Now, like a man who can’t get rid of hiccups might contemplate slitting his throat, I have only one thought in mind. The pills are on the table and I’m drinking whiskey, waiting for the end. He said my soul would go home to him, where it belongs—a bargain I now know I made when I stole his song—and that terrifies me. But it can’t be worse than this eternal repetition, driving out all human thought and feeling. It can’t be. I’ll have another slug of whiskey and another handful of pills, then I’m sure, soon, the blessed silence will come. Amen.
The Eastvale Ladies’ Poker Circle
An Inspector Banks Story
The man was very dead. Even Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, who hesitated to pronounce death even when a victim was chopped into little pieces, admitted that the man was very dead. He also speculated as to time of death—another rarity—which he placed at between 7:00 P.M. and 10:00 P.M. that same evening.
All this took place in the spacious study of the Vancalms’ detached eighteenth-century manor house on the western fringe of Eastvale’s chic Dale Hill area, sometime after midnight. The man lying on the carpet was Victor Vancalm, a wealthy local businessman, and a large bloodstain shaped like South America had spread from his skull and ruined the cream shag carpet.
The stain came from a massive head wound, which had been inflicted with enough force to splinter the cranium and drive several sharp shards of bone into the soft tissue of Victor Vancalm’s brain. Blood spatter on the flocked wallpaper and on other areas of the carpet testified as to the power of the blow. A brass-handled poker lay on the carpet not far from the body, surrounded by a red halo, as if it were giving off heat.
The rest of the study was in just the sort of mess Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks would have expected after someone had been pulling books from shelves and overturning furniture looking for valuables. From one wall, a gilt-framed painting of the Blessing of the Innocents had been removed and dumped on the floor, exposing a small safe, the door of which hung open. It was empty. Someone had smashed the computer monitor, which sat on a desk by the window, and emptied the contents of the drawers on the floor. The Scenes-of-Crime officers had cordoned off the study, from which they zealously repelled all comers, even Banks, who stood at the door gazing in, looking rather forlorn, a child not invited to the party.
In the living room across the hall, discreetly out of the sight line of her husband’s body, Denise Vancalm sat on the sofa sniffling into a soggy tissue. Music played faintly in the background, the andante movement from Schubert’s “Rosamunde” quartet, Banks noted as he returned to the room. Chandeliers blazed in the high-ceilinged hall, and outside in the night, police officers were going up and down the street waking up neighbors and questioning them.
The problem was that Hill Crest was one of those expensive streets where the houses were not exactly cheek by jowl as in the poorer neighborhoods, and some of them had high walls and gates. Hardly conducive to keeping an eye on your neighbor. Hill Crest was aptly named, Banks thought. It stood at the crest of a hill and looked out west over the river Swain, along the meandering valley where the hillsides of the dale rose steeper and steeper as far as the eye could see. On a clear day you could see the bare limestone outcrops of Crow Scar, like a skeleton’s teeth grinning in the distance. The skull beneath the skin.
But this wasn’t a clear day. It was a foggy night in November, not long after Bonfire Night, and the police officers outside blew plumes of mist as they came and went. Even inside the house it wasn’t that warm, Banks thought, and he hadn’t taken his overcoat off.
“II’m very sorry, Mrs. Vancalm,” he said, sitting in an armchair opposite her, “but I do have to go over this with you again. I know you talked to the first officer on the scene, but—”
“I quite understand,” said Denise Vancalm, crumpling her tissue and dropping it on top of the copy of Card Player that lay on the glass coffee table. The magazine looked out of place to Banks, who had been expecting something more along the lines of Horse and Hound or Country Life. But each to her own. He knew nothing about Victor and Denise Vancalm; he didn’t move in those kinds of circles.
“You say you arrived home at what time?” Banks asked.
“Half past eleven. Perhaps a few minutes after.”
“And you found your husband…”
“I found Victor dead on the study floor, just as you saw him when you arrived.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Good Lord, no.”
“What did you do first?”
A V formed between her eyes. “I…I slumped against the wall. It was as if all the air had been forced out of me. I might have screamed, cried out, I really can’t remember.” She held out her hand. “I bit my knuckle. See.”
Banks saw. It was a slender, pale hand with tapered fingers. The hands of an artist. She was an attractive woman in her late thirties, with tousled ash-blond hair falling over her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face, perfect makeup ravaged by tears and grief. Her clothes were expensive casual, black trousers of some clinging, silky material, a burgundy blouse tucked in at the waist. A waft of delicate and expensive perfume emanated from her whenever she moved. “And then?”
“I called the police from the hall telephone.”
“Not an ambulance?”
She shook her head impatiently. “I dialed 999. I can’t remember what I said. I might have asked for all of them.”
She hadn’t, Banks knew. She had asked for the police, said there’d been a murder, and the emergency operator had dispatched an ambulance. Banks could see what Mrs. Vancalm meant. Even someone who has never watched Taggart or Lewis would be hard-pressed to miss a murder scene like the one in the study, a body more obviously dead than Victor Vancalm’s. But people panic and call an ambulance anyway. Denise Vancalm hadn’t.
“What did you do next?” Banks asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose I just sat down to wait.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. People started to arrive very quickly. The paramedics. A police patrol car. Your assistant. Those crime scene people. You must know how long it took. I’m afraid I lost all sense of time. I was in a daze.”
“That’s understandable,” said Banks. He also knew that it had taken seven minutes from the emergency phone call to the arrival of the first patrol car. A good response time, especially given the weather. “How many people knew about the wall safe?” he asked.
Denise Vancalm shrugged. “I don’t know. Victor always kept the key in his pocket, with all his keys. I suppose Colin must have known. Anyone else who visited the house, really.”
“Colin?”
“Colin Whitman. Victor’s business partner.”
Banks paused and made a note. “Where had you been all evening?” he asked.
“Me? Gabriella Mountjoy’s house, on Castle Terrace.”
Banks knew the street. Expensive, in the town center, it commanded superb views of Eastvale Castle, rumored, like so many others in the Dales, to have provided a brief home for Mary Queen of Scots. He estimated it was probably a fifteen- or twenty-minute drive from Hill Crest, depending on the traffic.
“What were you doing there? Book club or something?”
She gave Banks a cool glance. “The Eastvale Ladies’ Poker Circle. It was Gabriella’s turn.”
“Poker?”
“Yes, hadn’t you heard, Chief Inspector? It’s become quite popular these days, especially among women. Texas Hold ’Em.”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Banks, not much of a card player himself.
“Four or five of us get together once a month for dinner, drinks and a few games. As I said, it was Gabriella’s turn to host us this time.”
“How many of you were there tonight?”
She raised an eyebrow at the question but said, “Five. Gabriella, me, Natasha Goldwell, Evangeline White and Heather Murchison. I’ll give you their addresses if you like.”
“Please,” said Banks.
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Denise Vancalm picked up her handbag and took out a sleek PalmPilot encased in tan leather. She read out the names and addresses. “Is that all?” she asked. “I’m tired. I…”
“Nearly finished,” said Banks. “What time did you arrive at Ms. Mountjoy’s house?”
“I went there straight from the office—well, I met Natasha in the Old Oak after work for a drink first, then I drove her over to Gabriella’s. It’s not far, I know, but I had the car with me for work anyway.”
The Old Oak was a trendy pub off the market square. Banks knew it but never drank there. “What kind of car do you drive?” he asked.
“A Mercedes cabriolet. Red.”
Hardly inconspicuous, Banks thought. “Where was your husband?”
“He’d been away on a business meeting. Berlin. He was due back from the airport about half past seven?”
“Did you see him?”
“I haven’t seen him since last week. Look, Chief Inspector, I’ve had a terrible shock and I’m very tired. Do you think…?”
“Of course,” said Banks. He had wanted to get as many of the preliminaries out of the way as possible—and whether she knew it or not, the spouse was usually the first suspect in a domestic murder—but he didn’t want to appear as if he were grilling Denise Vancalm. “Is there someone you can go to, or would you like me to—”
She shook her head. “There are plenty of people I could go to, but believe it or not, I just want to be by myself.”
“You don’t…I mean, are there any children?”
“No.” She paused. “Thank God.”
“Right. Well, you clearly can’t stay here.” It was true. Banks had checked out the house, and whoever had killed Victor Vancalm and ransacked the study had also been through the master bedroom, separating the expensive jewelry from the cheap—not that there was much of the latter—and even going so far as to cut up several of Denise Vancalm’s most elegant dresses and strew them over the bed. It could take days to process the scene.
“I realize that,” she said. “There’s a small hotel just off the market square, the Jedburgh. My husband often suggests it for clients when they happen to be visiting town.”
“I can take you there,” said Banks.
She regarded him coolly with moist, steady blue eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I probably shouldn’t be driving. May I collect a few things? My nightdress? Toothbrush?”
Banks went in to the hallway and saw Detective Constable Winsome Jackman coming through the front door. “Winsome,” he said. “Mrs. Vancalm will be spending the night at the Jedburgh Hotel. Will you accompany her to her room while she gathers a few essentials?”
Winsome raised her eyes in a “Why me?” expression.
Banks whispered, certain he was out of Mrs. Vancalm’s earshot, “And make sure there’s someone posted outside the Jedburgh Hotel all night.”
“Yes, sir,” said Winsome.
A short while later, as Banks followed Denise Vancalm out into the chilly night, where his Porsche stood waiting, he again reminded himself why he was taking such precautions and feeling so many reservations in the face of the poor bereaved wife. By the looks of it, Victor Vancalm had disturbed a burglar, who might have been still in the building. Confronted with a dead husband, a wrecked den, and a big empty house, most people would have run for the hills screaming, but Denise Vancalm, after the immediate shock had worn off, had dialed 999 and sat down to wait for the police.
By late morning the next day, a weak gray sun cut through the early mist and the sky turned the color of Victor Vancalm’s corpse spread out on Dr. Glendenning’s postmortem table. Banks stood on the steps on Eastvale General Infirmary wishing he still smoked. No matter how many postmortems he attended, he could never get used to them, especially just after a late breakfast. It was something to do with the neatness and precision of the gleaming tools and the scientific process contrasted with the ugly slop of stomach contents and the slithery lump of liver or kidneys. As far as stomach contents were concerned, Victor Vancalm’s last meal had consisted of currywurst, a German delicacy available from any number of Berlin street vendors.
There had been no surprises. Vancalm had been in general good health and the cause of death, barring any googlies from toxicology, was most certainly the head wound. The only interesting piece of news was that Vancalm’s pockets had been emptied. Wallet. Keys. Pen. All gone. In Banks’s experience, burglars didn’t usually rob the persons of anyone they happened to bump into on a job. They didn’t usually bump into people, for that matter; kids on drugs aside, burglars were generally so careful and elusive one might think them quite shy creatures. They didn’t usually bump people off either.
Even after the postmortem, Dr. Glendenning stuck by his estimate of time of death: between seven and ten. If Mrs. Vancalm had gone straight from work to the Old Oak and from there to the poker evening with Natasha Goldwell, and if she had not arrived home until eleven thirty, then she couldn’t have murdered her husband. Banks would still check her alibi with the rest of the poker crowd. It was a job for a detective constable, but he found he was curious about this group of wealthy and powerful women who got together once a month to play Texas Hold ’Em. Did they wear shades, smoke cigars and swear? Perhaps more to the point, could they look you straight in the eye and lie like a politician?
Banks took a deep breath of fresh air and looked at his watch. It was time to meet DI Annie Cabbot for lunch at the Queen’s Arms, though whatever appetite he might have had had quite vanished down the drain of the autopsy table plug hole, along with Victor Vancalm’s bodily fluids.
It was lunchtime in the Queen’s Arms and the place was bustling with clerks and secretaries from the solicitors’ and estate agents’ offices around the market square, along with the usual retirees at the bar and terminally unemployed kids on the pool tables and slot machines. The smoke was thick and the language almost as bad. Banks found that he could hardly wait until the following July, when smoking was to be banned in all the pubs in England. He had never suspected he would feel that way, and a few years ago he wouldn’t have. Now, though, the smoke was just an irritant, and the people who smoked seemed like throwbacks to another era. Banks still suffered the occasional craving, which reminded him what it had been like, but they were becoming few and far between.
Banks and Annie managed to find themselves a free table wedged between the door to the Gents and the slot machines, where Annie sipped a Britvic Orange and nibbled a cheese roll, while Banks nursed a half of Black Sheep bitter and worked on his chicken in a basket.
“So how was the redoubtable Gabriella Mountjoy?” Banks asked, when the person playing the slot machine beside them cursed and gave up.
“She seemed very nice, really,” said Annie. “Not at all what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Oh, you know, some upper-class twit with a braying laugh and horsey teeth.”
“But?”
“Well, her teeth are actually quite nice. Expensive, like her clothes. She seems every inch the thoroughly modern woman.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, really, Alan, you’re seriously out of touch.”
“With the thoroughly modern woman? Tell me about her. It’s not for want of trying.”
“First there’s the career,” Annie said. “Gabriella’s a book designer for a big London publisher. Works from home a lot.”
“Impressive,” said Banks.
“And then there’s the house. Cottage, really, and only a semi at that. It’s small, but the view must be worth a million quid.”
“Does she live alone?”
“As far as I can gather. There’s a boyfriend. A musician. He travels a lot. It suits them both perfectly.”
“Maybe that’s my problem with the modern woman,” Banks said. “I don’t travel enough. I’m always there when she needs me. Boring.”
“Tell Sandra that.”
Banks winced. “Touché.�
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“I’m sorry,” said Annie. “That wasn’t very nice of me.”
“It’s OK. Still a bit tender, that’s all. That’ll serve me right for being so flippant. Go on.”
Annie finished her roll first. “Nothing to add, really. She swears blind that Mrs. Vancalm was there all evening. Natasha Goldwell was at the cottage, too, when I called, and she confirmed it. Said they arrived together about seven thirty after a quick drink and Mrs. Vancalm dropped her off at home—it’s on her way—sometime after eleven.”
“Well,” said Banks, “it’s not as if we expected otherwise.”
“I just had a word with Winsome,” Annie went on, “and she told me that the other two say exactly the same thing about the poker evening. Denise Vancalm’s alibi is watertight.”
“God help me, but I’ve never liked watertight alibis,” said Banks.
“That’s because you’re contrary.”
“Is it? I thought it was my suspicious nature, my detective’s instinct, my love of a challenge.”
“Pull the other one.”
“Whatever it is, it seems as if we’ll have to start looking elsewhere. You’ve checked out our list of local troublemakers?”
“Winsome has. The only possibility at all is Windows Fennester. He’d know all about wall safes.”
“He’s out?”
“Been out three weeks now. Living back on the East Side Estate with Shania Longbottom and her two kids. Thing is, according to Winsome, he’s got a pretty good alibi, too—in the pub with his mates.”
“And whatever he is, he’s not a killer.”
“Not as far as we know.”
“The lads have also been out doing a house to house in Denise Vancalm’s neighborhood,” Banks said.
“And?”
“Someone heard and glimpsed a car near the house after dark. Couldn’t say what make. A dark one.”
“Nothing fancy like Mrs. Vancalm’s red sports car, then?”
The Price of Love and Other Stories Page 13