All Things Undying by Marcia Talley Page A

your dad?’
    â€˜Jon’s driving him to the garage to pick up his car. It’s having a dent in the bonnet repaired. Wasn’t paying attention and drove right under a turnstile without waiting for the arm to go up. Brand new car, too.’ She sighed. ‘One of these days, Hannah, we’re going to have to take away Dad’s car keys. I don’t want to think about it.
    â€˜I thought this would be a good time to show you that video of Dead Reckoning ,’ she continued, promptly changing the subject. ‘Dad wasn’t keen to stick around for that, anyway. The way he scarpered out of here you’d think I was going to handcuff him to the chair and force him to watch home movies of the Big Switch On at Blackpool.’
    â€˜A million bulbs? Six miles of the Promenade lit up like Las Vegas on steroids?’ I grinned. ‘Frankly, I’d find that irresistible.’
    Carrying our cups, we moved to the lounge and settled down in comfortable chairs arranged in front of Alison’s flat-screen television. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves flanked the screen. One held an impressive array of electronics – a DVD player, a Sky+ box, even a hunk of metal and plastic that I recognized as an obsolete Betamax machine. The other held what must have been the world’s largest collection of DVDs, including boxed sets of several long-running television series.
    Alison aimed the controller at the Sky+, pressed play, and fast-forwarded through the advertisements to get to the opening of Susan’s show.
    â€˜What made Susan decide to take her show to Britannia Royal Naval College?’ I asked as a man and a woman raced down a beach in fast-forward, whatever romantic issues they had been having completely resolved by some product in a green box that flashed briefly on the screen.
    â€˜One of her producers has a son who attended the college. Apparently the young man found the place a bit creepy at times. He mentioned this to his father, who suggested to Susan that she have a look see.’
    â€˜How on earth did Susan get permission to film there?’ I eased off my shoes and got comfortable on the sofa, tucking my feet underneath me. ‘During our time in Dartmouth, even major movie companies were routinely turned down.’
    Alison grinned. ‘Not turned down, exactly. The Navy charges a hefty fee for permission to film at the college. Or so Jon says. Obviously Susan has deep pockets.’ She stabbed a button on the controller, freezing the program at the opening credits, plump text morphing into clouds that flitted in Casper the Friendly Ghost-like fashion across the screen.
    â€˜They probably made arrangements through the public affairs officer in Portsmouth. He showed up, anyway. You’ll see him among the official party, along with Richard Porter. You remember Richard?’
    â€˜I do. The college historian. When we first came to Dartmouth, he was kind enough to give Paul and me a private tour.’
    I remembered the tour well. I’d been stunned by the beauty of the campus, sprawled across a hill overlooking the Dart, dominating the town. Both BRNC and the US Naval Academy had been designed by prominent architects. Both had been built in the first decade of the twentieth century, with careful attention to form and function. BRNC was smaller in scale than USNA, of course, reflecting the size of their respective Navies, but I’d felt instantly at home.
    On the TV screen, Susan Parker – dressed in a gray skirt, white shirt and pale pink jacket – stood chatting in front of the main gate of the college with a man I recognized as Richard Porter, chestnut hair neatly combed, handsomely turned out in a dark blue pinstripe suit. A scarlet tie was knotted around his neck. ‘Thank you for inviting me, Richard,’ Susan was saying. ‘I appreciate how tight security can be.’
    The camera followed the two as they strolled up the drive to the