by Jill Downie
“DC Brown’s a colleague,” Moretti repeated.
This assumption that Al Brown would be a regular player was disturbing. From what he had overheard of the conversation between Falla and the brainiac, much of the music played by Portuguese guitarists was of the gypsy jazz or fado variety, which was not his style. The last thing he needed was to lose his bass player and drummer in a fit of pique about a manouche player imported into the Fénions.
“So what’s it to be?” Ronnie held her pad at the ready.
“That,” said Al Brown, “was going to be my second question. What is involtini alla cacciatore?”
“Veal scallops stuffed with chicken livers and prosciuttto, rolled up and cooked with Marsala. Out of this world,” Ronnie replied.
Both men ordered the veal scallops, Ronnie departed, and Al Brown raised his glass.
“Here’s to magical thinking, and freedom of self-expression,” he said.
“Don’t you Met-trained guys believe in structure?” asked Moretti. “That’s what Chief Officer Hanley believes. He’s hoping you’ll teach me about MI Teams and Action Managers.”
“Shit,” said Aloisio Brown.
“The lights came back on and the screaming stopped.”
Elodie sat on the edge of the sofa in her sitting room, hands clasped, leaning forward towards Liz. It was about ten o’clock when Liz received Elodie’s text, and she had been on her way home from Beau Sejour. If she had not had her recent conversation with Marla Maxwell in the change room, she would probably just have talked it over with Elodie on the phone.
“Screaming? Just Marla, or anyone else?”
Elodie shrugged her shoulders. “Someone else did, but by the time the lights came on he or she had stopped. Could have been a man or a woman. Just a high-pitched sound, so I don’t know. But thanks for dropping by.”
“You seemed worried, and I was at Beau Sejour. Besides, wine with risotto sounded good.” Liz took another mouthful of risotto frutti di mare. “And it is.”
“I should come with you some time,” said Elodie. “I’ll admit, it was scary, particularly after reading Gandalf’s play, but it was what Marla was howling that really bothered me.”
“Which was …?”
“‘Leave me alone! Stop trying to frighten me! What have I done to you?’ — That kind of thing. It sounded like it was not the first time something disturbing had happened, and I started to worry about what I had done.”
“Putting the cat among the theatrical pigeons, you said. What did you do?”
Elodie shrugged her shoulders. “I rang Marie and told her that Shawcross saw her as an evil seductress. I laid it on with a trowel and she was thrilled. Then this happens, and I wonder whether I opened some can of worms with my trowel, although I don’t see why or how.”
Liz put her plate down on the table beside her, and picked up her glass of wine. “Neither do I, but it’s a coincidence of a kind, and my Guvnor doesn’t believe in coincidences.” She hesitated, and then continued. “I told you about Mrs. Maxwell’s complaint, and I don’t suppose it matters if I tell you about my encounter with Marla at Beau Sejour, since she refused to make it official. She says someone is pestering her with what she called ‘weird text messages,’ but she doesn’t want her parents to know. I haven’t looked into it yet, but can you make a text message anonymous? I think you can, but I’m going to double-check.”
“You can.” Elodie got up from her chair, went over to the sideboard and brought back the bottle of wine to the table. Her face was sombre. “If the texter has an unlisted number, it would not come up on the display, and it would be very hard to trace. And you cannot return a message left from a private caller, not surprisingly.”
Liz looked at Elodie. She had poured herself another glass of wine, then curled up in her chair, the position suggesting vulnerability, fragility. Not her usual body language at all, and Liz remembered her mother’s cryptic response to her observation about her aunt’s divorce.
“It’ll be interesting to see if Mrs. Maxwell gets on to us about this tomorrow. Did you see anyone enter or leave the room around about the time the lights went off?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. There was quite a bit of coming and going, because of the refreshments. There were twelve of us in the room —” Elodie stopped. “Hold on, there were thirteen of us, because of the late arrival.”
“Late arrival?”
“Yes, a friend of Marla’s. A young chap. Charlie, she called him. Charles Priestley. Central casting for a beautiful — is there such a thing as an homme fatale? From Hugo’s face, I think he’ll be doing a rewrite, and we’ll find a new character added. I thought Marie was going to blow a gasket, but she held on.”
“She said something to me about someone she didn’t want her parents to know about. Maybe it’s this feller. Was this before or after the lights went off?”
“Well before.”
“Did the late arrival just walk in? Or did he have to be let in?”
“Walked in. I don’t know who else was in the house, but Elton Maxwell didn’t make an appearance and no explanation was given. But we all know he is not a fan of the theatre. Marie just left the front door unlocked and we let ourselves in.”
“After Charlie Priestley arrived, did anyone leave?”
“No, I am sure no one left during the reading. We didn’t break, but went straight through.”
“So someone else came in and switched off the lights — unless it was a power failure. But that would be another coincidence.” Liz got up and carried her plate through to the kitchen. She called back, “So how was the vampire’s play? Any good?”
There was silence from the other room. Then Elodie replied, so quietly Liz could hardly hear her words.
“Yes, unfortunately,” she said.
When Liz came back from the kitchen, Elodie was pouring herself another glass of wine. Next to her on the sofa lay her copy of the play, and she picked it up and put it on the table between them. Liz pulled it towards her.
“Isn’t there usually a title page? This looks like the cast of characters.”
“Yes. I think Gandalf had a rush job on his hands last night, and he gave us the title in the meeting. Blood Play.”
“Bit obvious, isn’t it?”
“It is, as he said, a technical term. There are actually organized groups who get together and cut themselves and others, and drink each other’s blood.”
“Revolting!” Liz put down her glass of red wine with a shudder.
“That’s the whole point, really, that it is taboo, and that heightens the mythical quality of blood. Sadomasochism, pleasure and pain, but supposedly performed by consenting adults on each other.”
“So when you said ‘unfortunately,’ you meant what I said. Revolting.”
“I wish I did. I cope better with disgusting than — desolate. Gandalf’s creation took me by surprise, I’ll admit.”
Elodie kicked off her slippers and put her feet up in the chair. In profile, away from the table lamp, her face and her expressions were hidden from Liz.
“Apart from Lilith, what do you know, Liz, about vampire legends and the present craze for them in film and on TV?”
“Not much. Not my thing, fangs and open graves and dead people walking. In my job I see too much blood to find it sexy — and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Oh, and death, I suppose. Sex and death.”
“Primal fears in a nutshell, these days usually sugar-coated with sweet young things falling for glamorous male figures who are mad, bad and dangerous to know; dead as doornails, but immortal, with immortality achieved by drinking the blood of virgins.”
“Yuk, in my opinion. How can you call that sugar-coated, El?”
“Because on TV and in books and movies they have corrupted corruption. They dodge the issue of death, turn what is terrifying into highjinks in the dorm, scary pyjama parties, that kind of dreck.”
“And Gandalf didn’t.”
“No. In his pl
ay, he returns again and again to the most terrifying theme of all. Loneliness. Right up there with death, in my opinion.” Elodie swung around, facing Liz. “I cannot believe I am saying this, but I felt sorry for the vampire.”
Liz decided to lighten the moment. “And which of our island farceurs is going to play the bad guy? Do I know him?”
“You know both the person who will probably play him, and the man who should. Raymond, with his usual unerring lack of vision and backbone, will choose the wrong one. He should choose Rory Gastineau, and he will choose Jim Landers.”
“That’s a surprise. Doesn’t it take guts to turn down a Gastineau?”
“Not this one. Rory’s boozing has never stopped him learning lines, and there was such angst when he read. Jim is all intellect and not a shred of true emotion. But there is no love lost between Marie and her big brother, and Raymond knows it.”
“Angst? Didn’t he recently marry gorgeous Tanya — whoever she was before she met Rory?”
“After shilly-shallying around for years, Rory found himself one beautiful brood mare. Or, rather, she found him. She came here to find herself an offshore millionaire, so they say, and found herself island royalty instead. But there you have the problem for Marie, Liz. If Rory and Tanya have a boy, Marla no longer is the heiress apparent. And Ginnie will never be a threat, as long as all she wants for Christmas is the bookshop owner. Jim just isn’t interested.”
“Is he gay?”
Elodie laughed. “Not if his behaviour towards me is anything to go by. I went out to dinner with him a couple of times. I enjoyed his company, because the conversation was interesting. But he wanted more, and I don’t want anyone in my life, just at the moment.”
“I’ve never really met Jim Landers, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to have much small talk. What did he talk about?”
“Books, of course!” Elodie laughed. “His passion. But I learned something about his background, which was army. He spent most of his childhood on the move in places like Kenya and Zanzibar, with spells at boarding school, depending on how dangerous his father’s postings were. Seems to have seen little of his mother, and was not very fond of his father, from what I gathered. But he’s not one to express emotion. It was more what wasn’t said than what was.”
Liz thought briefly about asking how Elodie knew Jim Landers wanted more, since he wasn’t one to express emotion. But only briefly. She got up, and started to pull on her fleece jacket. “I’ve got to go. We’re still dealing with the suicide, and the trouble with hermits is they don’t socialize with anyone. Talk about loneliness!”
“Is loneliness the same as aloneness, I wonder. No next of kin, I suppose. Is that the problem?”
“Yes.” Liz paused, then said, “I lost my train of thought back there, but I remember it now. I thought there wasn’t much Gastineau moolah left to fight over. Is there?”
“Quite a bit in what the Americans call real estate. As well as piracy, it is how the family originally made themselves rich and powerful, with houses and land here, in France and in England. But they have sold off most of what they had over the years and kept only the town and the country house. The house out in Forest is worth a few million, because it is open market, apart from a small cottage in the grounds — and there are acres of grounds. There would be any number of potential buyers for the land alone. There have already been heavy hints dropped by Maxwell and Lorrimer, but so far Rory isn’t budging. And as long as he was unmarried, Marie was happy. Any heir has to be legit, apparently, to inherit, and males always take precedence.”
“Wow. Quite Jane Austen, isn’t it.”
“With more than a touch of one of the Brontë sisters — Tenant of Wildfell Hall, perhaps. Baroque and Gothic, rather than Buffy the Vampire Slayer-ish.”
“Oooh, heavy.”
Just as both women started to laugh, an unearthly howl rose outside somewhere in the garden.
“Oh my God.” Liz clasped her throat, an instinctive gesture she would think about afterwards. “What the —?”
“Relax.” Elodie got up and leaned over the sofa to pull one of the curtains slightly aside. The night garden was lit by a full moon in a cloudless sky, as beautiful and unreal as a stage set. “I’d know that sound anywhere. Gandalf must have let Stoker out when he got home, and he has sought out his mortal enemy, Mudge.”
“Ill met by moonlight,” said Liz, coming over to join Elodie at the window. “That was Titania meeting Oberon, wasn’t it, and holding on to the little boy.”
“Yes. An orphan. The son of someone dear to her, but she, being mortal, died.” The sadness in Elodie’s expression filled the room. Maybe, thought Liz, she has opened a can of worms, but for herself as much as for anyone else.
“What role are you auditioning for in Blood Play, El?”
“None,” her aunt replied. “I’ve already told Raymond I will be script assistant, but that I want no part in this.” Elodie turned back to Liz. “There’s an old German saying I once heard, and I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the past few hours. Can’t remember the German, but it goes something like this: Don’t paint the Devil on the wall.”
Elodie pulled the curtains together, shutting out the moonshine.
The bloodcurdling screams faded and died away.
“Just One of Those Things.” “From This Moment On.” Slowing into “All the Things You Are” and “You Go to My Head.” Behind, alongside, echoing sometimes, Al Brown gradually unfolding and developing the melody as Moretti began to like what he heard, to trust what he heard, and to give him space. It’s hard to play slow drifted into his mind. The words of Miles Davis, master of slow tempo magic. Even playing “Tempus Fugit” he could make time stand still.
They took the tempo up before they finished the set. “Lady Be Good,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “Lover.” The small crowd in the Grand Saracen whooped and begged for more. They gave them “You Rascal You.”
People began to filter downstairs from the restaurant, and Ronnie Bedini came down to help serve the drinks. Whenever he turned to look beyond the edge of the small stage, Moretti could see her dark eyes fixed on the tall, beautiful Latvian girl who served the drinks in the downstairs bar. Trouble? He hoped he was wrong. Deb seemed happy with her current lover.
“You’ve done this before,” Moretti said to Al Brown as they walked back through the quiet streets to the Triumph.
“I have. How did you get into playing jazz piano?”
“I learned to play the piano at my mother’s knee. Then, when I was about fifteen I picked up a record of Thelonius Monk. It was scratched and damaged but that was it.”
“For me, it was Django, of course. You have a drummer?”
“And a bass. They’re good.”
“Great,” said Al Brown.
Chapter Nine
Just on the outskirts of St. Peter Port, the Priaulx Library began life in much the same way as so many splendid homes in Guernsey; it was built in the eighteenth century on the profits of brandy running and contraband. The Priaulx family bought it from Peter Mourant, the smuggler, and Osmond Priaulx bequeathed it and his vast library to his beloved island. It stands just above the statue of Queen Victoria, who would probably not have been amused by its history, and close to Victor Hugo on his massive plinth, granite cloak blowing perpetually in the wind, whose sympathies would certainly have been with those law-breaking toilers of the sea.
Ed Moretti and Police Constable Bernie Mauger walked the short distance from Hospital Lane to the library, cutting through Candie Gardens, which had originally belonged to the house and which were part of Osmond Priaulx’s gift. It was a beautiful morning, and PC Mauger was humming to himself as he walked, happy to be part of Moretti’s investigation. He wasn’t sure why they were going to all this trouble about an old hermit’s suicide, but his was not to reason why. He was just chuffed to be along for the ride, unlike both plainclothes and uniform back at the station, who were grumbling about Hanley allowing
Moretti so much leeway.
“‘The solace of my life,’ Osmond Priaulx called his books,” said Moretti, as much for himself as for PC Mauger.
“Didn’t know that, sir, but I remember my dad telling me that, when they renovated the roof a few years back, they found all kinds of weird stuff left there by the roofers who’d done the job a hundred years before. Supposed to stop evil happening, or something.”
“Interesting. Did they leave them there?”
“Don’t know, sir, but most likely. Could have been unlucky to move them, right?”
Moretti looked at the constable to see if he was being ironic, but there was no sign of levity on his broad, placid face.
“What is it we’re looking for, sir?”
“I don’t know.” PC Mauger looked at Moretti, puzzled. “But I can tell you where to make a start. Ask for the records in the archive between about 1950 and the present day. Concentrate on the fifties, sixties and seventies, and on any news item with the name ‘Dorey.’ And don’t forget the classifieds.”
PC Mauger’s frown deepened on his wall of a forehead and he shook his head in dismay. “Dorey,” he repeated. “You’ve been off the island a while, haven’t you, sir. Had you forgotten it’s one of the commonest surnames here?”
“No, and I wish he was called something else, but he isn’t. What I want you to look for is family stuff — scandals, feuds, any unlikely news items about court cases, legal disputes, that kind of thing. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting a copy of his family tree, birth certificate, and so on. Oh, and look out for anything to do with marriages either here or on the mainland.”
“Right, sir. Is it about wills and such? Who gets what’s left? Wouldn’t have thought there was much, not with him living out there in that shack.”
Those were Moretti’s thoughts also. What could Gus Dorey still have in his life that had brought about his death? As far as they knew, only some pricey books, and they had been left untouched. Irene Edwards said he had cataracts, and since reading was unmistakably his passion, probably the only joy left in his life, losing that passion might be cause enough for suicide. The solace of his life, as it had been to Osmond Priaulx.