Scene Twenty
A/N: Credits to the Virtual Guide to the Tower of London in the Internet site .com
In striking parallel and contrast with Helen and Nikki's Parisian adventures, George Channing was entertaining the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia, Dr Kay Scarpetta and the very dependable Captain Pete Marino, whose blunt New York mannerisms concealed the sharp inquisitive mind made homicide detective for the Richmond police. It spoke volumes for the way that George had completely cut herself adrift from the establishment and had set out to make her own friendships, including her smart new flat. There were limits in living under Daddy's roof.
.
Kay was a sharply dressing blonde who was naturally curious and who loved nothing more than absorbing the ambiance and cultures of differing cities, both in her own home country and abroad. For reasons she had not ever fathomed, she had taken on herself the mission to culturally improve Marino who showed remarkable talents for digging in his heels in that area. They had enjoyed George's generous hospitality, which combined well with the case that George had been engaged with. They had a spare day left after the conclusion of their involvement with the murder case that George had taken on and, much to Marino's dismay, Kay saw the golden opportunity to make best use of precious time.
"So, you're going to see what cultural treats London has to offer? I'm sure you'll both enjoy yourselves." George said in her brightest conversational manner as she poured them an early morning cup of tea. Marino gallantly did his best in handling George's fine china cup and saucer and silver teaspoon, when he was far more used to the utilitarian mug of coffee."It would be an insult to the fair city not to take in an art gallery or a concert or both while we have the spare time." Kay enthused.George suppressed a grin as her sharp eyes spotted Marino's visible look of panic in his eyes. She could tell who wore the pants in this friendship."I could recommend the Salvador Dali exhibition on the South Bank. I've been round there myself and his paintings have to be seen to be believed. They're frightfully impressive compared to the prints."Marino placed his cup and saucer with as much delicacy as he could summon up with only a slight rattle. It was an impressive effort, given the circumstances."Do you want to borrow my car to get around? London taxis cost the earth. I'll take it easy at home sunbathing in the back garden and maybe do a bit of work while you're out.""That would be very much appreciated, George."She's even beginning to talk like the English, moaned Marino to himself.
"You've been in England before, Kay so I'll leave the driving to you." George said, directing a very meaning look at Marino. She had gathered very swiftly how an American male and his set of wheels were inextricably married and how much of a show-off Marino would be in the driving seat. That's all very well, she judged, but not in her car."Ain't it enough to be the all-powerful doctor lawyer Indian chief? " whined Marino the second when they had turned out of George's front drive. He could sense the culture glitter in Kay's eyes and he feared for his future. "I bet you ten dollars that the Brits don't even have a nearby McDonalds for a man to relax. My feet get tired easy."
"It's a chance while we're over here to catch up with our cultural education. We're right on the doorstep for London."
"What's London got that New York ain't got?"
"It's not the same for a start. It would be unthinkable to come so close to London and not take in the Dali exhibition. If that isn't to your taste, what about something thoroughly English like the Tate gallery or the British Museum?"
Marino visibly writhed as if the Mafia were threatening him with some kind of hideous torture. He could see the mischievous gleam in Kay's eyes as she saw past his first objection to her choice of gallery.
"I'm too old to change, Doc. I flunked art at high school. I flunked music at high school. Let's face it, culture and me ain't exactly good friends."
"So your rock and roll records don't count as music," put in Kay softly.
"That ain't the same. That's real American music. That's something that's pumping back at me when I'm cruising down the interstate bypass."
Kay's reaction was cool and unruffled. She knew very well that Marino only exaggerated the redneck inside him, the more she tried to improve his mind. The only problem was that he combined the cunning of an obstreperous teenager with the doggedness and dedication of the very fine cop that she knew him to be. Too bad that he couldn't see how good it would be for him.
"Ain't there any of this goddamn culture that I'm going to like…"
"It's like good medicine. It'll be good for you."
"Sure it will, doc and I bet you a hundred bucks that it tastes lousy like all 'good medicine.'"
Kay paused while she considered changing her tack. It coincided with waiting for the last person in the line of pedestrians at the zebra crossing. He nipped across the road while the hungry line of cars was waiting. She reckoned that Marino's mother must have had one hell of a time years ago dealing with his boyhood illnesses judging by the extra special sneer with which he overloaded the last two words. She turned smartly to the left into a cul de sac and switched off the engine. This had to be thrashed out while they weren't moving.
"Well, what would you like that's cultured, Marino?" Kay reasoned patiently.
"Something that's got some action in it. Something with guns," Marino said at last with a strong suggestion of wise cracking, 'one upmanship' smugness in his tone of voice.
Kay reached for her guide to London for inspiration. Culture and guns seemed like opposing concepts to her way of thinking but she was determined not to let him outsmart her. She flicked through the brochure, passed up on St. Paul's Cathedral and Royal Albert Hall until her eye lighted upon the imposing ramparts of the Tower of London. A slight smile lit her face much to Marino's discomfort. He had sneakily thought that he had set Kay an impossible task that she'd give up in despair but he should have known better.
"What about the Tower of London, Marino? It's historical which suits me and look at the picture of these cannons. They're far bigger than that Gloc of yours."
The expression on Marino's face was a picture. He had that look on his face that betrayed the fact that his bluff had been called. He didn't know what to think or say.
"It's a kinda oddball joint to go to. The Queen don't live there any more, Doc? "
"Relax, Marino. She finds Buckingham Palace more comfortable. Hey, listen to this. The brochure says that some parts of the Tower of London date actually back to Norman times."
"I get it, Doc. Like it's been here a long time."
"And we're going to find out more about it, won't we Marino. It's something to tell the folks back home. You could send them a postcard."
By the way that Marino grimaced but didn't say anything, Kay realized that her enthusiasm wasn't well received. However, she knew that inwardly, he was well and truly trapped.
Marino's definition of a city was New York. He had worked a number of years for the police department. He had driven his car with total confidence into the roughest part of the Bronx but he had gladly passed up the chance to drive round London. He had solid reasons to do so from what he had seen so far. While the centre of the Big Apple was set out in a rectangular grid and made it easy to drive around, the sharp twists and turns of London streets were starting to make him feel dizzy.
"Every goddamn country drives right side of the road. What's with this big difference here?'
"Different country, different culture. Relax, Marino, I'm doing the driving anyway. All you have to do is sit back and take it easy."
Marino's nerve ends were out on stalks. All his normal senses were reversed as if he were looking in a mirror. Everything felt all wrong and it made him tetchy. He was wondering what would happen when they got to be pedestrians and it would not do his rough, tough self-image good for the Doc to see that he was nervous of a little old road. He would never live it down.
"I can't figure out that goddamn screwball architect when all this asphalt got laid down. I'm used to treading power with my right foot right past some asshole of a driver who can't drive and chew gum at the same time. That don't work here, no sir. It just has to be different," he muttered under his breath.
"London's a historic city, Marino. You have to understand that."
He watched idly out of the passenger window and his eyes spotted the black cabs and his practiced eye saw how they weaved in and out of the traffic with perfect assurance. If they drive round London for a living, he had to respect them, especially as every one of them was undamaged.
"Still, I gotta hand it to these taxi drivers even if they drive these funny black set of wheels like some kind of weird hearse. New York yellow cabs, they've got more style."
As Kay stopped at the traffic lights and checked her directions, she was pleased that Marino found something to approve of. The unspoken fraternity of wheels crossed cultures and continents, she supposed.
"Wow, those coaches are something else. That's real smart, building them two decks."
The prosaic red London bus had a long history of wending its way round the busy streets, taking consignments of people from one place to another and little did it think how strange, how exotic it looked in Marino's eyes when compared to the grey cladded Greyhound single-decker coach.
"I don't get it," came Marino's running commentary as they passed down a street full of restaurants of all sizes. "England is England, right. I thought that those guys eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and drink cups of tea. So what's with this Starbucks café and that Chinese joint? Don't they know who they are anymore?"
"It's just that it's a cosmopolitan city. There's Chinatown in New York, for instance."
"There ain't that many aliens Doc, not even in this city."
"So perhaps English people are more adventurous with their diet than you might think."
"You think so? " Marino asked with genuine amazement, without his heavy-duty sarcasm.
Kay sat back smoothly in the car and let the conversation wash over her as she passed through Leicester Square. She had to admit that driving in London and totally reversing the habits of a lifetime was harder than she made out. It was six months ago since she was in England, but she had stayed at George's house and hadn't really been let loose in the big city. Nevertheless, she gloried in driving past the famous sights of London, past Piccadilly Circus, past…….
"Ain't that Nelson's column, Doc?" interrupted Marino. "If he was so damn smart, how come he let some jackass stick a column right up his ass so high no one can see him?"
"I really don't know, Marino," Kay sighed.
She followed the road signs down the wide expanse of Whitehall and the imposing array of government offices, past the wrought iron black gates that sternly defended the entrance to Downing Street. Remembering that Marino was shortly to be force-fed large doses of English history, Kay declined to point out these features though Marino looked secretly impressed by the grandeur of the buildings. Turning sharp left into Parliament Square, to their right stood the incredibly ornate Gothic structure of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben to its left. A shaft of sunlight illuminated its majesty. Kay had seen pictures of it and it took her aback to see it.
"Bet you don't know where we are now."
"Sure I know," Marino said with the enormous satisfaction of outsmarting the Doc. "It's the Houses of Parliament and that goddamn big clock on the side is Big Ben……. some place," he added laconically with masterful understatement.
Kay just smiled to herself and drove on down the embankment. The tide was in and the rippling waters bespoke a purposeful sense of bustle and purpose. In Marino's eyes, it looked like a classier version of the Hudson River. She picked her way out of the heart of the City of London and, sure enough the huge grey ancient turreted walls of the Tower of London loomed up. To one side was the famous Tower Bridge. By sheer luck, a multistory car park jumped out at her and Kay swerved left into the entrance, indicating at the same time, which made Marino wince. After a wearisome journey to the fifth floor, Kay led the way down the none too appealing concrete staircase while Marino followed on without saying anything.
Marino proudly led the way across the road as instincts took over, automatically looking the wrong way. A blast of a car horn and a screech of tyres shocked his senses as the car swerved, the man's mouth was opening and closing as it flashed past at lightning speed.
"Goddamn fruit loop driver. Ain't he got eyes?" Marino swore freely.
"Which side of the road do cars drive in this country, Marino," Kay said softly.
Marino blushed a delicate shade of red before he found a way out of his embarrassment.
"Just testing, hey. OK, let's go and get cultured."
Marino walked alongside Kay but let her just slightly lead the way. Kay smiled slightly but pretended not to notice.
It was inevitable that they would have to wait and queue up and Marino fidgeted by himself while Kay pretended not to notice. She seized the opportunity to buy a guidebook just in case her objective succeeded. She knew that Marino's natural inquisitiveness wouldn't be satisfied by her rusty general knowledge. Finally, the crowd of people moved forward and Marino suddenly saw the sharp outline of a perfectly formed double tower with a wide archway in the middle. His mouth hung open with total shock as if he couldn't believe his eyes. As they came closer, the archway seemed to lean over them and gently ushered them into a different world.
"Jesus Christ, a real castle. I thought they don't exist outside Hollywood." Marino exclaimed. A thoughtful expression crossed his mind as nostalgic memories of going to the pictures as a kid came back to him.
"Hey Doc, I remember Errol Flynn all the guys firing bows and arrows, hanging out in the forest and wearing those funny green stockings. Next time I saw him, the guy was on some kind of ship, firing cannons. He ended up getting knighted by that Queen Elizabeth. Of course, it ain't the same as those Wild West guys packing a real mean six shooter but I guess they didn't have the Colt 45 back then."
Kay noted that Marino's distinguished historical authority was the late actor in films of dubious authenticity and his own equally dubious sexual morals by all accounts. Marino's key to analyzing key turning points in history obviously lay in how many corpses were strewn about the stage.
"So you're getting impressed, Marino?"
"I might be."
As the procession carried on, Marino swiftly dropped his Mr. Supercool routine and became something like an excitable kid though the names and historical associations of the various sights passed him by.
"Hey, what's that? Feels spooky. I've visited pens that give you the creeps that way." Marino jabbed a forefinger straight ahead, referring in his own imitable way to the grim American penitentiary. It pointed down to the darkened area below them, silhouetted by a set of double barred gates looking like angry teeth. It gave Kay the shivers as if once past those gates, there was no escape. This looked like the ancestor of every prison that came after it.
"That's easily explained because this is Traitor's Gate, a one way trip from the River Thames and an execution at the other end."
"No kidding? This dump's a real let down. It ain't as scary as its name. No dead bodies just kind of hanging around," queried Marino petulantly, switching moods arbitrarily as was his wont.
"It was originally known as Water Gate," sighed Kay from the depths of her guide book," but was later changed when it was used as the landing for the Crown's enemies. All-important prisoners entered the Tower through this gate. According to legend when Princess Elizabeth arrived on Palm Sunday 1554 she refused at first to land at the gate, angrily proclaiming that she was no traitor. A sharp shower of rain however, caused her to change her mind. Later when as Queen she visited the Tower she insisted on passing through Traitors Gate. "What was good enough for Elizabeth the Princess is good enough for Elizabeth the Queen", she is supposed to have told the Constable."
"And she walked? That's real smart- or else her lawyer was," approved Marino.
Marino had mixed feelings about the Bloody Tower as he peeked at the small four-poster bed with velvet drapes, the delicately carved dark oak table and chairs and the modest but clean white room.
"No rats, no snakes, nothing like that?" Marino said with incredulity.
"Sir Walter Raleigh stayed here." Quoted Kay from her guidebook, hoping to detain Marino while she breathed in the cultural enlightenment.
"So what's with this guy?"
"He invented tobacco."
"No shit. So he's the guy that got you hooked."
"Well a few generations down the line, very indirectly."
Marino's spirits rose when they got to the White Tower, that formidable foursquare central tower buttressed at each corner by a high tower. It created a look of menacing military power. He was not disappointed by what it promised.
"Say, look at those suits of armour. It makes those guys kind of hard." Marino exclaimed. He eyed the shining curved metal and the way that their faces were covered. It made them look deadly, as if their shiny steel hard swords were made for killing people with. He really wanted to hold one of the swords thinking how totally lethal they looked.
"I could scare the shit out of some of those squirrels." He muttered meditatively.
"Marino, don't," Kay snapped.
He turned on that disappointed little boy look and strode off enthusiastically to the adjacent room to study "the collection of hunting and sporting arms including crossbows and firearms. Here can be traced the technical advances in firearm mechanisms, from the matchlock, the snaphance and the wheel lock to the flintlock. The development of decorative techniques is also evident. Craftsmen applied or inlaid precious metals, ivory, bone and even mother-of-pearl to enhance the wood they carved and chiselled with such consummate skill; the contemporary artistic styles from the 15th to the 19th centuries can thus be compared."
The most unlikely event finally happened to Kay that day. Marino asked her if he could borrow her guidebook.
In turn, Kay was entranced by " the exquisite Chapel of St John the Evangelist" on the first floor" where the royal family and the court worshipped and where the knights of the Order of the Bath spent their vigil the night before a coronation. It is one of the most perfect specimens of Norman architecture in Great Britain." She tried to stall her enforced exit for as long as possible but Marino's enthusiasm would not give her peace.
When they came out into the courtyard, Marino was in Seventh Heaven to spy the large cannon in the yard, mounted on wheels. The brightly coloured beefeaters and the yeomen of the guards passed him by, unnoticed. Marino eyed up the line of the gun and carefully judged where the shot would fall. He was transported to another realm of existence where he could indulge his fantasies to the limit. Kay stood patiently at his side until she had a brainwave as she had spotted a building of very fine Tudor architecture, the Queen's House.
"You stay here and I'll see you here in half an hour," Kay pronounced, very loudly and clearly in the general direction of his back.
"Huh?" he responded, his barely hearing ears having picked up the message.
She was sure that she could look out her version of culture, fine paintings and the refined world of a bygone age. She felt safe to leave Marino to indulge his boyhood gun fantasies. After floating through the artistic delicacies that were offered to her, Kay walked out of the low entrance door. She crossed the square to see Marino eye the chopping block with great satisfaction.
"If I had Diane Bray and Jay Talley before me, then……." Marino said with a chuckle." Sure beats hell out of the electric chair. Too quick though."
"They didn't always kill the prisoner with the first stroke." Kay interposed.
"You don't say," Marino beamed with satisfaction. "That was real smart of the Brits."
Presently, both of them were starting to feel dead tired. Kay looked at her watch and she could see that visiting time was nearly up. All good things had to come to an end. She couldn't believe how Marino's attention had been captured for so long. She would never have thought it possible. Just what he had absorbed from his version of culture was something she didn't want to think too much about. She was sure that she would hear all about it before long.
"Hey Doc, you drive round London real good. You must have been here before."
This was the nearest that Kay would get to a compliment from Marino, she smiled wryly.
In turn, Marino was puzzled how they had quickly cut through the London traffic after all the twists and turns of this morning until he put two and two together. No wonder, he called her doctor lawyer Indian chief, he reflected. He was tired yet curiously satisfied and was looking forward to George's cooking, a comfortable chair and a shot of Bourbon.
"I don't buy all this steel and concrete crap like they have back home. Last time I went home, places where I used to hang out got trashed. Makes me sad like nothing lasts. It's different here. You can feel the history. This is all real class, like George." Marino reflected somberly and quietly as they neared their home.
"What about George?"
"She's a real lady. Way she speaks, way she dresses is like something out of history but that's good. Bet you fifty bucks that her folks are just like her and the folks at the back of them. She ain't changed 'cos what went into them was built to last. It means something. This kinda changed the way I see things now. It's real strong. I trust it."
This was the first sensible comment Marino had said all day. He had finally become a cultured Anglophile in his own time and fashion.