The Dying Diplomats Club

by Matthew Benns

  La Contessa blanched and scooted around to sit next to him. ‘Well it doesn’t always pay to be too high-minded when doing detective work,’ she admitted. ‘Let’s see what it says.’

  Nick pulled the legal document from the envelope, leaving minutes for a strata meeting inside, and smiled in satisfaction. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘A new will made out after Rose Turner had come forward as Charles’s illegitimate daughter.’

  ‘Yes, it signs over the top apartment to Rose and, more importantly, his entire fortune,’ said La Contessa. ‘That must have upset a lot of people.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nick thoughtfully. ‘Charles Turner invited all his friends to live in the apartments with the promise of a bumper pay day when he finally popped his clogs.’

  ‘Hardly friends,’ corrected La Contessa. ‘Every single one of them took money from him in some way – his mistress, his lawyer, his golf pro.’

  ‘They all have a motive to kill his heiress,’ said Nick. ‘At least one of nine apartments opposite is housing a killer.’

  La Contessa returned to her familiar observation post under the orange tree.

  ‘Look, she’s there again,’ she said a couple of hours later. ‘She’s tying flowers to the lamp post near to where Rose Turner died.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Nick, looking at his phone on the sofa with his headphones in. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘Yes, I said that woman . . . Nick what are you doing?’

  ‘This new Binge streaming service has started and it’s terrific,’ said Nick. ‘There are some great detective shows I really want to see.’

  ‘Really?’ said La Contessa, coming over and pulling out his headphones to listen. ‘Gosh it has Big Little Lies and Game of Thrones. I love that.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Nick. ‘We have to set our priorities firmly in place. I want to watch The Wire and The Sopranos.’

  ‘Look, it says that you can pay for up to four streams in high definition,’ said La Contessa. ‘It’s very reasonable, darling.’

  ‘Marvellous, we will take out a subscription,’ said Nick, his concentration restored. ‘Now, what were you saying?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said La Contessa. ‘That woman is there again. She comes two or three times a week and brings flowers or just stands near where Rose died.’

  ‘Right then,’ said Nick, getting up and clipping the lead on to a tail-wagging Baxter. ‘This could be your chance for some real on-the-ground detective work.’

  ‘Me? But darling, I’m just the junior detective. And besides, I want to stay here and watch Binge.’

  ‘No, that’s the chief investigator’s job,’ said Nick, handing her the lead. ‘Go and be your charming self and find out who she is.’

  *

  ‘How lovely to be going out for dinner,’ enthused La Contessa. ‘It’s been so long I think I’ve forgotten how to do it.’

  Nick raised his eyebrows and handed his wife a pre-dinner martini. ‘You do look lovely, darling,’ he said.

  ‘What, this old thing?’ said La Contessa, giving a twirl of the black and gold Versace dress and quickly yanking off the price tag. ‘It was just hanging around in the wardrobe begging to be worn.’

  ‘You don’t think it might be a little, er, glamorous?’ ventured Nick bravely. ‘Luigi’s is after all just a little local Italian restaurant.’

  ‘I know, but it has been so long since we have been out and had the chance to dress up,’ said La Contessa. ‘Besides, I wanted to make a good impression on our guest.’

  ‘Ah yes, Victoria Potter. Well done for arranging to meet her.’

  ‘Thank you, darling – she was actually quite charming once I introduced myself. I suppose we should have guessed someone leaving flowers at the spot where Rose died would turn out to be her mother.’

  ‘It’s the fact that she so readily told you she had been Charles Turner’s secretary until she fell pregnant with his child that I find so interesting,’ said Nick.

  ‘Yes, she was very chatty,’ said La Contessa. ‘When I told her you were a detective she was very keen to meet you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nick. ‘I think she may know something that will help us catch her daughter’s killer.’

  They headed over the road to meet Rose’s mother for dinner – and Victoria Potter wasted no time in getting down to business.

  ‘I know who my daughter’s killer is,’ she said just as Luigi was arriving at their table with the pasta.

  ‘Madonna!’ gasped La Contessa, almost spilling her Chianti. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Three spaghetti marinara specials,’ said Luigi, placing the steaming plates onto the table. ‘It is so great to be open and seeing you again.’

  ‘It’s great to see you,’ said Nick, nodding towards the seven other diners in the Covid-restricted room. ‘Even if it is a little less crowded than we remember.’

  ‘Si. I think people are fed up with home cooking,’ said Luigi.

  Nick nodded vigorously before catching La Contessa’s frosty glance and quickly changed to shaking his head.

  ‘Now, let’s get back to the real business,’ said La Contessa as Luigi walked away. ‘Who do you think killed your daughter?’

  ‘I knew she should never have looked her father up,’ said Victoria sadly. ‘I kept his identity secret from her because he was such a bad man. But she was headstrong and insisted on making contact.’

  ‘And then Charles Turner welcomed her with open arms and an open chequebook,’ said Nick.

  ‘Yes, she was thrilled at the thought of moving into her own apartment and being close to her father. She even had her surname legally changed,’ said Victoria, twirling the pasta and taking a mouthful. ‘She could never have known she was moving into the same block as her killer.’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked La Contessa as Victoria suddenly began to choke, turning purple and clutching at her throat before crashing to the floor. Nick dashed to her side.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said after checking her pulse. ‘Anaphylactic shock. She asked if there were any nuts in the spaghetti.’

  ‘Si, I know she did,’ said Luigi, wringing his hands in distress. ‘Carmen, she cook it herself, and there are definitely no nuts in it.’

  La Contessa finished giving the address to the 000 operator and looked down at the body of Victoria Potter on the restaurant floor.

  ‘Oh, Nicky, this is awful. First her daughter is thrown from the roof of Turner Towers and now she dies in a tragic accident,’ she said. ‘And the poor woman never got to say who she believed killed her daughter.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Nick, placing a linen table napkin over the dead woman’s face. ‘She did say that the killer may have lived in the apartment block, which would confirm our theory.’

  ‘But how will we ever find them now?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Nick, getting up and walking to the front desk, where he coughed to cover the sound of a page being torn from the reservation book. Blue lights strobed the walls and sirens drowned out Mario Lanza singing ‘O Sole Mio’.

  ‘Nick Moore, what are you up to?’ whispered La Contessa as he returned.

  ‘There are seven other people in this restaurant and I want to check out who they are.’

  ‘Darling, are you saying . . . ?’ she asked as two paramedics bustled into the restaurant and hurried over to Victoria Potter’s prostrate body.

  ‘Yes, I think you had better get back on the phone and call Detective Inspector Cleaver,’ Nick replied. ‘Victoria Potter was murdered.’

  *

  ‘But darling, how do you know Victoria was murdered?’ La Contessa asked for the fifteenth time since they’d returned from Luigi’s restaurant.

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Nick distractedly as he paced the garden with a martini in his hand.

  ‘Nicky!’ said La Contessa furiously, stamping her foot.

  ‘Ah yes, my Tivoli temptress,’ said Nick. ‘How long have we been going to Luigi’s?’

  ‘It must be fifteen years at least
.’

  ‘And in that time has Carmen ever served up a substandard meal? Have you ever heard of anyone getting food poisoning?’

  ‘Never,’ said La Contessa, shaking her head.

  ‘Exactly. So when Victoria said she was allergic to nuts you can be sure that Carmen would have been fastidious,’ said Nick. ‘Which means —’

  ‘That someone added nuts or some kind of nut extract between the kitchen and Luigi delivering it to our table,’ said La Contessa. ‘But who?’

  ‘The obvious candidate in terms of ease of doing that would be Luigi,’ said Nick, freshening his martini. ‘But the real question once again is motive.’

  ‘Why on earth would Luigi want to kill a woman he had never met before?’

  ‘Exactly. He wouldn’t,’ said Nick. ‘But someone in that restaurant had a reason to silence her before she told us the identity of her daughter’s killer.’

  ‘With Covid restrictions limiting diners to ten, that means it must have been one of the other seven people in there,’ said La Contessa.

  Nick flourished the page he had torn from the restaurant’s reservation book. ‘One of these people killed Victoria Potter,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said La Contessa, looking at the page ripped from the restaurant reservation book. ‘I had no idea that lot were in there.’

  ‘Given you have spent the last two months in quarantine looking at them through the telescope, it is rather surprising you did not recognise anyone,’ observed Nick with a raised eyebrow. ‘Charles Turner’s mistress and part-time escort, Natalia Kowalski, for instance.’

  ‘Well she is the epitome of the “quaran-queen”,’ said La Contessa. ‘What a make-over; she looks so different out of her trackie daks and with her hair done.’

  ‘Yes, and she was dining with fitness instructor Wayne Durain,’ said Nick. ‘I wonder if they were having an affair.’

  ‘Didn’t take him long to get over poor Rose,’ sighed La Contessa sadly. ‘And then there is a booking for Lord Ron and Lady Arabella Sanders, and don’t they look different out of quarantine?’

  ‘The two elderly ladies sitting in the booth at the back were clearly Charles Turner’s widow, Catherine, and his sister, Alice,’ said Nick. ‘I paid very little attention to them on the night.’

  ‘Not surprising, given Victoria dropped dead before dessert. But that’s only six, so who do you think is this mystery Mr X in the reservation book?’

  ‘That was the chap dining alone in the shadows,’ said Nick. ‘My guess is that he is our shadowy Chinese businessman Hu.’

  ‘Crikey,’ said La Contessa. ‘Everyone there had a motive to silence Rose Turner’s mother.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Funeral Clues

  ‘How great is it that NRL is back? I love the new six-again rule,’ said Nick, walking into the garden with the newspaper. ‘Darling, what are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to try my hand at sculpture,’ said La Contessa, adding another dollop of something white to a growing figure.

  ‘You have certainly captured a great likeness,’ said Nick.

  ‘Do you really think so? I wasn’t sure about the eyes.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not the Leaning Tower of Pisa?’ said Nick. ‘What medium exactly are you working with?’

  ‘Toilet paper,’ said La Contessa. ‘When the great panic was on, I was less than circumspect about the quality and we therefore have rather a lot of unpleasant single-ply loo paper stocked up. I thought I would use it to make a papier-mâché replica of Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain.’

  At that moment, the entire sodden mass collapsed to the side with a soggy sigh. Baxter hopped off his blanket, raised his leg and delivered the coup de grâce.

  ‘Oh dear, I think I had better stick to detective work,’ said La Contessa. ‘We are still no further forwards in finding out who slipped something nutty into Victoria’s spaghetti.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Nick, flourishing the paper towards his wife. ‘But her funeral is listed in the death notices for tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s so sad – her daughter is dead and she was estranged from the father. Does she even have anyone left to attend?’

  ‘Whoever put the notice in the paper may have information that could lead us to the killer,’ said Nick.

  *

  The following day they headed out to Victoria’s funeral.

  ‘Mmm, darling, I had rather forgotten how good you look in a suit,’ purred La Contessa, running a red-painted nail down his lapel.

  ‘Easy, tiger, we are at a funeral,’ said Nick. ‘Although I must say you look rather fetching yourself.’

  ‘Do you like my lashes? I have been putting serum on them during lockdown to make them longer.’

  ‘I, er, yes. Marvellous,’ blustered Nick, looking round quickly for a distraction. ‘Look, they are carrying Victoria’s coffin over to the grave now.’

  He pointed to the newly dug grave 100 metres from where they stood concealed by a stand of trees.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t get the memo that you can have fifty people at a funeral now,’ said La Contessa. ‘There is hardly a soul here.’

  She jerked as Baxter pulled on the lead. ‘Are you sure it was a good idea to bring the dog to a cemetery?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought he would appreciate the airing among all the bones,’ said Nick, before pausing mid-sentence. ‘There is someone here to pay her respects after all.’

  The priest was leading the pallbearers to the grave. Behind them walked a single figure with flowing hair and dressed in a long black coat.

  La Contessa took the opera glasses they normally used at the races and studied the scene before turning white and handing them back to Nick with a shaking hand.

  ‘Whatever is it, darling?’ he asked. ‘You look like you have seen a ghost.’

  ‘I think I have,’ said La Contessa in a wavering voice. ‘There’s Rose Turner attending her mother’s funeral. It can’t be,’ she continued as the priest tossed a handful of earth onto the coffin. The young girl turned away.

  ‘But Rose is dead. We saw her body crash into Georgios’s car.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Nick, taking his wife’s hand. ‘We can’t let her get away.’

  Together they raced across the damp grass and reached the black-clad girl as she was turning out of the iron gate.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said La Contessa breathlessly. ‘Rose, we need to talk to you.’

  The girl turned, startled, her cheeks suddenly blushing crimson in the winter air. ‘What do you want? Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be afraid; we mean you no harm. We are just trying to solve a terrible crime,’ said Nick. ‘A murder.’

  ‘Actually, your murder,’ said La Contessa.

  ‘I think there must be some mistake – my name’s Pansy, Pansy Potter. I have just been at my mother’s funeral.’ Tears welled and she pulled a balled-up tissue from her sleeve to dab at her eyes.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said La Contessa. ‘Let’s take you over to that café and get you a nice cup of coffee.’

  The girl was too upset to resist and moments later the three of them were seated at a table.

  ‘So, Pansy, did you have any siblings other than Rose?’ asked Nick.

  ‘No, and I lost her after she went looking for our father,’ said Pansy through a fresh bout of tears.

  ‘Your father?’ said an astonished La Contessa.

  ‘Yes, we were identical twins.’

  ‘Golly, no wonder I thought you were your sister,’ said La Contessa, putting down her coffee cup with a crash. ‘Rose’s identical twin!’

  ‘But the question is, why did Rose pursue a reconciliation with her father while you chose not to?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Our mother had kept our father’s identity from us, I think to protect us. Charles Turner may have been a billionaire but I don’t believe he was a very nice man,’ Pansy said. ‘But when Rose turned eighteen, she insisted on finding out who he was.
’

  ‘And the fact that your mother conceived you both while she was working as his secretary and he was married did nothing to dissuade her?’ asked La Contessa.

  ‘No. She was obsessed with meeting him. Once she made contact it was worse. Turner, our father, had no other children. He embraced her with open arms.’

  ‘And suddenly she was living in a brand-new penthouse apartment, surrounded by her father’s immediate family and so-called friends. A dream come true,’ observed La Contessa, signalling the waitress for another short black.

  ‘Your sister did not mention you to Turner?’ asked Nick.

  ‘No, I begged her not to. I did not want to have anything to do with him or his money. He knew nothing about me before he died and his widow and family don’t either.’

  ‘Right now, though, you could place a legitimate claim as heiress to his enormous fortune,’ said Nick.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said Pansy.

  ‘A lot of other people do though,’ said Nick. ‘And that puts you in a great deal of danger.’

  *

  ‘No, darling, absolutely not,’ said La Contessa while trying on a new pair of winter boots that had arrived through the post. ‘What do you think of these?’

  ‘They are magnificent, and a towering monument to the defiance of gravity,’ said Nick. ‘How much did you say they were again?’

  ‘I don’t believe I did. But back to the real point: I cannot believe that you, my husband, Baxter’s human guardian, could come up with such a dark, dangerous and frankly Machiavellian plan.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that is a compliment or not,’ mused Nick over the tinkle of ice dropping into a cocktail shaker. ‘When in doubt I always hope for the best, so thank you, my Valbrona Valkyrie.’

  ‘Nicholas Moore, that was not a compliment,’ fired La Contessa, stamping her new black boot and coming dangerously close to toppling over in the process. ‘I cannot believe you want to put that poor girl in harm’s way after all she has been through.’