Alysse Aallyn

Category: Crime

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 9. The Dark Tower

    Pom insisted on bringing dinner from the pub – chicken Kiev, green beans with almonds, cherry tart and a case of Gruner Veltliner. “I remember how much you liked it. And that you have a wine cellar.”


    “This will be the first wine in it,” said Scarlet.


    He carried the case down himself to what he called “the crypt” and racked the bottles while Scarlet studied his strong arms. You didn’t get arms like that from painting – was he a rower? When he turned unexpectedly she knew she must be blushing violently but prayed he couldn’t see it in the gloaming.


    He condescended to take a perfunctory peek at the sleeping baby

    “Looks like General Eisenhower,” was his comment.


    “He does not! Eisenhower never had that lovely tuft of hair!”


    “Babies aren’t my purview,” admitted Pom. “Makes me feel like one of those pygmies who can’t see into photographs.”


    “He’s changed so much already,” Scarlet confided as they tiptoed out. “He was so long and stringy when he was born – now he’s all compacted. It’s his greediness – he’s a greedy little piglet.”


    “I don’t blame him,” said Pom, obscurely. “Life lies virgin all before him.”


    Now THAT was a masculine thing to say. Because they were already upstairs she took him to the Tower room, not admitting it was her first visit since Nick’s birth. Luckily the stairs did not seem so hard to climb. And even luckier, the room appeared invitingly glamorous. Not dusty at all.


    “This is astonishing,” said Pom. “You can’t think how you alleviate my guilt over selling you this behemoth. Those stairs are a particularly clever addition.”


    “Perhaps it’s a case of win-win,’ she suggested. Pom had to have this very American concept explained to him.


    “What a revolutionary notion,” he agreed. “We imperialists take it for granted there must be gluttons and losers in any transaction.”


    “It’s not popular,” Scarlet admitted.


    Pom started up a new subject, one closer to Scarlet’s heart. “I envy your ability to create with a view like this,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”


    “I haven’t written anything yet,” she confessed at the sight of the immaculate desk and the paperless table. “But now that I’ve acquired a babysitter I swear I’m just about to start.”


    But Pom was clearly thinking other thoughts.


    But it was the windows that drew Pom. She distinctly heard tears in his throat as he said, “You’ve done it. This was the way it was always meant to be. No longer a widow’s walk – it’s become a panopticon.”


    Scarlet was aghast at these comparisons.


    “Widow’s walk? Panopticon? Those are horrible examples. I think of it as the eye of the house. The oculus.”


    But Pom wasn’t through yet with his horrible examples.


    “You can’t see anything through an oculus,” he said mercilessly.


    She said, “Then why did I buy it?”


    She saw him hesitate before bringing up the unpleasant subject. “You didn’t buy it. The house is in your husband’s name alone.”


    He turned as if to deliberately miss her violent blush. “I thought it was strange at the time…for an American wife.”


    I must have known this, thought Scarlet. Surely something could be done. After all, I wasn’t there, so my signature was not required. So why am I so upset? Because a stranger pointed it out? Or was it because it was THIS particular stranger?


    “I didn’t choose the house,” she agreed, proud that her voice sounded calm. “But I like it.”


    He continued looking out the windows. “You weren’t at all what I expected.”


    She sat down on the slipper chair, breath suddenly knocked out of her body. “And what did you expect?”


    “I suppose an efficient young woman from a cookery advertisement.”
    “But would Ian marry such a girl?” She smiled.


    At last he turned to look at her, and sat down on the desk chair.
    “I’d like to read your work.”


    “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place.” She rose, laughing, opened a trunk and removed a copy of her poetry chapbook, Thistledom. “Be sure to let me know what you think. Somehow I’m sure you won’t hold back.”


    “You’re right,” he agreed. “I can tell you like the criticism better than the praise.”


    “One learns more,” she agreed.


    “You’re so right. My recent show had a reviewer who said my pictures were pretty colors.”


    “God!” Her jaw dropped. “What an awful thing to say!”


    “It certainly had an effect on me. I’ve worked in black and white ever since. Just last week I began adding a bit of blue.”


    She was still standing so he too rose, and looking out the windows said mockingly,
    “Save me, save me, Sister Anne,” And he pointed down the long stretch of road towards the gate. “Don’t you see her riding?”


    “Who?” Scarlet felt a flutter almost of panic. Curiosity or dread or both? Where was that quote coming from? Was he about to reveal some horrible tale about the house they had permanently bankrupted themselves to buy? Hauntings? Murders? Wastings away? If there was such a story, she knew she must hear it, even if it broke her.


    He turned his pale-eyed, narrow blond face towards her and she thought for a moment what a type he was. Everyone’s picture of clueless, useless English aristocracy – so unlike her handsome, Northern, rugged husband.


    “Bluebeard. The Perrault fairytale. Surely you know it.”


    “I guess French fairytales aren’t my purview,” she mocked him, she who had been dragged forwards and back through Norse mythology by her husband and was still feeling somewhat bitter about it.


    Pom had the grace to laugh, but then stung her again. “You know Disney, with the singing mice. Oakhampton has a lovely bookshop – the Fruitful Browser, which concentrates on folktales. But here’s the short version – Bluebeard used to kill his wives and lock the corpses in a forbidden room, but his last wife – Barbara, I think her name was – found it. He was going to kill her but her sister Anne rescued her. From the top of the house she summoned Sister Anne and saw her riding in. Do you have a sister?”


    Scarlet felt like a ship heaving in a storm but she was determined to remain upright. This man was interesting, but difficult. Definitely interesting. Definitely difficult. Possibly dangerous – was he probing for a weakness?


    “India. Older sister. No brothers.”


    “As an only child, I envy you,” he said, looking as if he really did not. “Sister India, Sister India” – doesn’t quite have that ring. Pomeroy was my mother’s name – she was an earl’s daughter and so I must blame snobbery. Where did your parents come up with your exotic names?”


    After the embarrassment of Disney, she was not going to admit to her mother’s addiction to Gone With the Wind, so she provided a quotation of her own, “Oh, brave new world. Americans like everything fresh. We create ourselves. You know how it is.”
    “I can only imagine,” he said. “I’m so jealous.”


    It was past time to return downstairs. She obscurely felt she’d been put through a wringer but Gruner Veltliner and music were sufficient to transform their rocky start into comfortable relaxation. Death and the Maiden played on the gramophone was a big success. Pom admitted he’d never heard it. “I thought Schubert was a waste of time. It certainly sounds very modern.”
    They listened while they ate.


    “You’re the only girl I know who doesn’t try to fill silences with useless cocktail chatter,” he said.
    Another backhanded compliment? Another scorched heir! She could have told the truth – that her mouth was too full to speak because she was so greedy for delicious food she hadn’t cooked – except that her mouth was full to explain even that! She decided to focus on the word “girl”. That must be a compliment – in her short experience strange men backed away from mothering females as if fearful of a paternity accusation. Scarlet still qualified as “young”. Even though she was now a mother she planned to be a girl for at least a few more years.


    “Lovely food,” she sighed, instead.


    Over coffee they relaxed enough to discuss their favorite films and books.


    “Oh, Hitchcock,” said Pom. “Hardboiled crime. Because of the paradigm shifts, for me it’s thrillers all the way.”


    He was full of surprises.


    “What’s a paradigm shift?”


    “A dramatic re-visioning. Very applicable to artists. Speaking of what’s fresh, – oh brave new world – artists need to SEE differently, be reborn – at least every other day.”


    “Like letting go of color. Yes, it’s also true of poets,” Scarlet added. “You don’t dare to ever be comfortable. Emily Dickinson calls it seeing “aslant.” If poets ignore that they get all stodgy. Like Wordsworth.”


    “And naturally society likes things stodgy. Likes and wants. Necessary for pigeonholing.”


    “And that’s just what an artist DOESN’T want.” She suddenly had the wild idea to discuss the germination of her possible novel with him, but of course she dared not. Possibly a pigeon hole might result – and if one did, it would prove impossible to rest inside with any comfort. She changed the subject, avoiding the dangerous corner like any good hostess.


    “I don’t know much Hitchcock but I enjoyed The Lady Vanishes. My favorite is Iris Murdoch. She’s not that good with the paradigm shifts but she does create believable, interesting universes to lose yourself in. I value particularly the way she meanders on and on. One Murdoch will last me anywhere. She could write a book that never ends and it would be all right with me.”


    “What a surrealist and philosopher you are – a book without an end. I’ll have to give her a try. But if you didn’t see Notorious or North By Northwest they’re worth going up to London for – much better than any play.”


    “What is it exactly that you like about them? You know already the paradigm shift is coming.”
    He considered.


    “His layers of revelation are so elegantly arranged – like a mille-feuille.”


    “Is it the pastry you prefer or the cream?” She felt certain no man would admit to preferring the cream.


    “I like the way the each plays off against each other.”


    He’s so interesting! she thought appreciatively. How unexpected! Could I have I found a friend? Would Ian be jealous? Is it possible for such an exciting man – who responds to me with such awareness of my femininity – to really be a woman’s friend? Instead she said, “Sounds like Iris Murdoch to me!”


    “But not if she takes too long getting around to it. Thrillers have to be constructed like this piece of music – they’ve got somewhere to go and they hurry you along. Is your poetry anything like Murdoch?”


    “I doubt you’ll think so. Like you, I was getting into a bit of a rut. That’s why I had a baby,” she teased him, “To improve my verse.”


    He laughed and laughed.
    All in all it was a most successful evening.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 8. The Help

    Fern revealed herself to be young & friendly, garnished with many local references Scarlet resolved to check. Scarlet doubted she’d hear anything against this fresh new face, as she could sense that the country people closed rank against city folk. But she also couldn’t prevent the mounting of a slow, inexorable excitement. Wouldn’t it be heavenly to get back to her desk, especially now that she had such a glamorous new desk to get back to? Did that mean she was a bad mother, failing to bond with her child?

    Back when she was a young teenager, shuffled off to a distant and disapproving male psychiatrist for “adjustment issues”, Scarlet grew a very healthy skepticism of mental health practitioners. They all seemed intent on fitting everyone into some grey flannel or Betty Crocker slot no artist could possibly accept. She wanted to get to know and to feel confident in taking care of her new baby, but certainly a couple silent, sacred hours to herself every day was not too much to ask. A bigger problem was feeling well enough to climb those stairs. She wasn’t there yet, and Ida had refused to clean “Up beyond” because “I don’t trust Rocco’s jury-rigged steps.”


    Scarlet promised to take care of that part of the house herself. It was better to never need worry about moved or missing papers. Until then she could use her two or three hours a day for a walk and a nap. That sounded luxurious enough.


    She needed peace and privacy to think about the novel she might write, something publishers might buy. So far, her only subject was Ian’s courtship of the shy American girl, heart bruised from oppressively football and career-oriented boyfriends searching for “the perfect wife” and subjecting all comers to a gamut of contortionist sexual and social auditions.


    This had been followed by an Atlantic crossing with too much alcohol and too many foreign males in “smash and grab” modality. If young men were “angry” about women who expected commitment to fatherhood, didn’t young women also have grounds for rage at their predicament? The problem really was the “happy ending” every woman Scarlet knew of was seeking; a safe place to raise her children. But those “happy endings” only occurred in “Romantic novels”, something Ian refused to ever acknowledge. “Happy endings are unrealistic.” He insisted important literature had always been written by and for males. No Charlotte Bronte, no Virginia Woolf; he wouldn’t even accept Jane Austen.


    Now Scarlet was finding herself increasingly bemused by Ian’s rather strange reaction to the birth of his son. He definitely seemed to consider Nicholas a competitor, even if he wouldn’t admit it – and also that Scarlet had been somehow tarnished by this birth. If she could rise above her kneejerk reaction of anger, pain, and revenge, couldn’t some great subject be unearthed? It seemed reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, really, some plot worthy of Aeschylus and Euripides. Ian couldn’t sneer at that!

    Well, Freud said life’s not about “finding” yourself but “creating” yourself and about this Scarlet agreed wholeheartedly. Fern’s references in hand, she phoned the Rector’s wife; first name on the list.


    “A thoroughly no nonsense girl, very dependable”.


    Wasn’t this enough? Why even bother to call the other people? What made Scarlet hesitate?
    The problem was that Fern was just too pretty. Some might even have called her beautiful, though probably not Ian, who disliked what he called “fat cheeks” on a woman. She was very dark with a lovely high color and those Elizabeth Taylor-like violet blue eyes sometimes found in black haired girls. Fortunately, she didn’t act like a pretty girl. Perhaps she was still too young, or Wyvern-on-Wye just too out of the way of the rest of the world. Was Scarlet afraid of the comparison, especially now, while she was “hors de combat”? Wasn’t the question really, did she trust Ian, or didn’t she? She would have trusted the old Ian, but this new situation seemed to offer some ineluctable yet terrifying new vision of the universe.


    She was still undecided when Ian called but she heard herself telling him she’d found somebody local and wanted to give her a trial. Hearing the anxiety in her own voice made her realize she needed that she appeared to need to offer Ian an “accomplishment”, since giving birth to his son hadn’t seemed to be enough.


    “Thank God,” said Ian. “I’ve discovered nannies are the most expensive servants in a servantless world. Seems they don’t know they are servants, and their employer is expected to keep the secret. I’d say it’s more like hiring a gang boss. They want to know who beside the parents and baby they’ve got to order around. It’s a status thing.”

    Scarlet laughed with relief. Wasn’t this the old Ian back, the two of them strategizing as a couple confronting a dangerous world? It was always like her to panic too soon; she’d been doing that all her life.


    Fern certainly displayed her best behavior. She congratulated Scarlet on the house perhaps a little too much, saying, “Lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely.” And she was more than willing to give Nicholas a bottle so that Scarlet wouldn’t be interrupted. Bliss.


    Driving her back and forth was a bit annoying – Scarlet resolved to unload that job on Ian – if he ever came home. Fern didn’t live with her grandmother but actually at the furthest edge of Oakhampton – and then she needed to be dropped at the Oakhampton library – but she was so cheap Scarlet recklessly hired her four days a week.


    Fern’s first day went fine – it was a unseasonably warm day so Scarlet took a long walk – but Fern said Nicholas hadn’t even cried. Driving her home Scarlet happened to mention that she was expecting Pom for dinner and was startled to see the disapproval on Fern’s face. “All by yourself?”


    “He wants to greet the new baby,” Scarlet hastened to add. It did make her feel funny – guilty almost, but eventually she engineered a way to feel better about it. If Fern had strong old fashioned rules about marital conduct, so much the better. Safer, certainly in a such a pretty girl.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 6 – Ian VS Poetry

    It wasn’t till the day the spiral stair was installed that Scarlet finally began to feel better. Maybe this was all she’d required: a positive personal accomplishment. Now the Tower was finally accessible! And then there was more. Ian came home whistling, saying, “Wait till you see what I’ve got for you.”


    What a wonderful gift, a glorious nineteenth century lady’s desk – a mass of pigeonholes and drawers like a huge jewelry box. “There’s probably a secret drawer but nobody knows where,” said Ian.


    The wood was in poor shape – covered with ink stains – but Scarlet was dazzled. “Oh, Ian!” she gasped. “It’s the best present ever!” When she commented on other people’s desks it was always the storage that she envied – give every idea its own resting place. It was a deeply flattering gift. He really had paid attention to her all these years! She hugged him breathlessly.


    “Is it possible -?” she wondered, gazing upwards, but Rocco the Enabler was way ahead of her.


    “We could winch it up,” he promised and a pulley was installed at the top of the house. The fine new desk, two Windsor chairs, a bookcase and a table were winched up to the tower room. Scarlet made one awkward trip upwards to supervise their installation. The small Tower room had windows on all four sides looking out over every bit of their property.


    “Oh, this is beautiful,” agreed Ian and even Rocco seemed impressed. “You could fit a slipper chair right here,” he offered, “A real lady’s chair – they’re selling one down at the church. Do you like purple?”


    Scarlet did – especially the chintz pansy print in which that chair was covered. There were other items at the church sale that she coveted – gorgeous copper pieces to cheer the many fireplaces. When the tower room was finished with the addition of a purple rug carried up by Ian himself it seemed a magnificent eyrie and retreat. Not just deep poetry but magnificent plays – possibly even novels – could be written here.


    “It’ll be cold,” warned Ian, and that was probably true. But “heat rises” said Scarlet and surely it must. And then she wrote a poem about it – one she could actually share.

    Heat rises
    From our marriage bed
    Powers up this house
    Summons up a cradle, fills the
    Varicolored jars of
    Seasoned fruit
    Museums of ripeness
    Captured – just
    As we –
    Fresh from the city were
    Caught and
    Prisoned.
    Belonging –
    Attempting to foreclose
    A Future.

    Of course there marriage bed was a decidedly less sexy place so long as Scarlet was a pregnant whale. And, It didn’t end right. She knew that, before Ian pointed it out. “You can’t say “prisoned”; he quibbled. “Surely “reveling’s” the word? Isn’t “future” just “the unforeseen”? Scarlet was annoyed – he usually right more than he was wrong, but he was still wrong about many central things. He always accused her of easy sentimentality and so she’d tried for a more evocative, ambiguous even threatening ending –the way Ian ended his own work, yet he still he wasn’t satisfied.


    She looked up “sentimental” in the dictionary and saw it described as “an appeal to tender feelings.” It couldn’t be that all “tender feelings” were inherently degrading, could it? But in England, they seemed to be! Scarlet and Ian had a child to raise.


    Scarlet wondered if it was even possible to satisfy these fussy men, determinedly hardening in their defenses. Ian was always talking about “toughening up” males – usually while wearing the latest fashion in gents’ bespoke suits – so that said males could “slay the dragon” as if modern educated people were still cave-dwellers. She took another look at her poem and decided “attempting to foreclose a future” was her favorite line.

    “Submit it to The Renegade,” suggested Ian, “I’ll write Nigel if you like.”


    She prayed she wouldn’t need his help. She wrote to Nigel herself.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 5. Pregnant Brain

    Grimly Scarlet launched an enormous push to have everything ready for the baby. The nearest big town – Oakhampton’s – merchants – though pricier than those in London – were willing – thrilled, in fact – to open charge accounts and to deliver. The deliverymen seemed very interested in the ongoing Wyvern House rehabilitation and expected a generous cuppa and a gossip in the kitchen. With Ian sealed off importantly in his “office”, there was no one to gossip with but Scarlet.


    “All the latest labor saving conveniences,” said one as he delivered a Bendix washer and drier to a corner of the capacious scullery. “Anybody can tell you’re American.” Scarlet was afraid this meant he thought she was rich but knew it would be insane to actually inform him just how poor they were.
    “New baby crib – how my missus would envy you. Ours has been passed down for a hundred years at least.”


    Scarlet couldn’t think how to warn him that crib slats had to be an exact distance to keep from catching baby’s head. Here in England, Science never had the last word. Next it turned out the spiral stair she’d ordered was four feet too short.


    “No problem,” said the washer deliveryman, who’d come upstairs to help, “My mate Rocco can build you a platform.”


    When that was undertaken, what with workmen marching in and out over the just-fitted carpet and filling the house with the sound of hammering – it was not at all the atmosphere Scarlet had hoped for in the days approaching the birth of her first child. She wrote a despairing poem “Future Blank” with the chorus “Nowhere to get to” and, ashamed of her own emotions, stored it at the very back of a pile of unsatisfactory work sheets.


    Fortunately, the midwife paid a cheering visit. She was revealed as a small, withered-looking Pakistani woman in a sari who promised a tank of “gas” in case the contractions became “too fierce”. Scarlet was grateful for any promise of pain relief; Ian appeared to think all “women’s problems” required was the application of masculine mind over feminine matter but Scarlet felt she couldn’t trust her gravid brain, and she certainly wasn’t going to listen to people telling her to “Buck up.”


    Ian himself had suddenly acquired a new passion for old furniture and began haunting estate sales. Soon he was dragging home settles, bureaus and tables.
    “How are we going to afford all this?” wailed Scarlet.


    “My folks have a lot of retirement cash just sitting idle in the bank,” said Ian confidently. “Proceeds from selling the shop. They’ll want to invest it here when they see what a fine place we’re creating.”
    But wouldn’t they expect income? That was the way things worked in America. “As long as they don’t expect to move in,” sighed Scarlet, but she was too exhausted to argue. Instead she sketched out yet another unsatisfactory poem: this one about how old houses were only walls of corpses holding up the ceilings. This too, must be hidden.


    What kind of home was she preparing for this baby? Was she herself putting a curse on the whole enterprise? Was this some grenade from the depths of her subconscious as Ian had always insisted, comparing her lack of a father to the United States’ “lack of history”? She usually fought back with the a fierce explication of the collective European unconscious whose “ancien regime” was obviously rotten with envy over the New World’s youthful potential?


    What awful obligations poetry placed on people! Every word, every idea had to be catalogued, organized and defended to the last ditch. Should she give it all up and become an interior designer instead? Why not concentrate on life’s beauties, opportunities and perfections, instead of digging about in universally discarded psychic muck?

    But employment required sucking up to people – something she’d never been good at. She felt far too old and tired to start now.


    If she died in childbirth Ian would read these abortive poems and draw entirely “the wrong conclusion” – that his wife had been miserable. But she was too committed a poet to destroy them. Poetry ideas – “seeds” – held a sacred, central importance in a poet’s life. You denied them at the peril of losing access to your deepest self. And that would be the worst fate of all.


    So she was conflicted. Contrasted with their life in London where they lived in such a small flat they had to take turns at the desk, wasn’t this existence wildly superior? She always felt less grounded when she “gave in” to Ian’s ideas – yet the wife’s job seemed to be all about “giving in”.

    Ian always seemed so confident, the opposite of the way she felt. It was what made him so attractive. But something in this new life went against her grain. Was it just the reckless expenditure? Key was her embarrassed silence with her sister India, usually her lifelong confidant. Was it simply embarrassment over confessing indebtedness? Was it disloyalty or pride that kept her from complaining about the man India warned her not to marry?

    How about the anguish of being suddenly the underdog when all her life she’d been on top, the prize-winner, the golden girl who could do anything and go anywhere. Both she and India had good brains – but she had looks as well. Here in Britain women were nothing, artists were nothing and Americans were less than nothing. Yet here she was, putting down roots as deep as they could go.


    For her letters, she’d have to construct an entirely false self, one she knew wasn’t fooling India at all. She couldn’t risk India despising her brother-in-law.


    Ultimately she felt she was producing the kind of nonsense you would send a stranger. She’d finally seized on the difficulties of moving as an excuse to let the whole mess go. How could she ever start the dialogue again? This was the first “secret” they’d ever had. It seemed far too big ever to surmount.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 3. Ian

    It was their first morning in the house and the moving van was expected by noon. Scarlet was excitedly making measurements and notes about where everything should go.


    Lacking a butler, the butler’s pantry became a “buttery” in Ian’s terminology, a “bar” in Scarlet’s. It had such wonderful oak-shuttered pass-throughs on either side. Did she dare set up barstools? She knew she would have to handle Ian tactfully. Their English friends would be appalled. Bringing the pub home would be so “American” – which was their automatic euphemism for “lower class” as Scarlet had sadly discovered.


    “Pomeroy Bronfen invited us to dinner,” said Ian. “The unlucky heir. I can call him from town. Is it a yes?”


    “It’s a yes,” said Scarlet. “I just hope it won’t go late. You know I pass out at ten.”


    “He said six.”


    “Better and better.”


    “I may have mentioned that you were a prisoner of early nights.”


    A prisoner. Scarlet didn’t like that at all. Hadn’t her sister India warned her: “Beware the house in the country. That’s where Englishmen stick the wives and kids so they can lead a bachelor life in town.”


    But Ian wouldn’t be like that! Would he?


    “Are you going out? Here’s a list of things you ought to get,” said Scarlet, tearing a sheet from her pad.


    He took it like a man.

    Another man showed at eleven to install the phone.


    “That was fast”, said Scarlet. “I’m impressed.” Rumor was, it took simply forever, my dear – to get a telephone installation in the country.


    “I heard it’s both a business and a residence,” said the man in a thick country accent. “New businesses get precedence – there’s not much investment hereabouts.”


    So that was Ian’s game! Well, Scarlet could play. ““We’ll be needing one phone in the buttery, one in the upstairs hall and a ringer in the garden,” she directed.


    He studied his work order. “The mister requested an office phone.”


    Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Well, I suppose he must have one then.” She showed him to the library.

    Chapter 4. The Battery

    What a strange name Pomeroy Bronfen had selected for his new residence, a low mews house located behind the business square – but Pomeroy – “Call me Pom, everyone does” – offered a ready explanation: “This place was first a chicken coop, and then a garage. Part of it is still garage. Battery’s the shared motif.”


    The place didn’t resemble either a chicken coop or a garage any longer. A series of low-ceilinged, agreeably furnished rooms rambling around to a picture-window view of rolling hills. The whole town revealed itself as a Potemkin village one-house-deep.


    Pom himself was very thin and tall, with prematurely silvered hair. His deep-set eyes and close-cropped hair gave him the look of an overgrown Dickensian orphan. He seemed eerily fine-tuned to Scarlet in a way that unsettled her. He would be a difficult man to think private thoughts around.

    Ian’s other friends never guessed what she as thinking; her mind, assured of complete freedom, could range anywhere in their company. By contrast, Pom noticed her eying his trouser stains immediately.


    “Battery acid,” he said. “So you see.”


    “You seem to have got some there, too,” she gestured at his leather vest. Pom didn’t cock so much as an eyebrow, but regarded the stain thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I think that might be roofing tar.”


    “I can’t figure out why you stay here now that you’re rich and can travel the world,” said Ian, with no apparent realization of the rudeness or even illogic of his statement.


    Pom swept the faux pas effortlessly away. “The bank got most of the money,” he said. “This residence at least is still family property.” Ian should understand; the Bronfens once owned everything. Pom smiled at Scarlet as if effortlessly reading her thoughts.


    “And one doesn’t need proper clothes but can muck about with cars all day. Drink?”


    “Pregnant ladies can’t drink,” said Ian at the same moment that Scarlet answered, “It’s my last trimester, I can have a glass.”


    She gave Ian a “married look” which, if he bothered to interpret it, said, “Weren’t you the one begging me to loosen up last night?”


    “As long as you’re sure,” said Pom, pouring. “I only have white.”


    Scarlet was sorry about that – till she tasted it. Then she was sorry she could only have one glass.


    “What flavor!” She gasped. “What do they make it from?”


    “Grapes,” said her husband flatly, but Pom replied politely enough.


    “Tastes like artichokes, don’t you think? It’s Gruner Veltliner.”


    “And peppers,” said Scarlet. “And apricots.” It was simply delicious.


    Pom guided them to the terrace where a platter of cheesestraws and apple slices lay underneath a bell jar, like a museum presentation piece.


    “Still think I should move?” Pom asked, gesturing toward the seemingly endless swath of green hills. “Selling – if I could even find a buyer – wouldn’t compensate me for losing a view like this.”
    “I agree that nature is very healing,” said Scarlet. “That’s why we came.”


    Ian agreed, “I take it all back. I just thought for an artist, London –“


    “I get as much London as I want,” said Pom. “I only want it about once a month.”


    Scarlet was thinking that her husband had buried the lead. “You’re an artist?” There wasn’t a single painting in any of his rooms. “Why don’t you display your work?”


    “I’m shy,” said Pom, and instantly Scarlet began constructing a mind’s eye version of Pom’s history where this was true, seeing the fair-haired boy with the wide forehead and the olive-green eyes always standing at a cautious distance from his peers.


    “Well, I for one would love to see anything you’d like to show,” said Scarlet. “We’re both writers – we need to get out of our heads. We live in the world of ideas.”


    “Not perhaps so much while you’re gravid,” offered Ian. What an irritating thing that was for him to say! She refused to breach the uncomfortable silence while Pom regarded Ian with unflattering solicitude.


    “I think the life of the mind is even more powerful now,” Scarlet rebutted finally. “I’m living entirely in the future.” Her eyes dared her husband to reveal how little writing time she’d actually managed while packing and moving house.


    “It’s the thinking that’s so important I find,” said Pom. “That’s where the work is. It’s really why I became an abstract painter.”


    His work wasn’t mentioned for the rest of the evening because Scarlet didn’t want to see it in front of Ian, and Pom, she recognized, didn’t want to show it to him. Instead they discussed London over a delicious platter of rare roast beef and salad, and gushed appreciatively over the individual trifles offered for dessert.


    “Mrs. Ryquist’s work from over at the pub,” said Pom, referring to the Cat and Corncrake, centerpiece of town. “She’ll cook anything for you so long as you don’t expect delivery. You take your glasses and she fills them for you.”


    The trifles were particularly wonderful and Scarlet most appreciated the enjoyment of penetrating the perfect layers. She thought she tasted limoncello in the ladyfingers and crème de menthe liqueur at the heart, but she chose not to mention it and the others didn’t either. Was that what contributed to her blissful sense of well-being at the conclusion of the meal? Would she suffer for that, later? Or was it the realization, entirely unexpected at the very end of an exhausting nine-month pregnancy – that another man – a nice man – found her attractive and her husband felt it and was jealous? And would she suffer for that, too?

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 2 – The Undercroft – 1959

    She felt a gush of relief at the first sight of what was to be her new home. Perhaps she could participate in Ian’s fantasy after all. This gate, massive and rusty, had fallen back against its stone surround and was an open invitation to a fairy tale. She saw something she knew Ian could never have resisted: this twisted iron was surmounted by a pair of stone wyverns. Ian had always claimed the wyvern as his “power creature”. Anything for sale in the town of Wyvern-on-Wye would be of interest to Ian. Was the town named after the house or the other way around?

    Whichever was true, she knew he’d claim the whole town as his by right. When she gasped out loud at the sight of their new castle Ian rippled with the same lordly pleasure he demonstrated on skillfully dispensing an orgasm. There it was, at the end of a curving drive, Wyvern House, miniature alcazar toppling on its hill, as if the earth itself would sink beneath its weight.


    “My goodness,” she muttered, thinking, as she knew he did, how impressed future guests would be, especially if they could clear away the brambles, re-paint the gates and set the slipping wyverns more solidly, less threateningly aloft.


    Up close, the “castle” proved considerably less commanding, revealing unpointed brick, mucky stucco, bleeding windows and muddy drive. Over the double front doors was carved a date which threw it completely out of the running for any claim to aristocracy: “1892: Magnus Bronfen”.


    “Soap manufacturer,” said Ian. “All soap manufacturers dream of castles, apparently. How else could you get a castle and six acres for nine thousand pounds?”


    She shuddered at the sum. Neither his family nor hers had ever seen so much money. In their five years together they had barely cleared a thousand pounds, and owed more than that. If she succumbed to this place what time would be left for working out her complex themes of literature? She had seen nothing encouraging, so far, about the financial viability of her productions in general.


    Ian himself was not doing much better with his proposal for a “modern mythology” TV series. They would be thrown back on Ian’s first idea: using his supernatural “imp” to win a football pool. Or her secret, most private fancy; writing an explosive novel that told the truth about women’s experience. The one time she had mentioned it Ian had been very clear that he considered “women’s fiction” a literary disgrace.


    “Plus, the novel’s dead. Plays are the thing, Angry Young Men and all that. Look! There is a garden. You could start a market garden. I’ve heard these roses were famed far and wide.”


    What had she ever done to make him think she longed to garden? But “rosarian” certainly was a better title than “hausfrau.” Much better. At this time of year, the overgrown garden offered nothing to see, but it was walled; the walls covered with the same brambly vines that were eating up the gate. They should be replaced with, say, espaliered fruit trees. By somebody. Someday.


    To her relief, inside she saw an ordinary house without the unlivable discomforts of an actual castle. The front hall was rather splendid with a huge creaky oak staircase that shed sawdust (deathwatch beetle!) when walked upon but the large rooms were blessed with electric light and there were four generous bathrooms: three second floor and one down.


    “I don’t think they spent a penny on the place after building it,” said Scarlet.


    “I’m sure they didn’t,” Ian agreed. “This Magnus guy died almost immediately. The current heir lives in town – I don’t think he has a sou but what I gave him. He says the place has been for sale – slowly dropping in price — his entire life.”


    It always impressed Ian to consult a “magic moment”. He was beginning to think he was a magic moment, himself. A fatalistic man, with a strong sense of “destiny”, he’d carefully consulted his horoscope before marrying Scarlet. The stars, and a general English misapprehension that all Americans were rich, had pushed him over the edge.


    “He only has what the bank gave him,” Scarlet longed to correct, but didn’t. Their marriage was the envy of their friends because neither of them – ever gave in to cracks like that. Ian had repeatedly stated his opinion that “money” was an imaginary concept anyway, created in the modern world by mere promises to buy and sell. Failing to leap aboard the mad carousel, you made certain of being left behind.


    Sixty-six years without improvements or upkeep should certainly give any buyer pause, thought Scarlet. What Horrible Secret – probably more than one – was this house hiding? Drains? Vermin? As if reading her thoughts – which he probably was, because marriage made a person good at that — Ian continued,


    “Apparently the problem is the railways – having to change trains from London only to arrive in the middle of nowhere with eight miles to go. But now that everyone has a car that will change. By road, the distance from London is two hours, tops.”


    No one in their London group really “owned” a car, but everyone aspired to, so why point out that the drive had taken them three hours? Ian would only say it as because his pregnant wife needed to pee every five minutes and maybe it had been. Ian had acquired the station wagon (third-hand) because he’d acquired the house, launching them to the summit of their particular clique. As they walked from room to room Scarlet felt herself warming to this unlikely residence – it certainly had potential – and feeling a lot more forgiving towards her improvident spouse.


    The rooms were big, well laid out, and the mullioned windows vast and wonderful. There was even a room of empty bookcases clearly meant to be a library – what more could writers ever require?
    The dining room was a bit dark but the scullery was enormous. “If we updated the appliances we could eat in here,” said Scarlet. “It would be cozy.”


    Ian made a moue of disagreement. “Why neglect such a magnificent dining room? I mean, we’ve got one, why waste it?”


    “Keep it for special occasions,” Scarlet murmured. Most of the time it would be just the two of them and a baby, because they’d never be able to afford live-in help. Anyway, what couple ever benefited from intrusion on their togetherness? “Pas devant les domestiques” was the English byword.


    Three large rooms beside a dining room, scullery and butler’s pantry Scarlet counted, then upstairs were six bedrooms laid out rather unimaginatively around a poorly lit central hall with bathrooms connecting between them. Scarlet suggested they each take for a study the smaller bedrooms. But Ian claimed the library.


    “Those are kids’ rooms, don’t you think?” he disparaged.


    Scarlet felt a thrill that he even contemplated extra children. He hadn’t seemed the least excited about her pregnancy until his flicker of interest when the doula suggested it might be a boy.
    She was too well-trained to argue. “If you prefer,” she agreed. “Why don’t you take the library for your office and I’ll take the odd bedroom. For now.” She was determined to have the baby with them in their bedroom for starters, requiring her do up just one guest room. Seemed a good way to keep out an overage of guests.


    There was no attic whatsoever and the stairs to the tower were barred with a handwritten “Danger” sign.


    “I haven’t been up there,” Ian told her. “Pomeroy the Heir pronounced the stairs unsafe. I think we must assume the whole Tower is a disaster area. He suggested just cutting them out altogether, getting rid of that weak flooring and making it sort of a skylight where you can look up.”
    Trust a man to come up with such an idiotic idea.


    “I’ll investigate spiral metal stairs,” said Scarlet. “They come in modular one piece units and I know where we can get one cheap.”


    Ian snorted, “The more fools they, then, lowering the price just because their Tower was a fake.”


    Since they couldn’t go up, they went down, down to the “undercroft”, as Ian called it, not a “basement” but a magnificently warm, low-ceilinged room with winking-eye lights to the outdoors, shelves of bottled fruit, an empty wine rack and a huge furnace. Purring away. The furnace clearly was newer than 1892 – and if that was the case, the situation might not be as desperate as Ian had painted it.


    “I wonder if any of that fruit is still good,” said Ian.


    Scarlet’s spirits lightened. She felt a poem coming on.

  • Devoured Heart: romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Scarlet – 1959

    Ian told Scarlet he bought the house as a gift. It was an apology for their cramped city quarters, compensation for Scarlet falling so heavily pregnant with their son. He, universally considered the ultimate bachelor, gave majestic permission for his wife to begin the nest-building and home-making he knew she had thirsted for ever since their hasty marriage.
    But as she sat beside him while he drove through the desolate winter countryside, she felt nothing but dread: how could he buy a house – reputedly for “her” – without her actual assistance? “Auction” was the answer.


    “Truth” presented by Ian seemed always subtly different from Scarlet’s apprehension of actuality, but in Scarlet’s youthfully cynical experience men never told the truth to women. It would be just like Ian to have purchased a ruin for the name alone. He was impulsive – act first, rationalize after – but he never thanked Scarlet for pointing it out. Women were supposed to be the impulsive, hysterical, emotional creatures, men were calm, rational, learned. Period. Scarlet had discovered there was even less room in England than in America for the sexes to locate the androgyny Virginia Woolf had so recently recommended.


    What was her fear, exactly? She felt for it nervously as if exploring a bad tooth. Would they be in hock to the moneylenders till kingdom come? The “big money” Ian assured her was right around the corner had yet to arrive, but he confidently continued to expect it. She wished Ian could see that auctions engineered participants into foolish decisions, but Ian considered himself above foolish decisions. In the early months of marriage, Scarlet had earned to pick her battles. Husbands didn’t welcome any overt attempts to “change” them.


    Unsaid between them, probably unremembered by him, was an episode early in their marriage where she’d suggested, “That will never work” to one of his passing fancies and he’d grabbed her by the throat. Made her shudder to think about it now. Clearly she should not think about it. Fetuses might be negatively affected by thoughts like those.


    After he’d cooled down – and apologized – she’d tried to get him to acknowledge that such behavior should never happen; his response was, “You shouldn’t taunt me.” So the blame was subtly – or unsubtly – placed on her. She was left with the unpleasant sensation that he’d somehow reserved the “right” to lose control – a right denied to her – but at least it had never happened again.


    Hadn’t he married her a brief three months after their first meeting, just to stop her returning to America? She’d been dazzled by his beauty, his gorgeous male power, glittering intelligence, tall wide-shouldered body, and those long-lashed blue eyes fixed so deliciously upon her. All Oxford considered him the matrimonial catch of the year – you could certainly claim she personally had benefited enormously from his hasty decision making. Everyone she met envied her; there was no one to whom could she confide marital difficulties.


    Not even to the very close sister, her “best friend”, who considered marriage “surrender” and who had refused to attend the wedding. All acquaintances so far collected in England were Ian’s eager slaves. There were certainly trade-offs, in the business parlance of the day. Men might be demanding, self-involved, autocratic, but didn’t that make them better in bed? Wasn’t that the real reason Scarlet had married him, the secret she dared not confess but everyone suspected, that he had overwhelmed her with a display of sexual seduction just the memory of which raised every hair on her body to antennae? Now that she was nine and a half months pregnant it regrettably seemed as if she would never be svelte, or young, or even whole – again.


    That was not all that had changed. She didn’t like it when she overheard him describing her as a “born hausfrau” – was there an uglier word in ANY language? She felt misrepresented, as if he deliberately missed the evidence of her true nature and the meaning of her entire existence. Wasn’t such blindness a crime against love? Yet what had he “done”, besides purchase a castle for her? At the apex of pregnancy – you could also call it the nadir – she was willing to admit that possibly she misrepresented HIM.


    They needed a fresh start. But with a baby expected, wasn’t that the pattern of couples everywhere?
    She couldn’t silence her inner critic. She felt emotionally repelled by all the bluster he deemed necessary to “get ahead”. Maybe she didn’t like the concept of “getting ahead,” especially considering he was so disparaging of America’s “crass commercialism.”

    And what was that about, his peculiar reliance on the occult? It was almost a religion with him. He made a game of consulting his “imp” through Tarot cards – a funny party trick morphing into a disturbingly dissociative responsibility dodge. When she suggested as tactfully as she could that perhaps they should not expose a growing child to superstition he “doubled down” with outlandish “universal mythologies” of magic, nemesis, false birth and disguise. Jung, even Freud, was on his side. She had no one.


    He had convinced himself his parents were no relation; he translated his envy of the aristocracy into an unshakeable conviction that he belonged rightfully among them. The democratic American in Scarlet tried to show him the pride in becoming truly “free” and his own person, but the lure of imposture seemed too strong.


    Thank goodness for her diary – there was nowhere else to confide her unsettling thoughts. She disguised her journal as a “baby book” – a document she could feel certain he would never read. Her totally inadequate London doctor – whom she would be happy never to see again – had assured her that pregnant women were all prey to “nonsense fears” and she would feel completely different following delivery. Scarlet was hopeful that deep in the country – perhaps with a midwife – she could secure more enlightened care.


    So she sat beside him on the way to view this new acquisition. And smiled.

  • The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 36. Blessings & Mysteries

    The nuns gave Jacquetta a party. They gave her the “special dispensation” to “step over the rail” and mill about the parlor with them. Sister Elgarde baked a cake, and if it was a little too dense and packed with raisins the frosting was a gustatorial delight as well as a thing of beauty.


    They oohed and aahed over her business card for “A Sister in Need.” And it turned out each of them knew of a mystery; a dropped stitch from the skein of Time. Attics were stuffed and barns choked with the detritus and confusion left behind by the lost and missing.


    “My aunt Cinderella was taken to the State Mental Home when I was just a child,” Mother Xavier reminisced. “But when we went to visit her, she wasn’t there, and they claimed they never knew her.”


    Jacquetta produced a notebook and began to scrawl in the distinctive sketchy hand no one else could read.


    “They do say she was raped by her own father,” Mother Xavier hissed.


    “And Mrs. Molino, who helps out in the store, when she came to clear out her father’s house, it turned out the funeral director owned everything,” said Sister Hyacinth. “The funeral director!”


    “That can’t be right,” said Jacquetta.


    “And Reverend Cross’s nephew Bob went to Newark to take up a job and he was never seen again! His car gone and everything! Not a word and it’s been seven years,” complained Sister Philomena.
    “What did the police say?”


    Philomena shrugged. “That a twenty-three-year-old man is welcome to go anywhere in life that he wants. But Bob Cross wasn’t the boy to ignore his parents and sisters! Never!”


    The nuns were full of such stories. They took a card to put up on their bulletin board – a special sign of support and recommendation – and another to place by their phone. They toasted her in daffodil wine, and at the end of the party she knelt to receive their blessing.


    “May the road rise up to meet you and the wind always be at your back”, said Mother Xavier.


    “May it be a long road, a walkable road and not throw you off it,” quavered old Sister James-and-John.


    “It will certainly be interesting, whatever else it is,” prophesied Mother Xavier.


    “May the sun shine upon your face and all the little flowers,” said Sister Elgarde.


    “May you see your children and your children’s children and may all God’s children be your children,” said Sister Philomena.


    “And may God hold you in the Palm of His Hand,” blessed Mother Xavier.


    “Or Her Hand,” said Sister Hyacinth. “Whatever the case may be.”

  • The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 35. Ricey

    A green Corvette parked a few slots down pulled out behind her but Jacquetta couldn’t see who was driving. Roxelle Shields – or her manager – drove a green Corvette. Coincidence? There were a lot of green Corvettes in the world. Speaking of coincidence, Rose-Alice Ramey could not POSSIBLY have the same name as the St. Barnabas churchyard baby. When a monster was close and about to surface, otherwise innocent ripples had one meaning and one meaning only.


    The apartment smelled horrible. Some kind of chemical smell suppressed the stench of spoiled food and an even nastier odor that could only be Death. Maybe I don’t want the clothes, thought Jacquetta. I’ve cleared out most of my stuff anyway. Make my phone call and get out.


    But as she entered the living room she was brought up short by the sight of Rose-Alice Ramey, aka Ricey Kleinemann, sitting in the rocking chair waiting for her.


    Caught by surprise Jacquetta knew she showed fear. She could tell that by the flicker of satisfaction on the other’s face. Damn! Now Ricey had the upper hand. How to win it back?


    ‘Who let you in?” She forced herself to advance far enough into the room so that she could sit on the sofa. Above all, she didn’t want Ricey standing up.


    “Your roommate gave me her key.” Ricey played with a lock of her own hair.


    “As well as her life,” said Jacquetta.


    “I needed to know what you knew,” said Ricey. “She was the weak link. If I wrapped a dishtowel around her neck and twisted it with a stick –“ She made a snapping motion with her hands. “But she wouldn’t tell me. She died too soon.” The murderer sound almost regretful. “I couldn’t bring her back.”


    Jacquetta was grateful for the apartment’s semi-gloom. Easier to conceal the blood boiling up her throat and into her face.


    “Why send those letters? You were safe until then.”


    “No one’s safe,” spat Ricey. “That’s why I sent them! People thinking they’re so safe!”


    “Who shared the Brooklyn apartment?” asked Jacquetta.


    “Oh, everyone.” Ricey shrugged. “No one. A girl’s got to live. You know what they pay nanny-girls? Next to nothing!”


    “So you preferred blackmail,” suggested Jacquetta. “But that didn’t work out either, did it?”


    “I preferred murder,” said Ricey, leaning forward. “I like finding the edge. I would have snapped that old woman’s neck if I could have gotten away with it. Pills in the milk. It’s so unsatisfying.” She laughed in a low, reminiscent chuckle, “Turns out I like shooting people and setting them on fire.”


    “You were smart to use so many different murder methods,” said Jacquetta, frantically thinking out her next move. The other girl’s cynical smile told her flattery wouldn’t work, so she desperately threw out her next idea. “What a pity you sabotaged your own work by wanting to be caught!”


    Wow! That got her! A little too much so – Ricey jumped to her feet while the rocking chair trembled.


    “I’m not going to be caught!” she snapped. “I’m never going back to prison. I can be anyone! I can go anywhere!”


    “Why tell me about the “commune” in upstate New York?” challenged Jacquetta. “You meant prison, didn’t you? You should have been worried, giving me so many clues!”


    The apartment door opened behind them and Ricey’s face changed. She seemed to back up, scared. Jacquetta twisted her head but was astonished by her rescuer – Roxelle. Carrying a gun.
    “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” said Roxelle. “For what you did to Granny. I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”


    The first shot went wild. Ricey ducked but her mother advanced on her, shooting, emptying the gun. The noise was deafening and the smell pungent. Jacquetta backed toward the kitchen and called 911.


    She dropped the phone when Roxelle appeared in the kitchen doorway.
    “She’s dead now,” she said. “Thank you.” And she was gone.


    Ricey was not dead. Jacquetta tried futilely to block the gushing blood with the spilled contents of Honey’s ironing basket, but there was too much. To the music of sirens the monster’s eyes refocused, unfocused, falling back in time to childhood, infancy, and ultimately to non-existence, to the time before all will and all suffering and the senseless destruction they perpetuate.

  • The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 34. A Stone Angel

    The door of Jacquetta’s own church, St Barnabas, was locked. This had never happened before. The sign said “mold treatment.” Jacquetta walked around the path to the churchyard and sat on a stone bench in the sunshine, watching the sexton clear graves. Some of the grass had been getting pretty tall!


    It was soothing having nothing to do, refusing to think. She tried praying but her mind kept drifting away. Shaming to have to tell Mother Xavier she was right; “I don’t want to be a nun. Turns out what I wanted all along was to be a snoop.”


    Being a snoop was endlessly absorbing, like trying to make sense of a forgotten language. Working as an actual detective would not be so much fun, she could tell. For one thing, you could end up shot or burnt. She didn’t envy Benson his gun, his license, or his death.


    There ought to be some kind of in-between career, Jacquetta thought. Maybe I can invent something. A helper constrained not by a client’s demands but by some higher purpose. “Will Snoop For Bread.” She recalled how delighted Honey had been raking through Miss Rainbeaux’s possessions. The “cleaned up” version offered to the public at the Open House, Jacquetta hadn’t found nearly so satisfying. “Sister Jacquetta Sorts Your Departed’s Junk.” There it was: a possible business. “A Sister In Need. I do what Relatives Don’t Have Time or Are Too Emotional or Disgusted to Do.”


    She smiled as she thought of the business card. It would actually be fun. She could make antique store versus dumpster recommendations without a hidden agenda. “A Sister You Can Trust.” Maybe that was a bit snide!


    The sexton finished. He climbed into his cart and tootled away, so Jacquetta stood up to admire his handiwork. There was one place he had missed.


    An obelisk dedicated to a 1930’s patriarch and his two – no three wives. A gaggle of children surrounding a stone angel. The smallest stones looked like footstones but, moving the grass with her foot, Jacquetta saw they bore engraving. Babies. “Bequeathed Only for A Moment.” “An Angel Passed Among Us.”


    And then she saw it. “Rose-Alice Ramey. August 31, 1962.”


    There it was. This is what Beatrix Rainbeaux had seen, this is what started the whole disaster. Hadn’t she told Jacquetta in their only conversation, “I was just at your church recently?”


    And she must have wondered about Avalon’s au pair; how she could be from “out of town” and yet have the same name as an infant buried in the St. Barnabas churchyard? And now Beatrix Rainbeaux was dead. Rose-Alice Ramey was the exact right age to be Ricey Kleinemann.
    Why had Jacquetta been so stupidly slow about recognizing this fact? Because she was rubbish as a detective, that’s why. Was it also because she liked Rose-Alice? Rose-Alice and she were outsiders together, two of a kind. But the “con” in “con-artist” comes from a criminal gaining trust – gaining undeserved confidence.


    Sociopaths were said to be charming. Jacquetta had identified with this hard-working young woman obliged to keep her opinions of her ridiculous employers to herself. Like everyone else, she was yearning for beauty, longing to travel. Jacquetta wanted the murderer to be one of the morally compromised Rainbeaux clan or someone from their cadre of sycophants. But Rose-Alice – she would have to think of her as Ricey now – had snuffed out the life of Honey, a fresh young girl – a striver, a dreamer just like herself – without a second thought.


    This monster wore a pretty face. Jacquetta decided the letters were older, probably unconnected with the murders. Ricey flexing her claws. Unable to contain her rage, her hostility, her secret violence, and she tried to siphon it off as harmlessly as she could. But when she gave in to love with her employer’s husband, her secret had been exposed. And who was Jacquetta to judge her for that? She saw George Cleese every day, he had plenty of time to work on her, as Nelson had “worked” Jacquetta.


    It was humiliating and enraging and it all made perfect sense. It explained why Miss Rainbeaux hesitated, why the real estate agent was charmed, why the detective relaxed, why Honey let her in.
    Jacquetta rushed back to her car. She needed a phone. She need to tell Lt. Marie the whole thing, because Ricey was clearly spinning out of control. She had nothing left to lose.


    Jacquetta regretted letting Nelson go: he had a car phone! She couldn’t think of a payphone closer than her apartment – she’d been planning to return anyway. She could think of no reason why the phone wouldn’t work. She didn’t dare wait even returning to the motel before she shared the secret. Ricey was too dangerous. She steeled herself. Grab some clothes and make that call.