I said nothing. The receptionist told us that Mrs Barrymore would be out directly and asked us to take a seat.
My first sight of the woman who was probably still Carl’s legal wife shook me rigid. I was aware of Mariette stiffening by my side. Claire Mendleson Barrymore was dressed in a cream silk trouser suit straight off the pages of Vogue, and radiated elegance and sophistication. She was smiling when she strode confidently towards us, but the smile slipped when she saw me. Not surprising.
We were so alike we could have been doubles. Even her elaborately coiffured hair, with its shimmering reddish tint, and so many layers of immaculate make-up that they paled the receptionist’s efforts into insignificance, could not disguise how alike we were.
I falteringly introduced myself, although something told me I didn’t need to. Neither of us commented on our tremendous physical similarity, either then or later, but it was breathtakingly obvious. Only the window dressing differentiated us. I fancied that the receptionist was studying us curiously, too.
‘I was with Harry in the UK,’ I said ambiguously. ‘Something happened there. I don’t know if you know anything about it . . .’
She interrupted me sharply. ‘More than I want to. You’d better come into the office.’
Grant had been quite right. She was no longer smiling and was clearly not pleased to see us. Neither was she going to discuss her private business in a public area of the hotel. She led us to the privacy of a small computer-filled room at the back of the reception area and closed the door firmly behind us before speaking again.
‘I really had hoped he was dead.’ Anger bursting from her, she almost spat out the words.
I flinched. Mariette put a hand on my arm. I still didn’t speak.
‘What do you want with me anyway?’ asked Carl’s wife.
‘I wondered if Carl, I mean Harry, had been here, been in touch with you,’ I replied, and realised as I spoke how feeble I sounded.
‘No, thank God,’ she said. But she didn’t sound angry any more. Just weary. And sad. I could identify with that well enough.
‘The cops have been on to me, of course. Wanted to know that too,’ she went on. ‘I can’t believe he’d dare face me ever again. And you? I know what he did to you. Surely you haven’t come here looking for him, have you?’
I nodded, if a little tentatively.
‘You must be out of your mind. I never want to set eyes on the son of a bitch again. He killed my daughter and he’s still doing his best to wreck my life.’
I could understand her feelings. Not only had she lost a child, in horrific circumstances, but she thought she had escaped from her past. I was beginning to realise that nobody ever can. She had thought she was Mrs Wexford Barrymore. Now she wasn’t so sure any more. The Florida police had notified her when it had been discovered who Carl really was after his arrest in Cornwall, and contacted her again when he had escaped from custody it appeared. All of it had been seriously bad news for her, the very worst.
‘I have a new husband, two young sons and a new life,’ she went on. ‘I will never ever forget the daughter I lost, nor how I lost her . . . but . . . life goes on . . .’
There was a catch in her voice. She paused as if unable to continue for a moment. When she spoke again she did so quite calmly and deliberately. ‘Harry was a raving lunatic. I didn’t know it when I married him. You didn’t know it either, did you? We both found out, though.’
Theodore Grant had hinted at her being mercenary and perhaps self-seeking. Well, who could blame her? She had built a new life out of the wreckage of one she wanted only to forget and she didn’t want it spoiled. She had tried to bury the terrible hurt of her previous life. I could relate to that. I studied her for a moment before we left. There was genuine pain in her eyes. She may not have been the kind of person I would choose for a friend, she did not exactly ooze warmth, but then, why should she to Mariette and me? She was another very American painted lady, but beneath the overdone layers of apparently obligatory make-up she was, more than likely, a perfectly ordinary, probably perfectly nice woman. And she had suffered. There was no doubt about that.
I didn’t like her, though, for all that. But then, I suppose I wouldn’t, would I?
I had just one request to make before we left. ‘If you do ever hear anything from him, would you let me know?’
She laughed humourlessly. ‘He really got you under his spell, didn’t he?’ she remarked. ‘He did it to me once too . . .’
She was right, of course. I had been under Carl’s spell. He was that kind of man.
‘Look, Suzanne Adams, or whatever you call yourself, if the bastard ever walked into my life again I don’t know what I would do. And that’s the honest truth of it. I’ll tell you one thing, though, he’s wrecked my life once. I’m not going to let him do it again . . .’
Her words were strangely chilling. Her façade of sophistication could not mask the turmoil she was so patently experiencing. There was desperation in her voice. Her eyes glazed over as she spoke. I wasn’t sure at all what she meant and suspected it might be better for my peace of mind that way. Certainly, I found myself hoping that if Carl was in America he would not try to contact his real wife.
Desperation can make people dangerous, as I knew only too well. Carl had been desperate when he had forced me to hide away with him back in Cornwall, and kept me locked up in that dreadful hut. I had considerable sympathy for the painted lady and all she had suffered, but I couldn’t help wondering how far she would go to protect her new life.
There was no sense in hanging around at Bay Point. Even with my inheritance we couldn’t begin to afford a room there and it didn’t seem very likely that the management would invite us to stay as their guests. We climbed back into the hire car and headed on down to Key West.
‘Wow,’ said Mariette. ‘I couldn’t believe how much that woman looks like you. You saw it, didn’t you. I know you did. You couldn’t miss it . . .’
Uneasily I muttered my agreement.
‘They say men always do that, marry the same woman over and over again. Looks are the only thing you have in common, though, I reckon, thank God. She’s a bit of a hard case, isn’t she?’
I smiled grimly. ‘After what she’s been through, what do you expect?’
I was, however, deeply disturbed by my meeting with the woman with whom Carl had shared years of his life, the woman who had given birth to his child. I suppose that was natural enough, but my feelings went way beyond jealousy or resentment or anything like that.
‘There’s something nobody’s telling us, I’m sure of it,’ I said. ‘Something that has caused Carl to be the way he is.’
We had called ahead to Key West and booked into the Artists House, home of the painter who had played such a part in Carl’s childhood. Mariette insisted that I needed to calm down and relax. She was probably right. The Bay Point experience had made me very tense indeed.
She drove in a leisurely fashion and managed to find a wonderful roadside fish restaurant for lunch, which someone back home in Cornwall had recommended. Even if you knew the mile marker it was hard to spot Monte’s, little more than a shack by the roadside, but as I tucked into fresh prawns and deep-fried soft-shelled crabs I was very glad we had managed to find it. I had learned to enjoy fresh seafood in St Ives, but had never eaten stuff like this – and out of cardboard cartons with a plastic knife and fork.
We arrived at Key West around midday. Mariette manoeuvred the car efficiently enough through the narrow streets of the island that forms the furthermost tip of America and even managed to find a parking space not far from the centrally positioned Artists House.
The man in charge, Jim, bade us welcome and showed us to a room, which I thought was stunningly beautiful. It had once been Eugene Otto’s studio. The furniture was old and solid. I had never been in so beautiful a room. Mariette and I were both bowled over.
Even the house cat, Boots, was a stunner: big, black and sleek.
I mentioned Carl’s name to Jim, his real name, Harry Mendleson.
Jim looked blank. ‘We’ve only had the house a couple of years,’ he said, when I told him how Carl had been brought up in Key West and had spent many hours in the very studio room we were renting watching Gene Otto paint. ‘I’ll ask around. There’s sure to be somebody who knows.’
That evening we walked down to Mallory Dock in time for the sunset. We ordered margaritas out on the pier and sat on high stools gazing west. The waiters and waitresses wore big smiles that said ‘Please tip me’, and kept wishing everyone a nice day. There was a carnival atmosphere. It was one of the perfect sunsets the island is famous for. The sun was a blazing amber ball when it sank into the sea and everybody cheered. I fell very silent. It was exactly the way Carl had described it to me and precisely how I had imagined it. Except for one thing. Carl was not there with me.
I drank in the atmosphere and made myself concentrate. Could he be here somewhere, drinking in a bar, walking along the beach, just a stone’s throw away from me?
‘Birds come home to roost . . . people always want to go back, they can’t stop themselves.’ DC Carter’s words haunted me. I knew by then that nobody much had a very high opinion of the man or his ability as a detective, but his theory was convincing and, as he had told me, based on long experience.
We walked back up Duval Street taking in the sights and found a rather good hamburger joint where we gorged ourselves on burgers and fries. On the way back to the Artists House we called at a couple of bars. Everywhere we went I asked after Harry Mendleson but drew a blank. I suppose it wasn’t surprising. As far as I knew he had left Key West more than twenty years previously, had only rarely returned and had left America a good fifteen years ago. The Key is inclined to have a transient population. People come there to work in the tourist industry or just bum about for a time before relaunching themselves into real life – and nothing much about Key West was very real, I was already beginning to discover.
There must be some people in Key West who had lived there all their lives and maybe generations of their families before them, but on that first night we never came close to finding any. Maybe they had more sense than to hang out in the bars of Duval Street.
In the morning when we wandered into the kitchen at the Artists House where Jim was serving a casual buffet breakfast, he had encouraging news. ‘Frank Harvey,’ he said. ‘That’s who you want to speak to, apparently. He’s a retired doctor. Lived here all his life and treated half the town. You’ll find him in Ezra’s bar out by the southernmost point almost every night, they say.’
‘Who told you? Was it someone who knew Carl . . . I mean Harry.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jim. ‘I was just told Frank Harvey is the man who definitely knew him, knew the family. There’s a story . . .’
He paused.
‘Go on,’ I coaxed.
Jim looked uncertain. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘You should get it from the horse’s mouth, I reckon.’
Frank Harvey looked more like a retired farmer than a doctor. And one who had led a pretty hard life at that. He was very tall and thin, and had a weathered, leathery brown face, framed by wisps of white hair, from which shone the brightest of blue eyes. It was difficult to guess his age but I thought he must be well over seventy.
He had not been difficult to find. The barman pointed him out at once. He was sitting on a bar stool with a bottle of beer and a newspaper in front of him.
I introduced myself as Suzanne Adams. He put down his bottle of beer and peered at me curiously.
‘Would you like another?’ I enquired.
He nodded. ‘English?’
I confirmed that both Mariette and I were.
‘Where ya from?’
I told him St Ives. He asked where that was.
‘Cornwall.’
‘Anywhere near a place called Penzance?’
‘About seven miles.’
He nodded, removed the pair of heavy framed spectacles he was wearing. ‘Can’t see to read without these danged things on but can’t see beyond a yard when I got ’em on either.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I should have known it,’ he murmured.
‘Known what?’ I asked.
‘No, you first.’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said. ‘His name’s Harry Mendleson . . . I think you knew him once.’
Frank Harvey nodded, almost as if this was what he had expected to hear. ‘So you’re Suzanne,’ he murmured, still staring at me. ‘Why isn’t he with you?’
I was startled. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
Frank Harvey took a long pull at the neck of his beer bottle. ‘I had a letter from him a few weeks back, first thing I’ve heard in fifteen years. Said he wanted to get in touch again, maybe wanted to come back here. And there was someone he wanted to bring, someone he loved, someone called Suzanne . . .’
My heart lurched. I hadn’t expected anything like this, not so soon, anyway, and with so little detective work. Thank you, DC Carter, I said to myself, you were right. Maybe, just maybe, Carl was actually here in Key West. ‘But you haven’t seen him? Or have you? Have you seen him, Doctor Harvey? Please tell me.’ I was falling over my words.
The old man was too slow for me. ‘Not in fifteen years.’ he said. ‘Not since it all happened and he went away. He telephoned me then, from Miami airport, to say goodbye. Then I never heard a thing, not until this letter. I was fond of Harry . . .’
‘I have to find him,’ I blurted out. ‘He’s gone missing. I-I don’t think he’s well. Can you tell me anything that might help me find him.’
The doctor seemed to consider my words carefully. But he did not speak.
I realised I had no choice if I was going to get him to trust me, so I filled the silence by telling him, as briefly as I thought I could get away with, about how I had met Carl, about Robert’s death, about how Carl came to be charged with abduction and how, finally, he had escaped from the court jail in Penzance.
Frank Harvey looked sad but not all that surprised. ‘Still running, then,’ he murmured. He leaned closer to me. ‘The years you were together, were they good years?’
‘Well, yes, mostly, sort of . . .’ I mumbled.
‘Mostly, sort of,’ he repeated. ‘That sounds like Harry. Don’t suppose he ever let you out of his sight, did he?’
I had to agree that was so, more or less. But I was somehow instantly defensive. ‘I know what happened in Key Largo. I know why he had to leave the States. We’ve been to Largo, talked to Claire and to the policeman, Theodore Grant, who investigated the case. But I am convinced there must be something more that they weren’t telling me.’
‘Are you indeed? Well, you might be right, young lady. I don’t suppose either of them told you that Claire Mendleson’s affair was with Theodore Grant and that he was Harry’s closest friend, did they?’
I turned to Mariette. ‘There, I knew there was more. No wonder Carl, I mean Harry, went off the rails.’
Mariette didn’t look impressed. ‘If every man whose wife had an affair with his best friend started locking her up there’d be a lot fewer people walking the streets, that’s for sure,’ she said.
I frowned at her. But Frank Harvey had started to talk again. He sounded tired. ‘Claire once complained to me that Harry used to call up the stores when she went shopping to check she was where she was supposed to be. Couldn’t have been easy for a woman like that. Maybe you can’t blame her for turning against him.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Harry was always off the rails, I guess, Suzanne. I was fond of him, still am. He’s not a bad man, is Harry. Too much history, that’s all . . .’
I waited expectantly.
Frank Harvey was staring into my eyes. ‘You don’t know do you?’
‘Know what?’
What happened here in Key West when Harry was just a teenager, the baggage he’s always had to carry with him?’
He started talking then about the old days, about Carl’s fathe
r, Billy Mendleson and how he had never had the talent as a painter that he thought he had and how he had taken to drowning his sorrows in drink and drugs. ‘Bit like we’re all inclined to do in Key West,’ the doctor muttered ruefully, lifting his bottle again.
I was almost impatient at first because he talked so slowly and much of this I knew already. Not all of it, though. Not by a long way, as it turned out.
‘Billy took to knocking young Harry’s mother around in the end,’ he related. ‘She denied it for years, of course. Why do women always try to hide it?’
He shook his head sorrowfully. I didn’t know the answer, but I knew he was right. I always used to try to hide what Robert Foster did to me. He had expected me to and I did my best to do so. I began to realise why Carl had been so exceptionally moved when he discovered how badly Robert had beaten me.
Frank Harvey was still speaking. ‘Harry had an awful childhood. His father ignored him most of the time, gave him the odd clout too, I shouldn’t wonder, and his mother was too caught up with coping with his father to take much notice of him. They both took solace in drugs. Harry used to try and help his mother; from when he was a little lad, he did what he could. But I never thought she wanted helping.
‘Harry was a bright kid, though, and a much more talented artist than his father was ever going to be. Billy wouldn’t admit it, of course. True, though. There was a schoolteacher who encouraged the boy and, right against the odds, Harry won a place at a top art school in Miami.
‘He did well there and he didn’t come home for almost a year. Can’t say I blamed him. Then he got a call from his mother begging him to come back and talk to his father. The beatings were getting worse, that was the truth of it, but she told Harry she wanted his help to get his father off the drugs, to get him to seek help.
‘Harry came home all right. But he took one look at his father and saw an even more hopeless case than he remembered. He told his mother she had to leave. Harry was still only eighteen, but he’d had to grow up fast. He wanted his mother to go back to Miami with him. He was selling paintings and he had a grant. He had a two-roomed flat and they’d manage, he told her. She’d always hung on to Billy like a limpet in spite of everything, but she agreed in the end. Harry wanted them to take off without telling anyone, but Jeana said she had to tell Billy. Couldn’t just leave him. Couldn’t live with herself if she did that.
A Deep Deceit Page 27