Blackbird Fly (40 page)

She closed her eyes tightly, memorizing the way he
felt, his shoulder under her hand, the smell of his skin, his
breath on her ear.

As the song wound down, he took her face in his
hands, smoothing her hair. “Blackbird. That is your song.”

“
Is that what my name
means?”

“
All your life,” he sang in a
breathy, French accent. “You were only waiting for this moment to
be free.”

He pulled her to his chest and sang along with John
and Paul — the dark black night, broken wings, blackbird arising —
as he stroked her hair. He smelled like fruit and life and
sunshine.

Criminy. It was going to be hard to leave.

BOOK FOUR

The Beginning

Chapter 39

The skies hung low and gray with flocks of crows
squawking in the bare trees. November in London was short, dreary
days followed by long, damp nights. A change from her last trip to
Europe but Merle wasn’t watching the skies. No dawdling this time.
Pascal had helped arrange the auction of the “Fine Vintages, Rarely
Seen,” as the Sotheby’s catalogue read. He had called Merle half a
dozen times in the last three months. She often missed the calls
because she was in meetings or wining and dining the
corporates.

She had dreaded starting her new job, but to her
surprise she wasn’t half bad. She began viewing herself as an
anthropologist who studies corporate lawyers, dissects their social
structure, mating rituals, and mindsets. They weren’t that
complicated really. She enjoyed appealing to their generous sides,
and most of them were generous if you knew how to press their
buttons. Lillian Wachowski called her a magnificent closer and even
took her out to dinner one Friday evening to celebrate signing a
big firm to a long-term pro bono agreement.

The hotel smelled of fish and chips, full of bus
loads of culture hounds. As she checked in, the clerk handed her a
large envelope with the auction house imprint. The copies of the
contracts she’d signed last month were inside, with more details on
the auction. Her father had gone over the fine print and everything
seemed in order. She was nervous about the auction. If the prices
weren’t good, she had decided to refuse the sale. She hoped that
didn’t happen, but the economy was still shaky.

The auction was in the morning, early, but her
internal clock was off and she wandered the streets for awhile,
considered a movie in Leicester Square, watched juggling instead,
and window-shopped at rare book stores. A fine mist began to fall
as she walked back to the hotel.

“
Miss Bennett!” the desk clerk
called. He handed her another envelope, letter size with the hotel
imprint. Inside was a fax, handwritten. She sat on the edge of the
bed.

Cher
Merle,

As you see I am not in London. Things are very busy
with the trial approaching. Gerard Langois and Hugh Rogers will be
put on trial together for the fraud, a time-saving maneuver which I
hope will not blow up in our faces. Rogers now claims Jean-Pierre
Redier is responsible for Justine’s fall, or alternately that it
was an accident. Can you come for the trial, my little blackbird?
Pascal

PS. Enclosed my translation of the report on the
pissotiere
bones, just completed.

The next sheet, the forensic report on the bones, was
short.

“
The bones are female, 20 to 40
years old at time of death, approximately one-hundred-forty-three
centimeters in height, brown-black hair, who has not delivered a
child. The skull had received a hard blow, fractured: probable
cause of death. Bones are contemporary based on clothing fragments
and hair samples found within the encasement, possible burial
thirty to seventy years past. Without dental records or DNA
sampling, identification is incomplete.”

She would write to Dr. Beynac, maybe he knew who the
dentist was in Malcouziac fifty years ago. But the chances were
slim. Weston Strachie had probably wiped out all evidence of
Marie-Emilie’s existence. The shame of the connection still made
her ill. He may be long dead, and good riddance, but he was still
the lowest sort of pond scum. She sunk into the worn bedspread. If
only Pascal were here, to stroke her hair and tell her it was all
over years ago.

The bidding on the Malcouziac wine began at 11 a.m.,
after a lot of 2000 vintages from Château Latour in Pauillac.
Prices for those were good. Merle listened to the talk in the
gilded rooms on New Bond Street before the bidding on her wine
began, standing with well-dressed men and sophisticated ladies
looking at three bottles, the representatives of her lot — Château
Pétrus, Château Cheval-Blanc, and Château L'Église-Clinet, their
old labels brittle but the glass shiny and bright, cleaned for the
day. There was no tasting as they’d done for the new vintages; the
bottles were too valuable to open. The Pétrus had the biggest
reputation. The wine critic Robert Parker had given it his highest
rating, 100 points. You could almost hear him salivating between
the words. The L'Église-Clinet was less well-known but might,
according to one gentleman, attract those looking for something
different.

She settled into the back row, in good line of sight
of the auctioneer. With amazing speed the Château Pétrus, 1946,
sold for £2200 a bottle. The Cheval-Blanc '47 went for £2100, the
L'Église-Clinet, 1949, sold in a split lot, half for £1200 and half
for £1450.

Then it was over. Stunned, Merle had to stare at her
notes for a moment before the figures sunk in. She punched in the
numbers on her calculator, pounds to dollars. On the Pétrus alone,
before the consignment fees, over 100,000 pounds sterling. That was
more than $152,000 US. On the others, over $240,00. Altogether
nearly $400,000. She couldn't believe it. She sent up a silent
thank-you to the old bastard, Weston Strachie, then almost fainted
from relief.

A ripple, a murmur, then the auction moved on. She
drew a deep breath. All that scrabbling, angst, and panic over
bottles of wine was finished. Pascal should be here. He had not let
her down. He had done what he said he’d do, restoring her faith in
men, or at least Frenchmen.

She gathered herself and stood up. She would see
Pascal again, sometime. But now there was one more loose end.

The quiet village in Somerset, a crossroads of two
narrow highways, could have served as a set for a Masterpiece
Theater program, something from Thomas Hardy perhaps. No thatched
cottages, but very nearly. Merle had taken the early train from
London after a little solo celebrating — and banking — in London.
The village was a couple blocks long in businesses, with old homes
mixed in, an inn where she intended to spend the night, a small
food shop, a bakery, a garage.

She asked the rental car clerk at the train station
for directions to the even smaller village of Hockingdon. A flock
of geese honked overhead, pointing her in the direction of the
hamlet. Carefully she urged the little car onto the pavement
(
stay left/stay left
, her right-handed brain scolded), into
the rolling pastures and hills. Hockingdon wasn’t far, and she made
it there by mid-morning. Fortifying herself with the thermos of tea
she’d brought, she parked in front of the Round Robin Inn.

Still there, after all these years, and still open
for business. Amazing. Weston’s archive of memories, including the
menu from the Round Robin, sat on the seat. The fat bird on the
sign matched the menu imprint. They hadn’t even changed the sign in
sixty years. She had found a listing for the inn — complete with
plump fowl — in a British touring magazine, but she’d also found
six other Round Robin Inns from Leith to Aberystwyth. She hoped
she’d guessed correctly. With that sign, she felt sure she had.
Closest to London and over a hundred years old, the inn apparently
embodied the village, nestled in the center of the single block of
buildings.

Pushing through the heavy door, Merle stepped into
the lobby. It smelled of grease and wet wool and bread baking. She
took a seat in the deserted restaurant. An older woman, plump and
red-faced, wearing a dirty apron, arrived at the table with a
kettle and teapot.

Outside a motorcycle zoomed by on the street,
rounding a school bus and barely missing a small child. Several
pedestrians waved their fists in anger. A couple made their way
across the street and into the inn.

The man and woman hung up their coats and scarves,
chatting as they sat down at the window table. They were both
gray-haired but looked youngish, talking in their country accents.
Odd to be in a foreign country where you could understand the
natives. Merle plucked a scone from the tray.

Tea in a pot was brought for the couple. Merle waited
for them to settle in, then stood up. They didn’t seem startled at
her approach. A good sign, she thought.

“
Pardon the intrusion. I was
wondering if you might be able to help me,” Merle said. “I’m
looking for someone in the village who lived here in the fifties,
someone who might remember a relative of mine.”

They were quick to introduce themselves and find her
a chair to join them. “Gavin Towne, and this is my wife,
Gloria.”

“
The fifties?” Gloria said. “Gavin
lived here.”

“
Yes, ma’am. When in
particular?”

“
Nineteen-fifty,
fifty-one.”

“
I was in school then.” He looked
over his teacup at her. “Sorry.”

Merle told them the memorized fiction, that she
wanted to find the woman her father married after leaving her
mother. “They divorced after only a couple years, I never saw him
again. But I think I might have half-brothers or sisters.”

Gloria’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?
Is your father gone now?”

“
Sadly, yes. And Mother too.” The
story of all the related parties being passed and gone had worked
at the convent so why not here? But she could feel her mother’s
fingernails on her neck.

“
Isn’t there somebody around here
who knew everybody?” Gloria wondered aloud.

They consulted the waitress who suggested the vicar.
But Gloria knew he’d only arrived five years before, just as they
moved back.

The waitress slapped her cloth over her shoulder.
“You should ask Tulliver.”

William Tulliver owned the store across the street,
and apparently knew everyone. Gloria and Gavin introduced her,
telling the shopkeeper of the search for lost relatives. He
scratched his head and said, “There’s the Westchesters, but I think
the old man’s gone in the head. Or maybe Lloyd Acres down by
Tinsley.”

The names flowed out of him. Merle scribbled them
down. There seemed to be something wrong with each of them, they
were infirm, recently died, or had begun to forget their kin. Then
he said, “What about Annabelle Gallagher? She doesn’t get out much,
but I hear the old girl’s still with us.”

Gloria had seen the woman several Christmases back —
a tough old bird. Liked to talk. Probably knew everyone.

The shopkeeper drew a map to the Gallagher place
called Three Oaks, a reference to long-gone trees. The sun came
out, scorching the green hills with color as she drove. The old
manor house, down a narrow drive, looked neglected, with missing
shingles, broken shutters, windblown tree limbs on the shaggy lawn,
a tire-less car rusting next to the carriage house. A few decades
back the owners of Three Oaks had thrown in the towel.

The knocker was a huge brass lion. A middle-aged
woman opened the door — thin, bad dye job, pale skin. “Miss
Gallagher?”

“
She’s in the sunroom,” the woman
said sullenly, opening the door wider before she remembered to ask,
“And who may you be?”

“
Merle Bennett. Mr. Tulliver in
Hockingdon told me Miss Gallagher was the person to talk to about
relatives of mine.”

The woman looked her up and down. “Wait here.”

Merle looked around at the wide, empty yard, trying
to imagine lawn parties and elegant sculpted boxwood and men in top
hats. It looked like there hadn’t been parties for a long time.

The door opened again. Merle was escorted through the
dark house, echoing rooms empty of life and furniture, to a large
glass Victorian conservatory with a two limp palms hanging onto
life. Under a red tartan blanket sat a shrunken old woman,
white-haired and wizened as an apple doll, with bright blue eyes.
She wore a pilled green sweater buttoned up to her chin.

Merle introduced herself as a dining chair was
dragged in. Jenny dismissed herself to make lunch. Merle pulled the
photographs out of her purse. “I’m looking for someone who might
remember my father’s second wife, in case I might have half-sisters
or brothers.”

“
What’s her name?”

“
That’s the problem. All I know is
her first name, Emilie.”

“
You don’t know your father’s name?”
Merle had a new facial expression, the Montrose deadpan, which she
wore now. It was her favorite response to questions she preferred
not to answer, something her new job was rife with. The woman
squinted at her. “You have a photograph?”

Merle put the photo in her hand, the small, blond
Emilie with Weston against a brick cottage. Three Oaks was
limestone, not brick, so this was probably the first of a hundred
dead-ends. Annabelle Gallagher stared at the photograph, her hand
trembling a little.

She handed it back with a sneer. “An awful little
man, but she loved him.”

Somewhere a clock was ticking. Jenny banged pans in
the scullery. Merle blinked. “Excuse me?”