Loretta Lawson 01 - A Masculine Ending

by Joan Smith

  ‘If he was mad, I was demented,’ Veronica said. ‘I started screaming at him, I used words I didn’t know I knew. He didn’t seem to understand why. He got angry himself after a while, he said I’d ruined his only chance of happiness. That was the last time I saw him.’

  Loretta waited for Veronica to mention the letter, whose contents were now explained. But she appeared to have come to the end of her narrative. ‘You didn’t know he was going to Paris?’ she asked.

  ‘No, why should I?’ Veronica demanded sharply. ‘Can’t you understand how much I hated him? It wasn’t until after he was dead that I…’ She stopped. ‘I didn’t invite you here to tell you all this,’ she said, suddenly defensive. ‘I’ve never breathed a word of it to anyone before now. I kept it all inside me. It’s been going round and round in my head ever since they found Hugh’s body. I suppose it had to come out some time.’

  Loretta regarded her bleakly. She was not at all sure that Veronica was telling the truth. It seemed much more likely that she had been carefully selected as a suitable confidante. After all, if Veronica had a burning desire to entrust her terrible story to someone, who better than Loretta? She was not a member of the family, someone Veronica would have to meet on a regular basis. As far as Veronica was aware, Loretta didn’t even have any connection with her husband, apart from the slightest of professional acquaintances. As a feminist, she would have a ready sympathy for another woman. And, on top of everything else, Loretta did not, as far as Veronica was aware, know any details of the murder. And wasn’t that significant? Loretta asked herself. For what Hugh Puddephat’s wife had just told her amounted to an excellent motive for murder. Plenty of murders were committed out of simple jealousy, and Puddephat’s behaviour had been far, far worse than abandoning his wife for another woman. And it wasn’t just a question of motive. Loretta suspected that Veronica had also had the opportunity. According to her version of events, she had rejected her husband’s proposal out of hand. That much was borne out by the existence of the letter, which counted as independent evidence of her story. But what had happened afterwards? Wasn’t it possible that Veronica had sought revenge? Had she feigned a change of heart to lure. Puddephat to his death? ‘I’ve had time to think about it, and I’ve changed my mind,’ Veronica’s voice was saying in her head. ‘Why don’t we meet in Paris, at Andrew’s flat. We spent our honeymoon there, and this will be a sort of honeymoon. But don’t let’s tell your friend I’m coming. You and I will arrive first, and make all the arrangements. There’s money to consider, and my access to the child. I’ll want to see it, of course. Your friend can join us a day later. As you said, if 11 be a surprise for him.’ Loretta shook her head, and the picture faded. She had allowed her imagination to run away with her. She did not believe Veronica capable of such coldblooded calculation. Besides, there were practical objections. Even if Puddephat had copied the keys to rue Roland in June, Veronica had no way of knowing that he had done so. Yet neither she nor Puddephat had approached Andrew for a further loan of the originals. Perhaps she had taken copies as well, a little voice persisted. Loretta refused to listen to it. If she was right, why hadn’t Puddephat’s lover reported the discovery of the body to the police? The whole thing was preposterous. Far from being evidence of her guilt, Veronica’s candour spoke eloquently of her innocence. The subject of these thoughts, who had been sitting silently in her chair, looked up suddenly. ‘I feel so much better for getting it off my chest,’ she said with an embarrassed laugh. ‘It’s been such a weight on me.’ Loretta was suffused with guilt. Veronica had trusted her, and she had responded by constructing a dangerous fantasy about her. ‘Are you hungry?’ Veronica was saying. ‘The least I can do is buy you dinner.’

  Loretta thought that after what she had been through, food would taste like ashes in her mouth, but she pulled herself together. ‘That would be very nice,’ she said lamely. Veronica suggested that they eat at a hotel in Woodstock, and went to phone for a reservation. When she came back, her face had been scrubbed and freshly made up. The subject of her marriage, Loretta thought with relief, seemed to be closed. They agreed to take both cars, and Loretta followed Veronica’s Citroën to the restaurant.

  During dinner, Veronica talked cheerfully about her plans for the future, which included selling the Red House and applying for a place on a social-work course. At ten, Loretta decided it was safe to take her leave. ‘I must get back to London,’ she said, putting on her jacket. ‘I’m off to Paris tomorrow,’ She told Veronica about the Fern Sap conference, and reached in her bag. ‘Have a look at this,’ she said, producing a copy of Spare Rib. Veronica took it politely, but with barely concealed distaste.

  They walked out to the cars together, and Veronica waited while Loretta fastened her seat belt. She did not suggest meeting again, an omission for which Loretta was profoundly grateful. Veronica would only be embarrassed by the memory of her revelations, and Loretta could see no point now that Puddephat’s wife was no longer a suspect. Pulling out of the car park, she slipped a tape of Don Giovanni into the cassette player. It seemed an appropriate choice, even if Puddephat’s inclination had been towards men rather than women. It was in his sexuality, she was now convinced, that the clue to his death lay. The most likely explanation was that he had picked up some stranger on the streets of Paris and fallen victim to him at the flat. The chances of the killer being apprehended, even if she were to supply the police with her meagre stock of information, seemed remote. With a lighter heart than she had experienced since her return from Paris, Loretta turned up the Mozart until it drowned out her thoughts.

  Chapter 12

  The restaurant was a little North African place near Les Halles. It took Loretta some time to find it, as it was tucked away in a back street. Inside the door, she paused and took stock.

  She was standing at the end of a long, narrow room with tables down each side. A variety of Moroccan cooking utensils and striped blankets hung on the walls. The room was dark, but not unpleasantly so. She could not see her friends - two women from the Fern Sap collective with whom she had arranged to have dinner - so she asked for a table for three, explaining that the others would be along in a moment. She sat down at one of the tables with her back to the wall, giving her a good view of the door. Years before, while she herself was a student, she had spent a holiday in Morocco, and she was pleased to see a number of tagines on the menu as well as the predictable couscous. The street door opened and she looked up for long enough to register that her friends had not arrived, then returned to her perusal of the wines offered by the establishment.

  Suddenly her left hand was seized and raised to the lips of the complete stranger whose arrival she had noted a minute before. Before she could protest, he had presented her with a single red rose and take a seat opposite her. His French was, initially; too fast for her to understand, and she peered anxiously round the room to see if there was any obvious explanation for his unaccountable behaviour. The mild curiosity on the faces of two waiters dispelled the notion that the stranger was employed by the restaurant to provide an eccentric greeting service for its guests. Waiting until he paused for breath, she began to speak. ‘Excusezmoi, Monsieur, je ne comprends pas,’ she said, referring both to his rapid French and the situation in general. The stranger appeared to be slightly disconcerted, but then shrugged it off. Leaning across the table, he confided that she was much more beautiful than her photograph. Loretta’s astonishment increased. When and how had this unknown man seen her photograph? She started speaking again in careful French, assuring the stranger that she did not know him, and that there must be some mistake. As her English accent became apparent, a look of horror appeared on the man’s face. He stopped her, and enquired whether she was not Mademoiselle Françoise Sauzède, aged twenty-eight, dental nurse just arrived in Paris from Rouen? When Loretta confirmed that she wasn’t, he clapped his hand to his forehead in a theatrical gesture of remorse. He was so sorry to have intruded upon her, he said, it was the most terri
ble mistake. He had come to the restaurant to meet Mademoiselle Sauzède, whom he had contacted through a computer dating agency. He had never seen her, but was in possession of a photograph in which she bore a striking resemblance to Loretta. Her suspicion that this was a novel method of picking up women proved to be unfounded when he reached into his inside pocket and produced a picture of a woman who really did look a little like her. Still apologizing, he stood up, bowed several times, and scampered off to a table as far away from her as he could get. Loretta was just reaching into her bag for a book when he materialized in front of her again. Without saying a word, he retrieved the rose, which was still lying on the table, and scuttled back to his seat. Loretta smiled to herself; if her restaurant jinx had come back, it was taking a less threatening form than had her last run of bad luck.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and she was able to watch in silent amusement as her erstwhile suitor went through his paces again. In the flesh, Mademoiselle Sauzède did not have much in common with Loretta apart from the style and colour of her hair. Her make-up was much heavier than Loretta was accustomed to wearing, and her heels a great deal higher. From the furtive glance the small man cast Loretta a few seconds after the arrival of his date, she got the clear impression that he felt he had got a better bargain second time round. She pretended to search in her bag to hide the broad smile which had spread across her face, and thought to herself that the dental nurse was welcome to him. Just then, her friends arrived, apologizing for being late, and she was able to regale them with the story in a low voice.

  After ordering, they turned to a more serious subject. The other women, a lecturer in English from Reading University and a French novelist, were on the same side as Loretta on the grammar question but, she soon discovered, were even more pessimistic than she about the outcome of the next morning’s meeting. Simone, who had spoken to the convener of the Fern Sap collective earlier in the day, thought that the whole thing would be over by mid morning; she had heard that the radicals intended to cut short discussion and force a vote as quickly as possible.

  ‘What we have to decide’, said Mary, the woman from Reading, ‘is whether we soldier on with Fern Sap in the hope of hanging on to most of our contributors, or whether we start afresh with a new journal of our own.’

  ‘Or abandon the whole thing for the time being,’ Simone added glumly.

  Loretta understood her pessimism; either of Mary’s suggestions would involve a daunting amount of work and a battle with the radicals’ proposed new journal, Mother Tongue. Nevertheless, having given the matter some thought on the way to Paris, she was now convinced that Fern Sap, or something very like it, should carry on. ‘We can’t give up now,’ she urged. ‘We’ve built Fern Sap from nothing. Most of the things in it wouldn’t get into print if it didn’t exist. Mother Tongue isn’t going to accept anything like our range of contributions. I agree with Mary. The question is whether we keep the title, or start something new ourselves.’

  They agreed to talk again next day after the vote had been taken. Although the room at the Sorbonne had been booked for Saturday only, Mary suggested they should try and reserve it again for Sunday morning. There would be a great deal to discuss, she pointed out. Bang goes my day of sightseeing, Loretta though sadly. Still, it couldn’t be helped. The next morning’s meeting of the collective was as tiresome as Loretta had anticipated. The discussion that preceded the vote confirmed her suspicion that the radicals were using the issue of masculine endings to force a split to allow them to set up an entirely separatist journal. The vote itself was held up by procedural wrangles until just before one, and the radicals lost narrowly. One of their number, an Associate Professor of Women-Authored Fiction from Ohio, immediately stood up and announced their withdrawal from the Fern Sap collective. The inaugural meeting of the Mother Tongue editorial board would take place in the room in which they were sitting at two thirty that afternoon, she said.

  They’re wasting no time,’ Mary whispered indignantly to Loretta. ‘I wonder if I should point out that this room was booked by the Fern Sap collective, and they’ve just left it?’

  ‘Why bother?’ asked Loretta. ‘I think we all need a break. We were planning to have our meeting tomorrow morning anyway. Let’s collect together a few people who are on our side and go to a café.’

  As Mary drifted off to speak with Simone, the door opened and the porter peered into the room. Making no secret of his reluctance to enter it, he attracted the attention of the woman nearest him and passed her an envelope. The woman, one of the separatists, gave it a cursory glance and silently handed it to Loretta. Her name was clearly typed on the front of it, Loretta saw, examining it with a puzzled expression. Who could be sending her a note? Everyone she knew in Paris was at the meeting with her.

  Opening it, she found a single sheet of paper bearing a typed message. When she read it, she was so shocked that she sat down abruptly. Gathering her thoughts, she peered round the room for Mary. ‘I’ll be downstairs, by the porter’s desk,’ she said urgently, rushing from the room.

  She found the porter in his cabin, a makeshift affair constructed of plywood, by the front door. She rapped on one of the windows to attract his attention. ‘Who delivered this?’ she demanded curtly in French.

  The man lumbered to his feet. ‘A young lady,’ he replied.

  ‘When?’ Loretta pressed him. He shrugged his shoulders. Half an hour, maybe three-quarters of an hour ago, he said.

  He had thought it better to wait until the meeting ended before bringing it up.

  ‘What did she look like?’ Loretta insisted. The porter shrugged again, and said she was just a young lady. Then he smiled slyly. She had red hair, the young lady, he did remember that, he said.

  Deciding she would get no more out of him, Loretta walked slowly to a bench which ran the length of one side of the entrance hall. She sat down, and read the note again. It was just as perplexing on the second reading, and Loretta realized it had also induced in her a twinge of fear. ‘Meet me at the Café Costes at three o’clock this afternoon,’ it said simply. The sting was in the tail. The note was signed ‘Melanie Gandell’ and, leaving no room for ambiguities, the sender had typed the name below the signature to make sure she got the point.

  It can’t be, Loretta told herself unbelievingly. There was no doubt at all that the girl was dead. She had been identified by a member of her own family. The inquest into her death had made no mention of any confusion. The signature could only be interpreted as bait to lure her … to what? Who would be waiting for her at the Café Costes, wherever that was?

  Then she remembered what the porter had said. The note had been delivered by a girl with red hair. Melanie Gandell had red hair, but Melanie Gandell was dead. Someone wearing a wig? Whoever it was had gone to a lot of trouble to get the details right. Or a relative of Melanie Gandell, a member of that elusive family she had been unable to track down? Not a sister, since Melanie had been an only child. And an aunt was hardly likely to qualify for the porter’s description of the messenger as a young lady.

  ‘There you are,’ said Mary, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Are you all right?’

  Loretta fleetingly wondered whether she should tell Mary what had happened, but decided it would take too long. ‘I’m fine,’ she said brightly, putting the note into her bag.

  She joined Mary, Simone and three other women in their search for somewhere to have coffee. The weather was not particularly cold for October, inclining instead to an intermittent drizzle. As the rain was threatening to start again, they made for the nearest bar. An animated discussion about the future of Fern Sap immediately sprang up, but failed to hold Loretta’s attention. Looking at her watch, she calculated that she had just over an hour until the rendezvous. She tried to approach the puzzle logically, compiling a list of people who knew she was in Paris, and precisely where she could be found. It was quite long, but did not include anyone who seemed a likely suspect in the matter of sending the note. Tra
cey knew, of course, but his tastes did not include spiteful practical jokes. The same went for her mother. She had mentioned the trip to several people at work, including the department secretary, but that didn’t get her any further. She also remembered speaking to Veronica Puddephat about it, but that made no sense either. Even if Veronica wanted to confess to murdering her husband, which Loretta didn’t believe for a moment, there were simpler ways of bringing about another meeting. She supposed someone could have phoned the department and discovered she was going to Paris but, far from narrowing the field, that thought opened it up impossibly wide.

  She returned to the porter’s description of the girl. Relegating theories about the substitution of bodies to the realms of fantasy, she was left only with the fact that the girl was not Melanie Gandell. A new thought occurred to her: perhaps the girl had nothing to do with the case, but had been bribed to deliver the note on account of her red hair? That was the most likely explanation. So it was the identity of the author of the note she must concentrate on. First and foremost, it was someone who knew that the dead girl’s name would mean something to her. Therefore, it must be someone with a good idea of the extent of her knowledge of the case. She panicked for a moment, wondering if the killer had, without her knowledge, observed her in rue Roland and again, by chance, in the course of her investigation. Fear for her own safety, which had gripped her at the scene of the murder, suddenly returned in full force for the first time since she fled the flat in rue Roland. But surely that was what the note had been meant to do? she asked herself. As well as playing on her curiosity, wasn’t there something sinister about sending a note in the name of a dead woman? After all, if the writer simply wanted to meet her for a chat, why not ring her up and say so? She did not like it one little bit and yet, she realized, it hadn’t crossed her mind not to keep the appointment. She waited for a break in the conversation, and asked Simone if she had heard of the Café Costes. She discovered that it was a very fashionable place on the fringes of Les Halles, famous for its splendid Art Deco interior. At least her unknown correspondent had taste, she thought wryly.