‘That’s funny,’ said Bryant, his eyes narrowing even more. ‘So do I.’
‘Then let’s both write it down and see who’s right.’
They sealed their pages into envelopes and handed them to each other. ‘Who’s going to go first?’ asked Bryant.
‘Toss a coin,’ said May. ‘Let’s use mine; I don’t trust yours.’ He took out a 50p piece and flipped it. ‘Call.’
‘Tails.’
‘Tails it is.’
‘Right, I go first. Let’s head back to the curry stall.’
* * *
—
The farmers’ market was in full swing once more. As they approached the stalls they could see that a long lunchtime queue had formed for Curry in a Hurry.
‘Colin suffered no ill effects, then,’ said May. ‘He even took Meera out for another one last night.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t try these in the right combination,’ Bryant said, pointing at the colourful condiment pots. He held one up before the counter girl. ‘Where do you get these?’
‘We mix and grind them ourselves,’ she said.
‘Ever had anyone get sick after using them?’
‘Certainly not. All of our hygiene certificates from the Food Standards Agency are up to date.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Bryant as they walked away, ‘I think Kamesh had heard about the legend, tore the ground up himself, then invited Hussein to take a look. She was studying urban sociology; maybe it was a subject that interested her. He met her some weeks earlier, then changed his mind about her. Perhaps Miss Hussein started calling too often and disrupting his plans. He decides to ignore her but she comes looking for him. Soon after this he realizes he’ll be unable to get rid of her. He concocts a plan, telling her he has something unusual to show her. He buys her a curry, brings a condiment bottle of his own just like the ones on the counter of the stall, and empties it on her side of the meal while she’s studying the footsteps. That way, he can be sure she eats it. Then he goes home and everything goes back to normal. The perfect murder.’
‘And that’s it, is it?’ asked May, fishing his partner’s envelope from his coat. ‘You dismiss my gloopy curry problem without a second thought.’
‘You think I’m wrong?’
‘I know you are.’
‘Then what is your solution?’
May smiled. ‘Mine—and you’ll like this—involves a paradox that is mundane, yet extraordinary. The boy is a murderer, but the girl wasn’t murdered.’
‘My dear fellow, what are you talking about?’
‘Follow me.’
It buoyed May to be in control for once. There was a spring in his step as he walked across the grass to the top corner of the quadrangle and the small supply hut belonging to the college’s gardener.
‘You’re partly right, of course. Alysha Hussein’s attentions were unwanted. She was always there, just across the square or hanging around the common rooms, waiting for him. He couldn’t concentrate on his coursework or his extracurricular project. He met up with her to have a talk, and to tell her once and for all to leave him alone.’
‘And in this scenario of yours’—here Bryant waved his fingers in the air to indicate the flimsiness of his partner’s theory—‘how does the lady take it?’
‘She’s devastated,’ May replied. ‘He’s invited her to share a meal with him and this is what she gets instead. She’s already nervous and hypertense, and overheated from the curry. Now Kamesh’s cruel dismissal pushes her heart rate further and she goes into the first of a series of arrhythmic arrests. She can’t breathe, let alone speak. She reaches out to him, desperate for his help. Does he realize that all he has to do is walk away from her as quickly as possible and let nature take its course, or does he just think she’s being overdramatic? Either way, he crosses the lawn and doesn’t look back until he’s returned to his room. You have to admit it’s a more plausible explanation than yours.’
‘Wait.’ Bryant held up a questioning finger. ‘What about the forty footsteps?’
‘Open my envelope,’ said May.
Bryant did as he was told. On the page inside was an instruction. He opened the lid of the gardener’s box and looked inside.
‘You told me your landlady complained about the poor planting,’ said May. ‘The gardener was trying to fix it.’
In the green pod was a gigantic yellow container of weedkiller.
‘At first I thought he had poisoned her with it,’ May admitted, tapping out a rare cigarette. ‘But when I did some checking I discovered that few British weedkillers have lethal chemicals in them anymore. They could make you sick because they contain dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, but they’re not likely to kill you.’
‘Then what does this have to do with—?’ Bryant started to ask.
‘Pick up the canister,’ May instructed.
When Bryant did so he found that its base had split, so that there was hardly any liquid left inside it.
‘There’s a crack in the pod as well.’ May pointed his cigarette at its base. ‘The weedkiller has been leaking out all this time. We didn’t notice it when it was raining, but on dry days it made the path wet. When Kamesh stood up to leave he walked in a puddle of it and trod it across the lawn. That’s why there are only a few bare patches—it wore off after a few steps.’
‘You mean he accidentally duplicated the original steps that were there on and off for three hundred years?’
May examined the end of his cigarette. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed an occasional smoke. ‘Not exactly. I did some further checking with your pal Kirkpatrick. Southey was off by more than just a few feet. The latest evidence locates the duelling site to a spot next to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, underneath a coffee shop.’
‘If you’re correct, I promise I won’t be a bad loser,’ said Bryant, ‘but you have to answer two questions for me. First, what makes you think you’re right?’
May pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to his partner. ‘Your hay fever,’ he said. ‘You can’t smell anything at the moment, can you? It reeks of creosote around here. The odour is added to the weedkiller to stop pets from drinking it. And the second question?’
‘How are you going to prove it?’
‘Check his trainers,’ May replied. ‘What does the winner get?’
‘Two chicken jalfrezis, please,’ said Bryant at the counter of Curry in a Hurry.
Janice Longbright and the Best of Friends
I. What Happened Before
Gail Barker first met Lily Marshall in the golden, molten days of a Paris autumn, when the air was hot and dead and the leaves were losing their richness.
Lily was taking a selfie next to Monet’s Water Lilies in the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries. When she caught Gail looking at her she said, ‘What? It goes right around the entire room, I can’t be blocking your view.’ They were the very last people in the place and the guards wanted them out, but Lily was taking her time.
Gail apologized for staring, and finally said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just not going to come out like that.’ Lily was dangling a Pentax in front of her and dipping at an absurd angle to try and get part of that vast mauve-blue painting in the background.
‘Then could you take it?’ Lily snapped impatiently. She was eighteen; Gail was seventeen. This was before proper selfies with phones, and Lily was using the timer on her camera, except she always thought it wasn’t going to go off and dropped her insouciant pose just as the shutter clicked. Gail untangled the camera from her and carefully took the picture.
Gail was still at school and had come to Paris by herself in the summer holidays. She had travelled by coach and paid for the trip through her Saturday job. Lily’s grades were not good enough to get her into the university of her choice, so she had accepted a job at Hom
e & Hearth, the homewares company where she would later be made a director.
After the gallery closed its doors they crossed the Seine to a bar near Notre-Dame called La Brasserie de l’Île Saint-Louis, a service continu joint where the waiters would leave you alone all night so long as you kept something in your glass.
Youth, Paris, love and the moon. Well, Gail wasn’t in love but perhaps, she decided, she had something better: a friend, the first her mother had not chosen for her. Lily was mature beyond a year’s difference. She wore so much makeup that it was hard to tell what she really looked like: foundation, concealer, bronzer, setting powder, two types of contour, highlighter, lip colour and half a dozen shades of eye shadow. She hardly ever went anywhere without this powdered mask. She explained that she’d had acne when she was younger and it had left her cheeks and neck with discoloured patches right down to the collar of her T-shirt, so the war paint boosted her confidence.
Lily had shiny black bobbed hair which she kept dyed because she said she was natural British mouse. Her eyes were set wide apart and she wore crimson lipstick that looked fabulous at night but slutty in the morning. Gail suspected that without these tricks Lily was probably rather ordinary-looking, practically invisible. Lily was affected, Gail supposed, because she was away from her controlling parents and in love with Paris and could be whoever she liked. But just as the water lilies only appeared whole from a distance, so Lily remained frustratingly oblique at close range.
‘Besides,’ she told Gail, filling her wineglass, ‘Monet painted four hundred and fifty pictures of his garden in every season and every light, and that’s how you should see people, always changing.’
The sun had set and the street lamps had come on. Waiters slipped between the tables in their white shirts, black waistcoats and white aprons. ‘I’m ordering us entrecôtes grillées. They’re thin boneless steaks—you do eat meat, don’t you?—but you must order it as you would like it to be cooked, otherwise they’ll flash it under the grill for two seconds and serve it dripping blood. And we’ll have to have fries because Parisians don’t seem to understand the concept of vegetables. Order what you like, my father’s paying. I’ve got him enrolled in a system I call Parenting Through Guilt.’
Gail was entranced. She had never met anyone like Lily. She seemed entirely comfortable in her surroundings and her own skin, even though her every movement reeked of artifice. She was from the wealthiest part of Surrey but didn’t have the conviction of absolute rightness you so often found in girls from the Home Counties. She was always willing to be proven wrong. Gail was as contradictory in her own way, practical but imaginative. She was a Londoner from a less well-off family, and it turned out that Lily was moving nearby.
‘My parents wanted me to go to university,’ Lily continued, ‘but I told them I wanted to find a company where I could learn from the ground up. I’m taking an interior design course to see if I’ll like it.’
‘But what if you find you don’t have the aptitude?’ Gail asked.
Lily stopped laughing when she saw how serious Gail looked. ‘Oh, you’re a worrier, I can tell. The one thing we both have on our side right now is youth, and it’s an advantage that will never come again. We can do whatever we please because we have none of the expenses that come with age and responsibility. Ask yourself honestly: What do you have to lose?’
Gail often thought back to that night: the lights, soft and yellow in the trees like glowing fruit, the slender waiters darting across the cobbles with trays, the darkness of the river beyond, and Lily so young and full of electricity. Nothing could frighten her, and Gail knew that if she stayed close by, nothing could frighten her, either.
* * *
—
‘You don’t like it.’ Gail turned her head, worried. ‘It’s the cut, isn’t it? I was told it’s very fashionable.’
‘Now you sound like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby,’ Lily said, tipping her head to the other side. ‘Blond makes you look washed out. Are you feeling all right? You’re not pregnant or anything? I hope not, because that’s your third martini and the baby will come out all stunted.’
‘You’re dreadful.’ Gail pretended to be shocked.
Lily waved the idea aside. ‘Oh, I can’t be doing with that toujours la politesse malarkey.’
The pair still chucked bits of French around in honour of the way they’d met all those years ago. And they were still best friends who told each other everything. Lily always said if you can’t tell your best friend everything, then you’re not best friends. Of course, this was before she told Gail she was looking older. Gail said, ‘Well, I’m not quite ready to start presenting baking programmes.’ Lily was always far too honest to be considered polite, but you could trust her with your life. If you felt sick at a party she’d barge everyone out of the way to get you to the bathroom.
They argued from time to time, of course. Usually it was over something Lily had thoughtlessly said or done. Volatile storm clouds would suddenly appear and flash about them. Afterwards Gail would write out her anger in letters she never sent, and the sky was clear once more.
When Gail was dating the Brazilian DJ who could stand on his hands in the shower and suddenly announced that he wanted to abandon his hedonistic lifestyle and fertilize her eggs, Lily was the one who told him Gail wasn’t ready to settle down. But a best friend does more than save you from a life of salsa, handstands and babies. Lily looked after Gail when her father died and the stress of caring for her mother had brought on shingles; then Gail tried to take care of Lily, which was harder because she was so independent that everyone first thought she was a lesbian.
‘Seriously, you do feel fine? Because you’re looking your age when you should be aiming for, oh, five to seven years younger. Mind you, I’m thirty-eight, I’ll always be slightly ahead of you. I’ve seen what’s around the next corner. Men who talk about damp courses and Pink Floyd albums.’
‘You still look like your old photos.’ Gail meant it, even though she was wounded by the thoughtless remark. She had always been thin-skinned, lacking in confidence.
‘You’re being polite again. You’re lucky, you have supple skin; mine is so dry I can practically hear it drinking when I whack moisturizer on it.’
As it was Lily’s birthday they were having a drink on a rooftop in Shoreditch that had, ridiculously in London, a swimming pool. Like all London bars it was overcrowded to the point of unpleasantness, and had none of the exclusivity one might expect from a private members’ club. But they were both earning good money these days and could afford their overpriced cocktails; Gail was running an online fashion company, and Lily was now the only female director of Afternoon Delight, the homewares store where she had begun her design career, now rebranded. She had been propelled into the upper echelons of the company, but the last three years had been punishing.
Lily’s camera fetish had truly blossomed in the age of the selfie, and she now photographed everything around her, from meals to friends to flower arrangements. At first she said it was company research but Gail knew she loved Instagramming it all and counting her followers. This meant that having a drink with her was now like watching a network TV show with all the commercials in it. Every time they started to discuss something serious, Lily broke off to rearrange the table and photograph it. She often put herself in the shot using one of her preplanned facial poses, and was discreetly tilting her phone at the crowd standing next to them when she suddenly stopped.
‘My God, look to your left, four o’clock. Sophie What’s-her-name—Stewart—almost unrecognizable. Don’t stare.’
‘Where?’ Gail asked. Her eyesight was terrible but she hated contacts and kept a rather old-fashioned pair of glasses in her bag.
‘She’s right in front of you, in the Orla Kiely-ish thing with the big poppies all over it.’
Gail tried to rem
ember who Sophie Stewart was. Something about a double first in English literature and humanities, and a critically lauded book on British social history. She now extracted sound bites from politicians on breakfast television, making a fortune as the nation’s favourite working mother, although her press agent struggled to keep it that way, given that her twin penchants for alcohol and unsuitable younger men sometimes coincided disastrously. Gail wondered if Ms Stewart had been held back by her somewhat maternal looks, which caused men to underestimate her abilities. The unpalatable truth, she suspected, was that the nation liked to see her as mumsy, and her disenchantment with the role was the reason for her bouts of bad behaviour.
While Gail poked about in her bag she tried to stare surreptitiously. She could see the woman Lily was theatrically attempting to indicate, but this couldn’t be Sophie Stewart, surely? Around fifteen years younger, with narrow hips and long red hair? ‘There’s a faint resemblance,’ she admitted, ‘but it has to be her daughter.’
‘She doesn’t have a daughter. That’s her, I swear. She’s been telling everyone she’s been on sabbatical. She’s had work done.’
‘That’s more than just work.’ Gail located her spectacles and took another look. ‘She’s completely different.’
Sophie Stewart 2.0 had cheekbones and a jawline. Even her neck looked longer. She had gone from a mother goose to a swan, but without the stretched artificiality that so often accompanied surgery. The effect was so startling that Sophie had chosen to rein it in a little by wearing black-framed glasses, which just made her look even more alluring, like a Technicolor movie star from the 1960s.
‘If I could look like that…’ Lily began. ‘What is it they say about men? As they age they become either toads or lizards. Women vanish.’
Gail wondered if this introspection had been triggered by the arrival of another birthday. ‘It’s not just about looks, Lily. She’s well connected. She’s smart. But if she can reinvent herself like that she can do anything. You should go up to her and ask her how she did it.’
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