by Jill Downie
Liz looked at the scrap of paper in her hands, with its swift dispatching of Lucy Gastineau’s life.
“Cold.”
“And not entirely accurate. Bernie found the birth announcement.”
Moretti handed Liz another sheet from the small pile. It came from the Guernsey Press, and it too, was brief.
The Gastineau family are pleased to announce the birth of a daughter, Lucy Marie. A sister for Roland.
“Look at the date, Falla.”
“November, ’thirty-one. That would make her …”
“In her fortieth year when she died. Could be an error by the newspaper — fortieth, fiftieth — but it could also be that someone was muddying the waters, trying to put who knows who off the scent.”
“But there’s no link with Gus Dorey, is there?”
“Not directly. But they are the same age, and they could possibly have met at university.” Moretti picked up another of the sheets of paper from the desk. “According to this Guernsey Press announcement, Gus Dorey was awarded a scholarship to Bristol University, to study history in 1949. Bernie is going to check the archive for the Ladies’ School for Girls, since we are reasonably safe in assuming that’s where she went. Only problem is, the school was evacuated during the war, and those records are not complete, so Lydia Machon says.”
“We could ask Rory or Marie Gastineau about their aunt, couldn’t we? Or the other sister, Ginnie. From what I heard this morning, it was Rory who sent Reggie out on the warpath.” Liz hesitated before adding, “I pushed things a bit, Guv.”
At this, Moretti looked at Bernie Mauger who, reluctantly, got up from his chair.
“I’ll get right on to the Ladies’ School archive,” he said.
Liz waited until the door was closed, then took out her notes.
“Pushed things a bit, Falla? Did the pushing get results?”
“Yes.”
Liz went through her notes, adding the soundtrack of Elton Maxwell in full cry about the silver fox and the stupidity of the Gastineau clan.
“And I’m sorry if I bring Hamelin down on our necks, but it was worth it,” she concluded.
“You know what, Falla? I don’t think that’s likely to happen. I suspect they’ll call their attack-dog off. Or, should I say, their antediluvian ponce.”
They both laughed.
“I’ll just check my messages, Guv.” Liz pulled her mobile out of her pocket. “Where’s Al? Still out at Pleinmont?”
“Yes, and he’ll be there a while. Overnight, in fact. Remember, PC Bichard thought he heard something the night after Dorey’s death.”
“Wow.” Liz looked up. “You think whoever tied that rope for the hermit will return to the scene of the crime?”
Moretti shook his head, and gathered up the papers on the desk, putting them in a drawer, which he then locked.
“That would be far too easy. No, Falla, not the — do we call him, or her, a murderer? We don’t know yet if Dorey asked for his death. I’m hoping Al will get a visit from someone else.”
There was no response from Liz Falla.
“The launderer, Falla, the launderer,” Moretti added.
But his partner was looking at the screen of her mobile, and Moretti didn’t need see her expression to guess who had texted her. When she looked up, it wasn’t anger he saw on her face. It was more like stunned disbelief.
“You think Elodie was playing sick party-games with Gandalf?”
“There was that possibility.” Moretti stood up, breaking, he hoped, the mood of the moment. How he hated the personal intersecting with the professional, and it had been unrealistic of him to think he could avoid it in this instance.
“And have you ruled it out?”
Falla’s voice was dispassionate, cool.
“Not her style, I think.”
“Good. What next?”
Falla was moving on, and he could only hope the detachment he heard in her voice was just that, a reflection of her professionalism. Moretti felt a wave of relief. He would be saddened if she was hiding hostility to him, and he noted his own reaction with some surprise.
“The hospital. Time we tried to talk to Hugo Shawcross. About vampires, and Blood Play, and why he’s here on the island in the first place.”
“I have unleashed powers of evil.”
Hugo Shawcross was not allowing the partial severing of his carotid artery and heavy doses of morphine to tamp down his orotund style. The unleashing of powers of evil had come as the answer to Moretti’s question as to why he thought this might have happened.
“Can you be a bit more specific, sir? You are suggesting you have some responsibility for this attack. What might you have done to cause it?”
The response was swiftly scribbled, and equally unhelpful.
“Evil exists.”
Moretti restrained himself. “In my job, I have no problem agreeing with you, but an attack out of the blue of this nature is unusual, to say the least. Let’s go back over the evening. You came home after the read-through at the Maxwells, went into the house, then went out to call your cat in for the night. Am I right so far?”
Notebook in hand, Liz Falla intervened. “To save yourself too much effort, sir, why don’t you tap once for ‘yes,’ and twice for ‘no,’ if that’s all the answer required.”
One tap.
“When you were outside, did you notice anything different?”
Two taps.
“Did you hear any unusual sound or noise?”
Two taps.
“You had to walk to the fence between the two houses, because there was no response from your cat?”
One tap.
“From what SOCO tells us, you went across into your neighbour’s garden, beyond the fence.”
Two taps, agitatedly.
“So the attack occurred on your property, and you were pulled, or forced into Ms. Ashton’s garden?”
One tap.
“Did you at any time get a chance to look at your attacker?”
Two taps.
Falla’s practical suggestion was proving almost as unproductive as the earlier pronouncements about the existence of evil. Moretti decided to change direction.
“Why are you here on the island, sir? What led to that decision?”
Hugo Shawcross’s hand holding the pencil suddenly moved as frenziedly as the indicator on a lie detector charting extreme emotion, causing various responses along a web of tubes to the screen above the bed, triggering the instant appearance of a nurse at the door.
“That was some reaction. Do you want me to check whether he has a record? He seemed less than thrilled when he found out I was a cop, and I don’t think it was just that three was a crowd.”
“That’ll keep for tomorrow. Hugo isn’t going anywhere for a while.”
They were in the police Skoda, which was now the car of choice of the island force instead of the BMW. Whenever he could, Moretti avoided using it, or the police Vauxhalls, but, as they left the Hospital Lane police station for the hospital, he had decided against the Triumph.
“So — where are we going, and why the Skoda?”
Moretti looked at Liz. She was putting the key in the ignition, and from what he could see of her profile, it was difficult to tell if she was angry, but everything in her manner suggested she was.
“For the next interview, I want to look as official as possible, not give the impression of friendly local sleuth, deferentially impressed by island aristocracy. Though I don’t think a Skoda is going to excite them into subservience.” It was heavy-handed, but normally it would get at least a glance and a grin. “You’re annoyed with me, aren’t you?”
“Pretty pissed off, yes. Since you ask, but it’s not my place to …”
She shrugged her shoulders and started the engine.
“Where to?”
“The Gastineau family pile in Forest.”
At least this got a glance from her.
“I’ll need to use the GPS. I don’t drop
my calling card off at too many mansions. Will they be there?”
“They’d better be. I arranged it before our hospital visit.” Moretti paused. “Can we talk about it?”
Not his style, talking about it. Not his style professionally or personally, and this was the worst of all possible worlds, because it was both. His partner was programming the GPS and did not respond.
“You first, Falla. This is too damned uncomfortable, with your aunt sitting between us in a bloody Skoda.”
“I may say something I regret, that’s all.”
“Carte blanche. Feel free to piss me off.”
The police car turned out of the courtyard to head south out of St. Peter Port along the Esplanade. Falla said nothing until they started negotiating the hairpin bends of Val des Terres, her voice swerving like the Skoda.
“Elodie got dragged into this by me. She did this for me. She did this to get Hanley off my back while you were messing about in your boat. Now she herself could be a target. That’s why I’m pissed off.”
They were now heading west towards the Forest Road, the inhuman female voice of the GPS punctuating the silence in the car.
“Fair enough. Is it possible you could move in with your aunt for a while?”
He had no intention of discussing his reasons for interviewing Elodie Ashton, because Falla, pissed with him though she might be, knew why he had done so. Not that it was making her feel any better.
“I’ve offered, and she refused. But I’ll be going over regularly to feed that wretched cat. I don’t want my aunt anywhere near Shawcross’s place.”
“I thought you liked cats.”
“Not funny, Guv.”
“Arriving at destination,” announced the disembodied voice.
At least she was calling him Guv again.
Chapter Fifteen
The island of Guernsey is divided into ten parishes, whose roots go back hundreds of years to the even more ancient feudal fiefdoms. Only one of them, St. Andrew, has no coastline. The parish of Forest, on the south coast, has one of the most spectacular of all. The cliffs are so high that there are few bays and coves easily accessible by land, and Moretti remembered sailing with his uncle to La Bette and Le Jaonnet bays, diving from the side of the boat and swimming in their deserted waters. He would do that again, he promised himself, soon.
He remembered now seeing the house, high on the cliffs, a dark, forbidding outline against the sky, and wondering how the sea and the rocks might look from up there, but at that time had no curiosity about who might be living in it. Seen now from the front, it had a very different appearance, displaying the charm of the old Guernsey farmhouse combined with Georgian elegance, as a later generation of Gastineaus had added to their home. It was cleverly done, an architectural marriage that worked. Around the house was a stretch of lawn extending behind the house to the cliff edge, and as they drove closer to the house they passed huge beds of multi-coloured roses.
“There’s the lady of the manor.”
Liz Falla pointed out of the car window at a distant figure on horseback, riding towards them through a small copse of trees. Another figure followed close behind.
“Do you know anything about her?” Moretti asked.
From this distance, it looked as if Tanya Gastineau’s riding skills went further back than her recent marriage and newly elevated income.
“What’s the local gossip, you mean?” Liz took the Skoda around the circular driveway and brought it to a halt by a massive set of steps leading to an equally massive door. “Not much, apart from the fact she came looking for a rich husband, and most likely got more than she bargained for. The lord of the manor drinks, apparently. Not that he’s been thrown out of many local watering-holes, because he’s more of a crier, than a fighter. Someone usually comes and takes him away.”
“Interesting. And here comes the lord of the manor, down the steps to meet us in person.”
Rory Gastineau was shambling down the steps, looking beyond the car at his wife, who had dismounted from a very pretty bay, and was in the process of handing her over to the young man with her. The sound of their laughter reached Moretti and Falla through the closed car window.
“Hmmm,” said Falla. Moretti glanced at her before opening the car door, but she said no more, and Rory Gastineau was already by his side.
“I fetched her back,” he said. He was holding a mobile in his hand, so presumably he was referring to his wife.
“Thank you, sir.” Moretti waited until Tanya Gastineau had joined her husband, before introducing himself and Liz Falla.
In her impeccably cut jodhpurs and tweed jacket, Tanya Gastineau looked like something out of a novel by Georgette Heyer or, possibly, Scott Fitzgerald. Certainly, she looked the part, whatever her origins. She pulled off her riding helmet, and a mass of blonde curls tumbled into the sunlight. The colour in her cheeks was as rosy as the flowers in the beds behind her.
“Hiya,” she said. “I’ll come quietly.” She threw back her head and laughed at her own joke, and the young man did the same.
Rory Gastineau looked dourly in his direction and said, “That’s enough for the day. Put those animals away, and do whatever it is I pay you to do.”
The young man flinched, turned on his heel and led both horses away. Tanya Gastineau went over to her husband and took his arm.
“I’m here, my sweet, safe and sound. Isn’t that part of what you pay Roddy for?”
Then she kissed him, and Moretti watched Rory Gastineau transformed into a doting, besotted, helpless slave to the beauty and life force of his young wife. It was all on his face, because his words were plain and unadorned.
“Of course.”
Hast thou not dropped from heaven? drifted into Moretti’s mind as they walked up the granite steps into the house.
Where did that come from, Moretti wondered. Caliban, of course. I’ll kiss thy foot, prithee be my god … I’ll swear myself thy subject.
It was a role that had intrigued Moretti at school, and in his police work he had encountered many Calibans. Ugly, needy, pathetic, but rarely tragic, figures. They aroused conflicting emotions, including sympathy, and in his experience it was wisest not to trust them. They were often masters at manipulating the good instincts of others to their own ends. A bit harsh, comparing Rory Gastineau to Shakespeare’s island monster, but he would do well to remember that overwhelming passion led people to do desperate things.
Not that he could connect any dots between what had happened to Hugo Shawcross, and Rory Gastineau. The connection, if there was one, was through the death of the Pleinmont hermit.
Inside the house, Rory Gastineau trundled ahead of them, with Tanya by his side, caressing his arm, stroking her monster. Moretti noticed he didn’t touch her himself, and he found himself wondering at the nature of their love life. If Rory Gastineau was unable to show affection or sexual imagination, then he could be in real trouble. Simply manufacturing an heir to the Gastineau throne would not hold this young woman. Or was he being naïve? Was that all Rory required, and was the blonde goddess disposable?
And I will kiss thy foot …
Probably not.
“We can talk here.”
They were in a room on the back of the mansion overlooking the cliffs. Most of whatever back wall there had been previously was gone, replaced by huge windows. Beyond a wide terrace, the lawn stretched to the cliff edge, an oasis of controlled cultivation between massive rocks, clumps of gorse and heather. Around the edges of the lawn, Moretti could see spikes of little white flowers. Lady’s Tresses, his mother called them. They had survived the lawnmower this year, which had been hardly used because of the hot, dry summer.
“Breathtaking,” said Moretti. Through an open window came the sound of the sea, crashing onto the rocks below.
“Yes. Difficult this year for the gardener. Salt and sea air and sun. Damaged everything but the weeds.”
Rory Gastineau swept his hand over the land and seascape, his view
extending no further than the edge of his property.
“That’s where we were going to do the play, if the weather was nice.”
Tanya Gastineau had joined them.
“Boo hoo,” she added, but her disappointment sounded genuine.
Behind them, Liz Falla said, “I understand from speaking to Mrs. Maxwell this morning that she intends to proceed.”
This drew a squeak of delight from Tanya and, to Moretti’s surprise, a broad smile from her husband.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Elton,” he said.
So, whatever the tensions between sister and brother, thought Liz, Elton is the real enemy. When their backs were to the wall, the Gastineaus stood together.
Moretti turned back from the window, and addressed Rory Gastineau.
“You have obviously heard about the attack on Hugo Shawcross. We have now interviewed Ms. Ashton, whose actions saved Mr. Shawcross’s life, and Mrs. Maxwell.”
“See —” Rory sat down, pulling his wife down beside him on one of the sofas by the window, and waved his hand at Moretti and Liz to do the same. “I don’t know why my sister had to be brought into this. We only know the man through the group.”
“That is what we thought too, sir, until my partner, DS Falla, had a visit at the station from advocate Hamelin.”
There was a swift exchange of glances between husband and wife.
“I see you know about that,” Moretti added. This was all taking too long to get to the point, and he decided to take a leaf out of Falla’s book and force the issue. “Advocate Hamelin suggested there is some connection between the apparent suicide of the Pleinmont hermit, Gus Dorey, and past events in your family. Then we have the inexplicable attack on Mr. Shawcross soon afterwards. Whether or not these two events are associated remains to be seen, but, since we need to talk to you about both, killing two birds with one stone seemed best.”
On cue, a seagull shrieked and swept close against the glass, startling Rory, who had his back to the window. He jumped, and his wife put her hand on his arm again, soothing him.
“The recluse with that place out at Pleinmont?” Moretti had the feeling Rory Gastineau was playing for time. “If advocate Hamelin suggested our family had anything to do with the man, then advocate Hamelin is off his rocker.”