No Cherubs for Melanie. James Hawkins
something at the end. Some reward. Forgiveness perhaps.
Who is there to forgive?
Me?
Who can ever forgive me?
Myself?
Never.
Melanie then?
Melanie could. Melanie, still alive in her mind, still six years old — forever six years old. “Forgive me Melanie,” she implored, knowing inwardly that it was not enough. It would take more than Melanie’s forgiveness to wipe away all her sins.
It wasn’t just that Betty-Ann had devoted part of herself to the memory of Melanie in the way that other bereaved parents might, a corner of their minds forever blackened by the loss. Betty-Ann had become the lone member of a devout religious sect formed solely to perpetuate and worship the memory of her daughter. Everything must remain exactly the same, she had decided within days of Melanie’s death, fearing that any change might cause Melanie’s spirit to flee. In the beginning she had concentrated all day, every day, on thoughts of Melanie. In this way the flame of Melanie’s life was not extinguished by her death, but was merely reduced to a glowing ember that only waited to be rekindled. Initially she used a photo in an ornate gold frame as a focal point for her hushed deliberations. Then, almost subliminally, she began muttering incantations: “Melanie, grant me, I beseech thee, pardon and peace, that I may be cleansed of all my sins and may serve thee with a quiet mind,” she would recite, sometimes aloud, but often silently, in what was left of her mind; over the years she developed an accompanying set of eccentric gestures and postures to match the words. Before long each day, and most of each night, was filled with devotions. Like a fanatical follower of a charismatic religionist, Betty-Ann attended her pious ministrations at precisely the same time each day, staring into a candle’s flame, reverently fingering Melanie’s clothing with as much devotion as a Christian might caress the Pope’s cassock or the Shroud of Turin.
The candle at Melanie’s sepulchre was flickering precariously close to extinction now. Betty-Ann left the window and shuffled to the dressing table where Melanie’s remains were precisely arranged. She poked a few shards of wax into the flame, until it burned steadily with an ochroleucous light. The candle was, she knew, her greatest achievement.
Martin had tried to stop her at first, confiscating her supply and ordering the staff to lock away all the candles at the end of each evening. But she had beaten him; making nightly foraging raids on the dining room, scratching even the tiniest of wax drips off the candelabra to feed her habit. And every now and then a careless waiter would accidentally leave a partly consumed candle on a table; she would seize these treasures with the gratitude of a starving man finding a potato. She was proud of her achievement, proud of her self-determination, and proud of the fact that, in some strange way, she had defeated Martin. She had robbed him of his power; her actions were beyond his control. I decide what to do, she thought, I make the decisions in my world — in Melanie’s world.
Every day she had the same inviolate routine. Every action, every movement, was choreographed; she was like a one-woman film noir destined to run eternally. One character going through the same motions, wearing the same costume, saying the same lines, moving to the same blocking. A solitary pitiful character played with passion and energy, but played without any desire for acclaim.
Betty-Ann had broken her routine on very few occasions, and then only for a specific purpose. Once, not long after Melanie’s death, before being fully committed to a lifetime of self-immolation, she had left her room to stand on a railway station platform, fully resolved to commit suicide. Twenty or more trains had passed and each time she pledged that the next would be her executioner. But when each train arrived, she shrank back from the edge of the platform, promising herself that the next one would be the one. Eventually she was harassed by an elderly shrew of a ticket inspector who nastily told her to either buy a ticket or leave. “What a country,” she had mumbled. “You even need a ticket to die.”
But she couldn’t kill herself — it was too easy. Death is not a punishment, she convinced herself. Death is an escape from punishment.
Punishment for what?
For what you did.
No. Not what I did. What I didn’t do.
Bliss’s eyes were still rivetted to the chandelier.
“How did it happen?” he asked the chef without looking around.
“Suicide they said. Something official like… ‘The balance of her mind was disturbed.’”
That’s possible, thought Bliss, recalling the frail frightened woman whose obvious good looks were marred by the ravages of grief following her daughter’s death. But something in the chef’s tone suggested he thought otherwise.
“When?”
“It must have been almost ten years ago; could have been more. She kept herself to herself, never came down to the restaurant. Stayed in the apartment all day. Apparently she had one of those phobias… What do they call it?”
“Agoraphobia,” suggested Bliss.
“Something like that.”
“What about her daughter?”
“Lumpy girl…” the chef stopped and thought. “Young woman really, I suppose. She was about twenty but you wouldn’t have thought it. Always bouncing around the place bumping into things. Used to bring half-dead animals and birds into the kitchen asking for food for them. I soon put a stop to that. Health regulations, and all that.”
“So tell me about the suicide.”
“From what I could make out it happened in the middle of the night. She came down and tied the end of the chandelier’s rope around her neck. Then she must have unhooked the rope from the cleat and the weight of the chandelier…”
Bliss stared up at the monstrous silver and crystal bauble, trying to gauge its weight. “And it was definitely suicide?”
“So they said, although more than one person thought he’d done her in. You see there was no note or anything, but she’d been funny for years. Her other daughter drowned you know, when she was three or four.”
“Six actually.”
“So you knew about that then?”
“Done my homework.”
“Well, apparently she was never right after that. Round the twist they said, that’s why the old man kept her out of the way. Some people reckon he kept her locked in her room from that day on.”
Suddenly everything became clear and Bliss swore under breath, “Shit.”
“Inspector, are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said, but inwardly he was feeling some of Betty-Ann’s pain. She had known all those years, he realized. Known her husband killed her youngest daughter and lived with that torment every day. No wonder her body language was wrong when I interviewed her, he thought. That’s why she couldn’t look me in the eye, why she couldn’t answer any questions without checking with her dear husband. It wasn’t surprising he kept her out of the way all those years. He didn’t want her breaking down in front of the staff or the guests, saying, “Oh by the way, did I mention my husband drowned my little girl?”
chapter four
The Grand Marnier in the gateau had started him drinking early, and the chef’s revelation that Gordonstone’s wife had committed suicide didn’t help. If ever there was a woman with a reason for murdering her husband, thought Bliss, she was it; but being dead and buried for ten years gave her a fairly convincing alibi. He would just have a single scotch he kidded himself. The news about Betty-Ann’s death gave him a convenient excuse, as if he needed one. A toast to a woman he’d met briefly twenty years earlier — a woman with whom, in some ridiculous way, he suddenly felt an affinity.
He selected a pub as opposed to a liquor store.