I sat back, defeated.
“Take heart, love. We’re still a long way—that is, Derek is still a long way from accusing Amanda of murder. So far as I know, Derek hasn’t traced the source of the digitalis. I don’t know if he’s been able to get at the man’s medical records, even. The weekend makes things more difficult. But I agree that Miriam needs to be sent away, if at all possible, no matter what happens. Shall we look for the sister?”
That was reasonably easy. Alan found the page listing the birth dates of all the Blake children. In addition to Amanda, there was one brother and one sister, Gillian. She was two years older than Amanda. Next he checked for a marriage record for Gillian Blake. Knowing the county made it easier. He could find no record that she had ever married.
“So presumably there is a Gillian Blake living somewhere in England. That’s a fairly easy search to do, in fact. Pity Blake is a common name, but Gillian isn’t. Do we have an idea where?”
“Ruth Beecham said Canterbury, but she wasn’t too sure.”
We tried Canterbury without success and then opened the search to any locality. We got lucky. There was only one Gillian Blake, at least only one that the search engine could find, and she lived in London. The screen obligingly provided her telephone number.
“Do you think, after all this trouble,” Alan asked, “that the sister will be of any help?”
“I have no idea,” I said drearily. “I’ll call Ruth and see what she thinks. I just hope we can talk Amanda into the idea of sending Miriam away. That’s at least half the problem. I can see why Amanda might not want Miriam to go to her parents, but maybe the sister would be all right.”
Alan stood. “Then you don’t need me anymore. You mastered the telephone quite some time ago. But, love”—he hesitated—“you don’t have to do this, you know. It’s upsetting you, and you have no real connection with Miriam and her mother.”
“Just call it my penance.”
“For what?”
“All those uncharitable thoughts about John Doyle and his chapel buddies.” I gave him a peck on the cheek and picked up the phone.
Ruth wasn’t home. I gave a passing thought to calling Amanda, but discarded the idea. She probably wouldn’t answer the phone. Ruth had given me the impression that Amanda had barricaded herself away from all comers.
No, I was, I thought, justified in taking direct action.
Sunday evening. Usually a good time to catch people at home. Before I could think about it too much and lose my nerve, I dialed the number and waited.
She answered on the fifth ring, and she sounded cross. “Yes?”
“Um—is this Gillian Blake?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Not on a Sunday night!”
“I beg your pardon? I’m trying to reach Gillian Blake, but if I have the wrong number—”
“Look, whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested and I’m busy!”
“Wait! Don’t hang up! It’s about your sister.”
There was a long pause. I could hear the snick of a lighter and a long drag on a cigarette. Finally, “Who is this and what do you want?”
“You don’t know me. I live in Sherebury and I know your sister, Amanda Doyle. My name is Dorothy Martin, and I’m trying to help her.”
“Do you belong to that so-called church?”
“No. Look, Ms. Blake, you may have read in the papers about the trouble your sister is in.”
“I don’t read the papers. What kind of trouble?”
I decided the only way to get through to her was to hit her between the eyes. “She’s likely, very soon, to be accused of murder.”
13
ANOTHER pause. Another long inhalation. When Gillian Blake spoke again, her voice had changed. “Well, well, well. So she’s finally had the guts to do it, has she?”
I said nothing.
“Listen, Mrs. Whoever-You-Are. You are telling me Amanda’s murdered that bastard she married, aren’t you?”
“I’m telling you no such thing. Yes, Mr. Doyle has been murdered, but not by Amanda. I’m convinced of that, but the police may have other ideas. I’d very much like to talk to you about the whole situation.”
“Who are you, anyway? You don’t sound English. You’re not a solicitor or something?”
“Certainly not! I’m American by birth, and I’m simply a friend—well, an acquaintance—of your sister. She is your sister, I take it?”
“She is. But why are my sister’s affairs any of your business?”
“Strictly speaking, I suppose they’re not,” I snapped, stung. “I suppose it’s none of my business if a man gets murdered and his widow is totally unable to cope. I suppose it’s none of my business if a child is foundering in a sea of misery and confusion. I suppose I ought to pass by on the other side and forget about the whole thing and get on with my life. Certainly Amanda has made it quite clear that she doesn’t want my assistance. I’d have thought you might consider her problems your business, since she’s your sister, but obviously I was mistaken.”
The temperature of my voice had been dropping steadily. For once, losing my temper seemed to help, because Ms. Blake’s attitude changed.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. Look, I was busy when the phone rang, and I thought you were a telemarketer. We got off to a bad start. Let’s begin again. Explain everything, including how you got into this and exactly what you think I can do about it.”
Explaining everything took some little time, even omitting Amanda’s suspicion of Miriam. I told Gillian about Amanda’s uncharacteristic behavior both before and after the murder, the manner of Doyle’s death, and, finally, Miriam. “She’s acting very oddly, I think. She didn’t like her father much, I gather, but even so, a murder in the family must be a terrible shock, and she seems much too controlled, too—oh, I don’t know. I don’t really know her, of course. You’d be a better judge than I.”
“I have seen Miriam exactly once, Mrs.—Martin, is it? Amanda had to bring her to London for something, I forget what, dentist or school uniform or something. That was four or five years ago, and they popped in at the flat. They stayed for perhaps fifteen minutes. That is the sum total of the time I have spent with my only sister in the last nine years.”
“I see.” I sagged into my chair with the disappointment of it. “Then you wouldn’t be interested in looking after Miriam for a while. I’m sorry I bothered you, but—”
“I didn’t say that.” I heard another cigarette being lit and inhaled greedily. “My sister is the world’s biggest fool, but she is my sister. P’raps it’s time to show a little family solidarity. Are there decent roads to that godforsaken place?”
I resented the description of Sherebury, which I consider one of England’s loveliest little towns. However, this probably wasn’t the time to say so. “The roads are very good, actually. You take the A twenty-one out of London, and then—”
“Never mind. I can find it. Where do you live?”
“In Monkswell Street, the house at the end, right up against the wall of the Close. You can’t miss it; it’s Jacobean and all the rest are Georgian.”
“Sounds like something out of Trollope. Anthony or Joanna, take your pick. God help us! I’ll be there in an hour.”
“But, Ms. Blake, it’s after nine. It can wait until tomorrow—” I broke off. I was talking to a buzz.
I sighed and went upstairs to clear the junk out of my tiny spare bedroom.
There was a lot of junk. I had barely finished making the room habitable, and had gone downstairs to tell Alan we were expecting a visitor, when the doorbell rang.
“Good grief, she must have flown all the way from London!” The bell rang twice more on my way to the door.
I don’t know exactly what I expected, but the woman who stood on my little porch, her finger extended to press the bell once again, wasn’t it.
She wasn’t actually tall, but she gave that impression, being so thin. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes deep sunk, and the black poncho s
he wore didn’t do much to hide her long, skeletal, black-clad arms and legs. Her spiky black hair completed the impression of something between Cher and a rather elegant spider. The inevitable cigarette dangled from her lips, which now curved into a half smile.
“You’re exactly what I expected,” she said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.
Two could play that game. “You’re not. Come in. That is, I take it you’re Gillian Blake?”
“Just Gillian. I use only the one name.” She stopped in my narrow hall and looked around. “Do you have an ashtray?”
“No. We don’t smoke. And we’d actually rather that our visitors didn’t, either.”
“Yeah. Right.” She stepped back outside the door, flipped the cigarette in a fiery little arc into the shrubbery, and came back looking hostile.
I led her into the parlor. I use that old-fashioned name for my living room because it seems appropriate. The house itself is roughly four hundred years old, and though I’ve made no attempt at “period” furniture, I’ve tried to use styles and fabrics that blend in. The effect is cozy and comfortable, especially with cats draped over the furniture here and there, but it’ll never feature in Architectural Digest.
Gillian Blake—or simply “Gillian”—looked about as much at home in that setting as a Martian in Buckingham Palace.
Alan came into the room. He was wearing a shabby pair of old trousers, a stretched-out turtleneck sweater, and bedroom slippers. I introduced them and watched with interest. Alan’s expression didn’t change by so much as a flick of an eyelash from his usual reserved courtesy. Gillian, on the other hand, took in his conservative-old-fogey dress and rolled her eyes up as she accepted his proffered hand and sat down.
“Would you care for a drink, Gillian?” He’d gotten the name right the first time. I wasn’t surprised, but she was.
“Whiskey, gin, vodka? Or of course white wine or sherry.”
She found her voice. “White wine. Please.”
Well, the “please” was a start. Alan raised his eyebrows at me. I nodded. When he brought Gillian her wine, he also brought some Jack Daniel’s for both of us. I felt I was going to need it.
“Cheers,” said Gillian, and took a sip of the wine.
I cleared my throat, not sure how to begin this conversation. “I—um—I’m not sure what your situation is. Your daily schedule, and your—er—means—”
“All right, we’ll cut to the chase. I write. For television. Soaps. It pays damn badly, but I manage. I live alone in a very small flat, and it would be pure hell to have a kid around making a row while I’m trying to get some work done. But there doesn’t seem to be much choice, does there? Miriam needs to get away from this mess, and unless Mandy has made some good friends here, which I very much doubt, it’s me or nobody.”
“Your parents?” I said doubtfully.
She reached in her purse and took out a cigarette, then gave both of us a baleful look and put it back. She took a healthy swig of wine. “How much do you know?” she asked. “About our family, I mean. You found me, for a start. I’ll give you long odds Amanda never told you about me, and I’m not all that eager to be found, so you must know something.”
Alan responded to that one. “We know that your father is Anthony Blake, the prominent Conservative member of Parliament. We know that your sister became pregnant with Miriam before she was married. All the rest is supposition.”
“Well, if you suppose that my father went up like a rocket when he found out Mandy had been and gone and done it, you suppose right. It wasn’t quite never-darken-my-door-again, but he made it perfectly clear that she was a terrible embarrassment to him, and he wouldn’t be shattered if she vanished from his life. I was still living at home then, and I’ll never forget the row. He was all for sending her off to America to have the kid well out of his way, and put it up for adoption, but then he found out he’d have to pay a small fortune in hospital bills, what with no National Health over there. My dear papa is as tight with money as he is in other departments. And then, you see, Mandy didn’t want to give the baby up for adoption, and she was stubborn about it. She sometimes has more guts than you’d think, to look at her.
“So then Father found this Doyle person, God knows where. I think he’d worked in a campaign once, or something. Anyway, he seemed to my father to be a ‘Godly, righteous, and sober’ person, and he had no family. No brothers or sisters, I mean, and his parents were dead. Well, of course, that pleased Father no end, because it meant that fewer people would know about the situation. So Doyle agreed—for a sum—to marry Mandy in some moldy old chapel. It was a thoroughly dim affair, notably minus champagne and ‘The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden.’ She was showing by then, but she wore shapeless clothes to cover it up, and if anybody in the constituency ever knew, there was never any talk.”
“What did your mother have to say about all this?” I hated to interrupt, but I wanted to know. Maybe the mother could help in the current crisis.
Gillian finished her wine in a gulp. “Lydia Blake, perfect wife. That’s the image Father projects. It’s true, up to a point. She’s gone along with everything my father wanted, and been a good politician’s wife, and all that rot, but Mum’s—well, she’s a decent person at bottom. She tried to intervene when Mandy was in trouble, look after her, find her a place to live nearby. She wanted to get to know her grandchild, you see. This was the only one she was ever likely to have, after all, unless Mandy had more kids. She knew I never wanted marriage and a family; I have a career to think about.”
“And your brother?”
“Jack’s gay.”
“Oh, dear. Your father—”
“Too bloody right. Thanks.” This was to Alan, who had refilled her glass. “Yes, the dustup when Father found out about Jack was even worse than when he found out about Mandy. As far as Father is concerned, you see, his family is a total washout. Not only are we of no use to him politically, we’re actually liabilities. And since politics comprise Father’s entire life …” She took another swig of her wine.
“That’s one reason I dropped the Blake a few years ago. The entertainment industry is among the many things Father disapproves of. He was on the news just last Wednesday fulminating about the trash one is offered on TV these days. Ironic, isn’t it? The Beeb didn’t dare not run it, even though he was ripping them to shreds. Anyway, I saw no reason to give him excuses for the diatribes he likes to deliver when his children displease or embarrass him. Besides, it’s a highly competitive business and, his views being what they are, he was just as likely to embarrass me if our relationship was known. How did you find me, by the way?”
“Computers are wonderful. And your telephone is still listed under the name of Blake.”
“Damn! What a slipup! I’ll change that.” She finished the wine and shook her head to Alan’s interrogative look. “No, thanks. I need a clear head to tackle Amanda. We don’t get on all that well. I think she’s a wimp and she thinks I’m a terror. I admit to a few rough edges; the business does that to you. But Amanda’s always tried to act the sweetness-and-light bit, and she thinks I’m crude.”
“I don’t know about that sweetness and light,” I said a trifle grimly. “She’s been fairly abrasive with me. Now that I know you a little better, I can tell you’re sisters. However,” I went on before she could react to that, “it’s late by our standards. I imagine you keep odd hours, but in Sherebury we start rolling up the sidewalks about ten-thirty or eleven, and as it’s nearly midnight, I’m sure Amanda’s already in bed. I’m putting you in the guest room for the night.”
She frowned. “I was expecting to stay with Amanda, so I didn’t take time to pack. I knew she’d lend me something for the night.”
“I’ve plenty of spare nightgowns, and if you don’t have a toothbrush, I trust you can make do with floss and some mouthwash.”
“I have one. I do draw the line at sharing some things.”
“Good, then come on up. I’ll show you which
room it is, and then you can stay up as late as you like, but Alan and I are going to bed.”
“You know,” said Gillian, rising from her chair, “you’re not quite what I expected, after all. A little more vinegar and a lot less sugar. Live and learn.”
14
I HAD expected Gillian to sleep very late Monday morning. Somehow she seemed like a night person, rather than morning, and I knew for a fact that her light had still been on at about two-thirty when I’d gone to the bathroom. But she appeared at the breakfast table a little after eight, attired in a nightgown of mine and a robe of Alan’s, which she could have wrapped around herself twice. I wouldn’t say she was exactly awake, but she sat silently and drank coffee while we had cereal and toast.
“Shall I go with you when you visit your sister?” I offered when she seemed to have ingested enough caffeine to be coherent. “It’s not easy to find, and then, too, she’s been in a sort of state of siege these last few days. I’m not sure what kind of welcome you’ll get.”
She yawned. “How hard can it be to find a street in a town this size? And I think Mandy’ll talk more easily with only me there. She’ll be all right, now that the bastard’s dead. He was the one who caused the real trouble between us.”
“I did wonder,” I said frankly. “You seem to care for your sister, yet you’ve been estranged for years.”
“That wasn’t the way I wanted it. I went to London just after she got married. I knew I couldn’t stick it at home without her. We didn’t always get on well—I told you that—but we were close, all the same. Do you have sisters?”
“Just one left, now, and yes, I know what you mean. I used to fight with the other sister all the time, but we loved each other dearly, anyway. Go on.”
“Well, it was just that without Mandy, there was nothing at home for me. And I had this job offer, a pretty dire job actually, and only part-time, but it was with the Beeb—sorry, the BBC—and I thought it could lead to great things.”
Sins Out of School Page 9
