by Tanith Lee
The first visit then, from Pond’s view, was simply to suss Nick out somewhat. Pond thought him a slight bit on the fey side, but not the wimp Angela had titled him. Nick was a writer and sometime artist. (Pond had gone to the trouble of looking him up, and had seen reproduced examples of his art, and one short story, both of which Pond thought rather more than fair.) Writers, artists, musicians, actors - they could seem a bit fey. And the rich, too. They definitely could, but usually in a more abrasive way than Nick’s. Pond, did not think Nick was gay, either. Nor even bi. Pond had no real grounds for that, just felt it was the case.
Nick seemed genuinely disturbed by the news that Laurence had ‘disappeared’. He seemed, too, not to have known who Angela was when she had called. He might have been pretending. But then Angela had told Pond that the last time she spoke to Nick, even on the phone, was over two years ago.
When Nick’s telephone rang, rather aptly, and interrupted their exchange, Pond had been intrigued by the sexy, well-spoken voice of the girl with the “chewy” phone. If she was one of Nick’s escort customers, she certainly seemed to like him. Nick must be good at his work.
Pond had ‘cross-examined’ Nick on his meeting with Laurence. Pond wanted to find out what the out-of-character meet was about. But he angled towards that gradually. Nine times in ten, if you asked questions they did not mind too much answering, some key or clue would pop up, even the revealing reply, before they could stall it, when you reached the jackpot. For the same reason one might ask even superfluous questions to make the subject uncomfortable, and that would bring things to light. In line with this, Pond asked Nick for his phone numbers although Angela already had them.
There was another reason for Stewart Pond’s questions on Laurence’s clothing.
Angela had described an extra quirk of Laurence Lewis’s eclectic sex-life. It seemed, whenever he made love to another woman, he would not only shower but change his clothes before he left her to go home. That was, said Angela, not just shirt and underpants, but trousers, socks, sometimes even his shoes. Perhaps he had done this at first to throw his jealous bitchy frigid wife literally off the scent. But why he bothered to continue the practice long after he knew she had found out, she could not fathom. “I think he’s a bit cracked,” she had said to Stewart Pond, with malicious smugness. “I think it’s a form of over-fastidious cleansing he performs solely to pamper himself. Probably gets off on that too, the cunt.”
Pond, from outside Nick’s, had noted on Laurence only an overcoat, not even kept track of Laurence’s shoes that night. Why would he? After visiting Nick, Laurence should be heading straight back home. The object therefore of Pond’s asking Nick exactly what Laurence had been wearing, and which luckily Nick seemed to recall so well, was to learn - when the corpse was discovered - if it was still dressed the same. For if not then a woman - even yet another woman - must be involved. Which being an unknown, could itself raise unforeseen problems.
There was too one further oddity.
Pond had asked Nick about Laurence’s jewellery. Nick had said there was just the wedding ring. Gold? Pond had inquired. But no, the ring was platinum.
During his general observations of Laurence, Pond had seen the ring was platinum. An unusual metal, and expensive. But on that Friday night, just as Pond had noted the Angela-watch was on Laurence’s wrist, he had seen too that Laurence’s wedding ring appeared to have been transmuted into gold. Indeed Laurence had paused to twist the golden ring around on his finger, there by his car in the cul-de-sac below Nick’s flat. Almost, in fact, as if Laurence had only just put the ring on and was adjusting it.
When Laurence’s body was at last unearthed from tree roots and ferns, and Angela, (feeling, she had assured Pond, not guilty, only stressed and nauseated by the state of the cadaver), identified it, and saw his clothing, Laurence was found not to have been wearing any of the garments Nick detailed, apart from the coat and scarf. What Laurence had died in, and what consecutively had been gnawed by the animals who also gnawed his flesh, were grey trousers, a sleeveless black jumper over a brown and grey stripe shirt, and black, handmade, Tunisian calfskin slip-ons. The lace-ups and other gear had been squashed in with other items in his bags. As for the ring, it was the platinum one. There was nothing else unusual on or with him. No golden wedding band. No small piece of ivory carrying an invented curse.
Pond did not relay any of this to Angela. She was by then in enough of a state. She still insisted it had nothing to do with guilt, but Pond suggested she get her tame private physician, Telby, to prescribe some mild happy pills.
“He thinks I’m grief-stricken, so he already has,” said Angela, “but I haven’t taken any.”
“Do. They’ll help you sleep, Angie. Just till you get over the shock.”
“But how can I be shocked, Stew? I asked you to arr…”
“But we’ll try to forget what you asked, for now.” Pond added, “You’ve been through a lot, not just after but before.” Better she think herself a martyr, deserving of respite, than a Borgia who had people killed. She took the pills, and seemed to calm down. She also drank less on them. No bad thing.
Time passed. Everything seemed to be working out. Pond had filed Nicolas Lewis far back in the cabinets of his brain. But then came Nick’s message on Pond’s phone.
Telby had already tipped Pond off, apologising. “He seemed distressed, not just about his brother’s death - some sort of break-in, I gathered. He thought you might sort things out. I hope you won’t mind, I passed on your number.” Pond had said that was fine. It was not, it meant Angela had put Pond’s mobile number in what she, or Laurence, called the House Folder. Pond wished she had not and presently erased it - it remained on her own personal phone, that should be enough. But Telby knew she had hired Pond, if only in the revised scenario, i.e. after Laurence’s vanishment, when she thought the police were not trying hard enough. (Which, given Laurence’s record of stay-away weekends, they had every right not to, Pond was the first to say.)
As things were coming out, Angela and he should never now require to reveal Pond had been working for her with divorce in mind. Nor would Pond need to implicate the young woman in Wimbledon, Kit-Kitty-Kitra Price-Andrew-Andrezou. Nor, come to that, any other stray woman Laurence had put on a gold wedding ring for.
As for Nick and his break-in, Pond let it ride. He wondered if Nick somehow suspected something. It seemed far-fetched. Whatever, let Nick stew a little, thought Stewart Pond.
But, where feasible, unfinished business should be finished.
One evening then, Pond went back to the U-shaped cul-de-sac. He let himself quietly in at the main door to the flats by use of a specialist key, and walked up to Nick’s apartment.
When he first saw Nick again, and Nick began by asking his own questions, Pond made a snap decision. He would run some of the truth past Nick, and watch how he reacted. Pond tended to follow his instincts on these things. His instincts were normally sound, and also well-trained. Taking care to consume very little of the strong drink Nick had fixed him - Pond was driving - he began to spill portions of the story, bean by bean.
But Nick revealed nothing much. Or rather, he seemed to know nothing much. Nick appeared merely interested, if in a slightly impatient form. Pond had the distinct impression Nick was only listening to him in order to do a bit of research that might, perhaps, come in handy later for some sort of written fiction about adultery.
Then something - the instincts? - made Pond focus in on the woman Nick then knew as Kit. Pond presented her as a definite look-alike for Claudia Martin - just the way Angela had declared she was. And just as, too, Nick Lewis, who was undeniably male, really was, and so much more successfully.
When Nick informed Pond, who already knew, of his mother’s name, Pond saw he had scored a flawless try, but was unsure what it amounted to. Nick had gone white.
And then: “Laurence was her son, too.”
And Pond had seen Nick’s face go hard and fleshless, like
that of an extremely old man, or a starved child.
Pond added, as if unaware of any changes, “That’s odd. When this woman of your brother’s was so like her.”
But Nick only repeated what he had already said. Then lowered his blond head right down, as if to be beheaded by an axe. Tears streamed from his eyes on to the wooden floor.
Pond let him cry. Then going to the kitchen he poured most of his own vodka down the sink and topped up the glass with tap water. He returned with that, a box of Kleenex, and an even stiffer real vodka for Nick.
“You take your time,” said Pond. And he rested his hand briefly on Nick’s shoulder. Pond could feel him shaking, though the weeping was virtually noiseless.
And Nick hated Laurence?
Pond went to look at some artwork on the wall. It was not bad, some of it excellent. He particularly liked a surreal, starkly beautiful cipher of night and trees and stardrift reflecting in water.
Standing there it came to Pond, unlooked for and, for a second, amazing him, a flush, a warmth of estranged compassion, pity - kindness. And he thought that his own son, terminally useless Timothy, would now be about the same age as Nicolas Lewis. Of course, Tim had never had Nick’s advantages. Neither financially nor artistically, certainly not genetically in looks, or talent, however slight. Come to think of it, not even in name. Pond was not much of a name to conjure with, as Pond’s own wife had remarked, once he wed her some years after Tim’s arrival.
So what was this? Envy of someone’s having a son like Nick? Some inappropriate male broodiness, wanting a sprog one could at least find presentable and pleasing? Or latent homosexuality? There was always that. Pond had half smiled. He doubted the last notion, but you never knew. He was getting on. Nearly fifty… Weird things could occur to either gender, when they reached a certain age. Pond himself had seen it happen.
But when he went back to sit down, after Nick’s ‘emotion’, as Nick put it, ended, Pond was quite glad the conversation quickly veered away into Nick’s territory of bizarre notebook burglars, the profligate Ms Price-Andrew-Andrezou, and the invented Ivorian curse.
Pond by then was watching himself like a hawk.
To feel human sympathy, for whatever temporary reason, must not be allowed to force him into a mistake. Pond was sure it did not.
Then came the two rogue bonuses. The distasteful little letter from the mad Ms KP, the news of her second flat in Marylebone.
Was that then where Laurence had taken himself that Friday night of the clothes change and the gold ring? Was it there he had lost almost two hours? And still with her? Then one must assume at least she had never tried her personalised insults on Laurence, for he, of all men, would never have gone back for more. Or would he? Would she, if even so, have allowed it?
What mattered however, at that moment, was to engender the idea, which might still be sensible, a last obfuscation of the facts of murder, that ‘Kit’ was Laurence’s indirect killer, her method her foul, female, black-widow-spider take on ego destruction. And never the fault of A Man, paid to see to things with his stone or his gun - or the sheer terror he could create.
To that end then, Pond had told Nick about the Last Weekend - which in fact never happened, since Laurence had died on Friday night.
As if in enlightenment, Pond described Laurence’s (invented) disturbance when he (inventedly) left the Wimbledon flat on Monday morning.
Pond had already established how, work on the case complete, he thought, he did not follow Laurence from the Wimbledon flat. Pond did not mention, for they were to be no free gift, about the altered clothes, the ring. Pond though could be truthful about the piece of ivory. It had not been with Laurence. Perhaps someone or thing had taken it from him, some scavenger, for some incomprehensible reason. The gold ring, Pond believed, might have been abducted by a magpie. One heard of such avian feats. The Man would not have taken either object, it went without saying. Only any loose money. That was all The Man ever took, before someone else had it.
There was one question left over in Pond’s mind. Why had Kitra, who when she did this did not know Laurence was yet dead, contact Nick and go to bed with him? A conundrum, a nut Pond would no doubt go on trying to shell for some while, if only privately. Decidedly he would not discuss it. With anyone.
When their dialogue concluded, Pond felt he had indulged and expunged any uncharacteristic warmth or care he had experienced for Nick. It had entertained Pond to allow himself the treat, if treat it had been. He had, he admitted, been quite paternal and reassuring. Another part he had played - and rather well. And like many good theatrical troopers, while he did it, he had believed in it. Pond had always known, it was not only film stars who could act.
To visit the old woman’s flat behind Harley Street was the ultimate task. Not for Nick’s sake, but to put the whole set-up together and pack it away.
Pond now wanted to know how Kitra used the place. He wanted Nick with him too, as a distraction for whoever was in there. Kitra, if present, might recall Pond - or not, the vague oldish man wanting Mr Purvis upstairs… But Nick she would know, Biblically at least. And if Kitra were not there, which was the most likely, Nick - young, handsome, appealing - would still get most of the attention. Even up front, Pond could keep inside the shadows.
Meeting the elderly madwoman, the Greek Jew or whatever she was, Jonquil Franks, (if that was her name), Pond noted she also referred to Kitra by the partial alias - or nickname - of ‘Kitty’. That Franks was Kitra’s grandmother was, he supposed, possible. The rest of the tale, that Kitty herself had bought the flat, Franks’s upbringing of Kitty, (which might well explain some of Kitty’s own insanity), that Kitty always dumped men and then they turned up angry - though Granny was quite willing to chase them off, perhaps when riding her broomstick - even the detail of Franks’s own ancient over-sexed boyfriend, (God help him) - these facts had not seemed at odds with anything else so far. That Franks’s flat served as an occasional sex joint for Kitra might also make sense. She would often need to avoid raging insulted lovers. Had only Laurence been allowed to call on her at both establishments?
Pond left Nick to think he, Pond, remained perplexed over several aspects. Pond had given away only what he felt could be helpful for himself, and Angela.
Conversely, on the other issue of Nick’s burglar, or team of same, Pond had rendered up all the information he had legitimately gleaned.
That Number 14 now stood empty, while one of the former residents was ill in hospital, were things he had unearthed and thus passed on. Pond had, inevitably, found the burglary less interesting than the rest of the maelstrom. But here at least he felt he had done his best, in his role of paid private investigator. The premise he would continue to work on the ‘case’ was only a sop tossed to Nick when they parted on the South Bank. To recommend the special locksmith was an extra favour. Actually, this firm was not the one Pond himself consorted with. He never gave their number to anyone, nor would they have welcomed it. Rather curiously, they were even less available, on the whole, than The Man. Nevertheless, the lesser firm was a good one. Pond believed he had not done Nick a bad turn, there.
Nor anywhere, really.
He had quite liked Nick. Even if the momentary swamp of sympathy was gone. Pond knew Nick meant nothing to him, rather in the way some painted landscape would not, like the look of it as Pond might. He would not really wish to holiday in such a spot. He would not, having turned from it, soon recall the colour tones of its stars or trees, the sound or spelling of its name. Pond could never have produced a son like Nick, let alone, however ardently gay either of them was, courted him for a lover. An Angela, a heavy drinker, a constant user of bad language, a murderess who would not even attempt the job herself, that was about as high as a guy like Pond would reach.
Epilogue
Winter
Alpha
Serena’s flat is not, technically, only ten minutes from Drury Lane. It lies walled up inside the ancient-and-modern of the Barbican.
The high windows gaze on one side over the winter green lawns with fountains, and out to what Serena calls “Wren’s re-mix of St Paul’s” on the other. The daylight in the flat appears always polished clear, and warmly cold. By night the lit cathedral looks colder. It seems like a black-leaded glacier. At least, to him.
And who is he? He himself feels he no longer knows. Nor can (or will) any of them really tell him.
“It’s a lovely day. Blue sky, chilly and still. Shall we go for a walk?”
“Yes. You go.”
“Oh Nick,” she says, looking at him lovingly sadly. “You must try.”
“Must I?”
“You know you must. Moderate exercise. They told you. They told me…”
“Yes, Serena. I was there.”
“No, not quite. You weren’t quite there. You’re not now.”
“They told you about that too.”
“And I offered you my perfectly brilliant shrink and you said…”
“Serena, please…”
“That you didn’t want any of that. But you are still in this state.”
“I’m sorry if it inconveniences you. Shall I just leave? I’m fine.” Nick hears himself, it is another man talking, mild, quite reasonable. Perhaps always himself?
“So you’re so fine you won’t even walk round the gardens with me. You just sit. How could you cope with leaving, and anyway you sold your flat, you said…”
“Yes. I did tell you that, didn’t I.”
“Nick! Don’t be so cold. It’s cruel to me. I only want to help you. I don’t want you to go. I don’t.”
She cries then, but only lightly, a little April shower of tears months too early.
Nick thinks back, pushing slowly into the recent past. He has vague memories of the whiteness of a hospital, and then a pastel room in the hospital. Of distant fuss, close pain and discomfort, and then just the niggling strangeness in his side which is never quite there, nor ever quite gone. He has dreams that the knife is still lodged in him, wriggling like a trapped fish in the outer edge of his left lung. He knows in the dreams he must not pull it free, because then it will stab him again of its own volition. On the other hand, it seems to be burrowing deeper, towards his heart perhaps. But apparently the wound had not been so serious. The lung had been drained, it repaired, was repairing, healing, something… And the shock, the flashbacks - none of which had or have made him able to recall what had happened. He remembers, over and over again, opening the door of the flat expecting a locksmith - and then there is a sort of dark red blank, inside which the silver knife-fish begins to wriggle in his side. He has not been helpful to the police, he cannot describe his attacker, nor say why he was attacked. His own thought, that the locksmith had attacked him, has been corrected by the police, however. The locksmith had, in fact, arriving soon after the ‘incident’, saved Nick’s life. The unknown, unrecollected (therefore unseen) man had staunched the blood, contacted the emergency services, vanished.