by Jill Downie
Liz looked around her. Décor and design were obviously not important to him, but the place was comfortably furnished, overflowing with books, magazines, newspapers.
“Mr. Renaudie, you know who I am and why I am here.”
Ludo’s son gestured to a chair, relatively free of paper and periodicals. “Please sit down, madame. I know who you are, you are a detective sergeant from Guernsey, but I don’t understand the need for this visit. I was happy enough with my adoptive parents, and I was not happy when my father came back into my life, although I appreciated the financial support. It set me free to do what I wanted. But our contacts are few and far between, and we have only met twice.”
His English was fluent, just a trace of an accent.
“What is it that you do?”
“I have a bookshop near the Place de l’Odéon.”
“The visit is necessary because your father’s circumstances have changed. Not financially, far from it. In fact, he is turning over his property and most of his assets to you.”
“Why?”
“He will be going on trial, and will almost certainly spend whatever is left of his life in prison.”
Charles Renaudie sat down, abruptly. It was the only emotional reaction Liz saw as she told him what had happened on the Just Desserts on two nights in April. He did not interrupt until Liz had finished. Then he asked two questions. “Why? I thought spies, even ex-spies, got away with murder.”
“You were wrong. He is no longer in the intelligence service, and he took the law into his own hands.”
“He and my birth mother together planned and executed the first murder — why?”
“The man they killed had cheated your mother’s husband, Sir Ronald Fellowes.”
“So they sought justice on behalf of the man for whom my birth mother deserted me.”
There was no denying that. From her backpack, Liz got out the packet of papers Ludo had left for her in his bathroom safe, and put them on the table in front of her.
“This is what your father asked me to bring to you. Some of the papers are about legal matters, and there is a personal account as well.”
“You can keep the personal account.”
Liz looked across the table at Charles Renaudie. “Take it or leave it,” she said, “I’ve done what I said I would do.” She stood up, and Charles Renaudie stood up also.
“You know what?” she said. “Ludo didn’t desert you. He looked until he found you. Enough of the self-pity. Get over it, Mr. Renaudie.” Liz picked up her backpack from the table. “I’ll see myself out,” she said.
Back behind the convent wall, Liz lay on the bed in her hotel room for a while. The passive hostility of Charles Renaudie had left her feeling drained. She wondered if Ludo had asked her to do this in the hopes that his son might react more warmly, with some show of feeling.
“Wrong, Ludo,” she said out loud to her reflection in the mirror across the room. She needed to talk to someone, anyone. She pulled out her phone.
“Moretti.”
She felt suddenly warmer, more optimistic, the blood circling again in her veins.
“Guv, it’s Falla. I’m in Paris.”
“Ah. So tell me.”
When she had finished, there was silence at the other end for a moment. Then Moretti said, “I wondered. Remember when I went to Italy after our first case together?”
“Yes. Was it something like this?”
“In a way. War casts a long shadow.” But he didn’t elaborate. “How did he take the fact that his father killed his mother?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
“You spared him.”
“Oh no, not spared him, Guv.” Liz shook her head vehemently, as if Moretti was in the room with her. “I think he would have enjoyed it.”
“You’ll have to get a new stereo, Guv. Ludo left you his music collection. And his wine cellar, actually.”
When he met her at the airport, she looked tired, and she sat in the Triumph with her head resting against the back of the seat, her eyes closed.
“Nice of him. What about you? Or did he consider this pilgrimage on his behalf a gift?”
“No. He left me La Chancho’s Poirets and Delaunays. Spooky. I’m going to sell them on eBay.”
Moretti could think of nothing else to say, so he changed the subject. “PC Mauger says thanks, but it really should have been your collar. You told him to take a look at someone called DeBiase? Gord Collenette’s maître d’? Dealing cocaine, I believe, as a side order with coquilles St. Jacques.”
“Wicked!” The news seemed to have revived her. A minute or two later, he heard her humming under her breath, and after a while he said, “What’s that? I don’t recognize it.”
She turned her head toward him, and he could hear amusement in her voice. “You wouldn’t, Guv, it’s not your kind of music.”
“Try me.”
So she sang to him and, no, it was not his kind of music, but the emotional impact of her voice was everything Ludo Ross had described. He had been critical of her lousy choice of lovers but, in that respect, were they really that different?
“It was written by a Celtic singer from New Zealand. I like it. I’ll be singing it next week at — but you’d not be interested.”
“I’m interested,” Moretti heard himself saying. “I’m interested.”
Herm
“I am surprised you brought her here.”
“I am surprised she agreed to be brought here,” said Peter Walker. “She is not at all a country girl, or a beach girl. A creature of big cities, Janice is.”
“So why here?” Moretti pulled off his loafers and felt the warm sand beneath the soles of his feet, the sun on his upturned face. “This place is so tiny you could hold it in the palm of your hand. Could be scary for a creature of big cities.”
“Because this is where it all started. Coming here, meeting you again, you asking for my help. Janice knew the policeman and the musician. The policeman is long gone, and I needed her to see a part of me she never knew, this old fart with binoculars and a song in his heart, watching the fulmars on their nests. How long this will last, I don’t know, I can only hope, but I needed to be here with her.”
“And she came with you. A good start, I’d say. Here she comes.”
Walking toward them over the curve of the beach from the hotel, Jan Melville called out, “I’d forgotten what a savage game croquet can be. I won! Here —”
She handed over two of the three cans of beer she was holding, took a hearty swig from hers, and sat down close to Peter.
“What a competitive person you are.”
Peter Walker touched her cheek with the chilled can, then his own, and Jan Melville’s slanting black eyes gleamed, and she laughed as if he had said the wittiest thing in the world.
“I must be off.” Moretti got up from the sand, brushing down his jeans, slipping his feet back into his shoes.
“Are you playing tonight?” Peter asked. “We could come across with you, stay overnight in the big metropolis.”
“I’ll be at the Grand Saracen tomorrow night, although it’ll be strange without Garth. Still, it looks like his horn-playing days are not over, thanks to his lawyer and a certain eagerness among the power brokers to get this whole business over ASAP.”
Janice Melville laughed. “And, thanks to Ludovic Ross, there are more bodies than bad guys to stand in the dock. What a storyteller! Looking at the case notes, I have wondered if Coralie Fellowes was killed by person or persons unknown. Hard to believe Ross did it, when clearly she was the love of his life. He liked to kill, that man — or was he just bragging?”
“Oh, no.” Moretti shook his head. “Ludo did it. Only Ludo would have put her to sleep, playing for her the tape he made her, the music of their time together.”
Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.
“If you don’t have plans for tonight, why don’t you stay and have dinner with us?” Peter pulled Janice to her feet, held her clos
e against him.
“I have plans. Not my music, but someone else’s. It’s something I have been meaning to do, but it never seemed the right time.”
Jan looked quizzically at him. “What makes it the right time now?” she asked.
Moretti smiled. “I heard the siren singing,” he replied.
Acknowledgements
Warm thanks once again to the Guernsey Police for their help with the structure of the force and the unique administration of laws on the island. My thanks also go to Ros Hammarskjold — my ex-co-headgirl at the Guernsey Ladies’ College — and her husband, Frank, for their friendship. Grateful thanks to my meticulous editor, Cheryl Hawley, and to Michael Carroll, associate publisher and editorial editor at Dundurn, for giving me the pleasure of seeing Moretti and Falla on the printed page. Kudos to designer Jennifer Scott for her moody and atmospheric cover design. Appreciative thanks go to “Nick,” whose anonymity I will maintain, who gave me useful insights into the internal power struggles in local government and the impact of the financial presence on the island. To Bill Hanna, my agent, goes my gratitude for all his efforts on my behalf. Sadly, Frances Hanna, my long-time agent and friend, did not live to see this book in print, and I have dedicated it to her memory. I shall miss her sharp editorial eye and conversations with her about politics, the arts — and cats. Thank you to my stepson, John, for his help with sound systems and firearms. Loving thanks as always to my husband, Ian, for his support, and for revisiting his skills as a geographer and cartographer to make a map of Guernsey for the book.
Copyright © Jill Downie, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Cheryl Hawley
Design: Jennifer Scott
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Downie, Jill
A grave waiting [electronic resource] : a Moretti and Falla mystery / Jill Downie.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0638-5
I. Title.
PS8557.O848G73 2012 C813’.54 C2012-901548-2
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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Also by Jill Downie
Daggers and Men’s Smiles
978-1554888689
$11.99
On the English Channel Island of Guernsey, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his new partner, Liz Falla, investigate vicious attacks on Epicure Films. The international production company is shooting a movie based on British bad-boy author Gilbert Ensor’s bestselling novel about an Italian aristocratic family at the end of the Second World War, using fortifications from the German occupation of Guernsey as locations, and the manor house belonging to the expatriate Vannonis.
When vandalism escalates into murder, Moretti must resist the attractions of Ensor’s glamorous American wife, Sydney, consolidate his working relationship with Falla, and establish whether the murders on Guernsey go beyond the island.
Why is the Marchesa Vannoni in Guernsey? What is the significance of the design that appears on the daggers used as murder weapons, as well as on the Vannoni family crest? And what role does the marchesa’s statuesque niece, Giulia, who runs the family business and is probably bisexual, really play?
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