Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  “So it is. And I’ll wager that’s Campion.”

  “Or should we say ‘Peltier’?”

  “That’s what we’re here to render our opinions on, partner.”

  It was not the manor house they were looking toward but an open-sided stone shed, an L-shaped, moldering, old structure with slate shingles missing from its roof and straw stuffing poking out of the crevices between the stone blocks of its walls. Unlike the impressive and immaculate manor house, this building had obviously been bypassed when it came time for refurbishing, and it still served its ancient functions as stable and tack room. Gear and equipment could be seen in one wing, and four stalls in the other, three of which had horses gazing vacantly out, as horses do, through the open tops of their Dutch doors.

  The building served as one corner of a stable yard or corral, otherwise enclosed by a relatively new white rail fence. Campion, if that’s who he was, was just inside the fence, using two curry brushes to groom a chestnut horse, and Miranda was on the outside, affectionately stroking the horse’s sweaty neck and apparently giving Campion instructions. Campion, wearing jeans and muddy Wellingtons, looked tired. Miranda, in a tailored western shirt, jodhpurs, and riding boots, her short silvery hair windblown, looked sensational.

  “Better-looking woman than I realized,” Buncombe said appreciatively as Bayley brought the car to a halt on the graveled driveway. “Taller too.”

  “Fine figger of a woman,” Bayley agreed.

  “Amazing. Isn’t she something like seventy?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Looks formidable enough, though. I’d watch out for that left hook, Harvey, once you succeed in irritating her.”

  Miranda and Campion had turned at the sound of tires on gravel and had remained standing on either side of the fence, waiting for them.

  “You see? There you are,” Buncombe said as the two men walked toward them. “She’s already irritating me. She’s showing us who’s in charge. She’s saying, ‘You’re on my turf now, coppers, you have to come to me.’ Clear as can be.”

  Bayley shook his head. “You are the most hypersensitive man I know, Harvey, you really must do something about that.” Privately, he thought that Buncombe was right about Miranda and that Buncombe knew he knew he was right. But this kind of easy raillery was a long-established part of the relationship, and neither of them saw any need for change.

  “Pretty quick off the mark to see that we’re policemen, though,” Buncombe said. “No uniforms, no markings on the car.”

  “Are you joking? Harvey, anybody can see you’re a detective. All they need do is look at you.”

  Buncombe was wearing a baggy, old tweed sport coat. His tie was loosened, and the top button of his shirt was undone. The points of his collar were curling. Add to that his heavy, world-weary face and his five-o’clock shadow (which was there in the morning an hour after he’d finished shaving), and he did, indeed, look like a cynical, seen-it-all cop. Bayley, on the other hand, had to shave only every other day and was dressed in a light, trim-fitting linen suit and pale-blue shirt that was buttoned up to the top to accommodate his neatly knotted, perfectly dimpled midnight-blue tie.

  Buncombe’s eyes ran scathingly up and down his partner. “At least nobody’s ever called me a pretty boy,” he groused.

  Bayley barely threw him a glance. “Surely you jest.”

  They had reached the yard now. Campion had gone back to working on the horse, but Miranda was looking squarely at them, arms crossed and face closed. Bayley, who was younger than Buncombe but first in seniority and nominally in charge, opened and held up his wallet, showing his shield on one side and his ID card on the other. “Good morning, Ms. Rivers. I’m Detective Bayley, and this is Detective Buncombe.”

  “My name is Mrs. Atterbury,” Miranda said by way of returning his greeting.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Atterbury. Sorry to interrupt what you’re doing, but, assuming that this gentleman is Mr. Randall Champion, we have a few questions we’d like to ask him.”

  Looking up with a relaxed and friendly smile, still holding the brushes and leaning his forearms on the horse’s withers, Campion said, “Good morning, Detectives. How can I help? Not that it matters, but my name’s Campion, by the way, not Champion. Like the detective chappie on the telly? Albert Campion?”

  “Or the seventeenth-century Jesuit author,” said Bayley. “William Campion.”

  Campion cocked his head at him. “Oh, that’s very good, Detective,” he said smoothly. “I’m impressed. Ninety-nine of a hundred people would have a hard time naming even a single seventeenth-century author, let alone William Campion.”

  And you’d be one of them, Bayley thought, having made one of his lightning-quick assessments of the man. You’re about as familiar with seventeenth-century Jesuit authors as I am with seventeenth-century Mongolian watchmakers. To be fair, though, Bayley himself had already expressed just about everything he’d retained about William Campion from his college days, but while they were driving here, he’d done a quick Internet search to see if there was anything about the writer that might be of use in fulfilling their assignment.

  And he’d found something. “Interesting thing about Campion,” he said offhandedly. “There’s also a writer named William Wigmore, born the same year, died the same year. Turns out they were the same man. Campion had an alias, in other words. I don’t believe anybody knows why. Must make for an exhausting life, being two people, having to constantly be on guard lest you slip up.”

  “I suppose that’s right,” said Campion. “Never thought about it before.” He went back to currying, working on the horse’s flank now.

  Well, that had produced exactly nothing.

  Miranda’s response was less amiable. “Could we get to the purpose of your visit, please, Detective Bayley? I don’t imagine that you’ve come to chat about William Campion, and we have quite a bit yet to do this afternoon.”

  She hadn’t wasted any time getting under Buncombe’s skin. “It’s Mr. Campion our business is with, madam. Perhaps you could give us a few minutes alone with him.”

  She was no less blunt. “I think not.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind, Mandy,” Campion said reasonably, straightening up. “Always glad to assist our police officers.”

  Miranda was unmoved. “But I mind. My few experiences with the minions of the law have not endeared them to me, and I am not happy with the idea of a pair of strangely inquisitive detectives coming here, onto my property, unannounced, to interrogate a friend of mine, a newcomer to Jersey who has little knowledge of his rights or of our laws and rules of police procedure.”

  “Now, now, no one’s talking about an interrogation—” Bayley got in before Buncombe could fire a retort of his own.

  “Is there some formal objection to my remaining?” Miranda demanded. “Am I not entitled to be here if Mr. Campion wishes it?” She looked at Campion to prompt a reaction of some kind, and he shrugged and smiled. Whatever.

  “No, madam, you are not entitled—” Buncombe said.

  “However, you’re welcome to remain,” Bayley cut in again, “as long as you permit Mr. Campion to answer our questions for himself. You may advise him, if you wish. Is there somewhere we might all sit down for a few minutes?”

  “I’m sorry, but there are no chairs out here.”

  Even Bayley’s patience was beginning to thin. It was hot standing in the sun, and not to offer to take them into the manor was calculatedly offensive. He had never understood why so many people chose, right from the start, to alienate police officers. If they had hostile feelings toward them because of negative experiences, that he could comprehend, but to go out of their way to openly antagonize them—that was a mystery. There were plenty of possible downsides to it, but where was the benefit? Whatever the answer, Miranda was obviously one of those people.

  “Very well,” he said, “then we’ll remain where we are. Mr. Campion, what brings you to Jersey?”

  “You still haven’t e
xplained what this is about,” Miranda said.

  “Kindly hold your horses,” said Buncombe with an unconvincing smile. “We’re talking to the gentleman, not to you.”

  Miranda, not used to this kind of treatment, could do no better than a huffy “I beg your pardon!”

  “Mr. Campion?” Bayley said.

  “What brought me to Jersey,” Campion repeated, continuing to brush the horse in slow, steady circles. “Well, first—”

  “And if you could stop working on the animal, please?”

  “Of course, of course,” Campion said contritely. “Sorry about that.” He slipped out of the straps that held his hands to the brushes and put them on a rickety table alongside some other horse-grooming implements. “I am here, Detective,” he said with an open, earnest smile, “because of the many obvious advantages of Jersey over Merrie Olde England: your beautiful countryside, the marvelous beaches, the low crime rate, low taxes, friendly, welcoming people—”

  “Ah, you see, right there, that’s one of the things we’ve come about,” said Bayley.

  “I don’t understand. Welcoming people?”

  “Taxes. We have no record of your paying any taxes in the two years—I believe it’s two years?—that you’ve been here.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” Campion said easily, “but to the best of my knowledge, I don’t owe any.”

  “How do you support yourself, Mr. Campion?”

  “Oh, well, you know, I—”

  Buncombe gestured at his muddy boots, the brushes, the horse. “You work for Mrs. Atterbury, do you?”

  “You could say that, yes,” Miranda answered for him.

  “I did say that,” Buncombe said sharply. “Is it the case?”

  “If you mean by ‘work for me,’ is he a paid employee, the answer is no. For his assistance, he lives rent-free on the property and is entitled to meals, that’s all. Well, and an occasional something for clothing and entertainment and such, but those are more in the nature of gifts than—”

  “Unfortunately,” said Buncombe, “all of that is considered as income to Mr. Campion, for which he is required to pay taxes.”

  “I had no idea!” exclaimed Campion. “Naturally, I’ll pay anything I owe.”

  “And back taxes as well, I’m afraid,” Bayley said with an apologetic smile.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Miranda said disgustedly. “We’re talking about gifts. Am I supposed to tell my workers how much they cost so they can pay the taxes on them? I don’t know myself. I don’t keep records of such—” She caught herself, but not soon enough.

  “Well, I think you’d better start,” Buncombe said with a reptilian smile. “There’ll be some retroactive penalties for you too, I suspect.”

  “How am I expected even to remember—”

  “You’ll need to take that up with Treasury and Records, Mrs. Atterbury,” Bayley said, “not with us.”

  She shook her head with a weary sigh, then made a hurry-up motion with her hand. “Well, get on with it. Let’s hear the rest of it. Obviously, there’s more.”

  “Well, there are a few more little things, yes,” Bayley said placatingly. He pretended to check a notepad. “Ah. I gather you’re not married, sir?”

  “Not me,” Campion said with a laugh. “Free as a bird.”

  “Lucky man,” said Buncombe, summoning up a chuckle of his own. “Never been married, then?”

  They had planned ahead to ask this question, once again wanting Campion’s reaction, but he was only able to blink twice before Miranda again took over, this time more forcefully.

  “That’s it!” Angrily, she put herself in front of Campion as if blocking the detectives from getting at him, which he seemed more than willing to let her do. With her hands on her hips, at her most handsome and statuesque, she glared at the two detectives. “Where the bloody hell do you two get off asking a question like that? Where do you get off coming here in the first place, bumbling around in his business, my business? I don’t know exactly what sort of fishing expedition this is, but I do know that two CID detectives are not sent out on routine matters like these. Please leave.”

  “I assure you—” Bayley began.

  “And I assure you that the instant you venture onto this property again without a warrant, or badger Mr. Campion or myself, I’ll be on the telephone to my old friend Chief Bowron at once.”

  “Mrs. Atterbury—”

  “I’ve asked you to leave once, and I’m not going to do it again. Now get the hell off my property and stay off.”

  In the meantime, Campion had found his tongue. “Nope, never been married,” he said as the detectives turned to leave. “Still searching for the right girl. Think I just might have found her, though.” He threw a smiling, manifestly proprietary glance at Miranda and then a smirking, cocksure one at the two cops.

  Miranda, glaring at him, looked mad enough to spit.

  CHAPTER 26

  “It’s him, all right,” Buncombe said with satisfaction as they pulled out of the driveway and onto Marais Road. “Isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure, Harvey. We weren’t any too subtle, though. If it is him, I hope we haven’t frightened him into bolting.”

  “You think he’s that keen, Lyle? I don’t.”

  “I think she’s that keen. But we can tell Sarge all about it. He can decide where it goes from here.”

  “When in doubt, delegate upward,” said Buncombe. “That’s my motto too. I’ll ring him now.” He got out his cell but looked up when Bayley turned left. “Why are we pulling in here?”

  “Because we are tasked with calling on the old lawyer . . . what’s his name, Jouvet?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot all about it.” He put the phone away. “Don’t know what Kendry expects us to get out of him, though. The old boy threw the police out the last time he was approached, and he’s on record as stating that whatever it was he’d told them about the Occupation was the result of confusion of some kind. Well, if the old boy was confused fifty years ago, I suspect he’s totally gaga by now. He’s ninety-five or thereabouts, isn’t he? Probably doesn’t even remember that there was an Occupation.”

  Bayley laughed. “It’ll be a short interview, then. He lives near the Market; we can stop at Rosie’s for a cuppa before we head back.”

  “Or even a couple of sausage rolls,” Buncombe suggested, lighting up.

  Edmond Jouvet lived in one of a long row of modest, semidetached houses that differed from each other only in their colors, which ranged all the way from white to pale beige. The curtained front bay windows were square and shingle topped to match the roofs, and the front gardens, if they’d ever been present, had been paved over to serve as sidewalk parking spaces, so that to get to the front door of most of them, you had to step around an automobile. Jouvet’s was a six- or seven-year-old blue Mercedes.

  “For a retired lawyer, it doesn’t look as if he’s made out all that well,” Buncombe observed, running his hand through the layer of dust on the hood.

  “Well, we don’t know what his expenses might be, do we?”

  “Very true. One never knows.”

  They were let in by a woman in her sixties who didn’t seem all that pleased to see them. “My father’s in the office back there,” she said. “He’s anxious to talk to you, but please don’t let him get excited.”

  Jouvet’s office was clearly a converted bedroom, but he must have furnished it by moving his old law office there, whole hog. Walking into it was like entering the chambers of a Gray’s Inn barrister in the 1930s (assuming the movies could be trusted), or even in the 1880s; neither of the two detectives could tell the difference. The Turkish carpet was threadbare; an old glass-fronted bookcase filled with faded brown books stood against one wall; and framed certificates and portraits of self-important-looking old men hung on the others. The air was a mix of furniture polish and cigar smoke.

  Jouvet himself sat at a walnut rolltop desk, his banker’s chair turned so that he faced them as th
ey entered. A frail, crabbed old man, who looked every bit of ninety-five and a shaky ninety-five at that, he wore a blue fleece bathrobe over striped pajamas, with tatty leather slippers on his feet. But a single, direct look from his hooded, intelligent blue eyes told them that he was anything but gaga.

  “Sit down,” he instructed, pointing at a couple of fabric-seated captain’s chairs. “Wilma will make us tea.” His voice, as expected, was reedy and cracked, but it sizzled with authority.

  “That’s all right, sir,” Bayley said. “We don’t need to take too much of your time. We simply want—”

  “Sit or stand as you prefer, but I’m going to have some tea, and I advise you to sit down and do the same. This is going to take a while.”

  Buncombe and Bayley glanced at each other as they sat down, eyebrows slightly lifted, thinking that, as usual, they were sharing the same thought.

  They weren’t.

  Well, well, this is going to turn out to be interesting after all, Bayley was thinking, his curiosity piqued.

  Well, there go my sausage rolls, Buncombe thought.

  CHAPTER 27

  Gideon, Julie, and John were collected in the same dusty Range Rover in which Rafe had picked them up at the airport, driven this time by a husky, outgoing young woman who looked as if she might be a first-stringer on her school’s lacrosse team. Indeed, Elissa Prentice was a student athlete—rugby, not lacrosse—at the University of Plymouth, where she was pursuing an MA in Jacobean drama, but in the summers, as she told them, she worked for her “uncle” Rafe as a “shofergopher” (which turned out, on translation, to be a chauffeur/gofer).

  Once again, John and Gideon took the backseats and left the front to Julie, who took no time in starting up a lively tête-à-tête with Elissa. Gideon, meanwhile, told John about the theft of the coffin van, but they soon found the women’s conversation more interesting than theirs and shortly tuned into it.

  “No, he’s not married,” Elissa was saying to Julie. “Never has been.”