Memory and Desire Read Online Free PDF

carpet. At least she had the carpet as an excuse this time, she thought, remembering her undignified stutter-step toward Richard.
    The door wouldn't shut—the carpet was bunched beneath it. She went back out onto the landing and grasped its edge to pull it smooth. Her fingertips touched paper. From beneath the heavy material she pulled a small envelope that had once been white but was now gray with dust. The word “Melinda” was pasted on its face in block letters cut from a newspaper.
    The back of her neck went icy cold. Claire jerked the carpet flat, leaped inside, and slammed the door behind her. She took the envelope to the kitchen and slit it open with a paring knife.
    The message inside was also cut from smeared newsprint. “Somerstowe shall not suffer a witch to live. Hie you hence, evil one, or your own demons will pick your bones.” Folded in the paper was a snapshot of Melinda in jeans and T-shirt. The photograph was punctured repeatedly by pinholes. The pin itself, an ordinary dressmaker's pin, was tucked into the center of the picture. Its head and its point framed Melinda's face with cold steel.
    Claire clapped her curry-scented hand over her mouth, pressing a gasp into her lungs. Sympathetic magic. A pin stabbing, a knife stabbing, witchcraft ... Those were the words one of the townspeople addressed to poor Elizabeth Spenser. According to both history and drama, Elizabeth had not hied herself hence. And she'd paid the price for her stubbornness, not by steel but by rope.
    Someone slipped the letter under Melinda's door for her to find. It'd gone beneath the carpet instead. She hadn't found it. There might have been others she'd laughed off, or this might have been the only warning before someone carried out the threat. A death threat.
    “Good God,” Claire said aloud. And the concept of “murder,” which had been a word in her vocabulary, an item on her list, suddenly became a sharp point lodged in her own heart. “Oh my God."
    Blake would only re-open the case if he had new evidence. Here it was. Wide awake now, Claire thrust the letter into her purse and headed out to look for a telephone booth.

Chapter Three

    The engines of the huge jet rumbled in her ears. She wriggled, trying to escape. She was trapped in her seat, surrounded not with sleeping but with dead bodies, each murdered by a dressmaker's pin between the eyes....
    Claire jerked awake. Above her a nubbly plaster ceiling shimmered with reflected sunlight. That pounding in her head was someone knocking at her door. Groaning, she rolled out of the hide-a-bed and pulled on her robe.
    “Who is it, please?” she called from her side of the door.
    From the other came a calm male voice. “Police Constable Alec Wood, Miss Godwin. DCI Blake rang me and asked me to call round."
    “Oh, sure—just a minute."
    Claire charged into the bathroom, dragged a comb through her hair, and found her glasses. Her travel clock read 8:10. She'd set the alarm for 7:30 and never pulled out the knob. That figured.
    At least her message of the night before had reached Blake. Claire folded the bed and tightened the sash of her robe. She was hardly wearing the proper clothing for a gentleman caller, but policemen were like doctors, they had to take what they could get. She opened the door to find the same bobby she'd seen twice last evening. No, three times—he was the man who'd been strolling through the portico of the Hall.
    He took off his hat, revealing a head of curly brown hair. “I'm sorry to knock you up."
    Claire gurgled, suppressing her laughter. She knew perfectly well what that expression meant here, she simply hadn't been prepared to encounter a transatlantic malapropism quite so soon. “It's a good thing you waked me up, I have to be at the Hall at nine and I didn't turn on my alarm clock. Come on in. Would you like some coffee?"
    “Thank you,” Alec stepped inside and closed the door. “It's good to meet you at last, Miss Godwin. I'm sorry about