Time Enough To Die (23 page)

"You mean there really are practitioners in the area?” Matilda smiled her most engaging smile. “Could you tell me where to find your bloke?"

"The Druid,” long-hair said sarcastically, and lowered her voice. “What do you think, Wendy?"

Wendy shrugged. “He likes a bit of skirt, don't he?"

"Younger than her,” returned the other, quietly, but not quiet enough.

Matilda pretended not to hear. “I promised to do a piece for my coven's newsletter when I get back to the States. However, I've been very disappointed. And I just couldn't bring myself to tell my son in Philadelphia the bad news. He's squatting in an abandoned tenement, turned against the materialism of the world, he says. I thought he'd like to know there are still spiritual values.... “She ate a few bites, drooping picturesquely over the plate. Patrick's taste actually ran to studio apartments festooned with enough electronics to furnish NASA shuttle control, but he didn't need to know his mother was taking his image in vain. That she was lying through her teeth, to be accurate.

The two girls were no longer wary but amused. “She's a nutter, Shirl,” whispered Wendy. “He gives us such aggro about history and all that bunk, let's set her on him."

Shirl. Matilda recognized the girl's name from the police reports—Watkins had interviewed her about Linda's murder. She'd claimed ignorance.

"Here,” Shirl said to Matilda, “it's hard remembering dates and places when all we've had to eat is a few chips. We're skint."

Matilda opened her handbag and pulled out a five pound note. “I'm so sorry, I should have offered you something earlier. Get yourself some nourishing food—whole grains, vegetables...."

"Yeh,” said Wendy. She folded the money into her pocket. “Ta."

"You know where the traveler's encampment is?” Shirl asked Matilda.

"Is that the one the road to Macclesfield? Are you living there? My son would love being out in the country like that, close to nature."

"Close to nature, yeh.” Shirl rolled her eyes. “Call round an hour before sunset on Friday. Someone can take you to the party. The rites of spring, he calls it. A right rave-up it was last time. Are you up for it?"

"I'll bring along my reading glasses, my cane, and my hearing aid,” Matilda told her.

Shirl laughed. Wendy inhaled the last of the chips and stood up. “We'll tell him to look out for you. Ta-ta."

Matilda watched the girls walk out of the shop, across the square, and around the corner.
Him,
she repeated. Nick? He'd better be looking out for her, she had no idea what he looked like. But her hunch that there would be an alternative Beltane ceremony was right. Whether her hunch that the old Celtic holidays had something to do with the case was right, was another matter.

She ate a few bites. The food was congealing fast. Her lips and chin felt greasy. The penalty for speaking with forked tongue, she told herself, and started back toward the dig.

Halfway there she spotted Della Reynolds, astride Bodie, pacing up the road. “Mrs. Reynolds! Good afternoon!"

Della looked myopically down from beneath the tiny bill of her riding hat. “Oh, Dr. Gray. Hello."

"Let me tell you again how much I appreciate your letting me ride Bodie the other day, especially when I hardly know what a saddle is.” She held her hand out to the horse, who snuffled amiably at it.

"Bodie's a good beast,” Della said. “Not so temperamental as Caesar and Gremlin."

"Gremlin did seem a bit skittish,” returned Matilda, “but then, I'm very much the amateur, not like you."

Della seemed to perk up a little, like a parched plant given water.

"My colleague, Mr. March,” Matilda went on, “tells me you're a historian."

"No, not really, I just like to read."

"Many self-educated people know more than the experts. You must know a great deal to have put together such a fine antiquities collection."

"That's Adrian's. I go in for Waterford, that sort of thing."

"Collecting takes real skill. I wouldn't be able to tell a genuine Waterford vase from a jelly glass. Antiquities, now—well, even though that's my field, I can always learn more."

Della smiled. “Come for tea tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Gray. Adrian would love to show you his artifacts. And we can have a quick lesson in collectibles, if you like."

"How very kind of you! About four-thirty? I'm sure Gareth would love another look at the collection."

Della's cheeks grew pink. “See you tomorrow."

"Have a nice ride,” Matilda told her, and patted Bodie's shoulder.

"Oh, I'm just out and about.... “The woman's voice trailed away as the horse clopped on up the street.

Shameless, Matilda chided herself. Utterly shameless. But she didn't have time to beat around the bush with Della.

Beltane was two days away. She knew, with the same subliminal certainty she knew the shape of the Roman ruins beneath the sod, that time was running out.

Matilda picked a table in the corner of the bar and sat down, her back to the wall. The speakers were silent tonight, thank goodness. Perhaps Clapper's sugary tapes had congealed, like Jell-O.

Sweeney leaned against the bar telling Clapper some extended joke. The innkeeper nodded and laughed. Matilda rolled her eyes. Typical Sweeney, to fiddle while Cornovium burned.

Ashley, Bryan, and Jennifer occupied a table nearby. “...no way,” Ashley was saying. “I'm sure not going to go home and tell my mom I got scared and couldn't stick it out. She kept telling me I was wasting my time coming here anyway."

"My dad kept griping about how much it was costing,” said Jennifer. “I figure I have to stay, just to make his investment worthwhile."

Bryan said, “You know, there comes a point you have to tell the old parental units to buzz off. Of course, it helps if you have good grades and some independent income when you tell them."

Bryan was a nice boy, Matilda repeated. He and Ashley could have a positive relationship. But she looked at him the same way Gareth looked at her, polite and oblivious. The two students hadn't been together on Sunday. Matilda could only assume Ashley had been with some local lad, and hope that he, too, was a nice boy. As for Gareth.... Sorry, Ashley, she thought. He's not auditioning to play your Prince Charming.

Gareth threaded his way through the tables, sat down, handed Matilda her glass of single malt, and swallowed a deep draft of his ale. Then he pulled out his notebook and flipped through several pages of notes.

Matilda rolled the single-malt around her mouth and considered Gareth's profile, cut as clean as one on a Roman coin. There was nothing quite as rejuvenating as sexual friction. By the time the threads of the case spun themselves out, she and Gareth might find that the friction was sufficient in and of itself. Or it might prove to have been a deliciously prolonged foreplay.

Matilda dropped her eyes as Gareth raised his, not wanting to distract him from the matter at hand.

"Dunning gave me the elbow, too,” he said.

"Dunning knows her clientele, doesn't she? What about Emma?"

"I took her to lunch and chatted her up. She got the job at the shop through Della Reynolds, but she knows sod-all about history. She says Dunning has a secret boyfriend. Adrian Reynolds, I reckon, getting in a spot of slap-and-tickle along with his antiquities smuggling."

"Reynolds? He would find Dunning very useful, wouldn't he? Clapper told us he was exerting his dubious charms on Linda.... “Matilda chased some elusive tendril less of thought than of impression through her mind and lost its trailing end in ambiguity. “I still feel I'm missing something. There's some strand in this tangle that I'm just not seeing. I don't know why, and that bothers me."

Doubt glinted in Gareth's face. With a toss of his brows he discarded it. “Give over, Matilda. It's not that complicated. Everyone in Corcester can't be conspiring together."

"No, I suppose not. But I can't see Reynolds playing Moriarty, the sole mover in the case."

"He's using Dunning to sell the antiquities he looted from his own property,” Gareth insisted. “He has expensive tastes. He needs the money. And Linda caught him out. Maybe she caught Dunning out as well. Linda was no fool, her records say she passed her A-levels but couldn't afford university. She threatened Reynolds with exposure. He lured her to Durslow Edge and eliminated her. Then Reynolds found Dunning a new shop assistant, one so thick she wouldn't recognize illegal statuary if she fell over it."

"That's logical,” Matilda assured him. “It would also be logical if Linda and Reynolds were conspiring together and fell out over the statuary. Or Dunning and Linda ditto, although I must admit I can't see Dunning cutting a throat. Too messy. Clapper could be part of the plot. Almost certainly Della knows something. Was the attack on Sweeney and Caterina a misguided attempt at treasure—pretty clumsy, if so—or a warning to us? We can theorize all we want, but finding enough solid evidence to bring someone—anyone—to trial...."

"...is another matter entirely. I know that.” Gareth scowled, seeing either justice or his promotion slip through his fingers. “I did once wonder whether Della killed Linda out of jealousy, but she hardly seems capable of jealousy, let alone murder."

"Mice have a way of roaring.” Matilda glanced again at Ashley.

"...and then,” Jennifer was saying, “my dad takes me into the den and says very seriously, don't get involved with any English men! As though English guys have two heads or something."

"Or something,” Bryan said with a grin.

Jennifer laughed. Ashley smiled secretly into her lemonade. A local lad, definitely, Matilda thought.

The corners of Gareth's mouth turned in opposite directions. “A shame you can't see a re-enactment of the murder and give us some leads, instead of wasting your time on an ancient domestic row."

"I'm not wasting my time. It's much easier for me to read ancient events or inanimate objects than living people. The Romans’ actions are carved in time—they're set pieces now. It's like going to see ‘Hamlet’ in theaters all over the world. No matter what the production is like, it's still the same play. Artifacts are finished, completed, things, no matter how resonant with the minds of their makers, while living people are dynamic processes. Simply watching a person often causes him to change direction."

"That's a common feature of a murder investigation,” Gareth conceded.

"Of any investigation. Although I've never done one quite like this. This is like.... Well, my son will sit with the remote control and surf through one TV channel after another, watching each one for only a few seconds. You get a bit of dialogue, a quick image, a burst of music. Nothing in context. It drives me crazy. That's what this case is like. Because of the murder, probably. The strong emotion."

"Does your son have the sight—ESP?"

"Not a hint of it."

"I rather doubted he did.” Gareth rubbed his eyes, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and took another long drink of his ale.

Even Patrick would have sensed Gareth's annoyance and frustration. The only way Matilda could ease his mind was to solve the case. To help him solve the case, that is. Even if she had to sacrifice the personal attraction to do it. She sipped at her whiskey. The room was becoming warm and close.

"Emma might be acting dumb for your benefit. Not that she struck me as terribly bright in the glimpse I had of her. She's resentful, I think. Feeling life has done her wrong. You asked her about Clive, I assume? Now there's someone who could well be involved. Even Moriarty had his Colonel Moran, his muscle."

"Emma said she hadn't seen Clive in donkey's years,” Gareth replied.

"Did you ask Emma about Nick?"

"Well now, that's interesting. Emma and I had our lunch in a Greek caff just outside the Arcade...."

"Oh yes, I ate there, too."

"Did you now!” Gareth exclaimed, and then lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “Why didn't you tell me? That's Nick's father's place—it says ‘Veliotes’ plain as a pikestaff on the window. Didn't you see the snap of the man himself on the wall behind the till?"

"What?” Matilda leaned across the table. “Gareth, I've never laid eyes on Nick. And I had no idea what his last name is!"

They stared at each other, appalled. Here she'd been contemplating melding bodies, Matilda thought, when what they needed to do was meld minds. What else did Gareth know that she didn't, and vice versa? “The café is where Nick met Emma?” she hazarded.

"I doubt it—she didn't start working at Borley Arcade until February. Clapper says she and Nick were having it off last year and that she keeps throwing herself at him.” Gareth glared at Clapper, who was pulling another pint of beer, his round face perspiring with virtue. “Emma looked at Nick's photo and said she might have seen him at one of the festivals, that's all. It's either a discrepancy in Clapper's story or in hers."

"Did you believe Emma's story?"

"Yes, I did. But then, I believed Clapper's, too. I don't have your ESP trick, do I?"

"It's no trick."

"No, I don't think it is,” he said wearily.

Matilda swallowed the rest of her whiskey, assessing the play of light and shadow in Gareth's eyes. She had convinced him of her skills, yes, but it was his own skills he trusted to solve the case. When all the lies were at last scoured away, nothing would be left except belief, and faith, and trust. Ground truth.

"Linda might have met Nick at the caff,” Gareth said. “I'd give a month's pay to find out if they knew each other."

"The break between Constantine and Nick could have been quite recent."

"He does have an eye for the ladies—Nick, that is, not his dad. I saw him with a woman myself, that day the yob cut Caesar."

"It wasn't Emma you saw him with?"

"I wasn't looking at her face.” Gareth drained his glass of beer and looked truculently into its foam-flecked bottom. “I can't tie the travelers in with any of this."

"I imagine they've done some clandestine digging at the fort, with or without Reynolds. Beyond that, I don't know. Maybe they're just a school of red herrings.” Matilda shook her head. “Tell me everything Emma said. Don't leave out a word.... Oh, hello Mr. Clapper. Business looks a bit off tonight."