Free Memory and Desire by Lillian Stewart Carl Page B

have a relationship with someone? She said, “Melinda wouldn't have wanted him to tangle himself up."
    “No, I daresay she wouldn't have done,” said Alec, with a reminiscent half smile which raised Claire's brows. “She wound him up good and proper, but then she wound us all up. Even so, it was Richard who was a bit shirty with her."
    “She teased him,” translated Claire, “and he was irritated. No surprise there."
    “When she disappeared he was just as baffled as the rest of us."
    Was he? Innocent until proven guilty, Claire reminded herself.
    They turned a corner and walked down a street so narrow the sidewalk took a third of its width. Where the street made an acute angle to the right a large mirror was mounted on the building opposite, so the hapless motorist could see how much competition he had for the corner. “Let me guess,” said Claire. “This used to be a medieval gutter."
    “That it was."
    Dodging three children on skateboards, Alec and Claire stepped out onto a wide grassy area. Ahead rose the church, its spire reaching heavenward like a hymn in stone. To its left was a grove of trees, foliage rustling in the cool breeze. The well below them was capped by a tangle of Victorian metalwork. Judging by its weathered and chipped stone, its base was considerably older. Next to it was a painting propped on an easel and surrounded by several camera-toting tourists.
    Claire squinted. No, it wasn't a painting. It was a picture formed of leaves, petals, moss, berries and beans, outlined by dark twigs and strips of bark. She turned toward it.
    “It's the well-dressing,” Alec explained. “The custom probably goes back to ancient Celtic ceremonies of blessing the wells and is peculiar to Derbyshire. One picks out the pattern in damp clay and fills it in with flowers, seeds—the first fruits tradition goes back a long way. Supposedly the custom died out in the Middle Ages, then was revived with a Christian theme during the seventeenth century."
    “Between the Civil War and the plague in the seventeenth century,” Claire said, “I would've wanted all the help I could get."
    “Even though the well's capped now, we still do up the picture. Elliot wanted to adjust the date to coincide with The Play, but Rob pointed out by spacing the events two weeks apart we get the tourists twice, and twice the quid."
    “Commerce meets tradition?"
    “Uneasy bedfellows, I expect."
    Claire looked up at him. “Alec, when you were searching for Melinda, did you check the well?"
    “Yes, we had the lid up and poked about. Got a right pile of muck and a fair number of coins we put in the collection box at the church."
    “Oh. Okay.” The picture showed an old man greeting a ragged youth. Tiny botanical bits provided amazing detail, the folds of the men's garments waving in the breeze, the dark eyes of the calf in the background rolling piteously. “The return of the prodigal son,” said Claire. “I always felt kind of sorry for the fatted calf."
    “A guiltless victim,” Alec agreed. “Like Elizabeth Spenser."
    “Is this the well she was accused of poisoning?"
    “Yes. And the gibbet was just there. Grass won't grow on the site."
    Claire followed his gesture and saw a cement post emerging from a patch of bare ground. “Superstition? Or the feet of tourists?"
    “Evidence that Elizabeth was innocent. Just as the many thousands—tens of thousands—of witches done horribly to death across Europe were innocent.” Alec's face went hard as the stone coping of the well, mouth thin, jaw set. “They murdered her cat, too. Said it was her familiar."
    “Now that's sadistic,” said Claire. “Although why killing a cat would be any worse than killing a young woman...” So this was where Elizabeth died, the victim of a judicial murder. And yet if her ghost walked, it walked at Somerstowe Hall, where she'd stitched away the long summer afternoons, foolish bumblebees and the scent of roses wafting in the window. “She's