All Things Undying Page 7

  ‘What boat are you racing, Jon?’

  ‘You know the boat, Hannah. Biding Thyme. A Contessa Thirty-Two.’

  Egad! Biding Thyme was the same Contessa 32 that Beth Hamilton had been last seen sailing. If Paul had died aboard that stupid boat I’d have put it on the market so fast it would have made his head spin. In the afterlife, of course.

  ‘Alison!’ Stephen Bailey bellowed after Jon had disappeared, presumably to telephone Paul. ‘What’s happened to my tea, girl?’

  Cathy took this as a sign that her interview with Stephen Bailey was over. ‘Well, I have to be going,’ she said, gathering up her sweater and handbag. ‘Thanks so much for your help, Mr Bailey. I really, really appreciate it.’

  Before her father could answer, Alison interrupted, breezing into the room carrying a tray laden with the wherewithal for tea. ‘Won’t you stay for tea, Cathy?’

  ‘Thank you, but no, Mrs Hamilton, I’ve got to be going. I have an appointment with a woman from BASH and if I don’t hurry, I’ll be late. Do you know her? Lilith Price?’

  Stephen Bailey grunted, which Cathy took for a no. ‘She was twelve years old during the American occupation of South Hams,’ Cathy explained, ‘so I’m going to talk to her about what it was like when the Americans were billeted here.’

  BASH I knew, was the Blackawton and Strete History Group. They’d published several illustrated booklets that made interesting reading even if you weren’t a World War Two history buff.

  Stephen Bailey struggled to his feet, reached into his breast pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper. ‘Here’s the number of that fellow in Brixton. Perhaps he’ll be of some use to you.’

  Cathy accepted the paper and tucked it into her handbag. ‘Thanks ever so.’

  While Alison busied herself with the tea, I walked Cathy to the door. ‘See you back at the B&B?’

  She tapped her temple in salute. ‘You betcha!’

  ‘And good hunting with BASH,’ I called after her has she headed down the walk.

  Cathy smiled and waved. ‘Your mouth to God’s ears.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Having left the mess room I called into the “ladies room” in the main corridor opposite the main entrance to the college. On my way out I passed the time of day to a Petty Officer Wren. The first bomb dropped . . . on B block and the quarter deck . . . and [I learned that] the Wren that I had just spoken to had been killed. This greatly upset and distressed me, but in wartime all we kept saying and singing was, “There’ll always be an England.”’

  Joyce Corder, Memories of War by Local People at Home and Abroad, 1939–1946, Dartmouth History Research Group, Paper 16, 1995, pp.5–6

  ‘Good. You’re back. Tea’s getting cold.’ Alison indicated a cup of milky brew, clearly intended for me, quietly steaming on the coffee table in front of the chair I’d recently vacated.

  Adding milk to tea was practically automatic, as English as fish and chips or bangers and mash. I was a little surprised that Alison hadn’t remembered that I drank my tea black, but decided what the hell, I’d drink it anyway. I sipped and swallowed, trying not to make a face. ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘Jon’s driving him to the garage to pick up his car. It’s having a dent in the bonnet repaired. Wasn’t paying attention and drove right under a turnstile without waiting for the arm to go up. Brand new car, too.’ She sighed. ‘One of these days, Hannah, we’re going to have to take away Dad’s car keys. I don’t want to think about it.

  ‘I thought this would be a good time to show you that video of Dead Reckoning,’ she continued, promptly changing the subject. ‘Dad wasn’t keen to stick around for that, anyway. The way he scarpered out of here you’d think I was going to handcuff him to the chair and force him to watch home movies of the Big Switch On at Blackpool.’

  ‘A million bulbs? Six miles of the Promenade lit up like Las Vegas on steroids?’ I grinned. ‘Frankly, I’d find that irresistible.’

  Carrying our cups, we moved to the lounge and settled down in comfortable chairs arranged in front of Alison’s flat-screen television. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves flanked the screen. One held an impressive array of electronics – a DVD player, a Sky+ box, even a hunk of metal and plastic that I recognized as an obsolete Betamax machine. The other held what must have been the world’s largest collection of DVDs, including boxed sets of several long-running television series.

  Alison aimed the controller at the Sky+, pressed play, and fast-forwarded through the advertisements to get to the opening of Susan’s show.

  ‘What made Susan decide to take her show to Britannia Royal Naval College?’ I asked as a man and a woman raced down a beach in fast-forward, whatever romantic issues they had been having completely resolved by some product in a green box that flashed briefly on the screen.

  ‘One of her producers has a son who attended the college. Apparently the young man found the place a bit creepy at times. He mentioned this to his father, who suggested to Susan that she have a look see.’

  ‘How on earth did Susan get permission to film there?’ I eased off my shoes and got comfortable on the sofa, tucking my feet underneath me. ‘During our time in Dartmouth, even major movie companies were routinely turned down.’

  Alison grinned. ‘Not turned down, exactly. The Navy charges a hefty fee for permission to film at the college. Or so Jon says. Obviously Susan has deep pockets.’ She stabbed a button on the controller, freezing the program at the opening credits, plump text morphing into clouds that flitted in Casper the Friendly Ghost-like fashion across the screen.

  ‘They probably made arrangements through the public affairs officer in Portsmouth. He showed up, anyway. You’ll see him among the official party, along with Richard Porter. You remember Richard?’

  ‘I do. The college historian. When we first came to Dartmouth, he was kind enough to give Paul and me a private tour.’

  I remembered the tour well. I’d been stunned by the beauty of the campus, sprawled across a hill overlooking the Dart, dominating the town. Both BRNC and the US Naval Academy had been designed by prominent architects. Both had been built in the first decade of the twentieth century, with careful attention to form and function. BRNC was smaller in scale than USNA, of course, reflecting the size of their respective Navies, but I’d felt instantly at home.

  On the TV screen, Susan Parker – dressed in a gray skirt, white shirt and pale pink jacket – stood chatting in front of the main gate of the college with a man I recognized as Richard Porter, chestnut hair neatly combed, handsomely turned out in a dark blue pinstripe suit. A scarlet tie was knotted around his neck. ‘Thank you for inviting me, Richard,’ Susan was saying. ‘I appreciate how tight security can be.’

  The camera followed the two as they strolled up the drive to the gatehouse where a man in civilian clothes stepped out to greet them. ‘That’s the chap from Portsmouth,’ Alison whispered, almost as if she were afraid he’d overhear her.

  Even in pre-9/11 days, security had been tight at British military installations, the college included, because of the Irish Republican Army. Afterwards . . . well, it took a written invitation, several forms of identification, and an official escort before they issued you a visitor’s badge and let you past security at the gates.

  On the screen, the man Alison had identified as the PAO handed Susan a plastic badge, waited while she clipped it to her lapel, then the three walked through the gates together. A uniformed sentry stood at stiff attention in the doorway of the gatehouse as they passed.

  The cameraman panned from the rigid form of the sentry down to the bottom of Prince of Wales Drive. Four individuals stood where it intersected with College Way, just as rigid and silent as the sentry, holding signs. I leaned forward and squinted at the screen, but the camera panned by the demonstrators so quickly that I couldn’t read what the signs said. ‘Who are those people?’

  Alison hit pause, freezing the frame on one of the individuals in question. She clicked forward frame by frame until
the sign the guy was holding came into focus: The Bible. The Real Message from Beyond.

  ‘Protestors,’ Alison said. ‘In a minute Susan will mention them.’ She clicked play, and Richard Porter promptly complied by asking the medium, ‘What can you tell me about the demonstrators, Susan?’

  The medium waved a dismissive hand. ‘They seem to follow me wherever I go, Richard. Comes with the territory, I guess. I suppose I should be flattered that I have groupies, like the Rolling Stones.’

  ‘Or the Grateful Dead?’ I quipped, causing Alison to nearly fall out of her chair laughing at my stupid joke.

  When we returned our attention to the program, Richard was saying, ‘Security is tight at the college, as you can imagine. We’ve tried to keep your visit with us today very low key. How did the demonstrators know you’d be here?’

  ‘If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that at least one of them is psychic, except they don’t believe in that, do they?’ The camera moved in for a close-up which showed only wry amusement rather than concern on Susan’s face. ‘There’s a mole among my production staff in London, I’m afraid. But I’ve had occasion to talk with these people, and although we obviously don’t see eye-to-eye, they appear to be harmless. Frankly,’ she went on, moving forward again, eyes on her feet, ‘I have an ex-husband in California suing for half of my assets, so a few . . . how shall I say . . .?’

  ‘Crackpots?’ Richard suggested, brown eyes twinkling behind the glasses.

  ‘Um, yes. Anyway, in the vast scheme of things, I think these demonstrators are the least of my worries.’

  Susan certainly knew how to work the camera. She stared straight into the lens and winked out at the television audience. ‘Besides, if anything ever happened to me, I’d come back and whisper in your ear, “If yer lookin’ fer the bloke what done me in, his name is Greg Parker.”’

  After a beat, the camera focused on Richard’s astonished face, then panned out, located another one of the demonstrators, steadied and zoomed in on the sign she was carrying: There shall not be found among you a consulter with familiar spirits for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. Deut. 18:10–12.

  And the program cut to an ad.

  ‘Abomination? Doesn’t sound harmless to me,’ Alison remarked, fast-forwarding through the ad. When the program resumed, Susan and Richard were seated in an officers’ lounge in comfortable club chairs arranged in a conversational group in front of a long bar. Richard was pointing out the saucer-sized circles on the ceiling where celebrating cadets at various times had hoisted Prince Charles, his brother Andrew, and Charles’s son William up on their shoulders to autograph the ceiling.

  When they got up to leave, I imagined the cameraman scuttling backwards as he preceded Susan and Richard into the Senior Gunroom. ‘Gunroom?’ Susan’s eyes darted from one wonder in the room to another. ‘Who knew?’

  I could understand her confusion. The gunroom is actually an elegant dining room – mess hall, to be precise – with a vaulted ceiling decorated with beautifully painted and gilded bosses. Portraits of famous naval officers lined the richly paneled walls. None of the officers appeared troubled, however, or making any effort to contact the living, so the party moved on, pausing at the dress uniform of King George VI, dripping with medals, in a glass case. King George didn’t appear restless or eager to communicate either, so they set off again, walking briskly down the highly polished floors of a long narrow corridor, anchored on one end by the gunroom and on the other by the chapel.

  Halfway along, the corridor opened into a vast entrance hall. On Susan’s right, huge double doors opened out, I knew, on to a marble staircase that led down to the parade ground overlooking the town and beyond it, the sea. On her left lay the heart of Aston Webb’s design for the college, the Quarterdeck, its entrance flanked by larger-than-life-sized portraits of Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth, respectively. When Susan commented on the portraits, Richard said, ‘Young Philip was a cadet here in 1939 when King George VI and the Queen arrived on the royal yacht with their daughters, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Elizabeth was then thirteen. He escorted them round.’ The camera caught Richard smiling. ‘We have photographs of them playing croquet.’

  The focus then shifted to Susan, hands clasped behind her back, studying Prince Philip’s portrait. Suddenly she raised a hand. Sniffed. ‘I smell smoke.’ She waved in the direction of the Quarterdeck. ‘What’s behind those doors?’

  Rather than answer, Richard smiled enigmatically and held the door open for her. She hustled through, trailed by the cameraman and the soundman, his boom making a cameo appearance in one of the shots. As Susan moved to the center of the great hall, the camera took full advantage of the opportunity, zeroed in on her face, creased with concern, then arched up to take in the dark-timbered vaulted ceiling. It swept around the gallery, known as the poop deck, that surrounding the Quarterdeck on three sides, and would likely have examined the intricate wrought ironwork of the balustrades in more detail had not Susan pressed a hand to her throat, and said, ‘The smoke is really intense in here.’

  The cameraman was on the case. He followed the medium to the far end of the room where a statue of His Majesty King George V stood wearing a heavy overcoat of marble. She stroked the marble, gazed thoughtfully into the old king’s face as if listening to what he had to say, then turned to Richard who waited silently, hands clasped in front of him. ‘This area was bombed, wasn’t it? A direct hit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that when this happened?’ she asked, touching the hem of the king’s coat where a triangular piece of marble appeared to be missing.

  Richard nodded, then, as if remembering that there was a camera in the room, said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m thinking the college was very lucky,’ Susan continued, her hand still resting lightly on King George’s overcoat. ‘I don’t feel death here.’

  ‘Fortunately, the bomb fell on a day when the cadets were not in residence. Otherwise . . .’ Richard shuddered. ‘It could have been a lot worse.’

  Susan bowed slightly at the waist. ‘Thank God.’ After a respectful moment of silence, she led the little group back the way they had come.

  ‘They’re heading for the chapel,’ Alison whispered, freezing the action on a frame of Susan with her mouth forming an O. ‘Watch this.’

  I would like to have seen what Susan ‘saw’ in the chapel, containing as it did many historical objects, including an altar cloth made from the same bolt of cloth as Queen Victoria’s wedding gown. But before she got anywhere near the chapel, however, Susan stopped dead in her tracks. She pressed a hand to her chest, breathed heavily. ‘Oh, my goodness!’

  Nobody said anything. A jet plane roared overhead, stealing the silence, but for some reason, the post-production people hadn’t edited the noise out.

  ‘There’s a woman here,’ Susan said after the noise of the jet had faded away. ‘She’s wearing a uniform.’

  Considering they were standing in a Navy school, that was a safe bet.

  ‘I’m getting an H. Helen?’ Susan squinted thoughtfully into the camera. ‘No, not Helen. It’s Ellen!’

  The camera swung quickly from Susan back to Richard in order to catch his reaction. Viewers were not disappointed. Richard’s eyebrows shot upwards, then returned to a neutral position. He said nothing.

  The camera swung back to Susan whose head was cocked at that angle I now recognized, when she seemed to be taking counsel from spirits in the great beyond. ‘Ellen says she’s dying of embarrassment. Does that mean anything to you?’

  The camera swung back in time to catch the corners of Richard’s mouth twitching upwards in what might pass for a smile. Still, he said nothing.

  ‘It means something to me!’ I yelled at the television screen.

  Alison glared at me. ‘Shhhh!’

  ‘The plaque is right behind her, Alison. She can’t help but notice it.’

  ‘They covered it up, silly. You’ll see in a mi
nute.’

  Sure enough, when the camera panned back, the bronze plaque that commemorated the event that cost Ellen Whittall her life had been covered with a dark cloth, taped to the wall with duct tape. Crafty Richard! He might agree to let a medium troop around the college with her entourage, but he had been careful to even up the odds. Susan had many talents, but I didn’t think X-ray vision was among them.‘She’s doing this.’ Susan traced a circle in the air. ‘She wants me to turn around.’

  I have observed that in buildings designed exclusively to accommodate men, women’s restrooms are often tucked away in odd, out-of-the-way places, in closets, for example, or under staircases. When Susan did as the spirit instructed, she found herself facing the ladies’ restroom, squirreled away in a corner just off the elegant entrance hall. The camera caught her smiling in amusement, then her face grew serious. ‘You poor thing!’ she soothed. Susan glanced over her shoulder and out into our sitting room. ‘Ellen’s telling me she was in the loo when the bomb exploded. She’s saying she had higher aspirations when she joined the military than dying with her knickers around her knees.’

  ‘So!’ said Alison, pausing the program at the point where Richard’s bemused face filled the screen. ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘I think it makes for interesting television,’ I answered, channeling Paul, ‘but the fact that a Wren was the only casualty of the bombing is common knowledge. I think it’s even mentioned in the BRNC brochure.’

  Alison pouted like a three-year-old. ‘But everybody doesn’t know about the loo.’

  ‘I know about it.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve spent time at the college. Susan’s never been.’ Alison waved the remote. ‘Until now.’

  ‘Point taken, but . . .’ I thought the show we’d just seen was one of the least convincing demonstrations of Susan Parker’s talents as a medium. However, watching Susan communicate with the restless spirit of a victim of World War Two (or not!) had given me an idea. ‘Does Susan do a walkabout like this on every show?’