by Jill Downie
The housekeeper deposited her burden behind a door in the hallway, and a pathetic whimpering sound emerged under the edge of the door, followed by snuffling.
“Poor little thing. Perhaps we could take it to Mrs. Gastineau? I don’t mind.”
“Mrs. Gastineau would. She just asked me to take her away, because she keeps chewing the tassels on her slippers. Mr. Gastineau got it as a present for her, but they just don’t think, do they. She’s called it Honeybun, would you believe.”
No comment seemed called-for, or necessary, so Liz followed in the housekeeper’s wake.
Tanya Gastineau was lying on a sofa in the room in which she and Moretti had first interviewed her and Rory Gastineau. She was wearing pink from head to toe; a fluffy mohair shawl over what looked like a silk dressing gown and pyjamas, and the puppy-magnet slippers on the floor at her feet. There was a glass of milk on a low table close to her, and a plate of fruit. She looked up as Liz and the housekeeper came in.
“Oh it’s you,” she said to Liz. “Rory is — indisposed.” She gave a sound somewhere between a giggle and a gulp, and Liz hoped her internal celebration at this stroke of luck didn’t show on her face.
Tanya without her watchdog, and I don’t mean the puppy!
“I’m sorry to hear that, so I’ll just have a brief word with you, Mrs. Gastineau.”
“Can I get you anything, ma’am?” Mrs. Livingstone managed to sound both curt and deferential.
Tanya sat up and pointed to the table.
“No, but you can take something away. The sight of that milk makes me feel even more like puking.”
“Very well. But Mr. Gastineau wants you to —”
“Mr. Gastineau can drink it himself. Hair of the dog that didn’t bite him.”
Tanya gave a short, sharp laugh at her joke. Mrs. Livingstone picked up the glass, checked with Liz that she wanted neither tea nor coffee, and left the room. Liz sat down in a plumply upholstered chair opposite Tanya.
“Congratulations. You and your husband must be very happy at the news,” she said.
Tanya swung around and sat up. Her formerly rosy cheeks were now a whitish-yellow, and she had dark circles under her eyes that were partly smudged eyeliner and partly not.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? Rory was over the moon, then last night happens and he’s hitting the bottle again.”
A tear made its way through one dark circle and ran down her cheek. Clearly, she had been doing a lot of crying, and this time the super-mascara had not stood up to it.
“Last night happens?”
“Well, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it. Me yelling.”
“You attacked —” Liz took out her notebook and appeared to check the name, “Charles Priestley.”
“Ooooh — is that what he calls it? Is he bringing charges?” Tanya now sounded derisive. She pulled a grape off a small bunch on the plate and popped it in her mouth.
“Actually, Mrs. Gastineau, I wondered if you might be thinking of charges. Is he the person you suspected of making threatening calls? That’s what it sounded like to the witnesses.”
Thankfully, Tanya didn’t ask who those supposed witnesses were. Instead, she leaned forwards and said, “I think he was. As soon as I heard his voice that night at the Maxwells’, I thought it was. But what could I prove? And any time Rory thinks I know any bloke under the age of seventy, he gets —” Here, Tanya paused. Liz waited, and then jumped in.
“Are you saying that your husband gets suspicious? Violent?”
“Rory, violent?” Tanya found this amusing. “Suspicious is what he gets, but violent? No. He gets weepy. God, I hate weepy, and now look at me.” She took a tissue out of the dressing-gown pocket and blew her nose.
“Mrs. Gastineau — Tanya — If you know why Charles Priestley is doing this, you will be much safer if you tell me. Particularly now you’re pregnant. Is it about who inherits? Because that’s what it looks like.”
“I wish I knew.” Tanya lowered her voice. “I married Rory for all the wrong reasons. Well, one wrong reason and I’ll give you one guess.” It was clearly a rhetorical statement, because Tanya ploughed rapidly on. “I had no idea, not at the time, not all this first-born stuff and show me the wedding-ring and the piece of paper and all that. And then I found out.”
“Found out what?”
“That his family were a bunch of lunatics! They hate me and I hate them.”
“Has any family member threatened you directly?”
“Directly?” Tanya snorted. “Directly is not the way they work, that lot. I’m sure someone put that la-di-da weasel up to it, but it could be any of them. Honest, I’d tell you if I knew. The only fun I was having was with the Island Players crowd, and then somebody went for poor little Hugo.”
Tanya leaned forward again and lowered her voice. “Between you and me, I think that was all about me and not about vampires and such. But what do I know? I’m just a dumb blonde dolly-bird!”
Tanya threw herself back against the sofa, her movement dislodging a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her dressing gown. She hastily pushed them back into the pocket and whispered, “Don’t tell Rory,” like a naughty child.
“But he’s right, isn’t he?” Liz tried to make her remark sound lighthearted rather than judgmental, watched Tanya’s expression become petulant, and moved the conversation along. Healthy pregnancy choices were outside her field of enquiry. “You say your only fun was with the Island Players, but last time I was here you were horseback riding. I don’t know much about it, but you looked pretty good to me.”
Tanya did not seem cheered by the thought. “Rory says it’s now too dangerous and I should stop. It’s only an excuse to send Roddy back to Bristol.”
A door opening. “So you knew your riding companion in Bristol? As an employer, or a friend. Or both?”
Tanya cheered up a bit. “Both. He worked for daddy, and that’s how we met. Daddy had a part interest in a steeple-chaser. Roddy actually asked me to marry him, once.”
“And you said ‘no.’ Why?”
Tanya gave Liz a look that spoke volumes, and took another grape from the bunch on the table.
“Ah. He’s got no money.”
Another woman who’d chosen smoked salmon over sardines on toast.
“Got it in one. I shall really miss him, and not just because of the riding. Someone to talk to. You know.”
Liz looked at the pretty woman sitting opposite her, and wondered. There must have been other choices, other men with enough income to satisfy the needs of this girl-woman who played the baby-doll game so well. Why Rory Gastineau? She went ahead and put her thought into words.
“You must have been beating off men with sticks, Tanya, and surely some of them were well off. Why Mr. Gastineau? What made him a winner?”
Tanya Gastineau looked straight at Liz and said, simply, “Because he was bonkers about me.”
As Liz tried to think of a response, Tanya held out her hand towards her in a gesture almost of supplication.
“You wouldn’t think it to look at Rory, but when it comes to words, he’s like something out of a chick-flick. Looking at you, detective, don’t tell me you don’t know what it’s like to have someone head over heels with you, tell you you’re everything, the sun, the moon, the stars.”
Liz stood up. It seemed like a good time to bring the interview to an end.
All, or nothing at all.
Lost in thought, humming to herself, Liz nearly missed the sound of the car horn just outside the Gastineau grounds. In her rear-view mirror she saw a police car leaving just after her. She pulled over and Bob McMullin and Rick Le Marchant pulled in behind her on the verge of the road. Rick Le Marchant got out of the car on the passenger side and came running towards her.
Le Marchant had been involved in Moretti’s enquiries before, and was one of the officers who had been ticked off by Liz Falla’s rapid promotion. Theirs was a combative relationship and Liz had once asked her Guvnor w
hy he had chosen “a wet-behind-the-ears dimwit” like Le Marchant over other officers.
“For just those reasons. Bernie Mauger looks like a simple country boy, straight off the farm, and isn’t. Le Marchant looks like what he is, and has an endearing way of lulling interviewees into a false sense of security.”
Which had, on occasion, proved true. Liz bore that in mind as Le Marchant galloped over the rough turf towards her.
“DS Falla, He’s packing up and leaving!”
“Mrs. Gastineau’s horseperson?”
“Right. Roddy Bull.”
“That’s his last name? Bull?”
“Yep. We told him this was a police investigation, and he’d have to stay, and he said we’d have to sort it out with his employer. When I asked him if he meant ‘the Gastineaus,’ he said, ‘Yes, they make the decisions around here, don’t they?’ Bloody cheek!”
By this time, Bob McMullin had joined Le Marchant, who was breathing heavily and invasively through the car window into Liz’s face in his excitement. She got out of the car and turned to Bob McMullin.
“Have you contacted the Guvnor?”
“Yes. He said he’d get back to Hospital Lane as soon as he could, and to warn Bull he could be charged if he left the island. Which we did.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Well, he didn’t turn around and start unpacking his suitcases, but I think he got the message.”
“Was he literally packing his suitcases?”
“Yes. He already had a couple by the door.”
“What’s he like? Besides cheeky.”
Rick Le Marchant answered first.
“Pretty boy. You know the type.”
Liz bit her tongue on various possible responses and turned to Bob McMullin who replied, “Bit of a smoothie, yes.” Bob McMullin frowned. “But I think he was worried about something. Not just us, but something else.”
“As in —?”
Rick Le Marchant got in first again. “As in he can’t stand Mr. Gastineau.” He seemed to find this comical. “Called him a jealous prat, said he couldn’t understand why Tanya Riley — that’s what he called her — had chosen such a loser.”
“So you got the impression he wasn’t at all unhappy to be leaving?”
Bob McMullin looked back at the Gastineau acres.
“I think he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He looked like he was going to bawl when we said he couldn’t.”
He seemed baffled by what he had observed, but Rick Le Marchant seemed supremely confident about the reason.
“All he was scared of was us.”
“You?” Liz tried not to sound incredulous.
“Us. Pretty boy,” he repeated. “Got no bal — backbone,” he added, giving Liz Falla a look that suggested an intimate knowledge of the workings of pretty boys’ minds.
“Sounds more to me like Roddy Bull got to you, Rick, than you got to Roddy Bull.” Liz responded, unable to resist the opportunity to put him in his place in the pecking order. “But be sure to put all that useful detail in your report — that stuff about a bull without backbone. Or balls.”
On which excellently satisfying exit line, she got back into her car, as her mobile started to ring.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Meadowlands, the house towards which Moretti and Al Brown were heading in the Triumph, had been the home of the same family since the mid-nineteenth century, and Charles Priestley’s uncle, retired Colonel Clarence Priestley, was the last surviving member of that family in residence on the island. As they drove, Moretti filled in some of the background for Al.
“I did some checking beforehand. They are an interesting lot, the Priestleys, but not unique. Guernsey has its aristocratic families — the Gastineaus are one of them — and its old island families with names like Dorey, Mauger and Falla. The Priestleys came here in the early eighteenth century, and they almost certainly were attracted by the money to be made from privateering, according to Lydia Machon at the Priaulx. But in the last hundred years or so are much better known as a military family of some distinction.”
“They came to plunder, and stayed to stretch their pensions and investments further.”
“Something like that.”
Moretti looked out of the window of the Triumph at the stretch of wall to their right, a thing of beauty year-round because of the burgeoning bunches of wildflowers growing in the crevices between brick and stone. In the sunlight of autumn slanting between the trees beyond the wall, they glowed like pink, lilac and white jewels. So much had changed, even in his lifetime, like the road names in this part of St. Peter Port. Mount Durand remained the same, but Queen’s Road at the top of the Grange had once been la Petite Marche, and Prince Albert Road, where they were heading, was once the much humbler la Pierre Percée. He didn’t know how long ago they were rechristened, but his mother always called them by the old names.
“But I think they fell in love with the island.”
“Why wouldn’t they? What’s the estate behind that amazing wall?”
“Government House.” Moretti turned the Triumph on to Prince Albert Road. “Here we are.”
Meadowlands was a sizeable house, even by Guernsey standards for substantial houses, but it did not have the elegant, spare lines of the island’s eighteenth-century mansions. Built of brick overlaid with ivory stucco, it had a complicated structure of many-levelled roofs with two three-storey wings set either side of a lower crenellated section that held the main door. Beyond one of the three-storey wings was another crenellated section, giving the building the appearance of a fortress, or castle.
“Wow. This is different.”
“Built to order, I’m told.”
Moretti pulled up alongside the front door, and checked his messages before he got out. Nothing yet from Falla, or the other two constables. He was wishing now he had sent Al with McMullin or Le Marchant, particularly since Roddy the Body was an unknown quantity, but he had wanted a show of strength when facing the colonel and his nephew, and Al Brown gave off more powerful vibes of law and order than either of the other two. And he wanted Falla to be the one who interviewed Tanya Gastineau.
Thinking of Falla made him think of non-work-related things, so he stopped thinking of Falla and got out of the car.
The sepulchral sound of the front-door bell clanging through the house beyond the closed door reminded Moretti of a television program about zombies — or the undead — from the seventies, and it was an anticlimax to be greeted by a young woman in a navy-blue dress that looked like a maid’s uniform, and not by a ghoulish manservant or a disembodied hand. The maid, if that was what she was, appeared to be chewing gum.
“You’re expected,” she said, giving Al a speculative glance. “This way.”
As they followed in the wake of her bobbing ponytail of multi-coloured hair, she blew an impressive pink bubble that subsided just before she knocked on a massive wooden door to one side of the cavernous hall. Moretti wondered how long it had taken to perfect her timing, or whether it was a natural gift.
The room they entered was like a film set out of Bowani Junction, or The Jewel In The Crown, by a designer who’d taken leave of his senses, and particularly his sense of proportion. The walls were covered with an armoury of weapons ranging from spears to guns, with the odd scimitar and sword in-between. There was even an animal skin on the floor — mercifully not a lion or tiger, its head snarling up at them, but what looked like it had once been an elegant antelope, or something like it. On the subtle taupe and bronze tones of the animal skin were two large feet encased in felt slippers, and attached to the feet was Colonel Clarence Priestley, wearing a plum-coloured velvet smoking jacket, seated in a vast armchair whose upholstery had seen better days. Behind an impressive set of whiskers his mottled face and small porcine eyes seemed annoyed.
“You’re the fellas who’ve come to harass Charlie,” he said. His voice rumbled out in a drawl that still managed to sound threatening.
&nb
sp; At least the battle lines were clearly drawn.
Moretti pulled out his police identity badge, Al did the same, and the colonel brushed them away with a flick of his hand as if they were a couple of tsetse flies.
“No need for that. What do you want from the boy?”
“His version, Colonel, of what happened at the Lorrimers’ party. Mrs. Gastineau says she lost control because she recognized your nephew’s voice as the one on her phone, the person who has been harassing her over a period of weeks.”
To establish, Colonel Blimp, who might be harassing whom.
At this, the colonel stood up, leaning heavily on both arms of his massive chair.
“Good God, man, this is all pure speculation based on the word of an unbalanced woman of dubious breeding. From what I have heard of her background, this could be an attempt to get money out of us!”
The colonel, it appeared, had done some digging.
But before Moretti could say anything in response, Al Brown had something to say. “That’s a very fine sitar, Colonel.” He was pointing at the wall just visible behind the armchair. “Looks like a nineteenth-century gayaki-style sitar to me. Teak or tun wood, do you know, sir?”
Both Moretti and the colonel looked at Al in surprise, and the colonel’s face lit up.
“You know something about sitars?”
“Yes, sir. I play a Portuguese guitar, and I’m interested in all stringed instruments, particularly guitars of any kind. May I take a closer look?”
“Please do, young man.”
The colonel joined Al as he circled the armchair, shuffling with some difficulty across the uncarpeted section of the floor. Moretti stayed where he was and watched the two men. At some point he had to get things back on track and talk to Charles Priestley, but so far so very good. The colonel was no longer facing the enemy across the pampas, or the veldt, or whatever. At least Al was admitted inside the walls.
“Looks like tun to me, sir — it’s a sort of mahogany — and the bridge, I think, is possibly camel bone. A gourd, of course, for the kaddu, the resonating chamber. All those strings! Most of them to supply that drone sound in the ragas. Such skill required. Did you ever hear it played, Colonel?”