Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  I nodded. I had felt the same. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I also felt that there was an agenda there, though I have absolutely no idea what it might be.’

  ‘So you think they might not be on the level?’

  ‘They probably are. But it’s a different level from the one we’re standing on.’

  ‘A more expensive one?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure it has anything to do with money. And that necklace bothers me. I am absolutely certain I’ve seen it somewhere before.’

  ‘I haven’t. But I’ve seen part of it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do you swear not to tell anyone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I got up and went to my desk. Right at the back of the right-hand drawer in the top was a box of drawing pins. I brought it over and spilled the contents on to the coffee table in front of us. The gold circle I had taken from the carpet of Helena’s bedroom shone dully in the light from the table lamps.

  Sam looked at it, then at me. ‘Is this what they call withholding evidence?’

  ‘I’m very much afraid that it is. I really don’t know what came over me, but when I saw this lying there on the carpet, soaked in blood, my first thought was whether it would implicate Helena in Amy’s death.’

  ‘Do you think it does?’

  ‘I might have once, but now I’m absolutely certain it does not.’

  ‘And how are you going to get it back to the authorities?’

  ‘Good question. A bridge to be crossed in due course.’

  ‘So if Doctor Drummond is innocent, who is guilty?’ asked Sam. ‘Got a pen and some paper?’

  I found a pad of lined paper and a felt tip and handed them over.

  ‘We need to do a bit of detective work. Or at least produce a précis of what we know already,’ Sam said.

  At the top of the page, he wrote: Did Amy know her killer? The answer was almost certainly yes, since the house had shown no indication of a break-in, which would imply that he came with her, or she let him in. ‘And at the risk of being labelled sexist, I’m going to refer to the killer as “he”.’

  ‘But the real question is how did Amy get in to Doctor Drummond’s house?’

  ‘And why go there in the first place? She must have been aware that, like everyone else, Helena couldn’t stand her. I imagine she didn’t have a key. Is it possible that Doctor Drummond let her in?’

  ‘I suppose so. Or had arranged to leave the front door unlocked, though given the animosity between them, it seems highly unlikely. Or maybe she just carelessly left it unlocked, as she so often did.’

  ‘What about the next question: did the killer bring the murder weapon with him, and take it away again when he left?’

  ‘Not the thing stuck in her eye, since he left that at the scene,’ I said, trying desperately not to bring Helena’s bedroom back into my mind – the blood, the smell, the stains – ‘but maybe the one responsible for the blunt trauma.’

  ‘Seems likely.’

  ‘I know the police took away a couple of objects capable of caving in Amy’s skull but have since returned them as being blameless. Or so my source tells me.’

  ‘Which implies that the murderer had come prepared.’

  ‘Or else used something in the house which he took away when he left. Helena’s house is so full of stuff, it’s almost impossible to say if anything’s missing.’

  ‘Moving rapidly on—’

  I held up my hand. ‘He also seems to have gone off with Amy’s expensive handbag, which according to her husband, Mark, she took everywhere, and which was not visible at the scene of crime.’

  ‘Fine.’ Sam scribbled on his bit of paper. ‘Moving on to the next point – and feeling like utter failures since so far we have no answers – what, if any, was the connection between Amy and her killer?’

  ‘That’s anybody’s guess,’ I said. ‘There didn’t even have to be any particular connection.’

  ‘I doubt that. She obviously went to bed with the guy, so she must have known him. I mean, even Amy, promiscuous as she seems to have been, wouldn’t jump into bed with a complete stranger. Or would she? And who was this person anyway? Did the two of them have a rendezvous at Helena’s place, thinking that she was away for the night?’

  ‘That seems a bit far-fetched. I realize that with her husband in the house, Amy wouldn’t have been able to meet him in Islington, but couldn’t they have gone to a hotel or something, if they were that randy?’

  ‘Who knows? Did they arrive together?’

  ‘Basically, we simply don’t know,’ I said. ‘Neither, as far as I can gather, do the police. My source says that they’ve questioned the neighbours but nobody saw or heard anything. A motorbike revving the following morning’s about the best we’ve come up with.’

  Sam looked at his sheet of paper again. ‘Right, next question: why was Amy killed? What was the purpose behind the murder, because there has to be one? Did she have something that somebody wanted? Did ghosts from her previous incarnations rise up for revenge?’

  ‘It does seem to have been something more than a simple murder – if murder is ever simple,’ I said. ‘Though mind you, you’d have to say that the wife throttled by a drunken spouse, the stabbing outside the pub, the act of self-defence against an unprovoked attack, would surely have to count as simple.’

  Sam adopted a knowing expression. ‘Find the why, and you find the who,’ he said. ‘If you’re lucky.’

  ‘It’s obviously something to do with Amy’s Masaccio book, gotta be,’ I said. ‘Those manuscript pages shoved inside her body … what was that all about?’ I gulped my whisky, beginning to feel exhaustion settling on me. ‘And then there’s the fairly obvious sexual connotations, and the destruction of the eyes.’

  ‘Thank God I didn’t see it,’ Sam said. ‘But from what you’ve said, it’s quite clear that whoever is responsible was furiously angry, just bursting with rage and hatred.’

  ‘I feel I ought to be able to put it together,’ I said. ‘And I just can’t.’ I recapped for him my visits to Amy’s three living husbands, to Helena’s former spouse in France, to Helena’s colleagues in the art world and the revelations from Lev Goldsmith. ‘And so far, the finger of suspicion doesn’t seem to point to any of them, far as I can see.’

  ‘So your copper’s instincts aren’t yet aroused?’ He moved slightly towards me. ‘Though I have to say mine are.’

  I ignored him. ‘Not as far as Amy’s killer is concerned, nor where Helena has got to. But they certainly are aroused to the fact that it’s now getting late and I need to go to bed.’

  ‘Need any help?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  He stood. ‘Maybe I’ll get lucky one of these days, Alex.’

  ‘Don’t count on it, Sam.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  We faced each other, hemmed in by the coffee table, and unaccountably I leaned forward to kiss his cheek, by now bristly with stubble. He turned his head so that I missed his cheek and got his soft, expectant mouth instead. I pulled back, blushing, and made shooing gestures at him. ‘Go, Sam. I’m tired.’

  I was finally tucked up in bed, drowsing over To Kill A Mockingbird for the twentieth time, when the phone rang. I frowned. 11:50. Kind of late for social calls. Which meant something bad. In the time it took to reach for my phone and press buttons, my mind had flashed through a dozen scenarios, most of them involving my parents and siblings dying hideous deaths on motorways or crushed by falling rocks or dragged off beaches by rogue waves.

  It was Sam. He sounded excited. ‘Can I come in for a nightcap?’

  ‘You’ve already had one. And I’m in bed.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me, shweetheart, if it doesn’t bother you,’ he drawled, in a passable imitation of Humphrey Bogart.

  ‘How long will it take you to get here?’

  ‘I’m standing on your doorstep.’

  ‘I’ll come down. But I warn you, I shan’t be dres
sed.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me, shweetheart …’

  When I opened the door, winter blew in on a blast of arctic air. I could hear the waves crashing against the shingle of the beach, and the rattle of halyards against metal masts from the Yacht Club further along the front. Sam was standing there, clutching a file to his chest.

  He came in to my sitting room, looking extremely cold. ‘Coffee?’ I asked. ‘Or more of my brandy?’

  ‘Any or all, please. It’s one of those hell’s-frozen-over nights.’

  ‘You know where the booze is … help yourself.’ I went into the kitchen and started the coffee procedure. The satin skirts of the robe my sister had given me last Christmas sighed against my bare legs in an unaccustomed and sexy way.

  When I carried the tray in, Sam was hunched over the coffee table, turning the pages of one of those celebrity magazines which feature an exclamation mark in the title. He had a brandy snifter in his hand a third full of the Armagnac I’d bought at the duty-free shop on my return from visiting Ainslie Gordon. There was another, not so full, waiting for me.

  He looked up at me. ‘Don’t bite my head off,’ he remarked, ‘but you look gorgeous with your hair down like that.’

  I gathered it in my hands and pulled it behind my neck. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered. I’ve never mastered the art of receiving compliments graciously, except the professional kind, perhaps because I so seldom have any others.

  He reached up and pulled my hand away. ‘Leave it be,’ he said. ‘I like it like that.’

  I’d never realized before how blue his eyes were. He patted the sofa and handed me the other glass of brandy. ‘Sit down here and have a look at this.’ He flipped through the pages of the trash-mag in his hands, an old battered copy, dating from several years back. ‘I’m sorry to be banging at the door again at this hour, getting you out of bed and all, but I thought you wouldn’t want to wait to see this.’ He slapped at the magazine. ‘Look at that!’

  I scanned the spread. Lots of glamorous photographs and faces I half-recognized. At first I thought it was the Oscars, but it was some gala function, women with their hair piled high, gorgeous frocks, fantastic jewellery, men at their sides dressed in immaculate evening clothes. Flunkeys were passing trays of champagne around, there were enormous flower arrangements dripping over golden pillars and columns. ‘None of it means a thing to me,’ I said.

  ‘Look more closely at that picture on the right, in the centre.’

  I did. An elegant woman with elaborate golden hair piled high on her head. A sweeping ballgown of pale blush-pink. A somewhat elderly man, in white tie with opal studs down the front of his stiff shirt. Understated jewellery hanging round the woman’s neck with—

  ‘Hang about,’ I said. ‘That’s the Lamont necklace!’

  ‘So it is. And who’s that wearing it?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Dexter Morrison, attending the Arts Ball at the Lincoln Center,’ I read aloud. ‘Dexter Morrison? Who’s he?’

  ‘More to the point, who’s she?’ Sam reached out and stroked my hair as reverently as if it were an art object in itself. ‘Gorgeous,’ he murmured.

  ‘Oh my God!’ I stared at the photograph, resisting the desire to duck my head and flick his hand away. ‘It’s Amy!’

  ‘Precisely. See, when we were looking at those portraits at the Lamonts’ gallery, I knew I’d seen that necklace before somewhere. And though I know it’s a strange interest for a man poised in readiness to serve his country at any time, I love looking at these magazines, the glimpses of lives I shall never lead, the women I shall never have – not that I want them, let me quickly add. I keep some of them for years.’

  ‘And see how very useful it’s been,’ I said. ‘One can never have too much information.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘But my God,’ I said again, ‘Amy Morrison. And presumably the old guy must be the husband who swept her off to New York all those years ago. So what do we conclude from seeing her wearing what must be Mercy Lamont’s necklace?’

  ‘Either that she feels it’s hers, in some way, or she didn’t think Mercy would ever see her wearing it.’

  ‘The latter is a bit stupid, isn’t it? I mean, Mercy is part of the social scene in New York. She’d almost be bound to see that photograph, if she wasn’t actually at the event itself.’

  ‘Or … she thinks she has a right to wear it. And if so, how did she come to that conclusion?’

  ‘Someone gave it to her?’

  ‘Who? Certainly not Mercy Lamont. And she told us it was a one-off, there isn’t another like it in the entire world.’

  ‘Could the rich husband have got Aspreys or somewhere similar to make a replica?’

  ‘Even if he had, where would he get the original in the first place? It would be pretty hard to copy it from a painting or photograph, I should think.’

  I got up, went into my office and came back with a powerful magnifying glass, which I used all the time in my work. Together we minutely studied the magazine photo. Finally Sam said: ‘It looks exactly like the one Mercy was wearing the other day.’

  ‘I agree. I particularly remember that slight dent in the god’s face, almost under his left eye.’

  ‘So what do we conclude?’

  I tucked my bare feet up under my robe; they were getting cold. ‘Do we think that somehow Amy stole it, and Mercy stole it back?’

  ‘Killing her in the process?’

  ‘Not by accident, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Unless you go for the red mist scenario – a sudden rage at Amy’s chutzpah, the seizing of the weapon and bashing in of the head, the sticking of that bradawl thing into both of her eyes – which I find hard to believe since Mercy seems such a controlled woman. She’s much more likely to have forced Amy to hand it over.’

  ‘Using what kind of leverage?’

  Sam picked up the bottle of brandy. ‘May I?’

  I held out my glass. ‘I’ll have a drop more too. So what kind of pressure could Mrs Lamont use against Amy?’

  ‘Exposure?’

  ‘What kind of exposure?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Could she have been responsible for the demise of old Mr Morrison, who was a friend of the Lamont’s, and Mercy threatened to tell?’

  ‘In that scenario, more likely that Amy would try to kill Mercy than vice versa.’

  ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘Is it feasible that Mercy Lamont is responsible for Amy’s death?’

  ‘Apart from the necklace, what on earth would be her motive? That was quite a savage murder and she seems eminently civilized. Would you really kill someone because somehow they had stolen a necklace which belonged to you, even if it was a family heirloom?’

  I shook my head in frustration. ‘And Helena, where is she?’

  SIXTEEN

  I found out the following day.

  The phone rang at six thirty-five, waking me from a deep sleep. After Sam had reluctantly gone home last night, I had swallowed a homeopathic sleeping pill, dived under the duvet and gone out like a light. I still wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

  ‘Quick?’

  ‘Think so …’ Wake up, I ordered myself. People don’t ring at this hour for an idle chat.

  ‘It’s Fliss.’

  ‘Mmm …’ Open your eyes, Alex. Wake UP!

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then wake up. Now.’

  ‘Just what I’m telling myself to do.’

  ‘I have some news, Quick.’ She paused. ‘Bad news.’

  That jolted me awake. She sounded sombre, and I knew instantly what she was going to tell me. ‘It’s Helena, isn’t it?’ I said, striving to keep my voice calm, though the tension in my chest was building to such an extent that I feared my body might rupture and my entire torso would disintegrate. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They’ve found a body.’

  ‘And they think it’s Helena’s?’ I seemed to have been tran
sformed into something rigid, a block of stone, a tree trunk. Pain coursed along the pathways of my body, as though my veins had been colonized by biting ants. ‘Oh, please, Fliss. Please not.’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Alex. She was wearing one of those ethnic bags slung across her coat, the ones that look like they’re made of matted felt or horse-blankets or something, with a long woven woollen ropey strap thing.’

  Tears came into my eyes. How often I’d seen her prancing along with that bag hanging over her shoulder or across her chest.

  ‘It had all sorts of identity in it,’ continued Fliss. ‘Wallet, credit cards, library cards, key cards to get through the locks of the university art department. That sort of thing. And of course the paramedics who were first on the scene recognized her from all the flyers we’ve sent around.’

  I beat the cover of my duvet with a clenched fist. Over and over. Trying to stay composed. ‘Wh-where did they find the … where was she found?’

  ‘A jogger saw her body floating in the river. Thought she was having a swim, at first, but realized that in this weather that was bloody silly.’

  ‘Strange the way the mind tries to persuade itself away from the fact of death.’

  ‘And anyway, she was fully dressed. Winter coat. High boots. We think—’

  I interrupted her. ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Uh … just a minute …’ I heard a rustle of papers. ‘On the edge of a village called Dovebrook. Along the river. Not far from you.’

  ‘Dovebrook is where my parents live,’ I said. ‘Why would Helena be anywhere near there?’

  ‘We’re looking at the possibility of accident or suicide.’

  ‘Suicide? Helena?’ I was outraged. ‘This was a woman who loved life in all its manifestations. Nothing could be more unlikely than Helena committing suicide.’ Though as I said this, I remembered how often those suffering from depression manage to hide it even from their closest family and friends.

  ‘That’s what people always say after the event,’ Fliss reminded me. ‘What about the possibility of an accident?’

  ‘The SOCOs will know more about that. How far from the village was she?’

  ‘About a mile along the river bank.’