by Jill Downie
Elodie picked up her coffee mug from the table, and looked into it, as though she were reading the coffee grinds. The smile had gone, and Moretti could no longer see the expression in her eyes. “I am, Detective Inspector, the last person to involve myself with anything to do with blood play or the undead.”
“Care to explain?”
“No. It’s — personal. Nothing to do with all this. I was going to help with the play, but I’d opted out of performing. Still, I imagine the whole project is now kaput.” She looked up at him, her feelings under control again. “How is Hugo Shawcross? I should have asked before, but I don’t want to think about last night anymore than I can help.”
“He’s doing remarkably well, thanks to you, not talking yet, but has already requested paper to write down what he wants.” Leave it at that, he thought. No need to tell her it’s just about the cat.
“Good to hear.” She turned away and looked out of the window. “I wonder if they’ve found anything.”
Moretti stood up. Looking out of the window clearly signalled the end of Elodie Ashton’s co-operation, but there was little more to gain by continuing now, and best to leave her to mull over what he had suggested. Not much mulling to do, though, he thought. Still, he didn’t see her as a game-player. Not this type of game, but there was definitely something she was holding back.
“Thank you for the coffee. I’ll go and talk to them.” He indicated the door that led into the back garden. “Is it all right to go that way?”
“Of course. Mr. Le Poidevin told me I could use it now. Sorry I yelled at you.”
She didn’t sound very sorry.
“It comes with the job. I’ve heard worse.”
She walked over to the door and unlocked it. “Liz enjoys working with you — her Guvnor, she calls you. One thing —” Elodie Ashton turned back to Moretti, looking up into his face. Seen from above, she had quite an arrogant curve to her nose. “I gather you haven’t heard her sing? She’s good, you know.”
“So I’ve been told.” Time for a swift exit, he thought.
“In her own way, as good as you.”
Taken by surprise, and before Moretti had time to respond, Elodie stood back in the doorway, and indicated the path along which she had seen Hugo Shawcross struggling towards her, drenched in his own blood.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said, “I’m locking myself in again.”
Moretti found himself standing alongside an elderberry tree, planted close to the former kitchen door. If he remembered rightly, it was supposed to keep the witches away.
Only time would tell if the redhead in the house was a heroine, or a harpy, or a bit of both. So many women were.
Chapter Thirteen
“Ah yes.”
Marie Maxwell’s unfocused greeting seemed out of character, and almost as if she was expecting to see Liz Falla on her doorstep. She was wearing light slippers over bare feet, and what looked like diamond studs in her ears flashed expensively in the light from the open door.
“Come in. I know who you are. Terrible, terrible.”
Above the bare feet and slippers were slim-fitting black slacks and a heavy white sweater that looked hand-knitted, but expertly hand-knitted, and Liz immediately coveted it.
“Detective Sergeant Falla, Mrs. Maxwell. You have heard about the attack on Mr. Shawcross?”
“Certainly I have. My cousin’s daughter is on the nursing staff at Princess Elizabeth Hospital, and she phoned me this morning. I imagine that’s why you’re here. Terrible, terrible.”
“Yes, but he is making a good recovery. Thanks to Ms. Ashton’s prompt action.”
They were still standing in the hallway. Marie Maxwell suddenly came to her senses as if awakened from a trance, clicking into hostess mode with offers of coffee, tea, water, and choices of rooms for the interview.
“Wherever is best for you, Mrs. Maxwell. This shouldn’t take long.”
Liz Falla followed her into a small room that looked like a private sitting room, feminine in décor and design. Over a fireplace blooming with baskets of silk flowers hung a large painting of a dainty lady on a swing. Liz recognized it as the reproduction of a well-known painting by Fragonard. She had once been given a box of chocolates with the same image on the lid by a suitor as hopeful as the two gallants in the painting. She wondered if they had been equally as unlucky.
Liz took the seat indicated by Marie Maxwell, a pretty little tub chair upholstered in ivory velvet, and her hostess sat down opposite her in a matching chair. As she took out her notebook and opened it, Marie Maxwell said, “You’re the officer who knows about what has been happening to my daughter, aren’t you? The text messages and so on?”
Good. The decision to let Marie Maxwell know had been taken out of her hands.
“She told you about our conversation at the gym?”
“Yes. I have a mobile, of course, but I really don’t understand how to do anything with it except make or receive a call, so all this is beyond me. And now I have to worry it all has something to do with this terrible attack.”
“Let’s start with when Mr. Shawcross first became a member of the group, and when the harassment of your daughter began. Has she told you when that was?”
Marie Maxwell jumped up eagerly from her chair and crossed over to a charming little escritoire by the fireplace. She opened it and took out a small notebook.
“I thought of that myself. Marla tells me the trouble began weeks before Hugo Shawcross first joined the Island Players, almost certainly before he was even on the island.”
“Did Marla tell you anything specific about the text messages? What they said. Or threatened?”
Marie Maxwell shrugged her shoulders. “The usual things these teenagers do, or say. You know. About her being pretty and a Gastineau mainly. That kind of thing.”
Marie had suddenly become vague, and it was difficult to tell if the vagueness was genuine, or assumed. And if assumed, Liz asked herself, why?
“Did Marla open up to you because she heard about the attack on Hugo Shawcross?”
“Yes. She was in the room when my cousin phoned. But I already knew there was something going on because of her hysterics when the lights went out at the reading.”
“The lights went out at the reading?” Liz repeated.
“Yes. The power had been switched off all over the house — well, our part of it.”
Liz waited for Marie Maxwell to continue, ready to prompt her if necessary. But prompting was the last thing Marie needed. The information poured from her, and it differed very little from what Elodie had said. Apart from her final statement.
“I couldn’t get Marla to give me any real explanation, and I am sure this all has something to do with that very strange young man she met at a party.”
“Met at a party?”
So far, hushed regurgitation of Marie Maxwell’s final utterance seemed to be all that was necessary.
“Yes, at the lieutenant-governor’s son’s birthday party. I mean, I couldn’t really refuse to let her attend — you understand, I’m sure.”
Of course Liz understood. This was an invitation to be treasured, trumpeted from the rooftops.
“What made you concerned about this young man?”
Marie Maxwell leaned towards Liz Falla, and put out a hand, almost as though she were about to touch her, then withdrew, pulling herself together.
“The fact that I knew nothing about him until he was in my house. Marla knows we have a shortage of young men, and that it was very unlikely Raymond would turn him away.”
“Raymond?”
“The director. I can usually persuade him to go along with my ideas, but in this case Hugo was in Raymond’s corner.”
“The name of this — strange young man, you called him.”
“Charles Priestley. I understand he was educated in Britain and is now staying here with his uncle before attending university. He is certainly charismatic, but in a way I find … iffy.”
&nb
sp; “Iffy?” echoed Liz. “In what way?”
Marie Maxwell waved her hands in the air, at a loss for words for the first time since the interview began. Liz dived into the momentary silence.
“We’ll check him,” she said. Then, swiftly changing direction before Marie Maxwell had a chance to dilate further upon her maternal concerns, she asked, “Is advocate Hamelin the Gastineau-Maxwell family lawyer, Mrs. Maxwell?”
The change in Marie Maxwell’s body language was immediate, her expression and her body frozen into stillness, her jaw slightly dropped.
Liz Falla waited. Over the past two cases she had been on with her Guvnor, she had learned that silence at such moments is often golden.
“He is. Why do you ask?” Marie Maxwell’s voice wavered as she finally spoke, and Liz decided to dive even deeper, and not worry about the chief officer.
“Because he came to talk to me about two days ago, about the suicide of the hermit on Pleinmont Common, Gus Dorey. From what he felt free to tell me, there are concerns about certain past issues resurfacing. I understand there was at one time bad blood between your two families?”
Not that advocate Hamelin had been the one to say that, but no harm in giving that impression.
“Bad blood?”
Now it was Marie who was the echo in the room.
“What on earth has that pathetic old man’s death got to do with this?”
“I was wondering if you could help us with that, Mrs. Maxwell. Clearly, advocate Hamelin did not feel free in his professional capacity to say more than he did, but the disturbing messages and the harassment of your daughter just might have a connection with the suicide. Of course, we would not have come to that conclusion without advocate Hamelin’s visit.”
It would be worth being raked over the coals by Hanley to land the silver fox in deep doo-doo.
Marie Maxwell drew herself up in her chair and leaned forward, speaking in a voice vibrating with emotion.
“There’s something I must tell you, Detective Sergeant.”
“Yes?” Liz waited expectantly, pen in hand.
“I refuse to be intimidated by whoever has done this terrible thing. The attempted murder of Hugo Shawcross alters nothing. We have the play, we have the players. The show must go on!”
Before Liz Falla had the chance to make any kind of response to Marie Maxwell’s swerve in direction, there came a roar from the half-open doorway.
“Over my dead body!”
Elton Maxwell was standing there.
At least, that was who Liz presumed it was, not having ever met Marie Maxwell’s husband. Although Marla looked facially very much like her mother, she had also inherited much of her father. He was tall, fair-haired, with a slender build, and fine features, which were temporarily distorted in rage. He strode across the room and, ignoring his wife, addressed Liz.
“Who, pray, are you? Another of my wife’s so-called artistic friends?”
These kinds of moments held their own satisfaction. Liz pulled out her police identity card and held it up close to the engorged face of Elton Maxwell.
“And you are … sir?” she asked, soft as a cooing dove in a Fragonard painting.
“Good God, the police! I’m Elton Maxwell, of course.”
Elton Maxwell spluttered to a halt and sat down abruptly in a frail-looking chair that matched the little escritoire by the fireplace. It creaked as he did so, and Liz saw that the slender build was deceptive. Elton Maxwell had an incipient paunch.
“That’s right, sir. Detective Sergeant Falla. I am investigating the attack on Hugo Shawcross, and the threats to your daughter.”
“The threats to my daughter?”
With Elton Maxwell now sounding like Little Sir Echo — a song her grandfather in his cups used to sing unasked and unendingly at family gatherings — Liz Falla asserted herself, and forgot about Moretti’s caveat.
“Phone and text threats that may have some connection with the attempted murder of Hugo Shawcross and the suicide of Gus Dorey, and the visit by advocate Hamelin to Hospital Lane after the announcement of the hermit’s death in the Guernsey Press.”
She expected a verbal onslaught from Elton Maxwell, and a verbal onslaught there was, but it was directed at his wife, not at her. Swerving around in the tiny chair, he shouted at Marie Maxwell, “I told you that was a blockheaded idea, but what else could I expect from that dunderhead of a brother of yours! Both of you boneheads, and Ginnie the only one with a sensible head on her shoulders!”
In anger, Elton Maxwell’s northern accent became more noticeable, his attempt at being posh slipping disastrously.
Certainly not a Channel-Islander, thought Liz. The Gastineaus may be dunderheads, boneheads and blockheads, but hot-headed Mr. Maxwell has just given me information I might never have extracted from his wife.
Marie Maxwell’s cool calm and collected response suggested she was used to her husband’s outbursts. But she was too smart not to realize the damage her husband had done.
“Get off that chair, Elton, before it collapses under you. You’ve enough trouble with your back since you put on that weight, and you fussed enough about what I paid for it without turning it into a heap of matchwood. Which was how you described it, as I recall.”
Elton Maxwell did what he was told. Without comment he transferred himself to an upholstered stool that looked uncomfortable, but serviceable. In spite of the explosion, Liz Falla felt that the balance of power lay with Marie, and not Elton, so she continued to question the weaker vessel.
“So you are saying, sir, that your brother-in-law suggested advocate Hamelin’s visit?”
“I am suggesting nothing, and this interview is terminated.” Elton Maxwell stood up. “With an attempted murder and my daughter under threat, we need to have a lawyer present in future.” His anger returned, but again it was not directed at Liz Falla. “And I don’t mean that antediluvian ponce your family keeps trotting out!”
“Very well, dear.”
Marie smiled serenely. She got up like a queen from her ivory velvet throne and addressed Liz, her poise more intact than it had been at the start of the interview. “Let me see you to the door. As you can see, my husband must have his way, I’m afraid.”
Have his way my eye, thought Liz. I would bet next months’ salary the show will go on.
Over his dead body, if necessary.
Outside, in the small courtyard where Gastineau ancestors would have mounted their horses and pulled up in their carriages to unload their ill-gotten contraband, Liz took out her mobile to text Bernie Mauger at the Priaulx, but decided to check her messages first. There was nothing of importance, but one that was cheering, from Dwight Ellis. They still kept in touch, and from time to time he came to hear her sing. She had yet to hear him perform with the Fénions, only with a pick-up band at the restaurant where he worked part-time. Everything Dwight did was part-time, including bouts of cooking and spells of house-painting.
“Hey, Liz. I’ve got a new bike, a Piaggio Xevo. Sexy name, huh? Want a ride some time?”
The message had been sent only about thirty minutes earlier. Liz texted him right back.
“Right now. Bring extra helmet, pick me up Gastineau place, the Grange.”
She texted Bernie Mauger, and then Moretti.
“Interview over. Getting something to eat. Where and when do we meet?”
The reply was immediate.
“Hospital Lane about an hour. Bernie Mauger’s come up with something.”
They had loved and laughed their way through about one year together, before either of them were interested in commitment. That’s what they told each other. But what had finished them was Liz’s parents’ discomfort with her Trinidadian boyfriend. At the time, neither had said that, but instead had harped on incessantly about his only steady job being as a drummer. Which hadn’t helped his cause. So she and Dwight had parted company and drifted into other, part-time relationships quite as transient as Dwight’s career path. Or lack of it
.
It felt good to have her arms around Dwight again, to peer around his shoulders at that beautiful profile of his. Dwight had cheekbones to die for. She had asked him once, “Where did you get your pretty face? Your mum or your dad?” And he had replied, “From all those Moors and white sons of bitches who helped themselves to my beautiful black female ancestors.” Then he had laughed and moved on to something else.
“Where we going?” His voice lilted back to her on the breeze.
“My place. Glategny Esplanade. Remember?”
“How long we got?”
“An hour. A lifetime?”
“Man, that’s scary, woman.” He had the warmest of laughs, rich and resonant.
“A lifetime’s no time at all.”
Chapter Fourteen
Bernie Mauger was beaming. In front of him on the desk in Moretti’s office lay two or three sheets of paper. From the look on her Guvnor’s face, their value was bigger than their bulk.
“Sorry I’m a bit late, Guv. I still mistime getting here by car.”
Liar.
“Never mind, Falla.” Her Guvnor, fortunately, seemed in as sunny a mood as Bernie Mauger. “Bernie’s come up with a couple of possible leads, one about where Gus Dorey went to university, and the other is about the daughter of General Gastineau. Lucy Gastineau.”
“Daughter? I thought there was just a son, Roland, the one who got into the argy-bargy with Gus Dorey. He’d be Marie’s father, wouldn’t he, and I thought he was dead.”
“He is, more’s the pity, and so is his wife. Bernie and Lydia Machon, the head librarian, found the death notice for the sister.”
Moretti held out one of the pieces of paper across the desk to Liz. It came from the Times, and was dated June 12, 1971.
In London, after a brief illness, in her fiftieth year, the death is announced of Lucy Gastineau, daughter of Roland Gastineau (deceased). Cremation has already taken place. If wished, donations may be made to the charity of your choice.