit, then made movements towards the next part of the museum exhibit.
Suddenly, Maude remembered something. “Look here,” she said, “do you want your pamphlets back?”
“Huh? What pamphlets?”
“The ones you gave me to hold at the speeches, just before you went to the loo, dear. I held them for you, but you never came back for them, did you?” I realized she still hadn’t quite grasped that I wasn’t Alma, or that Alma wasn’t me.
“The person you were standing with at the rally gave you her pamphlets, and you’ve still got them?” I said, very gently, so as not to rattle her.
“That’s right. They’re in my knitting bag in the cloakroom. They’re a bit heavy, and I’d be glad to be rid of them,” she said, looking aggrieved.
“Tell me, Maude, when the person handed over the pamphlets, was she carrying a big baby puppet on a stick at that point?” I asked.
“Oh, that thing—yes, you—well, she, I suppose—was. I remember saying it must be the thing you were carrying in that case you brought on the train. She didn’t really understand what I was saying, but now I know why, because she wasn’t you.” She was looking more and more muddled, and I knew how she felt.
“That was the puppet that you found in the cloisters?” Richard said.
“Exactly—so she took it to the loo with her, did she?”
“I think so,” Maude said. “It had come off its stick by then. I think one of the other marchers had a bit of a barney with her about it, and she was carrying it like it was a real one. It was ever so funny.”
“And she didn’t come back.”
“No. I waited for quite a long time, even after all the people went into the Cathedral. I didn’t go in, though—I’m chapel, you see. Don’t hold with all that kneeling and standing and kneeling. I went home instead and had a cup of tea.”
“You know, Maude, I think you might have been one of the last people to see Alma—that’s the lady who was killed—alive. I think you ought to tell the police about it.”
“Really? Me? Oooh, what fun. You really think so?”
“I know so. And you can give the pamphlets to them, as well. As evidence.” Maude’s bright little eyes behind their thick glasses shone like sea pebbles. Obviously, for some people, retirement in Canterbury didn’t hold nearly enough excitement. She beetled off at once, presumably to collect her knitting bag and fish out her mobile phone. “When you call them,” I called to her retreating back, “ask for Constable Potts. He’s the investigating officer.”
“Thanks ever so much,” she twittered back, her footsteps pitter-pattering on the staircase up to the main entrance.
“That should keep Potts happy,” I said with some satisfaction.
“You don’t suppose that the person who assaulted Alma heard Maude ask if the puppet baby was the one in your case, do you?” Richard asked. He’d heard enough about the situation the night before to understand the mistaken-identity theory and its implications, if any. “Because if he did, then he could have followed her, assaulted her and grabbed the puppet, thinking it was you, carrying whatever he thought you’d brought into the country in that suitcase. That old lady has just made Potts’s theory about you being in danger a whole bunch stronger, eh?”
Suddenly, everybody’s a detective. And suddenly, my knees felt awfully weak.
Twenty
The Church’s fear of sex was exaggerated and obsessive as well as fundamentally superstitious. It p
reserved the primitive magical belief in the power of sex to contaminate. It was for this reason that married couples must not only abstain from intercourse for three nights after their marriage, but having once performed the sexual act, must not enter a church for thirty days after, and then only on condition of doing forty days penance and bringing an offering.
-From the history section of Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
The entrance to the Eastbridge Hospital is very low, and Richard had to stoop so he wouldn’t whang his head. When it was built, the front door used to be at street height, but again, that weird building up of the ground had happened over the centuries, so now you had to step down into it. The front of the building was covered in a rough stone-like stuff, like stucco, but more ancient, which made the place stand out from its half-timbered neighbours. If anything, it looked older than you’d have thought was possible. A red sign over the door proclaimed it “The Canterbury Pilgrim’s Hospital of Saint Thomas”.
Our guide was the Master of Eastbridge, a gentle priest called Father David, who was also the rector of the churches in the city centre, St. Peter’s and St. Mildred’s. Father David explained that the place was established very soon after Thomas Becket was murdered, when his tomb and the scene of his death became a focus of pilgrimage, and the city suddenly had to provide accommodation for the hordes of visitors that flooded in.
“It’s called hospital in the old sense of the word,” the priest said, “a place of hospitality. It’s given shelter and help to pilgrims, soldiers, local societies and schoolboys, and has been a permanent home to a number of elderly people for about four hundred years.”
“Not the same ones, I take it,” Richard said.
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 92
