by Annie Dalton
Anna nodded. ‘One of Isadora’s old friends from her undergraduate days. He killed himself a couple of nights ago.’
‘The banker bloke?’ Liam said. ‘I heard about that.’ He frowned. ‘Wasn’t Professor Lowell an old friend of Isadora’s too?’ They both nodded. ‘That’s really rough,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How’s she holding up?’
Anna mentally paged through her recent encounters with Isadora. She pictured her puffing agitatedly at her stale roll-up, dressed in her designer finery for James’s funeral, looking pale but resolute after identifying Robert’s body. ‘That depends,’ she said cautiously. She could feel Tansy avoiding looking at her. They had begged Isadora to tell the police about her anonymous letter but she only repeated that she would when she was ready, and she insisted that she still wasn’t ready.
‘We’re going with her to Robert Keane’s house tomorrow – that’s the banker bloke. He named her as his next of kin.’ They’d got back to Isadora’s from the hospital to find a small package waiting for her from Robert’s solicitor. It contained an explanatory letter with directions to a house in Boars Hill, a set of keys and Robert’s alarm code. Isadora had silently read the note before telling them, ‘Apparently Robert wants me to organize his funeral. He’s left detailed instructions for me at his house. The solicitor seems to feel this is a breach of some kind of protocol, but says he feels he has to comply.’ She’d abruptly stopped talking to gather her little dog into her arms. ‘I’ll drive out there tomorrow,’ she’d added before burying her face in Hero’s curly black coat. ‘Darlings, I didn’t sleep at all last night,’ she’d told them, ‘and I’m suddenly very tired. If you don’t mind seeing yourselves out, I’m going to go upstairs to take a nap.’
Isadora had shown no sign of resenting this startling imposition by a man she’d lost touch with so many years ago, but Anna could see how much it was costing her. Exchanging glances with Tansy, she’d said, ‘Would you mind if Tansy and I came along? We could pick you up around ten, if that’s OK with you?’ Already part way up the stairs, Isadora had half turned to give them an infinitely weary smile. ‘That would be an act of great kindness, thank you.’
Keen to move the conversation away from violence and death, Anna said, ‘Liam, this is really lovely. Can I help myself to some more?’
‘Of course! I’ve made plenty!’ Carefully avoiding the dish with the industrial amounts of chilli, Anna refilled her plate. Liam turned to Tansy, a mischievous glint in his eye, ‘Did you tell Anna who we saw at Freud’s last night?’
‘No! Anna woke me at bonkers o’clock to go over to Isadora’s and I completely forgot!’ Tansy gave Anna a broad grin. ‘We only saw Dritan Lika! Well, it was Liam who spotted him. Oh, my God, Anna! I know Dritan’s a really bad boy and everything, but talk about sex on legs!’ Dritan Lika was a notorious local gangster who had come to Anna and Tansy’s attention when they were trying to find out who had murdered Naomi.
‘He was wearing a really beautiful leather jacket,’ Tansy added with a sigh. ‘And I bet you his shirt and boots were handmade.’
‘If you want, Tansy will draw his entire outfit for you,’ Liam said wryly. ‘She gave him quite a thorough looking-over!’ A less secure man would make this sound barbed, Anna thought, but Liam seemed genuinely amused. ‘So, talking of gangsters, Ms Lavelle …’ He gave a meaningful glance at the Christmas card which was currently propped up by the toaster.
‘No, I haven’t posted my father’s card!’ Tansy blazed. ‘I may never post it! Stop bugging me about it, Liam, OK?’
Anna felt as if all the oxygen had suddenly been sucked out of the room. She knew something of Tansy’s past life. She’d even met Tansy’s gangster dad in person and understood exactly why she felt so sensitive about him around Liam. All the same it was a shock to see the normally sweet-tempered Tansy obviously spoiling for a fight.
Liam took a leisurely swallow of his beer. ‘OK, Tansy,’ he said amiably, ‘but just a simple “No, actually, I haven’t posted it yet, Liam,” would have sufficed.’
After what seemed to Anna a long tense moment, Tansy gave him a slightly ashamed grin, though she couldn’t resist a mocking, ‘Sufficed? Get you, Liam “I’m studying for my inspector’s exams” Goodhart!’
He just grinned back at her and Anna saw Tansy suddenly let go of her anger. ‘Can you believe how laid-back this man is?’ she said to Anna. ‘He should really be a Zen master.’
‘How do you know I’m not?’ he asked calmly. ‘You need all your Zen powers in today’s police force, believe me!’
Gradually all the food was eaten. Liam polished off the dish with extra chilli then rather hastily knocked back the last of his beer. ‘Think my hand might have slipped with that one,’ he said a little hoarsely. ‘Now, you girls take your cups of coffee or whatever upstairs and I’ll clean up.’
Anna and Tansy took a pot of camomile tea and two mugs up to the sitting room, followed by Bonnie. Bonnie settled at Anna’s feet and began gracefully washing one of her front paws.
‘Exactly like the Cat in the Hat? Do you swear?’ Anna whispered to Tansy. ‘No pink ring? No turmeric stains?’
Tansy reached across to pat her arm. ‘It’ll be fine! You did a good deed tonight, Anna Hopkins.’
‘It was Liam who did the good deed. I couldn’t have faced cooking tonight. If it was down to me we’d live off toast like Sabina.’
‘Yes, but you let him loose in your lovely pristine kitchen and you hardly panicked at all – that was very brave,’ Tansy teased.
‘Just tell me I’m anal, why don’t you?’ Anna was trying and failing to close her mind to the alarming crashing and clattering downstairs. ‘I should probably go down and show him where I keep the dishwasher stuff?’ she suggested anxiously.
‘Hey, he’s a detective,’ Tansy said. ‘He’ll figure it out.’
Eventually they heard the dishwasher start to thump and churn. Soon afterwards Liam popped his head around the sitting room door. ‘OK, I’d better get off. I’ve got to drive up to Leeds tomorrow and I didn’t get too much sleep last night.’ He gave Tansy a fond look.
‘Actually, I didn’t get too much sleep last night either, so I’ll be off to bed now,’ Anna said feeling she should give Liam and Tansy space to say their goodbyes.
‘If Isadora doesn’t mind putting off going to Boars Hill till Monday, I could drive you all there, give you a hand?’ Liam offered. ‘It’s not going to be much fun, is it, going to some house where some poor bloke just committed suicide?’
‘Aw, that’s really thoughtful, Liam,’ Tansy said, ‘but I think Isadora just needs to get it over and done with.’
She glanced at Anna for confirmation and Anna nodded. ‘So she can get back to normal.’ Anna wasn’t sure what ‘normal’ consisted of these days, but she liked to imagine a peaceful stretch of time in which nobody they knew was blackmailed, fatally stabbed or horribly bludgeoned to death. ‘What are you doing in Leeds?’ she asked Liam.
‘My dad’s having his sixtieth birthday bash.’ He smiled at her. ‘Well, technically he’s my foster dad, but to me he’s just my dad.’
Anna dimly remembered Tansy mentioning this family gathering. Liam had asked Tansy to go with him but she’d flown into a panic. ‘It’s too soon!’ she’d told Anna. ‘Suppose they hate me on sight! Suppose I hate them? How is Liam going to feel about me then?’
‘Have a safe trip,’ Anna told him. ‘And if I don’t see you before, I’ll be seeing you at Christmas!’ From the way Liam and Tansy were looking at each other, she seriously doubted that Liam was going to get his early night. She made a discreet exit with Bonnie following on her heels.
TEN
‘Do you think that tree arrived pre-decorated in a box from Harrods? Or do obscenely rich people seriously pay other people to come and decorate their Christmas trees?’ They had just let themselves into Robert’s house, a monstrous red-brick temple surrounded on two sides by dank-looking woodland. Tansy had focused her immediate d
islike of their surroundings on the first thing they saw when they came in the door: Robert’s towering silver Christmas tree.
‘His wife had recently left him.’ Isadora reminded her, her voice echoing around the oak-panelled hall. ‘And he worked in a notoriously unforgiving industry, don’t forget. He’d still have been expected to return his colleagues’ hospitality, maybe host a pre-Christmas party.’
The three women stood staring up at the tree. Its frosty silver branches, hung with sapphire and white ornaments, added to the feeling of Arctic chill that pervaded Robert’s house. Anna was glad they hadn’t let Isadora go alone.
Tansy stuck her hands in her coat pockets, shivering. ‘This has to be the ugliest house I have ever seen.’ Lack of sleep made her seem slightly snappish. She’d told Anna that Liam had finally left somewhere around three in the morning. ‘Oh! Except that staircase.’ Her tired face suddenly lit up. ‘The staircase is really cool! You could dance down it like in those fabulous old movies!’
‘There’s a gym and an outdoor swimming pool – and, bloody hell, a cinema!’ Anna had found a brochure for a high-end estate agent on the hall table. ‘It looks like Robert had put it up for sale.’
Tansy and Isadora came to look over her shoulder. Isadora frowned. ‘Hmm, I think using “impressive” three times in the first paragraph was a distinct error of judgment. Tutankhamun’s tomb is “impressive” but you wouldn’t want to live there.’
‘Plus who the fuck calls their house “Ormidale”?’ Tansy gave a snort of laughter. ‘It sounds like somewhere elves live in Lord of the Rings!’
‘Shall we have our coffee before we get on?’ Anna suggested.
‘What, here in the hall?’ Isadora said anxiously.
‘Are you serious?’ Tansy said. ‘We’ll have it in the kitchen like staff!’
‘If we can find it,’ Isadora said.
Anna held up the brochure. ‘It’s OK. There’s a floor plan.’
They set off in search of the kitchen. Oak-panelled rooms opened into yet more oak-panelled rooms, each with its own picture-perfect arrangements of sofas, tables and lamps. Lacking even the smallest signs of daily wear and tear, they resembled those mock-ups of real rooms that you saw in department stores, Anna thought, only less inviting.
Tansy opened a door and said, ‘The kitchen’s in here!’
‘Oh dear, more oak,’ Isadora said. ‘I hate to think how many innocent trees were felled to build this horror.’
They had brought flasks of coffee with them. In unspoken assent, they drank it standing by a kitchen counter. All the cupboards were pale oak and all the counters were dark and glassy. Tansy experimentally touched one with a fingertip, instantly creating a smear. ‘These would be a bastard to keep clean,’ she commented.
‘Have you noticed,’ Isadora said, ‘we’re the only colourful things in this house!’ Anna hadn’t noticed this until Isadora had pointed it out, but sure enough Tansy’s knitted snood in a warm pumpkin shade, her own pink scarf and the tiny glints of green and orange in Isadora’s tweed coat formed the sole splashes of warmth and colour in a house otherwise devoid of either of these things.
A dull wintry light filtered in through drawn Venetian blinds. Isadora went to peer out through the slats. ‘There’s a garden.’
‘I feel like we shouldn’t be here.’ Anna was warming her hands around her cup. ‘Like we’re intruding.’
‘It’s this house,’ Tansy said. ‘It disapproves of us. It disapproves of everybody who doesn’t have an offshore bank account!’ She opened the fridge which contained five lemons, and several bottles of tonic. Robert’s freezer was similarly empty, except for a single drawer that was half filled with frozen meals from a high-end catering company.
‘The house can think what it likes,’ Isadora said, turning round. ‘Robert wanted me to come.’
‘Don’t you think it’s just a bit odd that he’s asked you to do all this?’ Tansy hesitated then decided to risk speaking her thoughts out loud. ‘Robert obviously wasn’t in a good mental state. You don’t think he could possibly have sent you that weird letter?’
‘No, Tansy, I don’t.’ Isadora’s voice was sharp. ‘Robert was many things but he was not the kind to send anonymous threats.’
‘Could he have sent you the extracts from Hetty’s diary though?’ Tansy persisted.
‘Possible but unlikely,’ Isadora said in the crisp tone she had once used to quell her students. Unlocking the back door, she took a few steps into the garden. It stretched away into the distance, all lawn and clipped box hedges. ‘Not a flower anywhere,’ she said, half under her breath.
‘It feels as if nobody has ever laughed or sung inside this house ever,’ Tansy said, ‘or cooked and enjoyed a real meal, or even had a good therapeutic quarrel.’
‘… Or made love, proper love,’ Isadora said coming back into the kitchen. Her expression was wistful. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help hoping that Robert had a little pied-à-terre somewhere that he shared with a warm-hearted woman.’
‘If he had a woman somewhere, why would he name you as next of kin, though?’ Tansy said.
‘I know that really, darling, I just can’t bear the thought of his life being so lonely.’
‘Shall we have a snoop upstairs before we go hunting for your letter?’ Anna asked.
Isadora was first to ascend the sweeping Hollywood-style staircase. When Anna and Tansy joined her at the top, they found her examining a display of framed family photographs that took up part of one wall. There were dozens of photos of Robert’s three children recording the usual stages of upper-middle-class childhood including various sporting triumphs; then rather fewer pictures of these children as adults with babies and toddlers of their own.
Anna stopped in front of a picture of a fair-haired woman in her thirties leading a pony with a tiny helmeted child mounted on its back. Judging from the woman’s clothes and hairstyle the photo had been taken sometime in the 1960s. ‘Is that Robert’s ex?’
Isadora gave a tight-lipped nod. ‘Yes, that’s Cornelia.’
‘So he married a nice working-class girl, then!’ Tansy said drily.
Isadora gave one of her wicked hoots. ‘Cornelia would have a stroke if anyone ever thought she was working class!’
‘Were you and Cornelia both at Oxford at the same time?’ Anna asked.
She nodded. ‘But not the same college. Cornelia was at St Anne’s. God knows how she got in! All she ever talked about was her dog. She always said she never wanted a family, just horses and dogs.’
‘Before going on to give birth to three incredibly unattractive children,’ Tansy pointed out. Either Robert’s house or lack of sleep seemed to be making her increasingly waspish.
‘They do rather seem to take after their mother,’ Isadora agreed. Her smile gradually faded. ‘I was appalled when I googled Robert and found out who he’d married. We all knew Cornelia had a thing for Robert, but he always insisted that she was ghastly.’
‘Didn’t you say she had money?’ Anna said tentatively.
‘Robert was no saint,’ Isadora said, ‘but he wasn’t the kind of man to marry just for money.’
‘Maybe not when you knew him,’ Tansy suggested.
‘You know, none of this makes any sense!’ Isadora gestured towards a photograph of Robert at his golf club, triumphantly holding up the winner’s cup. She looked distraught. ‘It’s as if he became everything he was trying to leave behind. Everything he most despised.’
Anna wandered further along the landing. She stopped in front of a small framed sketch. ‘Is this a real Matisse, do you think?’
Isadora came to see. ‘Heavens, I think it is!’
Anna suspected that her grandfather would faint from excitement if he ever found himself in close proximity to a genuine Matisse. Was Robert a true art lover like her grandfather, she wondered, or had he simply recognized a good investment opportunity? They’d seen other paintings as they walked through the house but there had
been many more empty spaces where paintings had obviously once hung. Maybe Robert’s wife got them as part of her divorce settlement, or Robert had sold them off to help pay her maintenance?
The women looked into four or five bedrooms before they found the master bedroom where Robert had been sleeping. On his bedside table was a stack of recent Man Booker winners seemingly unread. In the wardrobe they found shelves of identical blue-striped shirts, rolled socks, beautifully folded underclothes. Robert’s housekeeper must have been coming in until quite recently, Anna thought, peering in at the perfectly pressed handmade Saville Row suits and rows of gleaming Italian leather shoes. Each new discovery intensified her sense of a lonely castaway marooned on an island of privilege.
‘Where’s his home cinema?’ Tansy asked.
Anna consulted the floor plan. ‘In the basement, along with the gym and the sauna.’
Nobody was interested in the gym, but Tansy fancied seeing inside Robert’s cinema. ‘This is the one decent room in the house!’ she announced when she saw the luxurious seating arranged around the enormous screen. She plonked herself in the front row. ‘Try it, Anna, this is so comfy! Wonder what the last movie was that he watched?’ Tansy picked up Robert’s tablet, lightly tapping the screen which immediately sprang to life.
‘Don’t!’ Anna warned. ‘For all you know, he could have been watching porn!’
Tansy did a little smirk. ‘So he could! I’m surprised I didn’t think of that!’
But when the movie screen lit up it only showed the final frame of a Humphrey Bogart movie.
‘I remember all six of us going to an all-night Humphrey Bogart screening.’ Isadora’s eyes were misty with nostalgia. ‘We eventually emerged, blinking like moles, into the most marvellous sunrise!’ She seemed to wilt, as if she’d suddenly reached the end of her reserves. ‘Have you found the study on your floor plan, Anna? I think I’d like to find that letter now and go home.’
To get to the study they had to pass through what Anna assumed was the main sitting room where corporate-style Christmas cards, several featuring gaudy-coloured pheasants in snow, were displayed along a pale marble mantelpiece. Possibly Robert’s housekeeper had put them there in an attempt to give his house a more festive air. Anna couldn’t imagine a suicidal Robert doing it.