A Bed of Scorpions

by Judith Flanders

  I steered her back to the main points from this blizzard of information, shocked to find I had no trouble with the idea of facilitating a covert interview in a place where the interviewee had every right to believe she was among friends. I told myself it was because she wasn’t a suspect, but I knew if it had been Celia, not Delia (and really, who did that when they named their child?), I would have done it with redoubled enthusiasm. I not only would have, but I was about to, because Celia walked over before we’d had five minutes with her mother. We smiled and filled Delia in on how we knew each other, and I introduced Jake again as my partner.

  Celia was in no-nonsense form, though. She smiled her killer smile, like a basking shark, and then said, straightforwardly, ‘You’ve been popping up everywhere this past week.’

  She wanted to overlook the reality, that she’d approached me in the first place? ‘So have you,’ I said, also smiling, but aware I couldn’t match her basking shark danger. I was more a come-in-the-water’s-fine dolphin, maybe. No, I wasn’t that clever. A seahorse. Cute, but dumb enough to get washed up by every tide.

  Her shark smile never wavered. ‘Yes, but they’ve been Stevenson events, and I’m a Stevenson.’

  Which pushed me into justifying my presence, even as, dumb seahorse, I knew I didn’t need to answer to her. ‘Aidan and I are old friends. And I was at the press conference because your exhibition designer is on an Arts Council panel with me – the one you helped me with.’

  ‘I must try and make a point of being there,’ she said. It may have been my imagination, but she made it sound as if she’d be sure to pack her handy travel-sized stiletto.

  ‘That would be great.’ I sounded so enthusiastic anyone listening would have thought I was a contestant on a game show. I leant towards Jake in what ostensibly looked like comfortable friendship, but was really a silent either-join-in-or-get-me-the-hell-out-of-here appeal. Luckily he speaks gesture fluently, and he leapt in.

  Given that he couldn’t say, Where were you at 6.57 on the morning of the eleventy-seventh of December, and what was the purpose of your initial conversation with Ms Clair? Or even, Can you confirm your whereabouts on the evening of the insert-date-here, and what business took you to Chiltern Villas, Highgate at approximately 5.48 p.m.?, which were the questions I wanted to ask, I waited to see where he would go.

  He began with a meandering discussion of the upcoming exhibition, offering sympathy on how much work it must have been for her.

  She looked frosty. ‘It’s my job.’ Then, with a sideways look at Delia, she backtracked. ‘It’s both of our jobs.’

  Delia broke in. ‘Celia’s modest, but really she does all the work. I mostly refuse to travel, so she goes everywhere, whether it’s for exhibitions, or to meet collectors. She and Frank never thought twice before jetting off to São Paulo, or Stuttgart’ – the two places appeared to be equally inaccessible to Delia – ‘although since the pieces started arriving last month for the exhibition, they were both stuck in London. Since I was coming, I suggested we have a holiday, go to the country somewhere, the week before, but Celia insisted she couldn’t leave the city, that it was too good an opportunity to miss seeing Eddie’s pictures that were in private collections, arranging for them to be photographed and recorded.’ Delia shook her head at her daughter’s dedication. Her daughter smiled tightly at her mother’s chattering flow of information, but she didn’t try and stop it.

  I jumped back in. ‘I hadn’t realised that the works owned by private collectors are as inaccessible to you as they are to the general public.’

  She nodded. ‘Celia, Frank, and their gallery technician have been working like maniacs to get everything recorded as they came in this past month. They even set up a little studio at the house,’ she ran on, admiringly. ‘When I think of the way Eddie used to work, cutting photographs out of magazines, or using the bathroom as his darkroom.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘Do you remember that time he was doing the flower pictures, and we couldn’t have a bath for weeks because he had the prints drying over the shower rail?’

  Celia smiled without humour. Whether about her bathless childhood, or sharing the information with us, I had no idea.

  I encouraged Delia. ‘It must all be so different now, when everyone can take photos on their phones.’

  She looked wistful. ‘Eddie would have loved it.’ And for the first time, I felt badly. This wasn’t some abstract idea, this was her husband, and she missed him. Then she smiled, determined to remain positive. ‘Celia’s house last week was a bit like having Eddie back, photos, papers, magazines everywhere. When I think what his studio was like.’ She became confidential. ‘I couldn’t bear it after he left. I had everything packed up. Everything. I couldn’t look at it, so I put it in storage. And then’ – she smiled again, a guilelessly sunny 1960s flower-child smile – ‘once I arranged for Frank to take on the estate, everything was ready for shipping off. It worked out for the best.’

  Poor woman. Her husband had, she thought, abandoned her, and even so, she packed up his work not because she was furious with him, but because it hurt too much to look at it. Twenty years later, and she had only just found out he hadn’t abandoned her, or at least not in the way she’d thought for all those years. And yet, here she was, assuring everyone, and herself, that it had all been ‘for the best’.

  Someone came up to talk to Celia, and we took it as an opportunity to excuse ourselves – we had to offer our condolences to the family, I told Delia, we looked forward to seeing her at the exhibition, I had to get back to work. Now I was the one who was rambling, overcome with pity for this not very bright, but very brave woman.

  As we walked away, Jake said, ‘You’re worryingly good at this.’

  ‘At letting my partner interrogate witnesses without them knowing it?’

  ‘She knew it.’

  I stopped. ‘Celia? She knows you’re a detective?’ I ran the conversation back in my head. He was right. She had. I don’t know how he had known, and I don’t know how I did, but I was sure of it.

  He nudged me forward again. ‘It’s not surprising. She approached you in the first place, and so she knew who you were. And I’m not a secret.’

  ‘True. Although we still don’t know why she approached me.’

  ‘Also true.’ But he appeared unworried by how much we didn’t know. ‘And anyway, I didn’t mean you were worryingly good at letting me interview. You were doing the interviewing, and you are worryingly good at it.’

  I stopped again, ready to deny it. But he was right. I shook my head in disapproval, whether of my interviewing, his noticing, or his finding it worrying, I didn’t say. Mostly because I had no idea.

  We went and offered our condolences to the various family members – I was right, Frank’s sister-in-law was barely older than Lucy; I bet that had gone down a treat – and to Anna and Aidan. Aidan was looking better. Maybe it had just been the funeral, and now it was over, he felt he could move on. The way Frank had died, and the investigation, had made me forget that Aidan had lost his closest friend.

  I also talked to some of the gallery staff. You don’t have to remember people’s names to offer condolences. Myra was one of the few whose name I did know, so I stopped when I saw her. She had a red nose, which I charitably ascribed to the funeral, although the death-grip she had on her wine glass and her slightly fixed stare suggested another source. I introduced Jake, and although she must have seen him before – he’d been the lead investigator, and had spent time at the gallery – she either didn’t remember him, didn’t remember anyone in her present condition, or didn’t care.

  ‘That’s that,’ she said, as though she’d just taken the rubbish bins out on collection day.

  I couldn’t remember Debrett’s recommended response to that. So I aimed for neutral. ‘I’m sure Toby will be relieved it’s over.’

  She tsk-ed, as though Toby were a schoolboy who’d forgotten his homework. ‘And it’s not over.’ She stared morosely into her glass,
which had emptied substantially in the few minutes we’d been standing there.

  ‘No?’ A few minutes ago I’d baulked when Jake had said I’d been interviewing. Now I was doing it again, and I was entirely unashamed. Jake didn’t move, but I knew he was mentally rolling his hand at me: keep her talking. ‘What happens next?’

  ‘Probably nothing.’ She drank again. ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’ I looked around and flagged down a passing waiter with a bottle. Interested, me? said my body language.

  Myra brightened as her glass was refilled. ‘On who replaces Frank.’

  I aimed for non-committal. ‘It must be very difficult for you at the moment.’ I had no idea what that meant, I was just hoping that it was bland enough to keep her moving. Nope. The glassy look faded and a sharpness came into her face. ‘Who are you?’ she said to Jake. ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  He moved towards me slightly. ‘I’m Sam’s boyfriend.’

  She was not appeased, and continued to stare at him, her eyes appraising now.

  ‘It was so nice to meet Delia Stevenson. I’d heard Frank speak of her so often,’ I put in, reaffirming my bona fides as long-term friend of the family. She turned and stared at me too, as if I’d said something important.

  Then a polite smile appeared on her face, click, like a slide had changed. ‘It was good of her to come over for the retrospective. We’re thrilled. Will you excuse me?’ She turned towards a group behind us and said, ‘Tom! I’ve been hoping to catch up with you.’ Short of adding, Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, she couldn’t have made her feelings more plain.

  Lucy, who had been standing with Tom, whoever he was, must have seen Myra cut us dead, and she came over, kissing me like an old friend, introducing herself to Jake. I was surprised she hadn’t met him when he’d been investigating Frank’s death. He saw me thinking that, and shook his head infinitesimally. So instead I complimented her on her singing at the funeral, about which she was charmingly bashful. We discussed the choir she and her sister had belonged to, and how she no longer did now she was at university, because she missed too many rehearsals. Desperately searching for conversation, I asked how her plans for the summer exhibition were going. In exchange, she made polite noises again about my face.

  ‘Are you still cycling?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have the courage to do it at all. I don’t know how you could get back on the road.’

  ‘I haven’t yet,’ I admitted, and then, ‘Oh. Yes, I have. I collected my cycle from where I’d left it when I fell off’ – whatever Jake said, I was going to call it that to my dying day – ‘and I just cycled home without even thinking.’ I smiled as broadly as the scabs allowed. ‘Thank you for pointing that out. I’ve been dreading starting again, and you’ve made me realise I already have.’

  The chill that Myra’s personality change had created dissipated in the relief I felt.

  But when we were back outside, and had almost reached the car, ‘Oof.’ I wriggled my shoulders, as if a weight had been pressing on them. ‘You have a strange job.’

  He knew that, so he didn’t bother to answer.

  ‘Did you get what you wanted?’

  ‘That’s not why I was there, remember?’

  ‘I know you weren’t. And did you get what you wanted?’ I may have felt a little guilty about not expecting him to show up, but I wasn’t deluding myself that he hadn’t been working, either.

  ‘At the moment I don’t know what I want. The file was closed. Now we’re looking at Schmidt.’ His eyes flickered over to me. ‘Do you want an update?’

  Did I? ‘Maybe.’ That seemed like a good compromise.

  His lips quirked. ‘Maybe?’

  ‘If you’re going to say Frank’s file is still closed, and Werner Schmidt died in an accident, then yes, I’m ready for an update.’

  He put his hand on mine briefly, a touch that said, Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if the world worked that way. And then he went on, as if I’d acknowledged that it didn’t, ‘The probable time of death for Schmidt is late on Saturday night. He doesn’t seem to have eaten in the previous twenty-four hours, so there was nothing to go on there. Just a measurement of blood alcohol, and the level should have made him barely functional, but with alcoholics it’s often surprising how much they can consume. We’re waiting for more detailed toxicology reports. In the meantime I’ve had a look at the report on your hit-and-run.’ He felt me tense, but kept talking, his voice steady and low, the way you talk to a shy animal – See, I’m not paying any attention, so you can come out of from under the bed now. ‘There’s nothing to go on. The statements don’t agree even on the make of the car. That corner is just out of CCTV coverage.’ He shrugged. ‘Not unusual. Someone is looking at downloads for adjacent streets, but there’s no information yet.’

  Fine with me. I didn’t believe it was real, and I was going to go on not believing it. I turned the conversation away from what I was refusing to look at. ‘Why didn’t Lucy recognise you?’

  ‘One of my colleagues interviewed her. She’s at university at the moment, not working in the gallery.’ He wasn’t interested. ‘Come on, I’ll drop you on my way to work.’

  I’d moved on from my earlier feeling that he was a custody sergeant escorting me, and was now enjoying being ferried to and from the office. It was like being taken to school as a child by my father. Perhaps not a comparison Jake would enjoy. Maybe it was more like a 1960s novel of suburban angst, and I’d have martinis ready when Jake got home, over which we could passive-aggressively destroy our failing marriage. OK, that wasn’t great either. I’d never got into trouble by keeping my mouth shut. Maybe I’d do that.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BY THE TIME I got to work, the mass exodus for lunch was over, and the building was almost empty. Miranda was still at her desk, however, with a sandwich in front of her. She looked up. ‘I wasn’t expecting you till later.’

  ‘It doesn’t take very long.’ That sounded unnecessarily bleak, but I couldn’t work out how to soften it, so I just kept going.

  But Miranda’s voice followed me. ‘Have you got a moment?’

  Just the perfect day. First Jake and his we-need-to-talk, now Miranda and a have-you-got-a-moment. Neither is ever followed by good news.

  I smiled, pretending I didn’t know that. ‘Sure, come in. Or’ – I eyed her half-eaten lunch – ‘is it very private?’

  She looked taken aback.

  ‘It’s a nice day. If I grab a sandwich too, we could go to the square.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  By unspoken agreement we walked up to Malet Street Gardens, stopping at the deli to pick up something for me. We were lucky to find an empty bench, and we sat and busied ourselves with unwrapping and eating. After a couple of minutes, though, it was time to give Miranda a nudge. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Just tell me.’

  She laughed. ‘It’s not bad. Or not for me. I’ve been offered another job.’

  ‘Shit.’ She blinked, I shrugged. ‘I’d like to keep you, but I knew that couldn’t happen for much longer. You deserve to be promoted, but if we are going to be taken over, or whatever is happening, I know that even if a vacancy comes up, we’re unlikely to be allowed to fill it.’ I summarised. ‘What I’m saying is, I let it slide, because I didn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Really?’ She was surprisingly surprised.

  ‘Of course. Tell me what you’ve been offered, and where.’

  She did. It was a nice enough job, but nothing spectacular. A better job title – junior editor instead of editorial assistant. Probably, although she didn’t say, very little more money. In publishing, where the money is never great except at the very top, we accept job titles in lieu of salary. In an ideal world, Miranda would be promoted internally, to the same junior editor job she’d just been offered at Apollo. T&R published a wider range of books than they did, and she’d get more experience, and have more options when she was ready to be promoted again, which I full
y believed would be soon. She’d shown a lot of ability in the work she’d done for me. Editorially she could see where a book was weak, and make good suggestions about how to strengthen it; administratively, she was efficient and organised. The administration side is rarely mentioned, but those skills are almost more important than editorial intelligence.

  I chewed more slowly.

  ‘Sam?’ She was waving her hand in front of my face.

  I came back to earth. ‘I was trying to work out a way of keeping you at T&R, even if I can’t keep you myself. If I could get you something similar, would you want to stay?’

  ‘Want to? Yes, I’d want to. Could you – that is, would you?’

  ‘Would, yes; could, that’s what I don’t know.’ I got down to practicalities. ‘How much leeway do you have in terms of time? When do you have to accept by? Or have you already accepted?’

  ‘I haven’t.’ She was clearly not only thrilled, but astonished that we’d make an effort to keep her. Mental note: give more positive reinforcement to the next good assistant. ‘And yes, there’s a bit of time. The person who interviewed me’ – she tactfully omitted who it was, although I was sure I knew from the job description; the publishing world is small – ‘she’s just gone on holiday, and won’t be back until the week after next.’