No Cherubs for Melanie. James Hawkins
quit.”
Bliss shot him a surprised look.
“It was nothing to do with the old man’s death,” the chef added quickly. “Well I suppose it was in a way. Once word got out that the old man had kicked the bucket, the buzzards gathered and picked off the best staff. Malcolm went to the Faison d’Or.”
“You’re still here though,” said Bliss, stating the obvious.
“I had a few offers, but I figured I might have a chance of taking full control with the new owner. I’ve been running this place for years anyway. You could never rely on the old man.”
A high-heeled waitress, with a bum that stuck out like a small shelf, and nicely formed breasts hidden by a virginally opaque white blouse, leant provocatively over him to refill the coffees. Bliss chased an errant thought from his mind, then reflected and let it back.
“So who does own it?” he continued as the waitress drew his eyes in her wake.
“I guess his daughter. She’s a strange girl — woman really, I suppose. She must be in her thirties now. She went abroad to live — Canada — just after her mother died.” The chef glanced at his watch and rose. “And now, Inspector, I wonder if you’d excuse me. I’ve got a kitchen to run.”
Gordonstone’s wife — dead! thought Bliss, but he kept quiet, unwilling to admit his ignorance of such a basic piece of information. “I’d like to have a nose around, and talk to any of the staff who were here the night Gordonstone died… if that’s OK.”
The chef nabbed a passing waiter and turned to Bliss. “Jordan will show you around.”
“I’ll need a list of everyone on duty that day, and also a customer list if you have one,” Bliss said, before the chef could get away. Wandering around the dining room, Jordan in tow, ostensibly searching for evidence, Bliss soon found himself staring up into the giant chandelier, expecting its myriad glass eyes to offer some sort of clue. The crystal prisms swayed and tinkled slightly, wafting in the draft from an open door, and an eerie feeling swept over him, causing him to step away, irrationally fearing the whole thing might suddenly come crashing down on him. Then Jordan dropped a bombshell: “That’s what killed her.”
“Killed who?”
“Mrs. Gordonstone.”
Bliss’s head jerked around in surprise. “The chandelier killed Gordonstone’s wife?”
“So they say. It was before my time. It was years ago.”
“What… It fell on her?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Chef. He was here then.”
Bliss’s eyes followed the thick white rope from the top of the chandelier as it wound its way up through a pulley and down the wall, to where it was tethered in a figure eight around a huge brass cleat that might have once graced the deck of a schooner. He imagined it might take two, even three, strong men to lower the giant chandelier to the floor for cleaning, and walked over to examine the rope. The chef, returning from the kitchen, noted Bliss’s interest. “They had the rope shortened after the accident with Mrs. Gordonstone.”
Bliss stared at the chandelier as if expecting it to divulge some crucial piece of information. What accident? When? Mentally asking, demanding of it, “What happened?” The chandelier knew. It was a giant all-seeing eye that had peered down on the great room for over two hundred years. One giant fly-like eye with a mass of crystal lenses each absorbing images from the room below. Locked in its crystal gaze were the secrets of thousands of spies, philandering husbands, and shady businessmen. And the secret of Betty-Ann Gordonstone’s death.
It was the fifteenth of October, 1987, just before the great hurricane. The creaking floorboards, a natural security system of all old houses, alerted Betty-Ann Gordonstone to movement outside her room; the room in which she had lived alone for nearly ten years. She peered at the bedside clock: almost two o’clock. A door hinge squeaked with a familiar sound — Margaret’s door. He’s going to her… I know he is.
Whispers in the hallway confirmed her suspicions. She lay, immobile, as she had on a hundred other nights, listening to the furtive sounds: hushed whispers, doors opening and closing with a careful hand, moans, groans, and an occasional muffled cry.
Would the torment never end? I saw you, she longed to say to Martin. You touched her didn’t you? If only she had the courage to confront him, to tell him: I know what you’re doing to her. You could have gone to a prostitute. Not Margaret. You didn’t have to touch Margaret.
She dug her head into the pillow. “It’s none of my business.”
A voice deeper inside countered, It is your business. She’s your daughter. He’s your husband.
They’re both adults, she reasoned, knowing full well that was no justification.
Why don’t you stop him? said that other, inner voice.
The painful memory of a bruised cheek reminded her why. There was no point in even trying to talk to him, to tell him that she knew, to demand that he stop.
Noises in her head augmented the sounds from Margaret’s room. Cries for help — Melanie’s cries. A six-year-old’s screams, which had lasted for ten years in her mind and had grown ever more persistent.
Sleep, when it came — if it came — offered no respite. Nightmares merely replaced the anguish of reality. And in the morning there was more pain. Having to face her daughter as she bounced into the room: “Hello Mummy. How are you today?”
What was there to talk about? What, she often wondered, did other mothers talk to their daughters about. So many times over the years she had been tempted to ask, “So Margaret, just how was Daddy last night? Was he good?” What would the young woman say?
But she would never find out. Some unspoken agreement, some taboo, would always get in the way. Do other daughters confide sexual experiences to their mothers? Betty-Ann sometimes wondered. But Margaret was not like other daughters.
Margaret was a tease, taunting her with innuendo, revealing little secrets in tidbits, never once admitting anything specific. She dropped hints, even an occasional conspiratorial wink, as if craving her mother’s approval, wanting her mother to be pleased for her, whispering excitedly: “Daddy’s been really nice to me.” No details, nothing specific. Betty-Ann would turn away, wanting to know — to be certain — but, at the same moment, not wanting to know.
Unable to protect one daughter, she now watched the other being slowly sucked through a gauze curtain into a place she could see but never touch.
Awake, as usual, she glanced at the bedside clock: two-thirty now. Night or afternoon, she wondered. Does it matter? Not really. Although she guessed it was night. It was always night when she heard the sounds. The noises of the night, noises familiar to any prisoner: cries of anguish in the dark, lover’s whispers, creaking bedsprings, and an occasional shout of alarm from an inmate tortured by a nightmare. Every day in prison was the same: the same people, the same cell, the same view from the same window, the same smells from the slop bucket, and the same boiled cabbage. The only difference between day and night was the sounds.
Betty-Ann lay for a few moments ticking off the years in her mind. Ten, she counted, with the backhanded pride of a hunger striker. Ten years of self-imprisonment, ten years flagellating her mind, ten years of refusing to give in to temptation. Tormented during the day by the clamour of people in the restaurant below and at night by the sounds in her mind, she even denied herself the lush dreams enjoyed by most prisoners. How easy it would be, she often thought, just to walk out and rejoin society. But what punishment would that be. How much more challenging it was to stay, without guards, bars, or locks.
She slipped out of bed and shuffled to the window, easily avoiding the furniture in the familiar surroundings of the dimly lit room. The blue-white light of a street lamp painted deep shadows as she opened the curtains a fraction. “Night.” She