“I met her briefly at breakfast.”
“Did you now? Once met, never forgotten, I’d say. Let’s get her in here.”
Jocasta’s entrance was very different from her cousin Randolph’s. Where he had entered with loping, forceful strides, taking control of the room, Jocasta possessed the room in quite another way. Preceded by a waft of perfume strong enough to substitute as tear gas for the police force of a chic nation-state, Jocasta twirled her way into the library, petticoats swirling about her knees, her manner fluttery, winsome, and coy. Ignoring Sergeant Essex, she aimed her charm like a beacon at the two men.
She had changed her clothing since breakfast, and now wore a retro little number in silk brocade with a cinched waist and full pleated skirt that recalled Elizabeth Taylor during her Michael Wilding years. Max was to learn she changed frequently throughout the day, although there was little reason for it. Perhaps it was how she staved off boredom. As likely, it was a hangover from her acting days.
“Thank God you finally got around to talking with me,” she said, perching on the edge of a seat. “I’ve been on pins and needles, waiting.”
“Thank you for talking with us,” said Cotton. “This must be a difficult time.”
“You’ve no idea,” she said. “It’s been a nightmare—literally.” And she began to tell him of the dreams and premonitions of disaster she’d had, ever since coming to the castle (“The most terrifying of scenes—outside of my own films, of course.”). Max, from his chair across the room, thought he was used to this kind of premonition thing from Awena Owen, and he was certainly getting used to hearing it from the inhabitants of Chedrow Castle. Vague insights. Feelings. Coming from Awena, these insights were often, well, insightful, although he put that down to her remarkable empathy, intuition, and observational skills. This woman before him seemed merely nervy. A bundle of nerves, in fact.
And weren’t premonitions always easiest to claim once calamity had already struck?
Max said, “I would imagine it is strange for you being back at the castle, after so many years.”
Again she said, “You’ve no idea!” But this time she smiled, and there was subtle shading to her voice, a sauciness of tone out of place in the interview. As she breezed on, Max concluded she was trying on various roles, or perhaps reliving old stage and film triumphs.
“What can you tell us about the night before your father’s body was found?”
“We—my husband and I—played cards in the drawing room. What Leticia called a withdrawing room, a term that hasn’t been used since approximately the 1700s. She was like that, Leticia. Anyway, we were in the drawing room, living room, or whatever you wish to call it until quite late that night. We tried to interest some of the others in a game of bridge but found no takers, so we played gin rummy instead. After we went to bed—which was before midnight as I recall—who knows what happened? The butler found Oscar. You’ll have to get the details from him.”
“What a good idea. We hadn’t thought of that,” said Cotton. The irony was lost on Jocasta, who had found a flaw in her bloodred manicure. “Did you hear anything, see anything unusual at all?”
“I think I heard a noise outside that morning,” she told her thumbnail. “An owl, perhaps.” She looked up. “The jet lag has had me awake at all hours, you see.”
“Try to think, please,” said Cotton. “Could it have been a human voice?”
Obligingly, propping her chin in one hand and staring skyward, she appeared to give the idea every fair consideration, although as Essex remarked later she might have been wondering where she’d mislaid her mascara wand. “No,” she said at last. “No, I can’t really be certain.”
“Was there anything that night, anything at all that struck you as out of the ordinary? A quarrel overheard, perhaps?”
Again the pose of thoughtfulness.
“No-o-o.”
“We feel, you see,” put in Max, “that with your special training in the subtleties of nuance and gesture, you could be a valuable witness to any undercurrents of tension or hostility in the household.”
Jocasta preened visibly. “Do you really? Why, yes, it is the attention to gesture that most critics mention in connection with my work. Oh, I still get letters! Indeed, a constant outpouring, expressing the fervent wish that I reprise some of my more famous roles.”
“Ah, yes. Well—” began Cotton.
“Of course, it has been some time since my last appearance in film, which does tend to whet the audience’s appetite.”
“I see. Now, if we could return to the subject of your father’s murder.” Cotton felt he was being a bit brutal by using the word but he wasn’t sure there was any other way to capture her attention, as her mind seemed to spin in a continual orbit around her past triumphs.
“My father’s—oh, yes. Of course,” Jocasta cooed. “What was it you wished to know?” She flashed a brilliant smile at first one man, then the other. It was a smile that assumed it was melting the hearts of all who beheld it—a smile much rehearsed and perfected during endless reviewings and rewindings of her appearances, however brief, in film. Clearly flirtatiousness was her default mode. That it was a complete disconnect to the grave topic under discussion was lost on no one but Jocasta herself.
But suddenly, there was a switch in tone. It was like watching someone play with an on/off switch, thought Max.
“Family secrets,” Jocasta said darkly. “Every family has them.” She gave out a diabolical screech that might have been laughter. “But I shall share my secrets with you, shall I?” Max began to wonder if she was quite sane. He stole a glance at the page that held the family tree, now lying facedown on the table next to him.
“Good,” said Cotton. “Now, we can’t escape the fact your father was a wealthy man.”
“Certainly he was.”
“Were you—how shall I put this—were you and your husband in any financial difficulty?”
Again the screech. “Why would you say that?” she demanded. “I have made a vast fortune from my cinematic and stage appearances. I don’t need money. And I certainly wouldn’t … do as you suggest … to get my hands on it if I did. If you want to talk about who needed money, let’s talk about Gwynyth Lavener, shall we?”
“Your father’s ex-wife.”
“That’s right.” Jocasta’s narrow lips disappeared into a thin, sour, red line. “Gwynyth tells everyone she was a performance artist when she met Oscar. A performance artist! That’s a nice word for stripper.”
“Actually,” said Cotton, “we were given to understand she was performing on board a cruise ship when she met your father. Singing and dancing. That sort of thing. They don’t usually offer strip shows on any cruise line I’ve ever heard of.”
“That’s as may well be,” said Jocasta. Her mind seemed to have calcified on this subject. “What she did before she met him she’s not talking about, I’m sure.”
“Did your father’s remarriage cause a rift between him and you?” Max asked her.
She spent a moment ensuring the flounce in her petticoats was just so before she answered. “We were quite close, really. Well, early on. The years do pass so swiftly, don’t they? ‘Sunrise, sunset.’” To the astonishment of her audience, she hummed a few bars of the tune. “But you’ve got quite the wrong idea,” she finally went on. “We were close, I tell you. As only family can be. So difficult to explain to one who isn’t family.”
Her voice fluted across the Aubusson at Max, who said, “I quite understand.”
She blinked, her eyes like shades pulled quickly down. Max could read no more of her, get no sense of what she really felt. Perhaps Jocasta wasn’t such a hopeless actress after all.
“Now, as I say, it’s Gwynyth you should be talking with. You know why she’s here of course.”
Cotton looked at her hopefully.
“Money! The very motive I was accused of harboring just now.” Sitting up straight, she seemed to be slipping into another role: Max was remi
nded of an old-time star like Barbara Stanwyck, on horseback, facing down an irate posse. Fire and ice, backbone of steel. Jocasta all but flicked an imaginary whip and said, “She ran through the money he settled on her six years ago so now she wanted more. They quarreled, and—”
“You heard them quarreling?” Cotton quickly interjected.
“No, as it happens, but it stands to reason that is what happened.”
“If we could stick to the facts here…” said Cotton.
“That’s what I’m doing. Suddenly she’s back, and plagued by this newfound concern for her children, is she? No, Inspector, it’s money for herself she’s after. The twins are an excuse.”
“Hmm.”
“Oh, she’s quite lovely, in her way, Gwynyth. I understand she made quite a splash in the City for a while.” She examined one be-ringed hand, as if to say there were splashes, and then there were splashes. “That blond hair, rather weird, I always thought. That type doesn’t age well. She looks like a German airline stewardess. Simon calls the twins Hänsel und Gretel.”
“I think they prefer to be called flight attendants these days,” Cotton said mildly.
“Whatever. Oscar got a raw deal there. Oh, she looks nice enough, but she’s thick as two planks. When she turned up with twins … oh, my. My father was livid.”
“Why?”
“Well, I gather that was part of their agreement. That there would be no children. Then she became pregnant two minutes after they exchanged vows—or before. He barely tolerates those kids, and I think that’s why—apart from their general snottiness, that is.”
“I see,” said Max. “He feels he was tricked into fatherhood. That really is too bad for the children.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for any of them. They were all trying to use my father. Randolph, for example: He’s traded off the family connections for decades as a photographer. He’s quite a good photographer, so I’m told,” she added grudgingly. “I wouldn’t know. He started out specializing in photos of dogs and horses of the gentry. Then he moved up—or down, depending on how you view things—to photographing owners with the dogs, et cetera.”
“Were you close to his brother or his sister, Lea?” asked Cotton.
“Lester? Close to Lester? Of course not. Lea was another matter.”
“You were friends?”
“She worshipped me. You know, I don’t know what it is about me.” One hand fluttered to her throat as she took a moment to bask in the warm glow of her immense self-regard. Adjusting an outsized pinky ring, she said, “Yes, Lea adored me.”
The last person Max had met with this particular kind of blind spot was now serving time behind bars for GBH—Grievous Bodily Harm. Still, her self-love only made Jocasta ridiculous, not necessarily a murderess.
“I do miss her so.” Jocasta now drew one hand across her forehead in a mournful gesture.
“To lose her so young must have been difficult for everyone,” said Max. “And to lose her husband, as well.”
Jocasta looked at him for a moment, incredulous, but then the gracious smile (Celine Damascus, The Seething Serpent) inched its way into place, the red lips like curtains slowly parting to reveal the gleaming white teeth.
“No one missed him,” she said. “Frightful man.”
“I did hear,” said Max, “he was unkind to Lamorna.”
“He was unkind to me,” said Jocasta. “In Lamorna’s case his reaction was understandable. Lamorna was trouble from when she was a baby. Wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat.”
Cotton referred to his notes. “Lea adopted her from St. Petersburg, is that right?”
“That is correct.”
She rose from her chair and danced across the room.
“I had a few questions about the plane crash that took the lives of her parents,” said Cotton. “There was no suspicion of foul play at the time, was there?”
Jocasta had stopped in front of a gilded mirror near the fireplace. She had been told by cinematographers the right side of her face offered her best profile, and she struggled always to be backlit from this flattering angle. The light coming into the room was cooperating, casting a halo behind her head.
“Hmm?” Jocasta, lost in blissful contemplation of her image in the mirror, had only just realized the last question was directed at her.
“I wonder, Mrs. Jones, if I could have your full attention for just a moment?” said Cotton patiently.
“Certainly.”
Cotton repeated the question. Surprised, she actually tore her eyes away from the mirror and turned to face him.
“Foul play? Oh, surely not. Not that I ever heard.”
“We’ll have our colleagues in North America look through the old files. Just in case.”
This sent her into a complete dither of protestations, and the interview looked set to end in a shambles. She dug out a hankie from somewhere within the bodice of her dress and dabbing at her eyes began to wail. “Poor, dear Lea! Will she never rest in peace?”
To distract her, Max thought to ask about one of her films, which, by a most unlikely happenstance, he had both seen and remembered. He didn’t remember it for the right reasons, perhaps, but remember it he did.
Soon Jocasta, having wiped away nonexistent tears, began to gush about her career, a glossy tale of her meteoric rise to stardom.
“Of course I also starred in the sequel, Blue Noon. The reviewers were most kind.”
At their blank expressions, she drew back, astonished. “Don’t tell me you’ve not seen it?”
Cotton and Max both shook their heads, the picture of polite regret.
“Oh, the limited film distribution in the United Kingdom has been the plague of my career. To think of the millions who have been deprived of the chance to see me in my best roles, all because of the wanton, willful laziness of my producers.”
She abandoned the mirror and sat again, crossing her legs in an obvious and provocative way in Max’s direction. The legs, and fine legs they were, looked like a cancan dancer’s emerging from the foamy skirts.
Sergeant Essex’s mouth tightened. It wasn’t right, flirting like that with a man of the cloth. Especially this man of the cloth. Essex reserved a special place in her heart for Max, who had given her dying grandfather a measure of peace as he passed out of this world and into the next. This woman had no idea what she was messing with. Essex turned a page in her notebook with more energy and racket than was strictly necessary and, snapping it into place with the elastic, glared across the room at the bosomy actress. Any more plastic surgery and this Jocasta Jones wouldn’t be able to bat those heavy false eyelashes at Father Max.
Jocasta warbled on in answer to a question from Max about the family’s history, having to be corrected on some point of fact at least twice, which improvements she completely ignored. Finally, with a shrill cry reminiscent of a vulture spying a small woodland creature, she clapped her hands together and said, “Well, if there’s nothing further, I have stacks of scripts I’ve brought with me to read. Ron Howard is awaiting my decision on whether I’ll appear in one of his projects, but I’ve been so busy.”
And she began to swan her way out. Cotton, who could think of no further questions for the moment to detain her, thanked her. As if she’d just thought of something, she turned at the door and said, “I should ask Lamorna where she was at the time of the crime. There is something … rather odd … about that girl.”
“One more question from me if you wouldn’t mind,” said Max.
“Yes?” That “yes” had a hollow ring that belied the expression of patient cheer she’d pasted onto her face.
“Your arrival here came just before your father fell ill, did it not?”
“Ye-e-ess? Surely you’re not suggesting…? I mean, really.” The look of helpful merriment began to slip. “The cook needs to be more careful,” she said. “I had a touch of tummy myself after we first arrived. I was up half the night with it. I shall leave you now, even though my own life is at risk no
w and no one seems concerned about that.”
She swept out of the room in an eddy of churning crinoline so wide she could barely clear the door. As it was, part of her hem caught in the door’s closing, and Cotton was forced to become engaged in the momentary struggle to free her.
“As you know,” said Cotton once she’d safely gone, “I have rather a complicated relationship with theatrical people. So you tell me what you thought of that performance.”
Max knew Cotton’s mother had been a hippie rock star who dragged her son to “gigs”—an upbringing guaranteed to produce the kind of child who craves routine and order and does things like join the police force as a form of rebellion. Max thought that flamboyant history explained as well some of Cotton’s energy, and the touch of dandyism in his love of clothing and costume.
“I thought it was a performance,” said Max. “In part.”
“But which part?”
Max shrugged. “Most of it. I’m not sure how much control she has over that. It seems to be the habit of a lifetime.”
“I thought so, too,” put in Essex.
“I know nothing about the profession,” said Max, “but it does seem to attract the insecure, and then feed their insecurities until they grow to monstrous proportions.”
“Do you think so? I rather always thought the job attracted large egos—egos large and tough enough to withstand the occasional bruising by fans and critics.”
“Maybe it attracts both types, or a combination of both,” said Max. “People who fluctuate between arrogance and insecurity.”
“But here we’re looking for someone with daring, don’t you think? And brains.” This from Essex. “I’m not sure she qualifies.”
Max, nodding, said, “Her role-playing seemed nearly delusional to me.”
Cotton said, “Or is she just such a good actor—are they all called actors now? Anyway, is she so good at her profession we’re being tricked into thinking she’s delusional?”
“I think you’re overthinking this, Chief. I really do,” said Sergeant Essex. “She’s thick as two planks, is all. And so much for family values. She seemed determined to drop a few of her nearest and dearest in it, didn’t she?”
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