15

On my way back from the Rideout palace I stopped along the High at the Coffee Pot to clear my head of wine with their high-octane brew. A handful of people were there, including the Ichabod Crane-looking guy the villagers called Dr. Odd. He liked to prescribe bizarre home remedies for any ailment, to anyone who would listen, often complete with healing incantations. I knew that he and Heather, despite the age difference, got on like a house afire.

Bathsheba the cat lounged as usual before the fireplace, at a distance nicely judged to prevent her fur bursting into flame. There was often cat hair floating in the coffee but no one seemed to mind. 

The Coffee Pot had become my home away from home. Sometimes I’d put in my earbuds (“I Think Ur a Contra” was a current favorite) and tune out the world. Sometimes I’d eavesdrop—actually, I did that more often than not: I like to know what’s going on. It is not true that eavesdroppers only hear bad things about themselves, by the way. One day I overheard two women talking about me, not realizing I sat right behind them: The woman from the dry cleaners said she admired my can-do spirit, but she added she’d been worried about me since I lost my job. Her friend said, “Nah, she’ll be fine, she’s American, they bounce back.” I felt great about that all day. It is nice to be admired. Of course, they’d never seen my kitchen.

On occasion, I would strike up a conversation with Dr. Odd about native plants and wildlife. He was the reason I recognized some of Heather’s deadlier concoctions.

The door swung open and, speak of the devil, there she was. She blocked the doorway for a few minutes, struggling with Lulu’s baby carriage. She gave me a friendly wave but settled at a table with Dr. Odd. Some minutes later:

“Bath! Come down from there, you!” This from Greta the proprietor, who always wore her hair in swirls like cinnamon buns, one over each ear, like a woman in a Grimm’s fairy tale.

Heather looked over and said complacently, “You can always tell when they’re pregnant.”

“That tom of Margaret’s has got out again, then,” said Greta. “Lord, I hope not.”

I had taken my usual corner table and pulled out a notebook, intending to be professionally systematic, jotting down the date and time and the high points of my interview with Macy.

But our conversation had brought up some things I didn’t want to dwell on, for naturally, Macy had wanted to hear all the details of my discovery of the body. Now I blinked away an image of Anna’s dead stare, and shaking my head as I sat with my notebook, a small “no!” escaped me. I looked around to see if anyone had heard—it wouldn’t do to let them think I was coming unhinged—but beneath the sound of the espresso machine and Heather’s prattle I might have been alone.

For a while I simply devoted myself to eavesdropping. Someone’s daughter wasn’t doing well. Someone else’s “dogs were barkin’ from the new shoes, and serves her right.” Someone named Maxwell was just having trouble finding himself, and the new girlfriend—no better than she should be—wasn’t helping. Someone’s Hughie with allergies had “nearly died—the lads hid his inhaler from him as a lark.” Because of my brother, I knew too well how that could happen. I fought back another horrid image surging to the front of my mind.

Then I heard Heather say, “I did wonder when I saw Anna leaving the doctor’s.” That made me tune back in. Surreptitiously, I made a note to ask her more about that later.

My eye roamed to a nearby stack of trashy magazines and newspapers that reflected the owner’s taste in news. Headline news like ROBERT DOWNEY’S BACK. And BRAD AND JOLIE: CALLING IT OFF? Sometimes I’d borrow a copy of a particularly juicy old issue to take home.

Children from St. Clement’s primary passed in front of the shop, followed closely by the gooseberry butcher—still my top pick if I were profiling someone to be the village killer. The children always walked through the village on their way home, cute as buttons, starchy in their little uniforms. I liked to assign them character traits and futures as bankers or film stars. One of the little girls had the most complicated plaits you’ve ever seen, different each time I saw her, and I thought of the love and care that went into their creation each day.

The children were totally unlike the weekly boarders from St. Felix’s, the private girls’ school. In that case, being forced to wear a uniform had with the advent of the teen years encouraged gaudy flamboyance in hair and jewelry. St. Felix’s was a refuge that allowed the wealthy to avoid letting their daughters mingle with the great unwashed at the local comprehensive. It was necessary to keep these kids on track with relationships and associations that would get them into the right universities followed by the right jobs and marriages. I certainly could see the sense in that.

I often wondered what it would have been like to have been born and raised in the village. I wondered, moreover, if living that sort of cosseted life might have made me a different person. It was an unanswerable question—nature vs. nurture—but in my heart of hearts I believed the answer was yes. It would all have been different and I would not have been sitting there alone apart from Dr. Odd and the cat and assorted strangers. Oh, and Heather, of course.

Wasn’t it Lady Astor who said most women marry beneath themselves?

That evening with Will … It’s not worth writing about but I suppose, in the interest of accurate notetaking, I must.

Wind had whipped the trees in our garden as night came on, throwing droplets of a late afternoon rain. It seeped in at the base of one bedroom window, making the blinds rattle like a Halloween skeleton. I’d woken from a nap—the alcohol; those memories—as thunder rumbled in the distance, coming nearer.

Someone was in the house, moving stealthily, but I knew Will from the footfalls, the pacing of his steps, even his scent being transmitted to me subliminally. I got up to check my makeup. Panda rings under the eyes and not a trace of lipstick—your basic Alice Cooper makeover.

I’d opened the Crown Royal for a mid-afternoon sock of oblivion and that was the last I remembered. I found Will in the kitchen, holding my glass to his nose. The great detective.

“You’ve been drinking? Really?” he said. “It’s six o’clock.”

So? The sun was over the yardarm now. And I hadn’t had a drink in forever. Besides: hello? Kettle/black. I didn’t answer, since it wasn’t really a question, and he knew everything already. He always did.

“I’m making eggs and sausage for dinner,” I said. “If you want some. I didn’t have time to shop.” It was a favorite meal of his, nursery food, really. I was determined we would just be normal for a while—coast along, no major eruptions, see what developed. Although my every instinct was to tell him if he wanted dinner he could take me out to the gastro pub. I just didn’t want to be alone.

“I’m meeting someone at the pub,” Will said. He was rifling through some paperwork I’d left on the coffee table, which included the latest version of my CV. None too gently, I removed it from his hands. “You’ve been out of work for almost a year,” he said. He’d spent the last year complaining that we needed to tighten our belts and cut back on our spending. How that fit in with going to the pub all the time wasn’t clear to me.

“Nine months,” I corrected him. Someone? Who, someone?

“Closer to ten. Whatever.” He gave me that look, the kind of look you reserve for someone you might have crossed paths with in a mental ward. I hated that look—was it fear? Distrust? Or contempt? If so, what did he have to be contemptuous about? “You need to start pulling yourself together, Jill.” He stopped, peered at me, and said, “What have you done with your hair?”

So he’d noticed, at least peripherally, that despite the current panda eyes I’d been trying to pay more attention to my appearance. I’d also mastered coq au vin, but he’d yet to comment on that.

“I thought I’d try highlights.” I’d had them done weeks before. Did he never look at me?

“Good to know you have time for that.”

I looked out the window. Some star was spinning, twinkling, turning its face from me. A dog barking—that godforsaken dog of the Westcotts, left alone again. Some people don’t deserve the animals they’ve got.

“Look, it gives me confidence. When I go out for interviews and things.”

“When’s the last time you went out on an interview? And whatever happened with the voiceovers? All that money splashed out on equipment, just sitting there gathering dust.”

That really was the worst thing he could have said. It was unfair, the whole conversation, and he knew it. The truth was, it’s a cutthroat world out there in London and Americans need not apply. I was an alien. Even married to a Brit, I was and would forever be viewed as an alien. I had tried explaining this to Will, to no avail.

“I’ve got an interview next week,” I lied.

“Really?” The skepticism in his voice, habitual now when he spoke to me, was still there, but now he was less sure of his ground. “Next week” was more a concrete concept he could cling to. Will liked absolutes. “Who with?”

Annoyance inspired me. “Whom. With whom. Well, it’s sort of an interview. You remember Oscar? Guy I used to work with?”

“Oh, man. Oscar? Really?”

“Yes, Oscar.” I found myself getting defensive on Oscar’s behalf, although I totally got Will’s take on him. Oscar was perhaps not the world’s most reliable person, but still. The fact that Oscar fancied me and made little secret of thinking my marriage to Will had been a mistake might have factored into Will’s cynicism.

“What’s Oscar’s last name, anyway?” Will was not being ingenuous here. He simply didn’t remember or care to. “What kind of job?”

“Mayhew.”

“Oscar Mayhem. Right, I remember now. You’re wasting your time.”

I decided to let that go. If Will had a better connection, now would be the time to mention it.

“Oscar knows everyone,” I said. “I thought if I reminded him I was still on the market he’d have some ideas.” I was completely forgetting by this point that I had no appointment to meet with Oscar, but that could easily be remedied. More importantly, Oscar was bound to have one ear to the ground on what had happened here in Weycombe. Someone like Anna being murdered would be right up his investigative alley. The BBC camera van and crew had already trundled through the village; the wide-angle lens shots of our historic market town as it sat twinkling in the sunlight, festooned for harvest time, had been featured on the evening news. There had also been a close-up of the spot on the river where Anna had been killed, and establishing shots outside the estate agent’s office where she had been employed. Best of all, there had been stills of her desirable house in its exclusive enclave. I could write the voiceover introduction myself with my eyes closed: “Beautiful Anna Monroe, rich and successful, the envy of her neighbors. The envy of everyone who knew her. But was it envy that led to her brutal murder at a bend in the River Wey, just outside her postcard-perfect village? Or was it something else? The police are baffled by this crime—a crime that has shaken bucolic Weycombe to its core.” When they ran out of things to say there would be archival shots of the Bull, probably with my dear husband sitting at the bar, and of the farmer’s market on a Saturday morning, bustling with people like Heather buying flowers and cheese and free-trade coffee.

This sort of thing had been perfected by US television producers of true-crime reenactments—the type of show that makes you wonder just how many people are actually murdered every year, because there seem to be an awful lot. They also make you wonder how the justice system ever got to be so screwed up. These shows tend to feature an overblown narrative style and an awful lot of repetition, and the victim is always beautiful and wealthy and envied—or at least, very young. Ugly and poor don’t sell. Anna fit all the requirements, except for the young part. I wondered briefly who might play the role of Anna, and an image of a somewhat zaftig Catherine Zeta-Jones floated before my eyes.

The UK version of this stuff was Bloody Murder: London—as I’ve mentioned, I’d done much of the casting for that show. So when I say Catherine Z-J, I know what I’m talking about. Sooner or later, Anna’s death would be featured, no question about it. I figured maybe I could wangle a comeback when it was. Now that would be interesting.

Having “promised” Will I would go and talk to Oscar, I figured I might as well make good on it. It might prove useful, and Oscar—well, at least Oscar was never boring.

“Besides,” I added, letting Will in on some of my thinking, “I need to talk to someone right now. And Oscar’s good at getting me out of a slump.”

“Is that what you call it?” he said, not completely unkindly. Not completely. There was a shade of old Will peering out from behind fed-up, up-himself Will now. And there was a softening in his voice that allowed me to say, “The thing with Anna. It reminds me of my brother somehow. She … it’s so … awful. I don’t know if I can stand to relive it. But I don’t seem to have a choice.”

He nodded. I had told Will soon after we first met about my brother, and I could see how it got to him, the pity in his eyes. Pity is such a dangerous emotion; it can masquerade as love. I told him how I did everything I could to save my brother, and how I still felt the most terrible guilt.

“Of course you did everything you could,” he’d insisted. “You were only a child yourself.”

I knew my face now reflected some of my turmoil. His was pale, devoid of color. He looked like he’d aged ten years. He also looked as if he might have been crying.

The uncaring Will of recent weeks was gone and for the moment, my Will was back. He reached out and drew me onto his chest, holding me and kissing the top of my head. It was so unexpected, so tender; the treacherous tears I had banished forever, ages ago, sprang to my eyes.

This is what kept me off balance—this thing Will was doing, right there and then. He could not bear to see anyone suffer, you see. Especially when he was the cause. Otherwise Will was careful to avoid any scene with the potential to turn emotional.

Eventually, he extricated himself from my grasp. Furiously I dug my fists into my eyes to quell the tears. I didn’t want his sympathy. What was wrong with me?

“Look, I’m going out,” he said. “I have to go out,” he amended. “I’m meeting Gideon’s father for a drink.” This was a huge concession; Will seldom bothered anymore to tell me where he was going or who with. “You’ll be all right on your own?”

I nodded mutely. Wasn’t I always? All right, and on my own?

“Look,” he said. “Just—try to be … calm. Relax, if you can. And no more drink, at least for tonight, all right?”

I almost laughed. It was so Will. So very British. Just pull your socks up, stay sober, and everything will be fine.

“Are you happy?” I asked him. “I mean, despite … ?” It was a ridiculous question, given the circumstances. We barely spoke anymore; it had all broken down. Why would I care if he was happy?

But I wanted to hear what he’d say.

Predictably, the question embarrassed him. “You mean, despite all this.” He swept his hand vaguely about the room, and I was reminded of the Monty Python line, “What, the curtains?”

I wanted to laugh but I just nodded.

“Not happy,” he said. “No. Dazed would be a better word. We’ll—we’ll sort it all out. Just give it time. Let’s … For now, I’m content to wait and see.”

The way he said it, I could hear things unspoken. “We’ll sort it all out, and then … ” And then what? Goodbye?

I decided not to press. So long as Will was content for now, I thought, that’s good.

That was all that mattered.