Hovering in the doorway to the waiting room, Alex saw Sebastian attempt to barge past Tony, who held him where he was.
‘I know the police talk to you,’ Sebastian said, his voice squeezed. ‘Everyone says they do. I want you to help me.’
‘Calm down,’ Tony said.
Sebastian pointed past Tony, toward Alex. ‘She knows. She knows more than anyone else in Folly. She’s been involved in a lot of things around here. When we came here it was for peace. Elyan needs peace to work and so do I. And so does my little girl. It’s all too much. I want to know what they’re saying. If they’re saying I had something to do with Laura’s death, I need to know so I can make arrangements for Daisy.’
Alex had never expected to feel pity for this man, but she did now. She believed he was stretched to his limit and that he was concerned, above all else, for his child.
‘Tony,’ she said quietly, ‘let him come in.’ It could be that some answers were about to be dropped on them from an unlikely source.
With a brief glance at her, Tony let the man in. ‘Wait here. I have a patient to check.’ He gave Alex another, more significant look and she went directly into his office.
Tony followed her and closed the door behind her. ‘What the hell?’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘What does he think we can do to help him?’
‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘But he might know something we don’t know and I don’t think he’s the type to talk freely to the police.’
‘We’ll see.’ Tony knelt to check Bogie who grunted, sighed, and settled back to sleep. Katie hadn’t moved since the last time they came. ‘I envy these two. Are you as tired as I am?’
‘I think I’m too wound-up to be tired, not that I’d mind lying down and trying to clear my mind.’
He ruffled her hair and opened the door again. Sebastian was exactly where they’d left him. Tony led the way back into the waiting room but offered the man nothing other than a chair. ‘What’s got you so upset?’ he asked.
Sebastian sat on a straight-backed chair and ran his fists up and down his thighs. ‘They’re taking Green Friday apart,’ he said. ‘Middle of the night and they come and start tearing things apart again. Percy’s useless. He just rages. Wells is furious, but he doesn’t say a word, just stands there, glaring. And the women look terrified. Damn, I hate this. I put Elyan in the music room and told him to sleep. He may be tired enough to do it. It’s a good thing Annie’s gone back home for a couple of days.’
‘I take it you mean the police are searching the house,’ Tony said.
‘Of course. What else would I mean? Waving their sodding warrant in our faces. Mrs M. looked done in. She went back to bed and told them to search around her. Sonia had hysterics. She wanted to call their solicitor but Percy wouldn’t, said it wasn’t necessary. But, god, he’s horrible when things don’t go his way. And my poor Daisy. She isn’t used to being upset.’
‘Where is she?’ Alex asked. She couldn’t help herself.
Sebastian looked stricken. ‘Oh, my god. She’s outside in the car.’ He threw open the waiting-room door and rushed from the house.
‘This could be a lot closer than we want to get to these people’s problems,’ Tony said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ she told him honestly. ‘What are we supposed to say? What does he think we can do to help him?’
Footsteps returned and the front door slammed. Sebastian came into the room carrying Daisy who slept on his shoulder.
‘Good grief,’ Tony muttered. ‘Put her on the little settee.’
Sebastian did as suggested, setting the little girl down without waking her. The child’s black ringlets fell forward over her face. She sighed, wriggled, and grew still with one arm flung out. A blue cotton nightgown covered her thin form. She was smaller than Alex remembered.
‘Keep your voices down or you’ll wake her,’ Tony said, and Alex smiled at the way he took charge in any situation.
‘Just tell me who I should be looking out for,’ Sebastian said. ‘Who is it who’s telling all these things to the police? We’ve got a killer running around and I don’t know where to take Daisy for safety. The police keep asking the same people the same questions and going in circles. They don’t have any suspects. Or I don’t think so.’
‘The police seem to ask the same questions over and over,’ Alex told him. ‘But they change them a bit. They add things as they find out more. It’s normal in an investigation.’
‘Well, you should know,’ Sebastian said, and shook both hands in the air. ‘I don’t mean that the way it sounds. Not anymore. I know you two have been pulled into things that were nothing to do with you. But listen to you, Alex. You know what you’re talking about with this sort of thing.’
She could only look at the floor and feel useless.
Sebastian sat on the very edge of a chair. ‘If you were me, what would you try to do? Even if I wanted to abandon ship and clear out with Daisy, I don’t think I’d be allowed to go.’
‘I doubt it.’ Tony stood up. ‘Is there someone Daisy can be sent to? Her mother?’
The man grew very still and stared past Tony. ‘She only has me. We … we have each other and that’s good enough.’
‘Not if you want her out of this,’ Tony pointed out.
‘There is no one.’ Sebastian’s expression was stony. ‘Would they put someone on guard, do you think?’
‘That, I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘But you should put the idea to them. There’s always concern for children’s welfare.’
‘I could take her to my mother’s,’ Alex said, the words popping out without passing her brain. She gulped. ‘I would stay there, too, and there would always be someone with her.’
Sebastian frowned.
She avoided looking at Tony. ‘Mum lives in Corner Cottage opposite the Black Dog. We can get the job done and you wouldn’t have to worry.’ Alex hoped that was really true.
‘She’d be frightened. But it’s a kind offer.’ His mobile rang and he answered, his indecision about Alex’s offer showing in the way he looked from her to Daisy.
‘Should we leave you?’ Tony said quietly.
‘I can’t understand you,’ Sebastian said shortly into his phone. ‘Slow down, Percy.’
Alex remembered Bill Lamb’s warning about not missing important information. She shook her head slightly at Tony and clasped her hands behind her back.
‘Why?’ Sebastian’s natural pallor increased. ‘None of this has anything to do with me.’
As he listened, he slowly stood up. ‘And if I don’t come back?’ He watched his sleeping daughter. ‘Calm down, yes. Yes, I’m telling you to calm down. You’re making it harder on everyone. Tell me what’s happened and why O’Reilly is throwing threats around. I don’t have to do anything he tells me to.’
With a hand propping his brow, he closed his eyes. ‘Something horrible has happened, hasn’t it?’ Alex could hear the caller shouting. ‘Okay, okay, okay, I’ll be there.’
‘Something’s gone wrong at Green Friday?’ Tony asked. ‘Can we help?’
‘I don’t know … Can you keep Daisy here, please? Just until I can come for her.’
‘Yes,’ Tony and Alex said in unison.
‘If I’m not back by morning … I’ll get a message to you later anyway. They’ll let me do that.’
TWENTY-THREE
The Quillam household would be interesting if being there weren’t irritating as hell. Billeted in the dining room which Percy Quillam had allotted the police – with a dismissive flourish toward its grandeur – Dan O’Reilly glanced repeatedly to the open French windows. Rustling and an occasional shout came from the police outside.
‘Tell them to go as carefully as they can,’ Dan told Bill, indicating officers who searched bushes and tromped their boots through flowerbeds to do the job. ‘From the look and sound of Quillam Senior, we’ll get a list of every broken twig.’
On his way to spread an extra warning to the te
am outside, Bill said, ‘They aren’t his twigs.’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s who owns the twigs. Whatever we mess up, we’ll hear about it. This isn’t your East End borough.’ Tiredness and frustration were finally heating him up. ‘Around here, they leave a car with four wheels, they expect to come back to four wheels. So just tell the Big Foot clones to be bloody careful.’
From a room that couldn’t be that far away, given the volume, Elyan Quillam was playing. What, O’Reilly had no idea but it sounded as if he had three pairs of hands. No one pair could move that fast, or that furiously. Dan liked music, especially Irish folk music, but compelling as the young man’s piano feats were, the piece was a mystery to him.
Spread over the glassy surface of the dining table were the folders Dan and Bill had brought with them and a few useless pieces found outside and carefully placed on a sheet of plastic. There was far more information among the piles of paper than some of the people in this house would like, but the Rubik’s cube that was the case felt stuck and with a lot of pieces out of place.
The family and entourage had gathered in a sitting room from which raised voices could be heard from time to time, although not so much since Elyan began venting on the piano. It did sound like angry music – or perhaps it was just the startling volume and the waterfalls of notes that emanated from the music room. Dan had been told Elyan was resting in there. Some rest. The supercilious Wells Giglio – a name Dan could imagine on a brand of shoes – made repeated trips to the bathroom, his hands clutching his belly and his head angled down, presumably to hide the agony on his face.
And rather than do as he’d been told and remain with the others, Sebastian Carstens had left. No one even heard him go and if Elyan hadn’t finally, unwillingly, said he’d gone for a drive, they would be searching the estate for him by now.
They had discovered, unexpectedly, that there was a back entrance to the grounds. Apparently that was the escape route Sebastian had taken. Dan still felt furious that none of his men had reported it to him before.
Her backless high-heeled green shoes tapping and slapping as she walked, Sonia Quillam came into the room, clicking her fingernails against the door on her way but not stopping to see if she was invited in.
‘This is not fair,’ she told Dan. This wasn’t his first exposure to her but the result was the same – things male registered.
He opened a folder and flipped pages. ‘What isn’t fair, Mrs Quillam?’
Her green caftan, cinched under impossible to ignore breasts with a band of gold braid, swirled around her with a swishing sound, the silky material touching here and there as it found waiting curves.
‘We are the ones who have suffered a terrible loss but we’re also the ones you’re persecuting. I’d like to know why.’ Dark blond curls were caught up at the crown of her head and she looked at him with narrowed eyes a few shades darker than the hair. Under other circumstances he would like to sit back and look at her – for a long time.
This was the wrong moment to raise Hugh Rhys’s name. ‘I’m sure it seems like that. Having strangers all over your home in the little hours of the morning would be upsetting to anyone. I apologize for that but developments in the case make it necessary. We’re waiting for Mr Carstens to get back before we start inside. We’d like everyone present.’
‘Start without him,’ she said.
‘It’s been suggested that’s not a good idea, not with his child asleep in the house.’
She pressed her hands together as if in prayer. ‘Daisy will be all right.’
What could have happened between Rhys and this woman to make the man hostile toward her? Dan made a mental note to chivvy whoever was following up that piece of history. He wondered if the two could have been an item before her marriage to Quillam, or after, or both.
A door at the back of the house slammed and Sonia jumped. ‘That could be Sebastian now. He uses the back entrance like some tradesman. It’s a pity he doesn’t get … No matter.’
‘Finish what you were going to say,’ Dan told her, with a look that let her know he was insisting. The back entrance was being mentioned at every turn now. He willed his blood pressure to go down.
‘I almost said tradesmen’s wages which would be ridiculously unfair. Forget I said it, please.’
Dan didn’t ask if she knew what tradesmen were worth these days. ‘I’ll meet him.’ A sweeping glance over the table and he knew he couldn’t leave everything out. ‘Could you perhaps ask him to come in here? This is where my people expect to find me.’
There was no need for anyone to hunt down Sebastian Carstens. He walked into the room and gave Sonia a poor effort at a smile. ‘How are you doing, Sonia? Have Mrs Meeker get you some tea. You look tuckered out.’
‘I would if she hadn’t decided she needed her beauty rest. Cheek.’
Sebastian nodded. ‘I’d forgotten. So why has Mr Quillam summoned me back? I got the impression you might be thinking of arresting me, detective.’
‘You know how Percy gets,’ Sonia said. ‘He’s beside himself. And if he keeps drinking, he’ll be unconscious soon.’
‘Never rains but it bleedin’ pours,’ Bill Lamb said through his teeth, coming into the room and before he noticed Dan wasn’t alone. He didn’t look embarrassed. ‘Glad you’re here, Mr Carstens. I didn’t know you’d come back. Come to that, we didn’t know you’d left when you’d been told not to.’
Dan put a hand on Sonia Quillam’s shoulder and walked her to the door. ‘If you don’t mind, we’d prefer to speak to Mr Carstens alone. You can report back that it looks as if we’ll be starting on the house almost at once.’
He didn’t watch her leave, but he heard the heels of those shoes tapping, and the slapping of leather against soft feet. Shoes easy to kick off.
Dan pushed the door to behind her but didn’t close it. ‘You took your little girl out of the house, Mr Carstens. You could have asked us if that was necessary.’
‘I’m her father. I decide what’s necessary for her. And how do you know what I did?’
Bill showed unusual restraint. ‘Everything’s fine, sir. But Dr Tony Harrison is in the hall and Ms Duggins is in his car with your daughter. They say they had to come after you almost at once. When you left the child with them she was asleep. It frightened her to be with strangers when she woke up. Children do get frightened by strange situations, don’t they?’
Carstens showed signs of rushing past them but Dan held up a hand. ‘We all do what we think is best at the time. Bill, will you have Tony and Alex bring little Daisy in. It’ll help if she sees her dad’s okay and he’s okay with the people he left her with.’
Damn and blast, those two turned up like maggots in a rubbish bin. They were inevitable. Someone or something always brought them tripping through his cases in this blighted village.
He heard Daisy sobbing before he saw Tony carrying the little girl and Alex trotting along rubbing the kid’s back.
‘Daisy, darling,’ Sebastian Carstens said. He looked and sounded distraught. Nothing put on about that. ‘I’m sorry. Tony and Alex are good friends of mine and I thought you’d be happier with them for the night. You know you don’t like bother and there’s a lot of bother going on here tonight.’
Good friends? Wheels within wheels.
The child settled in her father’s arms and immediately quieted. ‘Papa, I didn’t know where I was.’ She sounded cross. ‘And you didn’t bring my glasses so I could see properly. And I wanted to be with you.’
‘Tell them to get started inside,’ Dan told Bill, who left the room with speed.
Within minutes, while the dining room group stood trying not to meet anyone’s eyes, the unmistakable thuds of a number of feet entered the house and Bill could be heard dispatching officers to different areas.
Alex was too pale. She chewed on her bottom lip and watched the child worriedly. ‘Couldn’t you get her settled down somewhere?’ She came close and Dan subdued the urge to put an arm aro
und her shoulders.
‘We will,’ he said quietly. ‘We didn’t plan for things to go this way. You know that.’
She smiled at him, said, ‘I do know that,’ and he wished he could cut out the part of him that reacted whenever he looked at her. ‘What a mess this is, Dan. Are you making any progress.’
He couldn’t manage the steel he needed and rubbed her back. ‘Hold in with me. I’ll sort it out,’ he said.
The officer he recognized as Wicks knocked and entered the room. He pressed his lips together, tried to smile at Alex but couldn’t manage it. ‘Sir, we need you,’ he said to Dan.
Dan followed the man into the hall. The trouble in clear, dark eyes hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘What is it?’
Elyan Quillam threw open the door to the music room. His hair was wild, his mouth slightly opened as he breathed hard. He passed Wicks and Dan and started for the stairs.
‘Wait, please sir,’ Wicks said, and his dark skin glistened with sweat. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I can’t concentrate here,’ he shouted, raking his hair back. ‘Not like this. Why are you searching the house? You’re agitated – who wouldn’t feel it? It’s something else, isn’t it? Tell me what’s wrong. Now.’ It was the first time Dan had heard the young man raise his voice and he was yelling at full volume now.
Wicks looked to Dan for guidance.
Elyan paced a few steps in several directions, wringing his hands. For the first time Dan saw something of Percy Quillam in his son.
‘Sir,’ Wicks said. He kept looking at Elyan. ‘Chief Inspector, we need you upstairs.’
Every policeman’s nightmare was shaping up in front of him. The door to the sitting room had opened and the family and those close to them started to spill out, slowly, one behind the other.
‘Stay where you are. All of you,’ Dan said sharply, grateful that Bill appeared and stood at the bottom of the stairs like a blockade. ‘Right, lead the way, Wicks.’
Melody of Murder Page 17