7

One good thing about the family-style chain pubs, thought Maggie, was that nobody raised an eyebrow if you only ordered a pot of tea or a cup of coffee, which was all she wanted when she met Lorraine Temple at The Woodcutter’s that Tuesday lunchtime.

Lorraine was a plump, petite brunette with an easy manner and an open face, a face you could trust. She was about Maggie’s age, early thirties, wearing black jeans and a jacket over a white silk blouse. She bought the coffees and put Maggie at ease with some small talk and sympathetic noises about the recent events on The Hill, then she got down to business. She used a notebook rather than a tape recorder, Maggie was glad to see. For some reason, she didn’t like the idea of her voice, her words, being recorded as sounds; but as squiggles on the page, they hardly seemed to matter.

“Do you use shorthand?” she asked, thinking nobody used that anymore.

Lorraine smiled up at her. “My own version. Would you like something to eat?”

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“Okay. We’ll start, then, if that’s all right with you?”

Maggie tensed a little, waiting for the questions. The pub was quiet, mostly because it was a weekday and the bottom of The Hill was hardly a tourist area or a business center. There were a couple of industrial estates nearby, but it wasn’t quite lunchtime yet. Pop music played on the jukebox at an acceptable level, and even the few children in the family room seemed more subdued than she would have expected. Maybe the recent events had got to everyone in one way or another. It felt as if a pall lay over the place.

“Can you tell me how it happened?” Lorraine asked first.

Maggie thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t sleep very well, and maybe I was awake or it woke me up, I’m not sure, but I heard noises across the street.”

“What noises?”

“Voices arguing. A man’s and a woman’s. Then a sound of glass breaking and then a thud.”

“And you know this was coming from across the street?”

“Yes. When I looked out of the window, there was a light on and I thought I saw a shadow pass across it.”

Lorraine paused a moment to catch up with her notes. “Why were you so sure it was a domestic incident?” she asked, as she had done over the phone.

“It just… I mean…”

“Take your time, Maggie. I don’t want to rush you. Think back. Try to remember.”

Maggie ran her hand over her hair. “Well, I didn’t know for certain,” she said. “I suppose I just assumed, from the raised voices and, you know…”

“Did you recognize the voices?”

“No. They were too muffled.”

“But it could have been someone fighting off a burglar, couldn’t it? I understand there’s quite a high burglary rate in this area?”

“That’s true.”

“So what I’m getting at, Maggie, is that maybe there was some other reason you thought you were witnessing a domestic argument.”

Maggie paused. Her moment of decision had arrived, and when it came, it was more difficult than she had thought it would be. For one thing, she didn’t want her name splashed all over the papers in case Bill saw it back in Toronto, though she very much doubted that even he would come this far to get at her. There was little likelihood of such exposure with a regional daily like the Post, of course, but if the national press got onto it, that would be another matter. This was a big story, and the odds were that it would at least make the National Post and the Globe and Mail back home.

On the other hand, she had to remember her goal, focus on what was important here: Lucy’s predicament. First and foremost she was talking to Lorraine Temple in order to get the image of Lucy the victim in people’s minds. Call it a preemptive strike: the more the public saw her that way from the start, the less likely they were to believe that she was the embodiment of evil. All people knew so far was that the body of Kimberley Myers had been found in the Paynes’ cellar, and a policeman had been killed, most likely by Terence Payne, but everyone knew they were digging there, and everyone knew what they were likely to find. “Maybe there was,” she said.

“Could you elaborate on that?”

Maggie sipped some coffee. It was lukewarm. In Toronto, she remembered, they would come around and refill your cup once or twice. Not here. “I might have had reason to believe that Lucy Payne was in danger from her husband.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“That her husband abused her?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of Terence Payne?”

“Not much, really.”

“Do you like him?”

“Not particularly.” Not at all, Maggie admitted to herself. Terence Payne very much gave her the creeps. She didn’t know why, but she would cross the street if she saw him coming rather than meet, say hello and make small talk about the weather, all the time with him looking at her in that curiously empty, dispassionate manner he had, as if she were a butterfly pinned to a felt pad, or a frog on the table ready for dissection.

As far as she knew, though, she was the only one to feel that way. He was handsome and charming on the surface, and according to Lucy he was popular at school, both with the kids and with his colleagues on staff. But there was still something about him that put Maggie off, an emptiness at his center that she found disturbing. With most people, she felt that whatever it was she communicated, whatever radar or sonar beam went out, bounced off something and came back in some way, made some sort of blip on the screen. With Terry, it didn’t; it disappeared in the vast, sprawling darkness inside him, where it echoed forever unheard. That was the only way she could explain the way she felt about Terry Payne.

She admitted to herself that she might be imagining it, responding to some deep fear or inadequacy of her own – and God knew, there were enough of those – so she had resolved to try not to criticize him for Lucy’s sake, but it had been difficult.

“What did you do after Lucy told you this?”

“Talked to her, tried to persuade her to seek professional help.”

“Have you ever worked with abused women?”

“No, not really. I…”

“Were you a victim of abuse yourself?”

Maggie felt herself tightening up inside; her head started to spin. She reached for her cigarettes, offered one to Lorraine, who refused, then lit up. She had never talked about the details of her life with Bill – the pattern of violence and remorse, blows and presents – with anyone here except her psychiatrist and Lucy Payne. “I’m not here to talk about me,” she said. “I don’t want you to write about me. I’m here to talk about Lucy. I don’t know what happened in that house, but it’s my feeling that Lucy was as much a victim as anything else.”

Lorraine put her notebook aside and finished her coffee. “You’re Canadian, aren’t you?” she asked.

Surprised, Maggie answered that she was.

“Where from?”

“Toronto. Why?”

“Just curious, that’s all. I’ve got a cousin lives there. That house you’re living in. Tell me, but doesn’t it belong to Ruth Everett, the illustrator?”

“Yes, it does.”

“I thought so. I interviewed her there once. She seems like a nice person.”

“She’s been a good friend.”

“How did you meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“We met professionally, at a convention a few years ago.”

“So you’re an illustrator, too?”

“Yes. Children’s books, mostly.”

“Perhaps we can do a feature on you and your work?”

“I’m not very well known. Illustrators rarely are.”

“Even so. We’re always looking for local celebrities.”

Maggie felt herself blush. “Well, I’m hardly that.”

“I’ll talk with my features editor, anyway, if that’s okay with you?”

“I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s all right.”