by Jill Downie
“Deepak! Are you already there? I’m on my way with a little more good news than I had before — yes — no — yes —”
In the outer office, Raymond Morris greeted Al Brown with the words, “He’s lying, of course. It’s never going to happen.”
It was said in muted tones, heavily laced with distaste and malice.
“The casino?”
“Right. Not where he wants to put it, anyway. There are some palms that will never be greased.”
Before he could say anything more, Douglas Lorrimer bustled through without a glance at either minion and was out the door.
Something about Raymond Morris’s apparent invisibility left Al Brown with the feeling that Douglas Lorrimer knew exactly what was going on between his wife and his colleague and didn’t give a damn. Just another conquest of the distaff side of the nouveau riche.
It had been a long meeting at Hospital Lane, going over the events of the day with Moretti and Al, and comparing notes. There was now an elaborate official procedure that had to happen with notes gathered and, by the time Liz Falla got back to her flat on the second floor of one of the eighteenth-century row houses on the Esplanade, the light was dissolving into dusk over the islands of Herm and Jethou beyond the bay. The tide was coming back in, and a large white heron was fishing from the still-exposed rocks. She admired him for a moment, the purity of his outline, like a Japanese print, his utter absorption in the task, then put on some music: a collection of twentieth-century string pieces, starting with Bartok. The disc would finish with Stravinsky. She had been introduced to this music that had been outside her realm of experience by a woman she had met on an earlier case.
Listen to it a few times. Then it lets you in.
It had.
Liz poured herself a glass of red wine, sat down on her sofa and curled her legs up beneath her, kicking off her shoes. On the table in front of her was her mobile. She drank most of the glass of wine, listened to the Bartok Divertimento, and mulled things over. As the piece finished, she stopped the disc and picked up her phone. Her aunt screened most of her calls but, on this occasion, she answered the phone.
“Elodie? It’s Liz.”
“We must be on the same wavelength. I was just going to phone you.”
Elodie sounded rushed, or possibly tense. Hardly surprising, given recent events.
“Something wrong?”
“Not really, but you tell me first what you were phoning about, or were you just — phoning.”
“More specific than that. I wanted to ask you if you were planning to go to the Hugo Shawcross shindig tonight.”
“You know about that?”
“I was there this afternoon to check on Mrs. Lorrimer’s alibi. And that’s why I probably shouldn’t be making this call. Nothing wrong with her alibi, but I’m probably crossing a line.”
“Yes, I’m going. I was asked to bring the wounded hero, but I demurred. The Gastineaus are doing that, and Jim Landers has offered to take me. I wish I could accept his offer, but in the circumstances —”
“You don’t want to get his hopes up.”
“Right.” There was a laugh at the other end of the line. “And I passed on Bob the copper’s name to him.”
“Thanks. I’ll take you, drop you off, and we’ll pre-arrange a pick-up time. No point in saying no, Elodie, because I’ll be there, and if I have to come in, I’ll be in trouble with my Guvnor.”
“No need, Liz, and that’s why I was going to call you, to find out if you knew or if this was your doing.”
“What was?”
“It’s your Guvnor who’s giving me a ride, that’s what.”
Outside the window the heron stretched his wings, took a firm grasp on the fish he held in his beak, and flew away into the evening sky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
As Elodie Ashton came down the driveway, Moretti could see she was laughing. It disconcerted him, and he was already feeling disconcerted.
“Good evening, Ed. Sorry to keep you waiting, but that was Liz on the phone, offering me a lift to and from the party. A bit like being a teenager again, with anxious parents.”
Moretti felt a twinge of anxiety.
“What did she say?”
Moretti opened the door of the Triumph, and Elodie got in. She was dressed casually, not in her best party dress, as he thought she might be, but in slim-fitting jeans with some sort of sparkly belt, and a plain white blouse under a denim jacket. Her curly red hair looked darker at night. The wind was getting up and, as he got into the driver’s seat, a strand of hair blew against his face, smelling of mint and lime. But it could have been from one of the ornamental bushes close to the car.
“She said she was watching a heron and listening to Bartok and she’d go and join Dwight and someone called Al for a jam session at the club.”
This time he felt a twinge of envy.
“She’s good, isn’t she — Liz?” Elodie fastened her seatbelt. “At her job, I mean.”
“Very.”
Moretti started the Triumph and backed down the driveway on to the road. As he moved up through the gears he said, “You two obviously took after different strands of DNA in your family. You couldn’t be more dissimilar in looks — colouring, height and so on.”
There was silence for a moment, then Elodie said, laughter gone from her voice, “I know. It’s a mystery I’ll look into one day.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not much to elaborate, Ed, but here’s the thing. I’m a scientist by training, and I work with top scientists in what I do. It’s my red hair that’s the mystery. All those Norman-French genes, and no one in memory living or dead with red hair. That’s the mystery.”
“I’m assuming it’s a recessive gene, so it’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Possible, but not probable. Under 2 percent of the population have red hair, higher in the United States.”
It had seemed a reasonably harmless topic of conversation, but clearly it was not.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve been meaning to deal with this, but haven’t felt like doing so yet.” Alongside him in the passenger seat he felt Elodie turn towards him. The fragrance of mint and lime was not from the ornamental bushes. “Now you, for instance, take after your Italian father, don’t you?”
“So I’m told. But as I grow older, I see my mother in my face.”
“And I don’t. See mine, I mean. Not a word to Liz about this.”
They had arrived just outside the Lorrimers’ place, and Moretti stopped the Triumph on the road, from where he could watch her walk up to the house, but not be seen too clearly by any of the guests who were turning into the driveway.
“Take care tonight. No stepping outside for a breath of fresh air. And you’re carrying a phone, of course.”
“Of course. I’ve got you on speed-dial.”
“If I haven’t heard from you by our pre-arranged time I’ll be here, knocking at the door. Which I really don’t want to do. Some of your fellow thespians have a direct line to my boss.”
“You sound just like my niece, only in Liz’s version you were the ogre.”
They both laughed, and Moretti regretted the journey hadn’t taken longer.
As she got out of the car, Elodie called back, “And another thing — I’m the only Ashton alive or dead who can’t hold a tune.”
Moretti watched her walk across the lawn towards a large conservatory attached to the house, and wished he could join Falla and the others at the Grand Saracen, but he didn’t want to risk it. Elodie would only have to make a call if there was an emergency, and if he was playing, he’d never hear it. So, better head for home.
She intrigued him, this solitary, sociable woman with her secrets, and now the mystery of her red hair. If it was a mystery. He had not said too much at the meeting with Falla and Al, but he felt Elodie was at risk because she had been so close to a killer. In fact, she was the reason that Hugo Shawcross had survived, not just bec
ause she had applied a tourniquet, but because she had interrupted a murderer who had been unable to finish the job. He had moderated his comments for Falla’s sake, but clearly she felt the same way.
What was it Al Brown had said about game-playing and fantasy?
The modus operandi may differ, but the fantasy is always the same.
What was the fantasy? Why Hugo Shawcross? He said he had unleashed the powers of evil, but they had already been unleashed on the hermit of Pleinmont, Gus Dorey, and that was not just the evil act of someone getting his — or her — jollies. That was malice aforethought. And, somewhere in the middle of it all was the half-century-ago relationship between Gus Dorey and Lucy Gastineau, he was sure of it.
Half a century ago, a love affair. Dangerous in those days, before the pill, before the days of safe sex and free love, when making love led to making babies.
Babies.
Moretti heard Falla’s voice in his head.
Importance of Being Ernest. Sort of fluffy. Not a great love story or anything.
But a story about an abandoned baby, in a handbag.
The champagne was flowing, as was the chocolate fountain, and in the middle of the conservatory sat the guest of honour in a high-backed rattan chair, a black kerchief around his neck. He had, not surprisingly, lost weight, and was looking frail, with dark circles under his eyes. He was drinking champagne through a straw, with Marie Gastineau hovering protectively at his elbow.
“Greetings, Elodie! Now all the usual suspects are here!”
Lana Lorrimer, swathed in scarlet satin, swam tipsily towards her through the undergrowth holding out a glass of champagne.
From what Elodie could see among the palm trees, most of the usual suspects were indeed there. The group’s membership expanded and contracted, but when an event like this was held all the hangers-on turned up, from the occasional scene-shifters and the sporadic program-sellers to the overabundance of women who appeared at audition time. But there were as yet some people missing, most notably Rory and Tanya Gastineau. She could see Ginny talking to Elton Maxwell, and they appeared not to be at each other’s throats for once. Misery loving company, she supposed. She had heard on the grapevine that neither of them wanted the show to go on.
She took the proffered glass and gave Lana the customary peck on the cheek usually exchanged by female members of the group. Over Lana’s shoulder she saw the beautiful newcomer, Charles Priestley, talking to another newcomer. Good. Jim Landers had got Bob the mole in on the festivities.
“Thanks, Lana. Everything looks wonderful. I must go and have a word with Hugo. How does he seem?”
“Wonderfully brave, a real trouper.”
Lana waved her now empty glass in Hugo’s direction and made her unsteady way towards Jim Landers and Raymond Morris, who were talking with some earnestness by the chocolate fountain. As Elodie watched, her hostess pushed Jim Landers aside with her hip and a giggle, grabbed a supernaturally large strawberry from the fruit plate and dipped it in chocolate. She then turned and ate it in two bites, all the time her eyes on Raymond Morris, who paid her no attention whatsoever.
“Elodie.”
Aaron Gaskell, holding a glass in one hand and a dark red rose in the other, was by her side.
“Aaron, I didn’t see you behind the — whatever it is.”
“Philodendron, I think. The biggest philodendron in the world. This is for you, courtesy of the smallest rosebush in this monument to grandiosity. You have a buttonhole in that jacket that cries out for a boutonnière. Here, let me.”
Elodie shrank back as he touched her jacket, but he took no advantage of the moment, inserting the flower swiftly and deftly.
“Thank you. Now I really must go and say hello to Hugo. Have you spoken to him yet?”
“No. I’ll come with you and pay my respects.”
They made their way through the throng. The sound level was increasing exponentially with the drink level and, in competition with the muzak, it was difficult to carry on any kind of a conversation anymore. Whether the plant world was responding to stress, or it was just the increasing warmth in the space, the smell of vegetation was growing stronger, it seemed to Elodie. From one corner of the conservatory came shrieks of laughter from Marla Maxwell amidst a cacophony of maidens. En route, they were waylaid by black-and-white-clad servers, offering prawns and pâté and tiny perfect pastries. Elodie took a salmon-filled bouchée, popped it into her mouth, and regretted not taking two. Lana always had the very best caterers for her soirées.
“Aaaah.”
A strangled cry greeted her from the guest of honour, and Elodie flinched. Hugo sounded very much as he had — How many days ago was it? She had forgotten, put it out of her mind — until now. He stretched out his arms towards her and stood up to greet her.
“My saviour!”
His voice was hoarse and weak, but he was talking, and it was good to hear.
Suddenly, Elodie felt close to tears. She had not imagined that seeing Hugo would take her back to that night, and her reaction took her by surprise. She must have shown something of her feelings because, by her side, Aaron Gaskell gently took her by the elbow.
“Hugo, it’s wonderful to see you.”
What to say in the circumstances was difficult — “how are you” seemed grotesquely inadequate — but she was spared finding the words by Marie Maxwell, who never liked being upstaged.
“Isn’t he wonderful! And he’s even started writing again, haven’t you, Hugo?”
Hugo nodded and winced. “Work on Act Two, almost finished,” he rasped.
“That’s good,” said Elodie. “Has Rory confirmed when we can start?”
“I don’t see them here,” said Aaron Gaskell, looking around. “Or are they concealed behind one of the Lorrimers’ giant arecaceae?”
Marie did not look amused, but she certainly looked annoyed.
“Yes, it’s confirmed, and no, they’re not here yet. I imagine Tanya wants to make an entrance.”
At that moment the door that led into the house opened, and there stood Rory and Tanya Gastineau. What Rory was wearing was, as usual, somehow rumpled and instantly forgettable, providing an effective foil for his wife. Continuing her Marilyn look-alike theme, her blonde hair skilfully tousled, she was dressed in a gown reminiscent of something out of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, clinging to every curve, shining ivory in the lamplight. She smiled radiantly at the assembled Island Players.
“Sorry we’re so late,” she said in her little-girl voice. “Rory couldn’t decide what to wear.”
She giggled, and so did most of the people in the conservatory. Even Rory gave a sheepish grin.
By Elodie’s side, Aaron Gaskell observed quietly, “Probably some truth in that. She will have known exactly what she was wearing from the moment the email arrived.” It was said without malice and some amusement.
Marie Maxwell was not laughing, and neither was her sister. Ginnie Purvis moved away from Elton Maxwell and went over to stand by Jim Landers, who acknowledged her presence with a faint smile and a slight shift of his body away from her.
From her place of honour beside Hugo, Marie called out, “Come in, both of you, and say something to Hugo. He is our guest of honour. I’m going to ask Douglas, as our host, to make the toast — Douglas.”
Douglas Lorrimer looked as if this had come as an unwelcome surprise. He gestured at one of the servers for a refill of his glass, scowled at his wife who was ineffectively hushing her guests, then silenced everyone with an angry bellow.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Marie has asked me to make the toast and I will not disobey orders.” Nervous laughter. “As most of you know, I am not entirely in the pro-performance camp, but suffice to say I am completely in the anti-garrotting camp!”
Stunned silence, as Douglas gave a huge guffaw at his own joke. Unfazed, he went on, “So, Hugo, let’s raise our glasses to your return to the land of the living and to the success of your play about the land of the undead!”
Douglas raised his glass, followed by the shell-shocked Island Players, and there were murmurs of “Yes — Hugo — here’s to Hugo.”
Lana Lorrimer looked as if she were about to cry. Elodie felt a wild desire to laugh.
“Does he always behave like this?” whispered Aaron Gaskell.
“Has been known to, yes. I’ve never been sure if he lacks a filter, or whether he does it to annoy —”
“Because he knows it teases? His wife, in particular?”
“Possibly.”
The moment passed, with everyone returning to their glasses or their flirtations, or their plates of food. A space had been cleared in one corner of the conservatory, and a few of the younger members had started to dance. Elodie wanted to get her mobile out of the little pouch she carried on her belt, but knew that, if she did so, Aaron Gaskell would offer her a lift home.
It was tempting, she had to admit, because she liked him. But she really knew nothing about him — whether there was an ex-wife in the wings, or a current one waiting for him on the mainland, for instance — and she didn’t want another Jim Landers episode. Jim was still cool with her after her rejection, and although he was cool with most people, there was something in his attitude towards her that was — well, different — from his usual indifference. Just as she was planning to use a trip to the ladies’ room as an excuse to move away, there was a disturbance at the other end of the conservatory, near the door into the main house. Someone was screaming.
“It was you! I thought it was you! You bastard! You creepy-crawly bastard!”
It was Tanya, and she was throwing herself against the tall, slender figure of Charles Priestley, pummelling him with her fists.
The first person to reach her was Bob McMullin, who took her by both arms and pulled her away. Then Rory, who had been talking to Hugo, ran over, followed by Marla Maxwell. Both of them were shouting, but their shouts dissolved into silence as Tanya Gastineau slithered down the body of Bob McMullin and collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.