Missing Susan

talking to a bunch of boring strangers while you overeat? So I do my exercises and read my books and stay at home with my cats-there’s Dickens and Waldo and Wilkie and Trollope. Trollope is female, get it? I had her fixed, though. And as I said, I read a lot. I think people are much nicer in books than they are in person, don’t you?”

At least, thought Elizabeth, they are easier to shut up. Aloud she said, “Actually, in the books I usually read, the people are nowhere near as nice as those I meet in real life. I like true crime.”

Susan appeared less than thrilled by this revelation. “True crime? That’s pretty ghoulish. Sort of perverted, I mean. How did you get interested in that?”

“I am a forensic anthropologist,” Elizabeth reminded her in icy tones, “but actually, it all began a few years ago on an archaeological dig in Scotland. One of the other diggers was a crime buff and he sparked my interest.” She neglected to mention what fate befell this crime buff. Besides, the truth was that Elizabeth’s fervors were short- lived, lasting for approximately six months each. Having gone through her Bronte phase, her sea lion fixation, and her most recent (and to her loved ones particularly trying) royal flush, she was now occupying her intellect with murder most foul, until the next idee fixe happened along.

“In fact, I brought along a true crime book today. I kept it with me in case I had time to read.” She reached into her purse and brought out a copy of Death Takes A Holiday: A Murder Guide to Britain by Rowan Rover. “It covers old murder cases in just the areas we will visit on this tour.”

“Do you think the guide will take us to those?” asked Susan. “I hope not. I wanted to see things of real cultural importance, like Agatha Christie’s home, and the cathedral of Brother Cadfael, and-”

“But those aren’t real crimes!” Elizabeth protested.

“But they were set in real places,” said Susan with unshakable logic. “And they’re much more famous. Besides, those PBS Mystery! adaptations are always filmed on location. Wouldn’t it be great to visit a movie set?”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “I want to see the roof where Charles Bravo threw up the poison his wife gave him. And I thought that as long as I was here early, I’d use this book to find some other places of interest to the group-just in case the guide isn’t familiar with this text.”

“Lucky for you that I turned up, isn’t it?” said Susan. “Imagine being stuck here all day with that nasty reference book. I find it impossible to read in airports with all the noise and confusion.”

Elizabeth managed a feeble smile. “Lucky me,” she said.

Elsewhere in the airport Alice MacKenzie, her finger inserted in a cup of ice water, was debarking from a flight that had seemed to last six months. Under these circumstances, she bore a newfound indifference to the charms of Britain.

Alice was a gray-haired woman in her mid-fifties with a penchant for pantsuits and sensible shoes, and she was not the least bit embarrassed to enter Great Britain wearing a Dixie cup on her forefinger. It would be silly to value appearances more than comfort, in her oft-stated opinion.

Alice had boarded the plane many time zones earlier in southern California, full of excitement about the upcoming murder mystery tour of England. A retired teacher from San Diego, she was a mystery buff who combined a keen love of travel with an interest in the island origins of her MacKenzie ancestors. When she read about the tour in a local newspaper, it seemed the perfect combination of both her passions.

“Go,” said her second husband Richard, who was not retired. “I have enough work at the office for two people. Besides, as long as the sports channel doesn’t go on the fritz and the pizzeria doesn’t stop delivering, I can manage.”

So Alice had boarded the plane with last minute instructions about the houseplants and the cat, and promises to call each weekend to check on him and give him tour updates. Once the plane began to taxi down the runway, Alice relegated the cat, the houseplants, and Richard to a mental broom closet. She settled back happily with her guidebook to anticipate the coming adventure. She was going to keep a journal of the trip, so that she could relive it privately in the months to come. Perhaps she would write it up for her book club. She pictured herself guest speaker at one of the winter meetings, regaling her friends with details of her sojourn in England.

Several cramped, monotonous hours later, Alice was beginning to feel like the modern equivalent of a wagon train pioneer. At least the forty-niners got more to eat than salted peanuts and Diet Coke. And they didn’t have to sit next to a snoring businessman for three thousand miles.

As the plane droned on toward Chicago over dark empty prairies, she found herself wondering if it would have been faster to get to England from the other direction. She supposed not. The Pacific was rather large, not to mention China and Russia. Still, it did seem to take forever to inch across North America and finally into the sky above the vast blackness of the Atlantic.

To make matters worse, just about the time she could have gone to sleep from sheer exhaustion, she managed to burn herself on that stupid light fixture above her seat, causing her to spend most of the Atlantic stretch of the journey in absolute agony. She was trying to turn off the light so that she could sleep, she explained tearfully to the flight attendant. On other airlines (better airlines, her tone suggested) the switch was beside the bulb. In this plane, it was on the arm-rest, but how was she to know that? In groping for it, she had put her forefinger directly on the white-hot bulb, sending a wave of unbelievable pain through her body. It seemed hours before a flight attendant strolled by to answer her call button. She asked for ice for her finger, which was by now beginning to blister. The stewardess brought it with all the casualness of someone indulging an irrational whim. Alice, mindful of her dependence on this creature’s goodwill for more ice, managed to thank her politely.

Ice, she discovered, made it possible for her to stand the pain without weeping, but she was still unable to sleep. She stared at the meager cup encasing her enflamed forefinger and watched the ice melt and turn tepid, sending stabs of pain through her injured flesh.

The necessity of staving off the pain forced her to make quite a nuisance of herself with the cabin crew for the remainder of the flight, ringing them whenever her balm melted, and in one instance, when no one answered her summons, venturing for ice herself, much to the dismay of the stewardesses, who were lounging around gossiping in the galley.

Alice remained civil to these slackers, but she was firm in her request for assistance in her medical dilemma. That’s what they were paid for, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t they help a stricken passenger?

She supposed that they were delighted to see her go when the plane finally touched down at Gatwick. For once she didn’t fret about the plane crashing on the runway. Now, however, she was having considerable misgivings about her ability to enjoy the tour. She exited the plane with her finger thrust into a cup of rapidly melting ice, wondering what would become of her next. An airport attendant told her that Gatwick had a first-aid station-not that anything could be done for minor burns, he added. His directions on how to get there were so endless and complicated that Alice resolved to look for a restaurant instead. Surely someone would sell her some ice.

But first she had to get through customs. Before the plane landed, the flight attendant had recited some carefully memorized instructions on how to proceed. It boiled down to: get your luggage, stand in the appropriate line.

Alice wondered how she was going to carry two suitcases with her finger in a paper cup. She managed to find the metal shopping carts, and was debating the best way to steer one with a hand and a foot, when a slender auburn-haired woman of about her own age approached her. “You look like you could use some help,” she said in familiar California English.

Alice heaved a sigh of relief. “I sure could,” she said. “I burned my finger on the airplane reading lamp! Did you just get here, too? Were you on Flight 304?”

The woman picked up Alice’s suitcases and set them on the cart. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Frances Coles, from La Mesa. I’m taking a mystery tour of southern England.”

After they had expressed delight and astonishment that they were both on the same tour, Alice reflected that it was not such a remarkable coincidence after all, since they were both from southern California. The travel agency had quite naturally booked them on the same flight, albeit twenty rows apart. But she was nonetheless delighted to find an ally so soon.

“I’ll hold your passport for you,” said Frances, as they waited in the nonresidents’ line for customs.

“Thanks,” said Alice. “I hope we get through fast.” She indicated her paper cup. “My ice is melting.”

“That would be a great way to smuggle diamonds into the country,” Frances remarked. “Burn your finger and hide the diamonds in the ice.”