Little God Blues

by Jeffrey M Anderson

  I checked the publication details at the front. This was the eleventh edition, published in 2000, so the trip must have been recent.

  What other privacies could I invade? In the end I did the other guest maneuver, and checked out her bathroom cabinets. If there was a clue there, I missed it. There were two zipper bags for makeup. There could have been a third, taken.

  Why had I always assumed that Claudia had gone away? Was it more abstract that way, more manageable than strangulation under my floorboards? Or was there some subconscious logic to it? A logic that finally explained how her seamless disappearance fit with the facts: not seen at any airport or other point of obvious embarkation. No passport. No missing luggage.

  My main impression was a lack of impression. To say 4B was sanitized was too strong, but it had a lack of personality, no signs of a real life being lived. It was like a demo apartment. Contrast it to my shadow life as Wormsleigh’s doppelganger, with his family photographs, artwork and wall hangings that meshed as signs of a unified idea of taste—old, stolidly traditional. There was his idiosyncratic book collection, including a shelf that confirmed why Jack Ross’ solicitor checked my ID. His Italian cuisine items. His private remedies, prescriptions and sex aids. In 4B you felt that things were missing, yet you were hard-pressed to name one exact item that proved the case. I told myself it had been months since Claudia had been there. The police had no doubt been all over it. Natalie had often visited. Then her party had torn through the place. Still, even after all that, I couldn’t lose the feeling that there was an intelligence orchestrating the flat. But what did I know about potential crime scenes?

  CHAPTER 2

  In those early January days I was still dealing with the aftermath of Natalie’s wild party. Things had been moved around; I was never certain where they had been to start with. I found a large, hardback notebook wedged in a sofa cushion. It was an address book, written in many inks with crossings out, arrows to new addresses. I had opened it to the middle, N, just to find out what it was. My eye fell to “Neeta/NE1” with a cell phone number. One of the few single-line entries. I called her.

  Neeta was friendly, with a chirpy, melodious accent, most probably Indian. After mentioning Wormsleigh, I proceeded to feel my way forward. She flirted in a meaningless, unapproachable way. I guessed she must be the scheduler, used to dealing with numerous NE1 egos, stroking them at a safe distance. (While her father was off in India arranging her marriage.) I explained about Kirk, about Claudia. I wanted to know if they had met. No, not through NE1, she told me. She didn’t ask about Kirk. I got the impression she knew of him. Well, that was enough for a first call.

  On the day before Sula returned I went to visit Hardcastle. He had regained consciousness but lay unmoving, slowly breathing with the help of an oxygen feed at his nose. His eyes were active, as if all his troops were pulled back to one last stand. I don’t think he knew who I was. I talked to him for half an hour about California, Sula. My case. It helped to say it out loud. Maybe Hardcastle’s formidable intelligence, locked away from the world now, was processing my words. Maybe he would give me one last hint.

  I met Sula at the Albert Memorial on the southern edge of Hyde Park. Just over the road the Royal Albert Hall sat on its considerable haunches; five minutes’ walk further south was Sula’s college.

  The Memorial was a monument to Queen Victoria’s cousin, also her husband, Prince Albert, whom she loved. He died at forty-two after fathering nine children. Its central spire looks like a Byzantine rocket ship, its outer facings in the darks and gold of a Greek (or Russian Orthodox) icon. There is a bust of the honoree, inserted later, in gold, looking south towards his Hall. Out of the corner of his eye he has line of sight towards to his native land in Germany. Seen from the side he looks especially hunched over, burdened. It is not a regal pose.

  I was sitting on its steps looking out to the Hall, trying to read Act II of Love’s Labours Lost (I was seeing the play in a few nights), unable to concentrate. Then there she was.

  There was a moment of awkwardness when we first saw each other. It was too early for either of us to be impelled forward with anything other than standard walking speed. She put her head down and approached with a gallows walk. I gave her a chaste peck on the cheek.

  Sula looked taller than I’d remembered, more tentative, as if she had spent most of our time apart talking herself into the folly of, well, me.

  “I’ve thought a lot about you,” I said truthfully. I had felt at home in California, but disconnected. There was this other me, this foreign guy with a separate life on hold.

  Again a strained smile. We started walking toward a small, manmade lake called the Serpentine, trying for some harmony in our gaits.

  I had dreamt for days of our reunion, how good it would be to see her again. Now this blank nothing. Still, the distant swell of suspicion that this time, with this girl, maybe this could be It. Oh, I was attracted all right, demonstrated again when my heart did a giddy-up as she walked to me. She certainly was challenging; charging me up, keeping me off balance. Still so new.

  “I have too…‌thought about you,” she started. “I wanted to see you again. But I had to think that this could change. You will be so far away. Everything looks different from far away.” Here her face went blank for a second. “I need to protect myself from that, so I tell myself, you won’t hear from him, it is better this way, and maybe, well it is better for any number of reasons best not to mention now. I tell myself these things and before you know it, I have convinced myself that yes, it is all true: he won’t call you. Yes, better this way. Once I am nearly convinced it is not so easy to, to turn off those doubts.”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  Then that smile I had remembered, so white, implacable, so sunny and exotic in this cold, misty land. On a bridge we watched the hunched-up ducks sailing this way and that in the thickening Serpentine.

  We walked up to Lancaster Gate in a comfortable way, not talking much, as if our syncopated footsteps were an alignment of interests. We had coffee in a hotel there. Sula was dismissive of anything interesting to report about her time in Greece.

  “So you continue with your research about your friend?”

  I told her about my new mission, no longer coy. I was a detective now. I was going around asking questions, poking my nose into private affairs, pretending I knew what I was doing. “Where were you on the evening of October 5, 2001?” I asked in mock seriousness.

  For a long moment, I’d lost her. “Sula?”

  Her dull eyes focused again; she gave me a tolerant smile. “How did you decide to be a detective?”

  “I didn’t. What I decided was that I was acting like one, asking questions like one, therefore I was a detective. I slipped into it.”

  “Yes? How did this start?”

  “Kirk’s suspicious death. The absolute mystery of my father’s book of poems.” I told her about that.

  “And once you finish with acting as a detective?”

  “I’m nowhere near that.”

  “What is your next step?”

  I was heartened that she was taking an interest, possibly more about how long I would remain in London. I told her briefly, dismissively, about Francine McLain.

  We walked back across the park to the Albert Memorial. Sula had made it clear she had work to do that afternoon, so this was going to be a holding meeting, a preview of possible things to come.

  Another chaste kiss on her cheek. Slow, I told myself. Yes, slow. With all other women I would be plotting my campaign, a city to be taken by storm or siege. A bit of R&R then off to the next city, battles in a never-ending war.

  We stood there awkwardly. We had taken our leave, but neither of us was leaving just yet.

  “I’d like to see you again,” I said. My words felt brittle under this clear, cold sky.

  “You must know I am not girlfriend type.” There was something in her faint smile; call it pain.


  “I’d still like to see you.”

  She looked up at me. I couldn’t read her face. “Just to talk?” she asked.

  I shrugged yes, why not? Whatever moved this forward.

  “It will not work.”

  “What, talking? We’re doing that now.”

  I looked into her eyes; she met mine. She was attracted to me. She let me know that with the way those eyes softened over the harder smile. She was holding back, fighting. Why?

  The previous version of Jim Shalabon would have moved on by now. It was my standard MO; no doubt ruled by my father’s early desertion. I would be doing the controlling here. No one walks out on Jim Shalabon, or is given the opportunity to do that. Now, that was changing.

  “Let’s just see each other, okay?”

  She gave me a hard, analyzing look, then loosened that into a smile. I took that as a yes.

  CHAPTER 3

  I had been trying to reach Francine McLain for several days. Her cell phone continued to be switched off. A prolonged Christmas break, I decided. The Internet gave me intriguing details.

  Born 14 April 1945 in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. Attended Badminton School (an all-girls school in Bristol) on a full scholarship. Spent four weeks in the summer of 1962 on a cultural exchange program in Moscow, where she gained a lifelong interest in Russian language, literature and culture. Enrolled in Nuffield College, Oxford in 1963, reading Russian Languages and Literature. Gained a double first in 1966. Started as an intern on the foreign desk of “The Daily Telegraph” before being recruited into the Foreign Service in March 1967. Transferred to the British Embassy in Moscow in November 1967, not returning to London until July 1973. McLain worked in various senior analytic positions in London until her early retirement in 1991. She is currently a commentator, freelance journalist and occasional speaker on Russian affairs.

  Her residency in Moscow overlapped Hardcastle’s by all five of her years there. Another Russian connection. If Kirk had found Hardcastle, if Hardcastle had known Francine McLain, then finally I was getting somewhere. Francine spoke Russian; she could have acquired my father’s poems there. If she had met Kirk, even a casual conversation could bring me into the mix; my background, my father. Similarly with Hardcastle, but he was unlikely to be Voronitchka, the book’s female dedicatee. Also, even if he was capable of sustained thought during Kirk’s visit back in September, he had no books in his small room at Sunnydown Hills. I had to slow myself down. If only Francine McLain would answer her phone.

  My only other lead, from my file snooping at Sunnydown Hills, was the lawyer. Lucian Gee was a senior partner at Hoodmore de Vere, a law firm based in Charterhouse Square. Surprisingly, my PA (who bore a striking resemblance to me) had no trouble setting up a meeting. I could hardly tell Gee that I got his name from a file I had seen illegally. I concocted a story, but in the end I just muttered an awkward sentence that included “Mr. Hardcastle” and “Trinity College” to his PA who, after keeping me on hold for a long minute, came back on the line, and booked me in for the following evening.

  Then I called the NE1 scheduler, Neeta. I had formulated a campaign. I would push her for a meeting, play up my loneliness, my willingness to be extravagant in entertaining her. I would only hint at this for now, while proposing we meet for coffee. She would resist, successfully no doubt. In the process she would buy me off with her assistance. She was the scheduler. She must have dealt with most of the NE1 members many times, maybe even chatted about how their last dinners went. My question was: based on her dating smarts, female intuition, intelligence, subconscious suspicions, and tea leaves (Darjeeling, of course), who was the most likely male NE1 member to have “shared a taxi” with Claudia Steyning? Not counting Lord Buchan. I knew about him.

  Before we got to that, she confirmed the club had been disbanded, more to do with protecting the members from the police than anything directly to do with Claudia. The eminence gris who founded the club was playing hardball with the cops. Neeta wouldn’t talk about him, but her references implied someone with power who used NE1 for his own agenda.

  She would think about my request for a name of a putative taxi sharer. Perhaps I could call her back tomorrow afternoon? I took that to mean she would check with her boss.

  ***

  There are rare times in life when a person is too easy. For reasons you don’t understand they take to you, see things in you, are happy to see you. Lucian Gee was one of those types.

  “Charles and I were at Trinity together. To say we were friends, well, that’s rather overstating it. Charles was different from anyone else I’ve known. Extravagantly intelligent; spent large parts of his time trying to fit in. For him this meant slowing down and waiting—a runner in a land of walkers. Rather a curse in its way.” Gee spoke as a thespian; projected, well enunciated, with a sense of timing and drama. He was a small man with an overlarge basset hound kind of face, with a dog’s way of poking his head forward as if sniffing for a bone. He was dressed exuberantly in a subtle pinstripe (lavender) with a burgundy silk handkerchief spilling out of his lapel pocket. He was one of those bow-tie lawyers.

  “We kept in touch after Cambridge. Largely curiosity on my part, to see how he would get along. I took on the Boswell role. We were friends too, in a way. We kept in touch, which is to say I kept in touch with him. Time passes. The proverbial leaves fly off the calendar until Charles is made to retire from the civil service, mandatory at sixty-five. What nonsense.” He paused here. “Would you like a drink of some sort? I feel in need of a GNT.”

  I assented, not knowing what it was. Gee called his PA with our order.

  “So, the great man has retired. How he kept busy? Well, I’m sure I don’t know. He admitted to the British Library and some research there. He lived alone in his flat in St. John’s Wood. No offspring. An ex-wife, a Russian poet, now in Australia. His brother long gone.”

  We were interrupted by the arrival of our drinks. His PA’s heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she approached. She had been so quick, those drinks must have been waiting.

  While we watched this serving ceremony I looked to the painting behind Gee’s desk, a sailing vessel in heavy seas, pitched sideways, a snarling wave about to break over her. Gee followed my eyes. He let me appreciate it.

  “A subtle metaphor for the client in trouble?” I asked.

  “There is that, I suppose. The original is in Amsterdam. I liked it so much I had an artist copy it.”

  A subtle, forged metaphor? He must have read my surprise.

  “Nothing illegal about copying a painting. The legal term is passing off I’m not doing that, you see. That’s why I’ve told you, in fact. Now I can subpoena you to testify that I have been open about the copy.” He was joking.

  “So…‌I felt I had a responsibility to keep an eye on Charles. We met every so often, three times a year or so. Well, to cut to the chase, as you Yanks say, he started to go batty. You have seen the end result.”

  He left a silence to speak for this turn of events.

  “He was a danger to himself, to the others in his building. More fundamentally there was his dignity. I happen to know through the old boy’s network that some of the work he did whilst in government was, well, monumental may not be too strong a word.” He took a short sip of his drink. “I will admit to some anger that our government could just abandon this man like that.

  “So there we are. We do have machinery in this country for looking after cases such as Charles’. Public Guardianship Office, Court of Protection, all that. They would handle Charles exactly in the same way as an old spinster with no relatives. That is how it should be. However….However, the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly…”

  He paused here to take a long sip. I followed suit. Okay, G and T meant gin and tonic.

  “Anyone who has had a loved one with Alzheimer’s will tell you that the early stages are the most difficult. In and out of lucidity. For half the day they are close to normal; the
other half, a danger to themselves, to near ones, to society.”

  Another sip.

  “I arranged for help. That worked for a while, then he became violent. Only occasionally. Poor man, it had to be frustration. So in the end I decided…‌well, he needed to be in care. He gave me Power of Attorney; we had better not look too deeply into that.”

  “They say,” I started, warming up my cold vocal chords, “they say that the more intelligent you are, the faster the Alzheimer’s, the faster the deterioration.” My voice sounded so flat, so American, after Gee’s theatrical narrative.

  He nodded here. “Yes, I imagine that Charles’ intelligence was down to his brain cells being wired up more efficiently. So the loss of one, and that’s what this dread disease is, that loss will have a greater, that is, a more deleterious effect.”

  I told Gee about his current condition—that he may not be with us for much longer. There was a pause in our conversation. Gee stood at the window. It was black outside. He said, “Terrible shame. One of the greatest gifts is to leave a life with dignity. Few do.”

  I wound up telling Gee about my case, and Kirk. He was neutral, non-committal. Sure, Americans arrive at Heathrow by the score to investigate fallen friends. I mentioned that I was going to interview Francine McLain.

  “Charles knew her in Moscow, well, and here,” Gee started. “An old flame I gather. They worked in the same section, one we are not allowed to talk about.” He paused to let me take in that significance. “I happen to know it was the closest he ever came….He did marry, later on. I gather that was rather a rescue mission.” Then Gee paused, squared up to me. “She’s dead I’m afraid. Francine.”

  He must have seen my shock, which at this point had more to do with my case than any thoughts about mortality. He had his PA look up the story on the Internet and print it out. Our conversation continued haltingly until his PA brought in a printed page and I had a chance to read it.