She didn't know and I didn't either, but I dredged it up, or was I making it up? Dreams are so fuzzy, who can tell? I thought of George in Virginia Woolf, unable, or unwilling, to distinguish truth from illusion. The thought was there, so I spit it out. 'You said, 'Jake, I can't hold on.''
She leaned closer. 'Hold on to what, or to whom?'
I wrinkled my forehead and thought some more. 'I don't know. That's all I can remember. But you were frightened, and so was I.'
'The sensation of falling is a common dream experience, but you seem to have transferred the anxiety to me. Quite interesting.'
She thought about it a while, so I concentrated on the road, which by now had shrunken to two undersized lanes. On either side were rolling farmlands, alternate patches of brown and green, an occasional herd of sheep grazing on grassy slopes. Tractors hauling plows chugged along the road, hogging both sides and crowding me toward the ditch on the left.
After a few moments Pam Maxson said, 'Freud wrote that dreams often express a repressed, unconscious wish from childhood.'
'Makes sense. Ever since puberty, I wanted to spend time with girls in bikinis.'
Her emerald glance chided me. 'You're being too literal. The unconscious wish is repressed, so it cannot be given direct expression even in a dream. The dream must distort the wish, so the dreamer need not face the cost of recognizing the true wish, which has been disguised.'
'You're saying I don't really have a repressed desire to see you in a bikini on a windswept beach?'
'No, but it represents something. The bikini may signify that you wish to see me stripped bare-'
'I can buy that.'
'— Stripped of the barriers each of us erects to protect ourselves. The color red can signify violence or bloodshed. As for what you heard, perhaps you have a desire to see me fall, a metaphor for fail.'
'Why would I?'
She considered it. 'I don't know, are you somehow threatened by me?'
'Intrigued, yes. Threatened, no. I'd like to get to know you. And not just in my dreams.'
She smiled and sat back, alone in her thoughts.
It was slow going as I followed her directions up a winding road. The asphalt turned to gravel, and as the road narrowed and overgrown shrubs clawed at each side of the Rover, the surface became brown dirt, pocked by holes. After bouncing through a few of the axle breakers, I heard a stirring in the backseat. Charlie Riggs was stretching like a bearded cat.
'There it is,' Pam said, pointing up a hill.
'Now, that didn't take long at all,' Charlie mumbled, leaning over the front seat to take a peek.
I pulled into a gravel driveway that led to a large limestone house topped by a thatched roof. Pam caught me staring at the shaggy top of her home. 'Our insulation,' she said. 'The reeds are stacked a foot thick and nailed down by thousands of wooden stakes. Keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Only needs to be replaced every sixty years or so, but the fire insurance is quite exorbitant.'
'Splendid, just splendid,' Charlie was saying.
'Shall we?' Pam asked, gesturing toward the house. 'I've told Mum all about you.'
'You, singular or plural?' I ventured.
'Plural,' she answered with the biggest smile to date. Then she darted close and kissed me. It wasn't a kiss that would lose a PG-rating in Hollywood. It was more of a whisk of lip across cheek, but my spirits soared to the top of the thatched roof where a weather vane pointed west. 'Gracious,' Pam said. 'It's nearly tea time. Let's see if Mum still remembers how to make a Bakewell tart.'
We headed up a flagstone path to a huge front door. It came to me then, a nagging question from earlier in the day. 'Why would the royal family be killing prostitutes?' I asked her.
'It had to do with Prince Albert, called Eddy in the Court. He was the son of King Edward VII and Alexandra. He was in line to be king. But he was known to be bisexual, and there were scandals involving relationships with boys. Those were fairly easy to hush up. Not so easy was the rumor that he had surreptitiously married a young Catholic shop girl, who gave birth to a baby girl. The royal family is said to have spirited the shop girl off to an insane asylum, kidnapped the child, and forcibly returned Eddy to the Court. All was accomplished very efficiently, except there was a witness. A friend of the shop girl: Mary Jane Kelly.'
'The last Ripper victim,' Charlie said.
'Yes. She was an East End harlot.'
'But five women were killed,' I said.
'The others were the smoke screen, necessary to create the myth of a Ripper indiscriminately killing prostitutes.'
'The royal family had five women killed to protect the Prince's reputation?' I asked, incredulous.
'It's one theory,' Pamela said.
'Bizarre,' Charlie Riggs concluded.
'Farfetched,' I agreed, mulling it over. 'As ridiculous as a state attorney killing a woman to protect his reputation as a war hero, then killing another to cover up the first.'
CHAPTER 23
An ancient clock above the marble fireplace bonged four times and a uniformed kitchen girl rolled a silver cart of scones, muffins, and crumpets into the drawing room. The walls were hung with gold silk damask and matched the festooned curtains. The floor was dark wood covered with a carpet of burgundy and gold. On the walls were grim portraits of Victorian folk, stout men with long tangled hair and pale women with swan necks.
We sat on chairs with carved knees and ball-and-claw feet. Overhead was a cut-glass chandelier. Mrs. Penelope Maxson personally poured steaming tea from a china pot decorated with roses. She never took her eyes from mine as she handed me the cup and saucer with a steady hand. She was a trifle too large for the long, fitted silk chiffon dress the color of a sapphire. White beads formed leaf-like shapes over the shoulder and down each sleeve. Red beads swirled like a cloud of dust over an ample hip. The dress was cut daringly low, and Mrs. Maxson threatened to spill over with the tea.
She had a fine head of gray hair piled high, a long patrician nose, and green eyes she had graciously passed on to her daughter. 'Lemon?' she asked, barely suppressing a smile. 'They tell me you Yanks use lemon, though I haven't the foggiest idea why.'
Pamela smiled. 'Some of them even drink their tea over ice.'
'No!' protested Mrs. Maxson, a twinkle in her eye. 'Whatever for, to quell a fever?'
'Philistines,' I agreed, realizing they were putting me on. I declined the lemon and accepted a dash of milk.
We made tea talk. Mrs. Maxson was too polite to ask why someone used my face for a soccer ball. Instead, she discussed the relative qualities of West Bengal Darjeeling compared with Russian. Charlie Riggs allowed as how he favored the smoky aroma of Lapsang souchong from the Fujian province because Darjeeling always reminded him of muscatel.
I know more about Dutch beer than Chinese tea, so I kept quiet and watched Pamela, who sat regally on a stiff chair, her legs crossed demurely at the ankles, cup and saucer balanced daintily on her lap. She had changed into a summer sweater of white cotton and a long denim skirt. A tad casual for the formal room, perhaps, but it didn't bother me. I just admired the lady's ankles, as Victorian men must have done in similar rooms a century before. Mrs. Maxson seemed entranced by Charlie, who was waxing enthusiastic about the furniture, which, to me, looked like Early Flea Market.
When he finally stopped talking, Charlie Riggs slathered clotted cream and strawberry jam onto a warm scone and inhaled the aroma of the sweet cakes and steaming tea. I hadn't seen him this happy since he had
