Page 6 of A Talent for Murder

There was one picture that Martha looked at more than the others. It was a candid shot during the cocktail reception, the small group assembled under a tent at the vineyard where they were married, a field of grapes in the background. Martha, in her wedding dress, and Alan, in his suit, were talking with a group of Alan’s college friends. Everyone was laughing, but Alan’s eyes were looking a little to the side, at another small group of talkers, which included her sister’s stepdaughter, a strikingly pretty teenage girl who had worn a very small dress that day—Alan’s mother had referred to it as “four handkerchiefs and a piece of string.” Was Alan looking at her, ogling her, on his wedding day? Was that the man she married?

Early the next morning, after a night of brief snatches of sleep and forgotten dreams, Martha got up a few hours before she needed to be at the library. She showered and dressed and made herself breakfast. Then she sat down at her desk, the phone number for Lily’s mother in front of her, and prepared to make the call. She was thinking about what she might say when the cell phone in her hand vibrated with an incoming call. It was Alan.

“Morning,” she said.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said back, sounding chipper.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, why? Because I’m calling? I was just going to text you, then decided I’d rather hear your voice instead. I knew you’d be up.”

“How’s Chapel Hill?”

“It feels like summer here already. My booth is actually outside on the main quad under a tent and I’ve sweated through all of my shirts.”

They talked for a while about the weather and then Alan said, “I’ve been thinking. You and I should take a trip.”

“Oh yeah? Where to?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, as well. You know how we both hate the heat in August. Maybe we could go to the North of England for a week. Haven’t you always wanted to visit Haworth?”

It took Martha a moment to realize he was talking about Brontë Country, but once she figured it out it made perfect sense. On their first date they’d had a long conversation about Wuthering Heights, her favorite book.

“I’d like that,” Martha said.

“Would you?” He sounded genuinely happy, as though he’d just asked her to marry him again and she said yes.

“Of course.”

“Great. I have to go and open my booth, but when I get back let’s pick a week and start to plan.”

“Okay,” Martha said, meaning it.

“One last thing before I let you go. I’ve been thinking of changing my walk.”

“Changing your what?”

“My walk. I was thinking about it, how my feet point in and I lean forward a little, and I think I should have a much cooler walk. That’s all.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know, something smooth and iconic. Maybe Sean Connery’s walk, the one he had in Goldfinger.”

“Well, you should work on that, honey,” she said.

He laughed and said, “I will.”

After the call Martha sat unmoving for about five minutes, realizing that she had a faint smile on her face. Alan had two comic sensibilities—corny jokes, and then a kind of dry absurdist humor like that bit about his walk. She loved his dry humor and Alan knew that. It was like he was trying to win her back, being funny, promising vacations. A part of her—the part that believed in love curses and fate and the presence of ghosts—felt as though Alan had sensed that she was about to make a phone call that would alter their lives forever and that he’d called to intervene. Not that he knew what was happening, just that he felt it. And then she thought of his words—offering a vacation to a place she wanted to visit, making the kind of joke she liked—and she wondered if he’d practiced his call before making it. Like a sales pitch. Had he also reminded himself to sound like a regular human being? To smile on the phone because she’d hear it in his voice? An image of a frozen smile on her husband’s face flared into her mind. She shivered, just as Gilbert rubbed his face against her ankle.

After feeding her cat she thought more about Alan’s phone call. Maybe he was simply being thoughtful in suggesting a trip to see Heathcliff and Cathy’s moors. Of course, she knew that he was thinking about all the English beer he’d be able to drink while they were there, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a sweet thing to do. She thought about the tone of his voice when he’d said, “Would you?” as though he were genuinely happily surprised that she was interested in the possibility of the trip. It was one of his better traits, that he didn’t take her for granted and that he felt grateful for her love. And now she didn’t know what to think. He felt unknowable to her, but so was Gilbert, in the way that cats were unknowable, and she loved him fiercely despite it.

About twenty minutes before it was time for her to leave for her job in Kittery she had a different thought. What if Alan knew she was on to him, and he’d invited her to England to murder her in the moors? Was he going to do it there because it would be easier to get away with it, or did he want her to die in a place she loved? The thought of it made her almost laugh out loud at how ridiculous her life had become. But then she thought: Just talk to someone else about it. Call Lily. What harm could it do?

Chapter4

It was gently raining as I left the coffee shop holding my paper bag of savory scones. They have scallions and cheddar cheese baked into them and my father had decided that they were the perfect accompaniment to his morning egg. I did try to reverse-engineer them once in our own kitchen, but I am not a particularly good baker and my scones came out with the consistency of clumps of sand.

I looked up at the sky, a mix of dark rain clouds and thin wisps and decided that the rain would be short-lived. It’s a two-mile walk back to Monk’s House, but it was a warmish morning for April. I’ve never really known why humans are averse to walking through rainstorms. Why is getting wet on a walk less pleasant then getting wet on a swim? I suppose it has to do with clothes, of course, but, really, it’s not so bad. The rain picked up as I turned onto the walking path that brought me across disused tracts of farmland. I spotted two crows, having their morning conversation, and wondered if they were complaining about the rain.

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