This Body of Death

by Elizabeth George

  “Control your paranoia for five minutes,” Lynley said. “I said from the first that I wanted to talk to you. I waited more than an hour in the incident room. Dee Harriman finally told me you’d gone home. All right?”

  “Talk to me about what?” she asked.

  “Frazer Chaplin.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’ve had most of the day to think about this from every angle. I reckon Frazer’s our man.”

  SHE WAITED FOR Lynley’s explanation. She drank more coffee and decided to make an attempt with the toast. Her stomach didn’t recoil altogether at the thought of food, so she lifted one of the triangles Lynley had made for her, and she took a bite. She wondered if this was the extent of the inspector’s culinary talents. She thought it likely. He’d used far too much butter.

  As he’d done earlier in the incident room, Lynley spoke of a magazine he’d had from Deborah St. James. Frazer Chaplin was in one of the pictures. That could indicate several things, he told her: Paolo di Fazio had been claiming from the first that Jemima had been involved with Frazer, despite the household rules that Mrs. McHaggis had put up for all her tenants to see. Abbott Langer had said much to support this claim, and Yolanda—at a stretch, Lynley admitted—had also indicated an involvement of some kind on Jemima’s part with a dark man.

  So we’re going to listen to a psychic now? Isabelle wailed.

  Just hang on, Lynley told her. They knew Jemima’s involvement wasn’t with di Fazio since she’d asked Yolanda repeatedly about whether her new lover returned her affections and she’d hardly be asking that about di Fazio after she’d ended her relationship with him. So wasn’t it safe to assume that Frazer Chaplin—his denials to the contrary—was the man they were looking for?

  How the hell did that follow? Isabelle demanded. Even if he was involved with Jemima, that hardly meant he’d murdered her.

  Wait, Lynley told her. If she would just hear him out please … ?

  Oh bloody all right. Isabelle was weary. She waved at him to continue.

  Let’s assume a few things, he said. First, let’s assume that prior to her death Jemima was indeed involved romantically with Frazer Chaplin.

  Fine. Let’s assume, Isabelle said.

  Good. Next, let’s assume her possession of a gold coin and a carved carnelian are indications not that she carried a good luck charm or is sentimental about her father’s belongings or anything of the like. Let’s assume from these items that a Roman treasure hoard has been found. Then, let’s assume that she and Gordon Jossie are the individuals who found that hoard and they found it on their holding in Hampshire. Finally, let’s assume that prior to reporting that hoard—which must be done by law—something occurred between Jemima and Jossie that brought their relationship to a precipitate halt. She decamped to London, but all the time she knew there was a treasure to be had and that treasure was worth a fortune.

  “What on earth brought their relationship to such a halt that she actually went into hiding from him?” Isabelle asked.

  “We don’t know that yet,” Lynley admitted.

  “Wonderful,” Isabelle muttered. “I can hardly wait to let Hillier know. For God’s sake, Thomas, this is too much assuming. What sort of arrest d’ you expect we can manage from all this speculation?”

  “No arrest at all,” Lynley said. “Not yet at least. There are pieces missing. But if you think about it for a moment, Isabelle, motive isn’t one of them.”

  Isabelle considered this: Jemima Hastings, Gordon Jossie, and a buried treasure. She said, “Jossie has a motive, Thomas. I don’t see how Frazer Chaplin has.”

  “Of course he has. If there’s a buried treasure and if Jemima Hastings told him about it.”

  “Why would she have done?”

  “Why wouldn’t she? If she’s in love with him, if she hopes he’s ‘the one,’ there’s a good possibility that she told him about the treasure to make sure he stayed ‘the one.’”

  “All right. Fine. So. She told him about the treasure. Doesn’t it stand to reason that he’d want to get rid of Gordon Jossie and not Jemima Hastings?”

  “That would secure him the treasure only if he could hold on to Jemima’s affections. Her various visits to the psychic indicate she may well have been having second thoughts about Frazer. Why else keep asking if he was ‘the one’? Suppose he knew she was having doubts. Suppose he saw the handwriting on the wall. Lose Jemima and he loses the fortune. The only way to prevent this would be to get rid of them both—Jemima and Jossie—and he doesn’t have to worry about anything.”

  Isabelle considered this. As she did so, Lynley rose from the table and went to the sink. He leaned against it and was silent, watching her and waiting.

  She finally said, “It’s such a leap, Thomas. There’s too much to account for. He’s been alibied—”

  “McHaggis could be lying. She could also be mistaken. She says he was home taking a shower but that’s what he always did, didn’t he? She was asked days later, Isabelle, and she could well want to protect him anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a woman.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, what’s that supposed to—”

  “Everyone agrees he has a way with women. Why not with Bella McHaggis as well?”

  “What, then? He’s sleeping with her? With her, with Jemima, with …who else, Thomas?”

  “With Gina Dickens, I dare say.”

  She stared at him. “Gina Dickens?”

  “Think about it. There she is in the magazine pictures of the Portrait Gallery’s opening show. If Frazer was there—and we know he was—how impossible is it to believe he met Gina Dickens that night? How impossible is it to believe that, meeting Gina Dickens, he fell for her? Wanted to add her to his list of conquests? Ultimately decided to replace Jemima with her? Sent her down to Hampshire to get herself involved with Jossie so that—”

  “D’you realise how many things are unaccounted for in all of this?” She put her head in her hands. Her brain felt sodden. “We can suppose this and suppose that, Thomas, but we have no evidence that anything you’re saying actually happened, so what’s the point?”

  Lynley went on, seeming undeterred. They did have evidence, he pointed out, but he reckoned they hadn’t been putting it together correctly.

  “What, for example?”

  “The handbag and the bloodstained shirt from the Oxfam bin, just to begin,” he said. “We’ve assumed someone planted them there to implicate one of the inhabitants of Bella McHaggis’s house. We haven’t considered that, knowing the bin wasn’t emptied regularly, one of the inhabitants of the house put the items there merely to store them.”

  “Store them?”

  “Until they could be taken down to Hampshire, handed over to Gina Dickens, and placed somewhere on Gordon Jossie’s property.”

  “God. This is madness. Why wouldn’t he just—”

  “Listen.” Lynley returned to the table and sat. He leaned across it and put his hand over her arm. “Isabelle, it’s not as mad as it seems. This crime depended upon two things. First, the killer had to have knowledge of Jemima’s past, her present, and her intentions towards Gordon Jossie. Second, the killer couldn’t have worked alone.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “Because he had to gather what evidence was going to be necessary to frame Gordon Jossie for this murder and that evidence was to be found in Hampshire: the murder weapon and a yellow shirt from Jossie’s clothes cupboard, I expect. At the same time the killer had to know what Jemima was doing with regard to Jossie. If Frazer was indeed her lover, isn’t it reasonable to assume that she showed him those postcards that Jossie had put up round the gallery in an attempt to locate her? Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that, learning about these cards and already being involved with Gina Dickens, Frazer Chaplin began to see a way in which he could have everything: the treasure that he’d learned about, a means to get to that treasure, and Gina Dickens as well?”

  Isabelle th
ought about this. She tried to see how it had been managed: a phone call made to the number on the postcard that would tell Gordon Jossie where to find Jemima; Jemima’s decision to meet Jossie in a private location; someone in Hampshire to keep an eye on Jossie and monitor his movements and someone in London doing the same with Jemima, and both of these someones intimately involved with Jossie and with Jemima, privy to the nature of the relationship they’d had with each other; both of these someones additionally in contact; both of these someones engaged in a delicate minuet of timing … ?

  “It makes my head swim,” she finally said. “It’s impossible.”

  “It isn’t,” he said, “especially if Gina Dickens and Frazer knew each other from the night of the gallery opening. And it would have worked, Isabelle. Carefully planned as it was, it would have worked perfectly. The only thing they didn’t take into account was Yukio Matsumoto’s presence in the cemetery that day. Frazer didn’t know Matsumoto was being Jemima’s guardian angel. Jemima likely didn’t know it herself. So neither Frazer nor Gina Dickens took into account that someone would see Jemima meet Gordon Jossie and also see Gordon Jossie leave her, very much alive.”

  “If that was Gordon Jossie at all.”

  “I don’t see how it could have been anyone else, do you?”

  Isabelle considered this from every angle. All right, it could have happened that way. But there was a problem with everything Lynley had said, and she couldn’t ignore it any more than he could. She said, “Jemima left Hampshire ages ago, Thomas. If there’s a Roman treasure hoard sitting down there on the property she shared with Gordon Jossie, why the hell in all that time did neither one of them—Jossie or Jemima—do a single thing about it?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out,” he said. “But I’d like to break Frazer’s alibi first.”

  STILL IN HER dressing gown, she walked outside with him. She didn’t look much better than when he dumped her into the shower, but it seemed to Lynley that her spirits were raised enough that she was unlikely to drink again that evening. He was reassured by this thought. He didn’t like to think why.

  She came as far as the narrow stairs that led from her basement flat up to the street. He’d mounted the first two steps when she said his name. He turned. She stood beneath him with one hand on the rail as if she intended to follow him up and the other hand at her throat, holding her dressing gown closed.

  She said, “All of this could have waited till morning, couldn’t it.”

  He thought about it for a moment before he said, “I suppose it could.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Why now instead of the morning, d’you mean?”

  “Yes.” She tilted her head towards the flat, the door standing open but no lights on within. “Did you suspect?”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “I thought there was a chance of it.”

  “Why bother, then?”

  “To sober you up? I wanted to toss round ideas with you, and I could hardly do that if you were in a stupor.”

  “Why?”

  “I like the give and take of a partnership. It’s how I work best, Isabelle.”

  “You were meant to do this.” She touched her fingers to her chest, seeming to indicate with this gesture that she was referring to the superintendent’s job. “I wasn’t,” she added. “That’s clear enough now.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You made the point yourself: The case is complicated. You’ve been handed something with a learning curve steeper than any curve I’ve had to travel.”

  “I don’t believe that at all, Thomas. But thank you for saying it. You’re a very good man.”

  “Often, I think the opposite.”

  “You’re thinking nonsense then.” Her eyes held his. “Thomas,” she said, “I …” But then she seemed to lose the courage to say anything more. This seemed uncharacteristic of her, so he waited to hear what she wanted to conclude with. He came down one step. She was directly below him, no longer virtually eye to eye with him but instead her head reaching just beneath his lips.

  The silence between them stretched too long. It evolved from quiet into tension. It moved from tension into desire. The most natural thing in the world became the simple movement to kiss her, and when her mouth opened beneath his, that was as natural as the kiss itself. Her arms slipped round him and his round her. His hands slid beneath the dressing gown’s folds to touch her cool, soft skin.

  “I want you,” she murmured at last, “to make love to me.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, Isabelle,” he said.

  “I don’t care in the least,” she replied.

  Chapter Thirty

  GORDON HADN’T PHONED THE SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVE when Gina returned home on the previous night. He wanted instead to watch her. He had to learn exactly what she was doing here in Hampshire. He had to know what she knew.

  He was rotten at acting, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d realised something was wrong the moment she’d come onto the property and found him sitting in the front garden at the table in the darkness. She was very late, and he was grateful for this. He let her think that the hour of her return was the reason for his silence and his observation of her.

  She said she’d got caught up in things, but she was vague when it came to what those things were. She’d lost track of time, she said, and there she was in a meeting with a social worker from Winchester and another from Southampton, and there was a very, very good chance that from a special programme established for immigrant girls, funding could be diverted for the use of …On and on she chattered. Gordon wondered how he hadn’t seen earlier that words came far too easily to Gina.

  They’d got through the rest of the evening and then to bed. She’d spooned against him closely in the darkness and her hips moved rhythmically against his bum. He was meant to turn and take her, and he did his part. They coupled in a furious silence meant to pose as wild desire. They were slick with sweat when the act was done.

  She murmured, “Wonderful, darling,” and she cradled him as she fell into sleep. He remained awake, with despair rising in him. Which way to turn was his only concern.

  In the morning she was wanton, as she’d been so often, her eyelids fluttering open, her long slow smile, her stretching of limbs, the dance of her body as she eased beneath the sheet to find him with her mouth.

  He pulled himself away abruptly. He swung out of bed. He didn’t shower but dressed in what he’d worn on the previous day and went downstairs to the kitchen where he made himself coffee. She joined him there.

  She hesitated at the doorway. He was at the table, beneath the shelf where Jemima had displayed a row of her childhood plastic ponies, a minor representation of one of her many collections of items she couldn’t bear to part with. He couldn’t remember where he’d put those plastic ponies now, and this concerned him. His memory didn’t generally give him any problems.

  Gina cocked her head at him, and her expression was soft. “You’re worried about something. What’s happened?”

  He shook his head. He wasn’t yet ready. Speaking wasn’t the difficult part for him. It was listening that he didn’t want to face.

  “You didn’t sleep, did you?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Will you tell me? Is it that man again … ?” She indicated the out-of-doors.

  The driveway onto the property was just outside the kitchen window, so he assumed she was talking about Whiting and wondering if there’d been another visit from him while she’d been gone from home. There hadn’t, but Gordon knew there would be. Whiting had not yet got what he wanted.

  Gina went to the fridge. She poured an orange juice. She was wearing a linen dressing gown, naked beneath it, and the morning sunlight made of her body a voluptuous silhouette. She was, he thought, a real man’s woman. She knew the power of the sensual. She knew that when it came to men, the sensual always overwhelmed the sensible.

  She stood at the sink, looking out of the window. She sa
id something about the morning. It was not yet hot, but it would be. Was it more difficult, she wanted to know, working with reeds when the day was so hot?

  It didn’t seem to bother her when he didn’t reply. She bent forward as if something outside had caught her attention. Then she said, “I can help you with clearing the rest of the paddock now the horses are gone.”

  Horses. He wondered for the first time at the word, at the fact that she called them horses instead of what they were, which was ponies. She’d called them horses from the first, and he hadn’t corrected her because …Why? he wondered. What had she represented to him that he hadn’t wondered about all the things that had told him from the first there was something wrong?

  She continued. “I’m happy to do it. I could use the exercise and I’ve nothing on for today anyway. They think it’ll take a week or so for the money to come through, less if I’m lucky.”

  “What money?”

  “For the programme.” She turned to look at him. “Have you forgotten already? I told you last night. Gordon, what’s wrong?”

  “D’you mean the west paddock?” he asked her.

  She looked puzzled before she apparently twigged how his line of thought was zigzagging. “Helping you clear the rest of the west paddock?” she clarified. “Yes. I c’n work on that overgrown bit by the old section of fence. Like I said, the exercise would be—”

  “Leave the paddock alone,” he said abruptly. “I want it left the way it is.”

  She seemed taken aback. But she collected herself enough to curve her lips in a smile and say, “Darling, of course. I was only trying to—”

  “That detective was here,” he told her. “That woman who came before with the black.”