A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “So it doesn’t mean that someone could have hurt her? It’s just that I can’t bear to think . . .” Rory opened her eyes as wide as she could, straining to keep herself from breaking down a second time.

  Sheehan said, “Let me say that there’s no evidence at all of . . . well, of foul play. One drinking glass overturned on the bedside table, and that’s it. Ease your mind on that score.”

  But as to the rest? Rory asked herself. How could she ease her mind about anything until she knew for certain what had happened to Clare?

  She said, “It was her assistant who rang me. Can you tell me where she is?”

  Resting in her own room was the detective’s reply. She’d told the police that this unexpected death had reignited the anguish she’d experienced at the recent death of her own son. So she wasn’t coping well.

  “Who can blame the poor woman?” Sheehan concluded.

  Who indeed, Rory thought.

  SPITALFIELDS

  LONDON

  Charlie Goldacre heard it in Alastair’s voice the moment the man said, “Is that you, lad?” when he answered the phone. To Charlie’s “What’s wrong?” Alastair said, “I’ve got to go up to Cambridge. Lad, I need you to go with me. See, your mum and me . . . Sorry to say we’re still having our problems down here and—”

  “What’s going on?” Charlie’s pulse had started beating in his fingertips. He could feel it from the way he was gripping the phone. He said, “Cambridge? Alastair, has something happened to Mum?”

  “No, no,” Alastair reassured him hastily. “It’s that Clare Abbott’s died of a sudden. She and your mum—”

  “Clare Abbott? Good Christ. What happened?”

  “She and your mum were up there in Cambridge for some do. Clare wanted your mum to go along with her as per usual ’cause there were books to be sold and all that rubbish that goes with it. She died in the night and your poor mum found her just like that this morning. She rang, she’s a wreck, and there’s no way on God’s green earth she c’n get herself back to Dorset on her own, so I’ve got to—”

  “Died?” Charlie was still trying to get his mind round the fact that Clare Abbott, who to him always seemed much more than a mere mortal, was actually dead. “Was there an accident? God, she didn’t do something to herself?”

  “Don’t know anything beyond her being dead. Only that your mum rang me and she can’t get back here on her own in the state she’s in and having to take the train and change in London and manage the luggage. She’s not making a lot of sense on the phone, but the police have been and she’s had to talk to them and that set her off in a bad way.”

  “The police?” Charlie wanted to rattle his brains like a cartoon character to keep himself from playing the echo.

  Alastair said, “They’ve had your mum in for some questions, but they’d do that, wouldn’t they? They’ve got to speak with who found the . . . well, her. Clare. With who found Clare and that was your mum. Wish it’d been the hotel maid or something but there you go. It’s all unnerved her. What I know is the police have been and that Rory person—Clare’s good friend who’s a bit peculiar with that dog, you know?—she’s there now. So what it is is this, lad. I need your help with your mum ’cause we’re still in a bad way with each other and she’s asked for you as well. Fact is, she’d rather have you from the word go and she only rang me as you weren’t answering.”

  “I’ve had clients all this morning. I’ve only just taken a break.”

  “No need to explain. But will you go? I don’t mean on your own. I’ll come up there and we c’n set off. Will you do it, Charlie?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. “But my God, Alastair, this might push her straight over the edge, after Will.”

  “I know,” Alastair said.

  They made the arrangements. As it happened, Alastair was already on his way, only phoning Charlie when he’d stopped for petrol at a Welcome Break along the motorway. They worked out where to meet so that Alastair could avoid having to trek through London, and after that Charlie made quick work of cancelling the remaining appointments he had that day.

  It was a terrible irony, he thought. Clare Abbott, as far as he knew, had been the picture of absolute health while his mother was in the worst physical condition of her life, with uncontrolled weight gain taking her ever closer to a heart attack or stroke. How in God’s name had Clare turned out to be the person to die unexpectedly?

  RIVER HOUSE HOTEL

  CAMBRIDGE

  Rory watched the laughing tourists make a hash of trying to punt on the Cam. Obviously, they’d decided to go it alone on the river instead of having the pole wielded by one of the many straw-hatted young men available for the activity. As it was, they were merely floating in circles while boaters far wiser and in the hands of skilled punters sat back and enjoyed the smooth ride taking them in the direction of Grantchester. Behind her, at one of the tables set out on the lawn to enjoy the afternoon summer sun while it lasted, Caroline Goldacre was refusing the hotel’s special afternoon tea being urged upon her by her husband and son. She didn’t want to drink and she couldn’t eat, she was telling them. What did they think she was? Clare had died, did they not understand? Yet another person had been ripped from her life—

  “From his mother’s womb, untimely ripp’d” came to Rory. How odd it was, she thought numbly, that a single word could trigger a line from Shakespeare completely unrelated to the events at hand.

  She couldn’t blame Caroline for refusing the offer of finger sandwiches, scones, and sweets. She herself had eaten nothing all day. She’d found something for poor Arlo and he’d made short work of it, but as for herself the sight and the smell of food in any form closed off her throat. She could barely manage a cup of tea.

  Caroline’s son and her husband had taken her out of the hotel because she’d not been able to cope once they descended with her to the lobby. She couldn’t breathe inside the place, she told them, and she couldn’t muddle through the checkout procedure at all. Not with everyone staring at her and knowing that she’d found Clare’s body and believing that she had something to do with what had happened. It was the bloody police, she had hissed. It was that they had insisted upon questioning her away from her own room and at a distance from Clare’s. People saw them escorting her to a conference room, and now they thought she had something to do with what had happened in the middle of the night.

  They knew that much: Clare had died between midnight and three A.M. But even that was mere speculation on the part of the forensic pathologist. More would be forthcoming later: a more specific time of death and the cause.

  While still at the tea table with them, Rory had asked Caroline why the police had wanted to question her. It had seemed an innocent enough question as she voiced it, but Caroline’s icy reply of “Why do you think they wanted to question me? Have you recently gone stupid?” prompted Rory to push back from the table, rise, and walk to the low wall separating the garden from the Cam. Caroline’s voice followed her, “Are you stupid? Because it seems to me you’d have already worked out that she went to bed healthy and she dropped dead in the night and they want to know what happened to her. Did I see anything, did I hear anything, why didn’t I go to her if she was in distress?”

  Rory turned from the view. As there were others in the garden having their own afternoon tea, she walked back to the table and said in a lower voice, “In distress? What do they mean?”

  “They mean she was on the floor, Rory,” Caroline said. “They mean the connecting door between our rooms—the door on her side—was open. They think that looks damn well suspicious . . . as if I’d hatched some nefarious plan to kill her in the night, God only knows how.”

  Charlie extended his hand towards her. “Mum, you’re in a state and that’s not a surprise, considering what’s happened. But perhaps it’s wiser to go inside—somewhere private?—if we want to talk about th
is.”

  “Of course I’m in a state!” Caroline cried. Other tea takers looked in their direction, interest on their faces. Caroline ignored them as she went on. “And you sit there . . . look at him just sitting there staring like I’ve come from Mars. She doesn’t get herself into a state, does she? No, no, not our darling Sharon.” She was speaking about Alastair and his lover, Rory knew. She glanced at Charlie. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  Rory sat again. Arlo whined. He could tell, of course, that things were heading in the direction of off the rails, but the situation was beyond his instincts for protecting Rory since she herself was angry but not afraid. She said to Caroline, “Didn’t you hear her?”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like a cop! I was asleep. I didn’t hear a damn thing! What was I supposed to hear? If she was having a heart attack or a stroke or whatever, she wouldn’t exactly have been making any noise.”

  “But if she was well enough to get to the doors between your rooms, why didn’t she fetch you? She’d opened one of the doors, why not the other?”

  “Because it was locked, all right?” Caroline cried. “Because I locked it. Because I wanted a little privacy for once. I didn’t even want to be here, d’you know that? I came for her sake, but you would think she was the one doing me a favour. So at the end of it all, I locked the door and I went to bed and if she needed me in the night, she could have bloody well rung me on the phone.”

  A waiter approached the table, with the excuse of a water jug in his hand. He murmured to Alastair that, perhaps, their party might like to move indoors where a private room could be made available to them?

  Alastair stood. Charlie did as well, looking enormously relieved that somehow his suggestion to his mother had been anticipated by the hotel staff. He went to the back of Caroline’s chair and said, “Mum, let’s take our conversation—”

  “Did she know you locked the door?” Rory cut in.

  “Of course she knew it. We’d had a few words and I’d had enough of her for one night, so I shut the damn door and told her I was locking it. And I told her I wanted my own private room henceforth and who can blame me. No more of this adjoining-rooms rubbish.”

  “Clare told me about the words you two had,” Rory said. “What she didn’t tell me was what they were about.”

  “Stop this!” Caroline shouted.

  At that, the waiter said, “I really must insist . . .”

  “You’re acting as if you think . . . What do you think? That I killed your precious goose? That I stopped her from laying any more gold eggs for you? Why the hell would I do that as, aside from everything else, it puts me straight out of a job?”

  “What else?” In her peripheral vision, Rory saw a neatly attired man come bustling from the hotel into the garden. He was striding directly towards them, a fixed smile on his face, and she reckoned he was the manager. She felt desperate for information from Caroline and with the other woman’s rising agitation, she felt also certain that she could prise from her details that she might otherwise keep to herself. She said, “What else, Caroline?” and she didn’t care a fig who heard her.

  “What?” Caroline snapped.

  “You said ‘aside from everything else.’ What else?”

  “Is there anything I might help you with?” It was the hotel manager speaking, and he brushed at nonexistent lint on the sleeves of his jacket and attempted to look pleasant. He nodded at a nearby table of camera-laden tourists who were listening, agog with the drama unfolding before them. The waiter took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the matter in the other man’s hands. “Anything at all?” the manager said meaningfully.

  “I’m not putting up with this,” Caroline said, ignoring him. But she did at last rise from her chair. Rory did likewise.

  The manager, apparently believing he’d effected the desired result of his appearance on the scene, smiled broadly at their party and said, “Yes, yes, if you’ll come this way . . .”

  “I said I’m not putting up with any of this,” Caroline snapped. “You stand there like a whimpering statue”— this to Alastair – “while she accuses me of God knows what because her friend dropped dead in the night and we all know what you wanted from her, Rory, and how does it feel knowing you aren’t ever going to get it now?”

  “Pet, patience,” Alastair murmured.

  She swung on him, “Is that what you call her as well? Your little two-quid whore. ‘Pet, pet’?”

  “For God’s sake, Mum,” Charlie said.

  She flung herself at him, but it was not to attack. Rather it was to seek the shelter of his filial arms. “Take me home,” she cried out. “Charlie, please. Take me home.”

  CAMBERWELL

  SOUTH LONDON

  India wouldn’t have admitted the fact to most people, but she’d taken largely to getting her news from the Internet. It was in this way, late in the evening, that she learned of Clare Abbott’s sudden death, a piece of unexpected information that appeared in one of those boxes of data that tried to entice the Internet user away from whatever other reason they’d logged on in the first place. In this case, the facts given were limited to “Famed Feminist Dead at 55” with an accompanying picture of Clare. So startled was she to see this that India forgot for a moment what she’d been looking for.

  Behind her, Nat said, “Something wrong?” and she recalled what she’d meant to do: to find a romantic inn for them in Norfolk, if such a thing existed. Nat had suggested a weekend away from London and they’d settled on the Broads as the weather was still good and what could be more pleasant than bracing sea air, a tramp among the dunes, and a visit to Horsey Mere? They could stay in the village and set out from there.

  India had welcomed the idea and she’d set about finding them a place to stay. Now Nat came to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He kissed the top of her head.

  “Clare Abbott,” she said and clicked on the story. The information was limited: Cambridge, the River House Hotel, in town for a debate with a conservative female priest. Clare had died sometime during the night. There was no cause given. “She’s the woman Charlie’s mum works for,” India told Nat. “How dreadful. Nat, she was only fifty-five. This will send Charlie’s mum into a real state.”

  India had already told Nat about the dedication of Will Goldacre’s memorial stone, about the appearance of Will’s erstwhile lover on the periphery of the event, about the additional appearance of Francis Goldacre and his young Thai wife. She hadn’t intended to do so, but Nat had rung her twice during her absence that long day and his question of “Have you been out and about today?” was spoken in so friendly a fashion that she’d told him everything, including Charlie’s wanting her to be there in Shaftesbury with him. That had caused a little wobble in their young relationship, but they’d got past it when she explained to Nat that had she not been there to talk to Lily Foster, no one would have believed that Clare had not invited Francis Goldacre to the event with the express purpose of tormenting his former wife. To Nat’s question of why anyone would have thought that, she’d said, “Because that’s how they are. It’s the oddest thing, Nat, but all of this chaos inside Charlie’s family was starting to seem quite normal to me until I finally left them.”

  Now Nat nodded at the computer’s screen. “As to our getaway on the Broads . . . ?”

  “Definitely,” she said, but she hesitated all the same, staring at Clare Abbott’s face looking out sternly at her, not the best photo in the circumstances. Odd, she thought, how difficult it was actually to capture the spirit of a person in a photograph. One had to have a level of skill that went far beyond—

  “You’re concerned,” Nat said. “Is it the woman herself? Clare Abbott?”

  “Not quite,” she said and thought about the entire idea of concern. She said, more like a meditation than a declaration, “Perhaps I ought to ring her.”

  �
��Who?” Nat drew an ottoman over to the desk and sat, which put his head lower than hers and slightly in shadow. He watched her, his eyes gone quite dark.

  “Caroline,” she said. “I could offer her sympathy. As I was her daughter-in-law for years . . . as I’m still her daughter-in-law technically . . .”

  “Hmm. Yes. When are we going to talk about that?” He rubbed the back of his neck as he said this, making the question appear just a casual thought triggered by the term she’d used: daughter-in-law. To her question “About what?,” he said, “India,” in the disappointed voice of a father knowing his child is avoiding a necessary discussion of an infraction committed. “About you and Charlie,” he told her, “and what you’re going to say to him and when you’re going to say it.”

  She felt her spine loosen when she sighed. “I’m avoiding, obviously.”

  “Obviously. It’s been how many months now?”

  “Since you and I . . . ?” She smiled at him fondly. She found that she wanted to take him straight to bed, to prove that he had nothing to worry about when it came to her marriage. “I would expect you to know to the very minute, Nathaniel Thompson.”

  “Two months, twenty days, four hours, and—” He glanced at his watch “thirty-seven minutes. No, thirty-eight.”

  “You’re joking!” She laughed.

  He reached for her hand and kissed her palm. “As to the minutes and hours, yes. But as to the months and days, I do have them down. Have I told you what I first noticed about you on the bus?” And when she shook her head, he went on with, “How intently you read. It was days before you even looked up from your book and gave me a glance.”

  “Was it? How odd. I have no memory of a first glance at all.”