Memory and Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

the circumstances, Melinda going missing and all."
    Claire's reputation had certainly preceded her, hadn't it? “I just wish I'd been able to come sooner,” she told him.
    “DCI Blake said you found a threatening letter addressed to Melinda."
    “Yes. It was under the carpet just inside the door."
    “Someone slotted the letter beneath the door and legged it, then, didn't know his scheme had gone wrong."
    Alec, thought Claire, sure wasn't the country bumpkin cop beloved of stage, screen, and television. He was maybe a couple of years younger than she was, tall enough to have to stoop coming in the door, his broad shoulders square and yet not at all tense. A tremor at the corners of his mouth suggested it was accustomed to smiling. He had a good face for a policeman, his even, open features as reassuringly matter-of-fact as his uniform.
    He had a good face, period. She filled the teakettle, set it on the hot plate, and took two cups and a jar of Nescafe from the cabinet. “I wonder whether Melinda even knew she was being threatened. She sure never told me."
    “Would she have done?
    “Taking it as a joke, maybe."
    Alec nodded in agreement. “Yes. She'd think it was a joke, being a bit of a joker herself."
    Claire pulled the letter from the desk drawer where she'd locked it last night and offered it to him.
    “Put it down there, please.” The letter safely on the scarred wooden top of the table, Alec pulled a pair of tweezers from his pocket and teased the letter and the photograph from the envelope. He bent over them.
    Claire poured boiling water over the instant coffee and added milk and sugar. She set the steaming cup on the table, far enough away from Alec's hand he wouldn't accidentally knock it over onto the evidence. But even though his hands were as large and strong as the rest of his body they moved with deliberate delicacy.
    “The words are from The Play,” he said. “A load of rubbish about witchcraft and all. Are you familiar with it?"
    With witchcraft? Oh. “The Play? I've never seen it performed."
    “Whoever did this has done. The words are changed slightly from the script as per Elliot's direction."
    “You played Walter Tradescant last year, didn't you?"
    “I've played him for three years now, since Rob Jackman gave up the role. He was getting a wee bit long in the tooth for the role of the male ingenue. And I'm a bachelor, to boot. More suitable, so some would think."
    Really? Who would think? Melinda? Walter had been Elizabeth's lover—in the old-fashioned sense of the term, not in the modern trash your inhibitions and get down to it sense. Claire drank, grimacing not at the heat of the coffee but at finding yet another candidate for Melinda's real-life lover. She'd find men hanging in the wardrobe next, arranged neatly on hangers.
    Alec frowned. “Now, that's no good. I made this snap myself. Richard tacked it up on the bulletin board in the entrance hall."
    Melinda's miniaturized face looked up from the table. She'd taken on the expression of a fashion model, eyes slightly crossed, lips parted, expression vacant. And yet the angle of her brows mocked her pose. Claire could hear her asking, “Why is it that in order to look glamorous you have to look brain dead? Why is it you have to be glamorous in order to be taken seriously by the good-old-boy Establishment?"
    “That stone wall in the background,” Claire said, “looks like the Hall's boundary wall."
    “That's what it is, right enough. Melinda, Fred, and Janet were on lunch break, picnicking in the garden, when I made the snap."
    “And the pin?"
    “Ready to hand, I expect. Every year Sarita uses up a box or two of pins, with the costumes and all."
    “How could Blake's people have missed the letter beneath the rug?"
    “He only sent a couple of men, not an entire investigative team. No body, you see. No probable cause.” With his tweezers Alec turned the picture over and looked narrowly at the date printed on the back.
    “Why would