VI
The Riddle
Moira was waiting for him when he came out of the police station. She was standing with a woman in her early sixties, who looked comfortable and reassuring, the sort of person you would want at your side in a crisis.
‘Shadow, this is Doreen. My sister.’
Doreen shook hands, explaining she was sorry she hadn’t been able to be there during the last week, but she had been moving house.
‘Doreen’s a county court judge,’ explained Moira.
Shadow could not easily imagine this woman as a judge.
‘They are waiting for Ollie to come around,’ said Moira. ‘Then they are going to charge him with murder.’ She said it thoughtfully, but in the same way she would have asked Shadow where he thought she ought to plant some snapdragons.
‘And what are you going to do?’
She scratched her nose. ‘I’m in shock. I have no idea what I’m doing any more. I keep thinking about the last few years. Poor, poor Cassie. She never thought there was any malice in him.’
‘I never liked him,’ said Doreen, and she sniffed. ‘Too full of facts for my liking, and he never knew when to stop talking. Just kept wittering on. Like he was trying to cover something up.’
‘Your backpack and your laundry are in Doreen’s car,’ said Moira. ‘I thought we could give you a lift somewhere, if you needed one. Or if you want to get back to rambling, you can walk.’
‘Thank you,’ said Shadow. He knew he would never be welcome in Moira’s little house, not any more.
Moira said, urgently, angrily, as if it was all she wanted to know, ‘You said you saw Cassie. You told us, yesterday. That was what sent Ollie off the deep end. It hurt me so much. Why did you say you’d seen her, if she was dead? You couldn’t have seen her.’
Shadow had been wondering about that, while he had been giving his police statement. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Probably a local, playing some kind of game with the Yankee tourist.’
Moira looked at him with fierce hazel eyes, as if she was trying to believe him but was unable to make the final leap of faith. Her sister reached down and held her hand. ‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. I think we should just leave it at that.’
Moira looked at Shadow, unbelieving, angered, for a long time, before she took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose we should.’
There was silence in the car. Shadow wanted to apologise to Moira, to say something that would make things better.
They drove past the gibbet tree.
‘There were ten tongues within one head,’ recited Doreen, in a voice slightly higher and more formal than the one in which she had previously spoken. ‘And one went out to fetch some bread, to feed the living and the dead. That was a riddle written about this corner, and that tree.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘A wren made a nest inside the skull of a gibbeted corpse, flying in and out of the jaw to feed its young. In the midst of death, as it were, life just keeps on happening.’
Shadow thought about the matter for a little while, and told her that he guessed that it probably did.
October 2014
Florida/New York/Paris