by Susan Moody
‘Knight in white armour,’ Paula said.
It took me a moment to realize what was wrong with the phrase. ‘I was very lucky he came along,’ I said.
‘I was lucky I came along too,’ said Gavin. ‘Very.’
I grinned hugely. ‘Otherwise I might have sat there for the rest of the week.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ Paula said. ‘Someone would have eventually come.’
Another tick on the debit side for Gavin’s Mum: no sense of humour.
‘Still got your Morgan roadster?’ Paula asked.
‘You bet. I’m not getting rid of that at any price.’
‘Not very practical for children.’
‘Mother dear,’ Gavin said lightly, ‘you may not have noticed, but I haven’t got any children.’
‘They’ll come soon enough, love.’ Paula glanced at me in such a meaningful way that I would have blushed if I’d known how to. Children? As with Ham, if they came along, I would be delighted, but not devastated if they didn’t.
‘Where does your family live?’ Paula asked me.
‘There’s only my father: he lives in Rome.’
‘Is that right?’ She gazed at me thoughtfully. I wondered if she knew about Sabine; I wasn’t going to launch into any of that and hoped Gavin hadn’t mentioned it. But given that her own son had been right in the middle of what had happened, it seemed unlikely that Gavin hadn’t told her of my own connection.
‘How long are you in England for this time?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t quite decided. As I said, I’m keen to come back here, but it’s a question of where I move to. And, I suppose, what I can afford.’
‘Will you be looking at any area in particular?’
Again she stared at her son rather than at me. ‘That would depend on …’
I could see she was dying to know if Gavin and I had any plans of a permanent nature, and if so, what they were. But beyond the next week or two, we had none. Not yet, anyway.
Call me undutiful or cold-hearted, but I was already quite sure that whatever the future might hold for Gavin and me, I was not going to want his mother coming along for the ride. I could envisage it quite clearly: the endless Sunday lunches, the offers to pop round for tea, the kindly suggestions of days out together, phones ringing when we were making love on weekend mornings, the hurt if she weren’t included in some outing we wanted to undertake, the constant poking-in of noses. No, thank you. It’s not that I’m antisocial: I just like to choose my company rather than have it thrust at me.
I glanced across at Gavin and could see he was thinking very much along the same lines. Where the hell could we escape to? Outer Mongolia? North Korea? Feet would have to be very firmly put down, I thought. But how to do it without hurting someone? Not someone: Paula. Oh dear.
Gavin was spending a few days with his mother, visiting family in the Lake District, and although I always had plenty of stuff to do, I was quite glad of a diversion.
‘That guy down there’s been hanging round across the road for at least half an hour,’ Lorna said late one afternoon, one ample hip perched on the edge of my desk as she slurped coffee from a stained mug and stared down at Bond Street.
‘And I’m interested because …?’ I clicked a button on my computer and brought up images of aboriginal art. Something I find intrinsically boring, mainly because I know perfectly well that the images have not sprung out of any artistic impulse but have been created to order. Usually by unscrupulous whitefella dealers.
‘Because a) he’s looking up at these windows. And b) he’s holding up a sign saying, “I love you, Chantal, will you marry me?”’
‘What?’ I jumped up to stare down at the street below. There was no man with a sign saying anything. But there was Brian Stonor. I waved and made signs indicating that I’d be down shortly. ‘You are a barefaced liar,’ I told Lorna, and she laughed.
‘Looks like my last depilation treatment worked, then.’
‘Oh, très droll,’ I said, cross with her for making my heart lurch when, for a moment, I had really thought Gavin was down there, proposing.
‘Would you have accepted if it’d been Gavin?’
‘I would have – until I met the mother.’ I threw a few things into my shoulder bag and headed towards the door. ‘I might have to rethink my strategy.’
‘I’ll have him any day,’ Lorna said. ‘Talk about dishy.’
‘You’ll have to make do with Nat.’
‘Hope you didn’t mind,’ Stonor said as we settled at a table in the Royal Academy restaurant.
‘Not in the least.’ I poured tea from the pot we’d ordered. ‘So what did you want to tell me? Or ask me?’
‘Discuss with you, actually.’ He reached into the briefcase he’d set on the floor beside his chair and pulled out a file. ‘The Palliser case: I’ve spent the last few days boiling down the evidence in the police files to a manageable size. Your final question, when we last met, is the one I’ve been concentrating on. That’s to say: if not Clio Palliser then who?’
‘And what’s your conclusion?’
‘I haven’t got one. Not yet. But first I asked myself who had the means and the opportunity; that was relatively easy. It was the motive I found difficult.’
‘So who did you put on the list?’
‘I went back, first of all, to Harry Redmayne. To be honest, I always liked him for it.’
‘I thought you’d established conclusively that he couldn’t have done it.’
‘I’ve looked again. But I’ll come back to that. Next, the locals and the neighbours. We investigated them thoroughly at the time, but looking again, I can see gaps where anyone could have done it, if they lied about it. Farmer Barnard, for instance. He was in and out of Weston Lodge all the time, knew his way in, knew the layout of the house. I think he could have done it. He certainly had the opportunity. But why? That’s what I can’t work out. Neither with him nor with most of them.’
‘Let’s get the list sorted first, and then see if we can come up with a motive.’
‘There’s also Sam Windrow,’ said Stonor. ‘Son of Linda Windrow, one of the Weston Lodge cleaning staff. Sixteen years old at the time. We didn’t investigate him all that thoroughly, though perhaps we should have done. Supposedly watching TV in his bedroom, but easily capable of getting over to the Lodge, carrying out the murders and slipping back home again, no one the wiser.’
‘He’d have been chancing his arm a bit, wouldn’t he?’
‘Maybe he’d got the hots for your – excuse me – your sister.’
‘I don’t think she ever mentioned him, but I’ll have to check up on that. But at sixteen, to kill her?’
‘Maybe she rejects him. Laughs at him. So he strikes out at her. Turns away and sees one or other of the boys witnessing all this, so does them too.’
A thought struck me. ‘Do we know who was killed first? I never thought to ask.’
‘According to the evidence offered by Gavin Vaughn, it seems that poor little George got it first. Then your sister. Then Edward. Then it would have been Gavin, if he hadn’t found an escape route through the pantry.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘But maybe it was the other way round. Like I said, Sam the Son comes into the house, up to Sabine’s room, she rejects him, he kills her in a fury, sees one of the boys watching and goes after him, has to do the other, can’t catch the third boy and races on home to finish watching Dallas or whatever.’
‘That’s possible, I suppose.’ A party of Japanese tourists clutching guide books settled like a flock of starlings at the tables round us.
Stonor looked down at his file. ‘Now, Lord Forshawe. Desmond. I looked at him more closely, and he could certainly have done it. Had the means and the opportunity. Wife was out walking the dogs, Mrs Stanton, the housekeeper at the time, had gone home. What was to stop him driving round to the Lodge and committing murder? He was a career soldier once, you know. Saw active service all over the world. Perfectly capable of killing someone if he w
anted or needed to. But as we’ve said, even if you believe a guy like him could have killed children in cold blood, what the hell was the motive?’
‘I wouldn’t believe it, anyway. Not Desmond.’
Fort a moment he stared at me thoughtfully. ‘You don’t think your sister could be at the root of all this, do you?’
‘You mean Desmond Forshawe had got the hots for Sabine and decided at eight o’clock in the evening to go round and proposition her, when Redmayne might have returned from London, Clio could be having a glass of wine in front of the fire, the boys were still swarming about? I absolutely do not think so.’
‘It does sound a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?’ He put a hand on his papers as though to prevent them from flying away. ‘Now here’s an interesting one. With a motive, too.’
‘Yes?’
‘You know that picture which the boys had scrawled “Fuck You” on?’
‘Harry Redmayne’s newest acquisition, you mean?’
‘That’s the one. Well, it turns out it wasn’t his, after all. It was lent to him: guess who by?’
‘Cut to the chase, Brian. I can do Sudoku but not guessing games.’
‘Lady Forshawe, if you can believe it.’
‘I knew she was quite a connoisseur. Why would she lend Redmayne a painting when he had so many of his own?’
‘I would guess it was loaned to Clio, rather than Harry. They were good friends. The thing is, she was out walking her dogs at the crucial time. Suppose she took it into her head to borrow it back for Christmas. So she walks over to Weston Lodge, goes inside – all the staff were gone, don’t forget, Clio’s beavering away in that soundproofed study of hers, the boys and your sister were upstairs. She thinks she’ll unhook the thing from the wall, sees it’s been scrawled with rude words, picks up a paper knife or whatever is to hand and flies up the stairs, knowing it must have been the children who damaged it, not Clio or her husband, starts laying about her with the knife, kills your sister just because she happens to be there.’
‘As a theory, it’s certainly got legs. And who told you about the loan?’
‘The extremely helpful Mrs Linda Windrow, mother of the aforementioned Sam. Turns out we used to go to school together. Funny, isn’t it?’
‘Hilarious.’
‘I just happened on that snippet of information this time round. I should have looked at it more closely at the time. It certainly provides a motive, something we’re a bit short on.’
‘But isn’t it a longish way to walk the Forshawe dogs, on a snowy winter night?’ I remembered Desmond Forshawe’s rueful laugh as he said that his wife had loved her dogs only second to her paintings. ‘On the other hand, I suppose they were big dogs, needed exercise.’
‘And nobody would suspect her for a moment, would they?’
‘What about footprints left in the snow?’
‘By the time we got there, it was snowing quite heavily. They’d have been covered up well before then.’
‘Clothes covered in blood?’
‘Gets back to her house, strips off down in the mud room or whatever they call it, throws them into the furnace that powers the central heating. Creeps up the back stairs and into her bedroom, gets dressed in a fresh outfit and down she goes to make supper for herself and her husband. Easy as standing on your head.’
‘I, for one, have never found that particularly easy.’ I was mulling over what he’d said. It certainly hung together. But knifing two children to death because of a swear word or two seemed pretty extreme. ‘If by any chance you’re right, you’ll never get her for it.’
‘I know. She’s dead.’ He grimaced. ‘More tea?’
‘Thank you. And of course you’ve already explained why the Honourable Clio might have gone along with having the blame laid at her door: remorse over her lack of warmth and so on towards her two dead children.’ I raised my cup and peered at him over the rim. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Attempt to establish someone else as the guilty party.’
‘Or, of course, Clio’s innocence. Either way would do.’
‘If she is innocent. At this distance in time, almost impossible to prove, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Pretty much.’ I thought of my father’s mantra, It’s not going to bring her back. I knew that. What I wanted now was some kind of justice. I wanted, if not exoneration of Clio Palliser, then at least some understanding. And if she were to prove blameless in the matter of the foul slaying of her own children, then I wanted that established too, if only for Sabine’s sake. ‘But it’s worth a try.’
‘So what’s the first move?’
‘If you seriously think Farmer Barnard or Lady Forshawe could have done it, I suggest we go down to Weston Lodge again, stay a night or two, visit Desmond Forshawe, meet up with some of the locals. I’ll pay for you, if you like.’ I thought of the money my darling Ham had left me: investments, stocks and shares, cash in different places, the leasehold of my house. I was never going to be short of money.
‘I’m not short of a bob or two,’ Stonor said, echoing my thoughts. ‘Thought the place was well worth the money. No, prices will have increased by now … Let’s pay for ourselves. I agree with you that bearding the lion in his den is as good a place to start as any. And as soon as possible, eh?’
‘Absolutely. Let’s go for it!’
Across the table, we shook hands.
‘Motive, though. We have to establish a motive.’
Easier said than done.
Eleven
We drove down to Weston Lodge early on Saturday morning, intending to take pot luck. If there weren’t rooms available at the hotel, we’d find a B&B somewhere.
David Charteris remembered us from the last time we were there. ‘How nice to see you back again,’ he said.
‘Good to be here.’ Stonor nodded. ‘We’re travelling together, but quite independently, in case you’re wondering.’
‘No, no. I wasn’t,’ Charteris said hastily. ‘None of my business, anyway. So two bedrooms, and will you be here for dinner tonight?’
‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘The food was brilliant when we were here over your promotional weekend.’
‘Good, good.’
‘Same for me,’ said Stonor.
‘Is it going well?’ I asked. ‘The new hotel, I mean.’
‘Very much so. In fact it’s only because we had two cancellations just this morning – two American couples travelling together – that we even have any spare rooms.’ He handed over two sets of keys. ‘We’re even thinking of expanding: converting some of the existing outbuildings to add more accommodation.’
Once settled in my room – not the same one I’d had last time – I used the house phone to tell Stonor I was going to stroll through the woods to see Desmond Forshawe and maybe set up another meeting with him.
‘Better tread carefully, Chantal,’ he said. ‘Nobody wants a relative stranger appearing on the doorstep and implying that his wife could have killed three people twenty-three years ago.’
‘I’d already worked that one out,’ I said. ‘I’m planning to use all my feminine wiles on him. Hens, roses, Balthus, it’ll be a cinch.’
‘I just hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘What will you do while I’m gone?’
‘I’ve thought about Trevor Barnard, and it might be better if you were there for pursuing that line of enquiry. So I’m going to visit friends and relations round about the area who were here at the time and knew some of the people involved. Then, if that peters out, we’re back to looking very hard indeed at Redmayne, yet again.’
‘Is there possibly an X factor here? Somebody we haven’t yet considered. Or don’t even know about.’
‘We can explore that one when we’ve seen how this comes out. But I need to say that I still think in the main that Clio did it. I’m going to have to be very very convinced to believe otherwise.’
‘Right. I’ll see you in the bar before dinner.’
�
�I’ll be the one holding a half-pint of beer.’
I felt like a completely different person from the one I’d been last time I walked through these woods. Looking back, I could see the sort of limited person I had become over the years, emotionally bent low and seeing only the ground beneath my feet. Now I walked tall, head held high. Taking on the world. It was partly to do with Gavin, I knew that. But more because I had at last properly faced my demons.
The landscape had changed, moved into russets and golds, after the rich green of summer. The fields off to the right were amber, tawny, more than ready to be harvested. In among the trees, there were already bare branches and a thickening carpet of fallen leaves. Somewhere above my head, pigeons cooed forlornly and intermittently, a woodpecker rat-tat-tatted for insects. When I arrived at the edge of the woods, I could see Desmond Forshawe pottering about on the stone-flagged terrace, holding a pair of secateurs in a useless kind of way.
‘Good morning!’ I called, when I got nearer. ‘How are the roses doing?’
‘Chantal Frazer!’ he said. ‘What a welcome sight you are, my dear.’ He looked at his watch. ‘A glass of sherry would be appropriate, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Definitely.’ I mounted the mossy steps and gave him a buss on the cheek. ‘So how are you? How are the hens? And the dogs?’
‘All the better for seeing you.’ He led the way into the drawing room and poured us each a generous sherry. ‘Let’s sit outside, while the sun’s still shining. It’ll be winter all too soon.’
We sat on weathered teak outdoor chairs and contemplated the view. A couple of dogs sidled up, gave me a desultory sniff, and lay down beside their master.
‘So,’ I said. I couldn’t think of much to say after that. As Stonor had pointed out, the subject of Lady Forshawe’s possible murderous activities was a difficult one to broach. ‘Thank you for contacting the chairman of Chauncey’s on my behalf.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
I sipped the excellent manzanilla he’d offered. ‘Your intervention has done wonders for my profile at Chauncey’s. I’m going to be in charge of a sale of miniatures early next year.’