A Holiday to Die For

by Marion Leigh

‘What about Father John? The things you’ve said about Florian could apply equally well to him, couldn’t they?’

  ‘Not really. First of all, he doesn’t have the charisma Florian does. He relies on his position and his rhetoric, plus a few underhand tricks of the trade, to exert influence. During his confessional the other afternoon, the only person lusting after the dear Father and not Florian was Gina. God knows why! In my book, he’s sneaky, creepy, physically repulsive …’

  ‘So how does he fit into the picture? Sandrine seems to think he walks on water.’

  ‘There must be something in the past we don’t know about …’ Petra said.

  ‘There are lots of things we don’t know about. We need to investigate the almond factory, Jacob De Witt, your friend Father John, and the rest. The list is getting longer by the minute.’

  Chapter

  27

  Petra hurried to the Cape Sands Hotel. A lengthy delay caused by an accident on the N2 meant that it was now nearly four o’clock. The spa reception area was deserted. The desk was tidy and the glossy magazines arranged in neat rows on a table near the window. Petra tried the door in the wall that led to the treatment and relaxation rooms. Damn! It was locked.

  If it hadn’t been for the accident, she’d have arrived in time to find out whether Vicky Dunlin was back after her working holiday or, if she wasn’t in, to determine her schedule. Not that the staff had been particularly helpful on her last visit. The only person who seemed to know anything about the girl was the expansive Mrs. Pinderally … who just might be a hotel guest.

  Crossing her fingers, Petra made her way to the main lobby. The junior clerk on duty at Reception clearly had not heard the name before. She checked her computer and threw Petra a look of regret.

  ‘I’m so sorry. We have no guests by the name of Pinderally. Could she be with someone else?’

  Of course she could. Or she could be anywhere in Cape Town or not in the city at all. And why were people always sorry?

  Petra sighed and decided to spare the receptionist, who was trying her best. She turned away from the desk with a curt ‘Thank you’, walked across the hall and stood looking at the schooners lying at anchor in Table Bay in the massive painting on the wall.

  Frustration was part of every investigation. ‘You’d better get used to it,’ the RCMP instructor had told his class of raw recruits. ‘And ignore the temptation to give up. The more you think laterally about a problem, the quicker the solution will present itself.’

  Petra stared through the finely drawn rigging and began to think. Mrs. Pinderally was a creature of habit: three massages a week plus the body cocoons. She didn’t look as though she travelled far. So if she wasn’t a hotel guest, perhaps she lived in one of the apartment buildings surrounding the marina.

  ‘Mrs. Pinderally lives on her boat.’

  The low whisper came from a white-gloved steward wearing a white turban who pressed an orange-coloured drink into Petra’s hand as she spun round to face him.

  ‘On her boat? You know Mrs. Pinderally?’

  ‘Yes, Miss. I’m sorry, Miss, I heard you asking at Reception about her.’

  ‘I’m glad you did! How can I get in touch with her? Where is her boat?’

  ‘It’s here in the marina. Scheherazade. Follow me. We take Mrs. Pinderally the tea every Sunday at 4.15.’

  Petra fell in behind the turbaned steward and a couple of lackeys carrying trays laden with finger sandwiches, scones, strawberry jam and cream, a silver teapot and a small dish of lemon slices. The cucumber slices were probably in the sandwiches.

  Scheherazade, a sleek tri-deck motor yacht, was moored along the dock wall conveniently close to the hotel. A wide boarding ladder with double handrails led at a shallow angle from the dock to the yacht’s main deck. The steward and his lackeys carried their loads effortlessly up the ladder and onto the boat.

  ‘Come!’ bade the steward, stepping onto the aft deck and turning to face the tinted aft doors. They opened as if he had said a magic word.

  Petra followed him into the vast salon. The décor was minimalistic and monochrome – a far cry from the gaudy Eastern draperies, gold-braided cushions and Persian carpets she had expected in a yacht dedicated to an Arabian princess. Two long white sofas faced each other on the port and starboard sides of the boat. Four black tub chairs, two forward, two aft, completed the square. In the centre stood a black lacquered coffee table. Forward of this seating area was dining space for ten: white leather chairs and a black marble table. Two white rugs with a widely-spaced wave pattern demarcated the areas on a dark cherrywood floor.

  Mrs. Pinderally was sitting in the middle of the white sofa on the port side, wearing a lounging robe of white muslin. She had slipped her feet with their pink-painted toenails into jewelled flip-flops. ‘Teatime,’ she announced greedily. ‘Thank you, Ali.’

  Ali bowed as his lackeys set down their burdens on the coffee table. As he righted himself, Petra caught sight of a woven insignia on the pocket of his tunic and realized that he was not an employee of the Cape Sands but a member of Mrs. Pinderally’s crew. Embroidered in black on a flying pink carpet was the name Scheherazade.

  ‘This lady is seeking you, Madam,’ Ali said. ‘I judge her AOK so I bring her with me.’

  Petra waited for Mrs. Pinderally to respond with anger and was pleasantly surprised when she gestured for her to come forward.

  ‘My dear girl. Now you are not interrupting my meditation. You may share my tea. Sit.’

  Petra sat down on the sofa opposite her hostess.

  Mrs. Pinderally’s sharp brown eyes scoured Petra’s face. ‘In one week you have aged. And you are too thin. This is not good. What have you done?’

  Petra frowned. She hadn’t done anything. If she had aged, it was Sandrine’s fault for scheduling so many activities and not enough down time.

  ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ Mrs. Pinderally said, making a series of clicking noises. ‘The creasing of the brow is a very bad thing indeed. It is the mark of a distressed mind. You must endeavour to be as free of trouble as I am.’ She ran a finger across the middle of her forehead, leaving a sticky trail. ‘Now tell me why you have aged.’

  ‘I went to a wedding. Every day we were kept busy. There was no time to relax.’ The words spilled out. ‘And there was a lot of drama.’

  ‘Drama? What drama?’

  Petra found herself describing the events of the past few days while Mrs. Pinderally started on the mountain of sandwiches.

  ‘This Florian,’ Mrs. Pinderally said, waving her hand about and dropping a cucumber slice onto the table, ‘Methinks he is very sexy, no? And you like him, yes?’

  The air in the salon suddenly seemed unbearably stuffy.

  ‘Then you will see him again.’ Mrs. Pinderally moved her bulk slightly forward to gaze sternly at Petra. ‘But I do not like this Father John. He is a sleazy ball.’

  ‘You know him? How?’

  ‘I have listened carefully to what you have been saying, and I know many things.’ Another cucumber slice fell out of Mrs. Pinderally’s sandwich, this time onto the carpet. Ali rushed forward to pick it up.

  ‘Your wedding was in Stellenbosch, at the Vredehof Manor. The same place where I arrange my daughter’s wedding one year ago.’

  Petra could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  ‘This Father John marries many brides, but not my daughter. A Marriage Officer must be congenial to the bride and groom and to the parents. Especially to the parents. Father John is not congenial, his fee is not congenial, so I change him. And Bob’s your uncle!’

  That would have thrown a spanner into Sandrine-the-event-planner’s works. Sandrine did not like to be overruled.

  At that moment, Petra remembered the tin of sugared almonds she had brought with her to give to Vicky Dunlin. She dipped into her shoulder bag and fished it out. The lid was
decorated with yellow, blue and white stones set in a random pattern round a large red central stone.

  ‘This is for you: it’s one of the favours we were given at Julia’s wedding.’

  Mrs. Pinderally wiped her fingers on her muslin robe and took the heart-shaped tin. After examining the top and the bottom carefully, she said, ‘The tin is the same. The maker is the same. The jewels in the lid are different. We choose orange sapphire, green tourmaline and colourless zircon like diamond to represent India and the origins of my daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t know you could choose your colours.’

  ‘With money, you can arrange everything. Except honesty.’ Mrs. Pinderally wiped a tiny tear from the corner of her eye. ‘Sadly the tins I send to Geneva to my beloved relatives did not arrive.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Stolen from the luggage. Iniquitous bandits!’

  Idly, Petra wondered whether the tins she and Carlo were taking home via Geneva would suffer the same fate. Then she shook her head and tut-tutted for Mrs. Pinderally’s benefit. The muscle at the base of her neck where it joined her right shoulder was tight and she rubbed it absent-mindedly.

  With the keen eyes of a fox, Mrs. Pinderally didn’t miss a thing. ‘Did the organizers of this wedding provide a massage therapist?’

  Petra shook her head again.

  ‘I thought not! That is the problem,’ Mrs. Pinderally pronounced. ‘You need a Rolling Sands massage given by an expert. I will lend you Miss Vicky. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Indeed. Miss Vicky is becoming my personal masseuse and cocoonist. Now eat.’

  She gestured at the pile of scones and began her attack.

  Chapter

  28

  It was the middle of April, not the first of January. Nevertheless, as she strolled back to her hotel after eating far too much, Petra made a resolution never to get as big as Mrs. Pinderally. Vicky Dunlin must be a very courageous young woman to have accepted an offer of employment to be her personal masseuse and cocoonist. No doubt she had decided that the opportunity to live aboard Scheherazade would outweigh the disadvantages.

  The live-aboards Petra had encountered in the course of her duties as a Police Sergeant in the Marine Unit tended to be sailors who took their boats to the Caribbean during the winter. It was a long haul but preferable to the ice and snow in Northern Ontario. Living in luxury aboard Scheherazade in South Africa would be something else.

  In the hotel’s business lounge, Petra ran through the specs and photos of the British-built Princess 30 M on the company’s website. The boat hadn’t hit the headlines in North America yet but she deserved to. There were some great features: a powered folding balcony entered through sliding double doors from the salon, a spa bath on the flybridge, a hardtop with integrated sunroof, a hydraulic swim platform with stern garage for a decent-sized dinghy, and more. The master stateroom, set forward on the main deck, offered frameless picture windows, handcrafted cabinetry and fabric wall panels. Mrs. Pinderally must have very lucrative business interests to afford such a sensational boat.

  As she prepared to turn in for an early night, Petra scrutinized her face in the bathroom mirror. No new lines that she could see. Faint circles under her eyes caused by a week of dinners and parties. She hadn’t aged and she hadn’t lost weight. If anything, she had put on a kilo or two. Mrs. Pinderally was way off base. But she had been shrewd in her analysis of the movers and shakers at the Vredehof Manor House. What a coincidence that she had chosen to host her daughter’s wedding there. And how strange that she should have developed such antipathy towards Father John. Carlo would be amazed at the turn things were taking.

  Her phone was charging on the night table. She grabbed it and dialled his number. ‘Carlo?’

  ‘Shh. I can’t talk now.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be busy until two o’clock tomorrow. Pick me up here at the Waterside any time after that.’

  ‘That’s fine. Ciao.’

  He was probably doing something he shouldn’t be.

  ‘Mrs. Pinderally begs you to make haste,’ Ali said. ‘She is in her suite.’

  Petra looked at her watch. It was just before ten o’clock. She wasn’t late.

  ‘I hope Mrs. Pinderally is all right.’

  ‘Very all right, but befuddled.’

  Petra had a vision of Mrs. Pinderally like an elephant drunk on Amarula Cream liqueur. She followed Ali through Scheherazade’s rather clinical-looking salon. The master suite was on the main deck, forward of the galley. She peeked into the galley as they passed: grey counter tops, stainless steel appliances, white tile floor. More like an operating theatre than a place for preparing sumptuous meals. Perhaps Mrs. Pinderally ordered all of hers from the Cape Sands.

  Ali rapped on the door of the master suite.

  ‘Enter!’

  He pushed open the door and, inclining his head, stood aside to allow Petra access. Her mouth dropped open.

  It was like walking into Aladdin’s Cave. Directly in front of her, on a U-shaped bed covered in red velvet, Mrs. Pinderally lay sprawled against a pile of garish embroidered cushions. She sported a bejewelled turban and a technicolour dressing-gown that gaped to reveal knobbly brown knees.

  Hurriedly Petra averted her eyes. To the right and left of the enormous bed, windows partially covered in red velvet curtains allowed glimpses of the world outside. Between the windows, gilded pilasters ornamented the walls. Below each window a built-in dresser in cream lacquer with gold pulls provided plenty of storage.

  But it was what stood on each of the dressers that made Petra stare in wonder. Everywhere she looked were mannequin jewellery holders festooned with rings, necklaces and earrings: voluptuous female figures in evening gowns with wire arms and headdresses. Dozens and dozens of them, wearing strapless sweetheart gowns, off-the-shoulder mermaid gowns, Victorian crinolines, princess dresses, in all the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘I am most befuddled,’ Mrs. Pinderally said.

  ‘Me too,’ Petra murmured.

  ‘You like my ladies?’

  Petra nodded. She had seen similar figures in shops in Venice but never such a variety and so many in one place. Nor so much jewellery.

  ‘Mr. Pinderally, my husband, God rest his soul, was a very generous man. And a very shrewd diamantaire.’

  ‘Diamantaire?’

  ‘A specialist in diamonds and precious stones. He did not believe in banks. See, over there, in that frame. Our wedding picture.’

  Petra studied the photograph. A much younger slimmer version of Mrs. Pinderally stood with her arm round a small dapper man. Both of them wore traditional Hindu dress and happy smiles.

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Nice indeed, but I am still most befuddled.’

  Petra waited for Mrs. Pinderally to elaborate.

  ‘You have given me a most expensive gift. I do not understand.’

  Petra wrinkled her forehead. ‘The dragées were given to me at the wedding. They’re not expensive.’

  ‘No, no. The dragées were good. It is the stone!’

  ‘The stone?’

  ‘Yes. Almost I break my teeth. Look there!’ Mrs. Pinderally waved in the direction of a tray full of rings.

  Tentatively Petra sorted through the gold and platinum rings set with what appeared to be very precious stones. ‘Do you mean this?’ she said, holding up a round brownish stone the size of a small coin.

  ‘Eureka! That is a diamond.’

  ‘A diamond?’

  ‘Alluvial, in the rough. That is why I ask why you gave me such an expensive gift.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was there. Sandrine Broselli gave me the tin to take back to Canada.’

  ‘Canada?’

  ‘Yes, via Europe.’

  ‘Europe?’

 
‘Geneva.’

  ‘Ah, Geneva is suspect! That is where the tins I lose were going.’

  ‘This is incredible,’ Petra said. ‘Why would the Brosellis put diamonds in tins of almonds?’

  ‘To get them to market without the certificate!’

  Petra nodded slowly. ‘Are you sure it’s a diamond?’

  Mrs. Pinderally gave Petra a look full of pity. ‘You think I could be married to Mr. Pinderally, God rest his soul, for forty years and not learn about stones?’ She raised herself up on the embroidered cushions. ‘An expert gemologist can tell where a stone comes from. I am better than expert. That stone is from Namaqualand.’

  As far as Petra was concerned, it could have come from Fairyland and Mrs. Pinderally could be making the whole thing up.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Namaqualand is an arid region stretching over one thousand kilometres along the West Coast of South Africa and Namibia. The Orange River divides it into two.’

  Mrs. Pinderally sounded as though she was quoting from a textbook memorized many years ago.

  ‘It is an area rich in alluvial diamonds carried there by ancient water courses as kimberlite pipes eroded. Some ninety percent of these diamonds are gem quality. They can be found in old river beds, on terraces, beaches, and in shallow and deep ocean waters,’ she continued.

  ‘Golly! Can you just pick them up on a beach?’

  ‘Once upon a time, indeed. Now the best places are governed by concessions.’

  ‘I don’t think the Brosellis have diamond mining concessions. Apart from wine, they produce biscuits and cakes, maybe sugared almonds; they have a hunting and safari lodge, and fishing trawlers.’

  ‘There you have it! Where are these trawlers?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I’ll have to ask my friend Carlo. He’s picking me up after my massage.’

  ‘Ah, massage!’ Mrs. Pinderally wagged a finger. She reached inside her dressing-gown and pulled out a gem-encrusted watch on a gold chain. ‘There can be no massage without Miss Vicky. Ten o’clock has come and gone. Where is she?’