Quick off the Mark

by Moody, Susan

  ‘We’ll go to the Fox and Hounds. I can tell by your accent you’re a visitor to our shores.’ The Major could swap clichés with the best of them and indeed, frequently did. ‘Divided by a common language and all that, ha ha.’

  ‘Major,’ I said. ‘Might I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course, m’dear.’

  ‘Better still, why don’t you join us?’ said DuBois, as I had mentally laid odds that he would.

  ‘That would be very …’

  We pushed our way through the lunchtime throng in the saloon bar of the Fox and Hounds.

  ‘I’ll have a tomato juice,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Right you are.’

  ‘Not so much a visitor …’ DuBois picked up on the conversation when the three of us were seated on an oak settle and a three-legged stool such as a milkmaid might have used in days gone by. ‘More like an immigrant.’

  I could see by the expression on the Major’s face that the word suggested hollow-eyed children carrying indeterminate bags and men in ratty cloth caps being processed on Ellis Island, before spending a lifetime of grinding poverty and discrimination in the slums of the bigger cities of America. Or some refugee from Africa. Or even hefty young men with iPhones and leather jackets. These days, immigrants were just as likely to be terrorists posing as asylum-seekers from dictator-run countries. In fact, the word had taken on a whole new meaning as the diaspora of hundreds of thousands of people from war-torn countries trekked westwards in search of a safer life or a better economic future.

  Either way, this soi-disant Todd, smartly dressed, silk socks (I would bet that the Major always noticed men’s socks), nice bit of barbering, couldn’t be further from the popular image of a refugee. ‘Immigrant?’ the Major echoed faintly.

  ‘Wrong word, perhaps. Back home in Louisiana,’ said Todd, ‘my family’s a long way from being immigrants.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Sure is.’ Todd pointed at his cream linen shirt. ‘Fact is, this kid is descended from a long line of plantation owners, some of whom joined with John Paul Jones to fight the English over the emancipation issue.’

  ‘And stayed on?’ I said. I was trying very hard to keep the cynicism out of my voice. I’d run across a number of conmen in my time on the force and was pretty sure I was talking to a prime example of the breed right that minute.

  ‘You got it. Mint juleps on the verandah, gambling on the riverboats which ply their trade up and down the Mississippi, fireflies and hominy grits, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, all that southern jazz.’ Todd looked regretful. ‘Unfortunately, over the years there was rather too much of the juleps and the gaming tables, and by the time my daddy inherited, the land had mostly been sold off and the plantation acres reduced to a small farm which produced little more than dust and weeds.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the Major.

  ‘Mind you, far as my daddy’s concerned, the DuBois are still way at the top of the social tree. And I gotta say my parents made a handsome couple, driving off to parties and balls in their well-worn finery and their ancient Lagonda. But there was no way Poppa was ever going to dirty his hands with Lousiana mud, and since he couldn’t afford to employ anyone efficient enough to turn the farm into a going concern, the two of them just mouldered gently on in that big old tumbledown house of ours.’

  ‘It’s like a film,’ said the Major. ‘Gone With the Wind, or something. Vivien Leigh, Atlanta in flames, exciting stuff. Or that other one, with a lot of dust in it, something to do with grapes. Talking of which …’ He drained his glass and signalled for refills for the three of us.

  ‘You know what my daddy used to tell me?’ said Todd.

  Major Horrocks shook his head. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Used to say “Son, ah hev a dream”. He has this real hokey fried-chicken-and-Spanish-moss accent, and what he never realized was he was exactly repeating Martin Luther King’s words from back in the Sixties.’

  ‘Right.’ The Major nodded sagely. ‘Martin Luther King.’

  ‘And the ironic thing about it was,’ Todd wagged a finger at us both. ‘Mah Daddy would never have said such a thing, if he’d realized, King being a man of colour, know what Ah’m sayin’?’

  ‘And did your da— father’s dream come true?’ I asked.

  ‘I was never quite sure what the dream was, to be honest with you. Restoration of the ancestral lands, I should think. But in the end, he had to sell off what was left of our acreage, and the two of them relocated to a smaller (only seven bedrooms! What a come-down!) house outside Baton Rouge, living on nostalgia for the good old days.’

  ‘So what about you.’

  ‘Hey, I hightailed it out of Louisiana soon as I could. No way I was ever going to restore the family fortunes. “Ah’m lookin’ to you, son …” my daddy would say, and I’d think, You’ll have to look elsewhere, Poppa, ’cause this mother’s son won’t be back any time soon.’ Over the rim of his glass, Todd looked at Major Horrocks. ‘So, Major, what’s your story?’ he asked.

  ‘My story? Well …’ The Major shook out the flannel sleeves of his Tattersall shirt, obviously feeling a trifle warmer than he would have liked. ‘Regular army for thirty years, got a job as bursar and sports master at one of the local private schools, so me and the wife moved down from Catterick and bought a house here.’

  ‘Why here?’ I asked.

  ‘Mostly because of the job. But I always fancied the place because my grandmother came from these parts, and I’d spent holidays with her when I was a boy. Seemed a logical move at the time, though looking back, perhaps it wasn’t. My wife never really settled, she wasn’t one for the WI and the—’

  ‘WI?’ Todd’s brow creased.

  ‘Womens’ Institute. Jam-making, knitting and so forth, not her thing at all. Though she did do the church flowers from time to time, thanks to our next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Church flowers?’ Todd seemed bewildered. Chu’ch flahs … I was still trying hard to see him as genuine.

  ‘Oh, you know. Teams of ladies taking it in turns to decorate the church on Sundays. My poor Esther could just about tell a rose from a daisy, but that was as far as it went. Flower-wise, I mean. But she enjoyed the company.’

  ‘Guess she had other talents,’ Todd said.

  ‘If she did, I never found out what they were, in forty years of marriage.’ The Major produced a snorting laugh. ‘I even went to a couple of basic cookery courses, took over the cooking, just to make sure she didn’t poison us both.’ He looked uneasy, as though long-gone Esther might be about to launch a lightning bolt from the realms of bliss.

  ‘Sounds like my petite maman back in Louisiana,’ Todd said. ‘Never lifted a finger about the house. In fact, I’m not sure she even knew where the kitchen was.’

  ‘A large staff, I suppose.’ The Major was clearly chuffed at being on a par with the DuBois materfamilias. He adopted a knowing expression, as one used to cooks and parlourmaids, footmen and tweenies, though in fact once he left the Army, I doubt if he and Esther had employed anything more than a weekly cleaner.

  ‘Twenty in the house alone,’ said Todd. He grinned his all-American grin at me again. My sceptic’s antennae jiggled about as though they were caught in a high wind.

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘Of course, they ran the place. More or less told my parents what to do and how to do it.’

  ‘Sounds very democratic,’ I said. Did Todd realize I was not being pulled into the golden bubble he was so effortlessly creating?

  ‘I guess it was.’

  ‘So what is a gentleman like yourself doing in these parts?’ asked the Major.

  ‘I had some unfinished business,’ Todd said. Evasively.

  ‘Finished it yet?’ I asked, wanting to know what his connection to this seaside town was. Whether he had any kind of link to Tristan Huber, though there no reason at this point to think that he might have. Or exactly what his unfinished business was.

  ‘More or less.’ Todd picked u
p his beer glass and tossed back a couple of swallows. ‘Slightly delayed by the absence of the other party involved.’ He quaffed his beer. ‘Say, I read about this murder you’ve just had here …’ Todd let the sentence trail, guessing the Major would pick it up.

  ‘Indeed, sir. Met the victim a couple of times when he was doing up my neighbour’s place. Nice fellow. The poor young man’s body was abandoned behind a hedge just down the lane from my house. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘It was the Major who found him,’ I said to Todd.

  ‘Is that so?’ Todd stared at me over the rim of his glass. ‘Hey, they mentioned the guy’s sister in the papers this morning. Dimsie. What’s that short for?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s short for anything, actually,’ I said. ‘What’s Todd short for?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘I read somewhere that it means a fox. Wily. Devious,’ said the Major.

  ‘That’s me, boy. Wily and devious.’ Todd laughed, revealing once again his perfect teeth, of which he seemed to have at least twice as many as the average man on the street.

  ‘I’ll just bet you are,’ I said.

  ‘It said that this dead guy was only thirty-eight. That’s awful young to die.’ He pronounced it ‘dah’.

  ‘Did you by any chance know him?’ I asked.

  He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘Not’s far as I know. By the way, where does this Dimsie dame hang out?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, wondering why he was so interested.

  ‘Why not? Put it down to my chivalrous southern upbringing, wanting to offer aid and comfort to the bereaved.’

  ‘How kind.’ In my opinion, the soi-disant Todd DuBois had slightly overreached himself by asking about Dimsie, a woman supposedly of whom he knew nothing. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘So what’s next?’ The Major sucked at his pint of bitter, looking at Todd. ‘For you, I mean.’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure.’ Todd did the grin thing again.

  ‘World your oyster, eh?’ said the Major.

  ‘Maybe.’ Todd picked up his second half. He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe I’ll try France. I have French blood in me, after all. Most everyone in Louisiana does.’

  ‘France? Wine, cheese and sun. Wonderful country. My late wife and I spent many a happy holiday there. You could become a cheese maker. Or buy a vineyard and start producing wine.’ Major Horrocks stared wistfully into his glass. ‘Matter of fact, it’s always been a dream of mine to—’

  ‘Whoa! Not another one with a dream!’ Todd broke in. ‘On the other hand … a vineyard, hmm, sounds good.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Major Horrocks was obviously picturing himself, straw hat on head to protect himself from the fierce Charentais, or it might be, Burgundian sun, walking between the rows of vines, holding the ripening bunches in his hand to test their weight (rather like checking his balls for that telltale prostate tumour, I should imagine), sniffing at the grapes and nodding wisely, Todd perhaps in the neighbouring row, (‘Going to be great harvest this year, Todd.’ ‘You just betcha, Norm’) ‘I mean, how hard can it be?’

  ‘Pretty darned hard, since you ask,’ Todd said. ‘I spent a summer vacation in the Napa Valley one year, picking grapes for the harvest, and believe me, it’s back-breaking work. Returned for six months after I graduated from college, learned quite a bit about the whole process, too.’

  ‘There you are!’ The Major beamed at me as though I was responsible, patted Todd’s arm. ‘We’re already halfway there. Don’t know about you, old son, but I’ve got no ties here anymore, could be on my way tomorrow.’

  ‘I say, steady on, dude. It takes years to build up a vineyard. And without wishing to be offensive, you’re not exactly in the first flush of youth. Say you bought a vineyard tomorrow – day after, perhaps, give you a chance to unpack your bags – when would you anticipate tasting the first glass of wine from your own vines?’

  ‘Good point. Unless we could buy a going concern.’ Major Horrocks heaved a sigh and ordered another half. ‘And anyway, I suppose Chateau Horrocks doesn’t quite have the ring. Oh well, another one bites the dust.’

  ‘Tell you what though, I’ve always rather fancied going into catering of some kind,’ Todd said, after a short silence, leaning his elbows on the small round table between us. ‘Can’t you just see it? The little village restaurant, checked tablecloths, confit de canard, grape arbours, freshly made lemon mayonnaise, pichets of the local wines, wonderful country potages.’

  ‘Homemade patés,’ added the Major. ‘Ducks flapping about, lavender fields, garlic all over the show. I could help with waiting tables, stacking the dishwasher – done quite a bit of that in my time – opening bottles, that sort of thing. Not to mention the actual cooking, too. Tell you what, as well the basic stuff, I also took a course in French cuisine once. My boeuf bourguignon has to be tasted to be believed.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said.

  Horrocks leaned towards Todd and me confidentially. ‘Know what my secret is?’

  We both shook our heads.

  ‘Guinness!’

  ‘Guinness?’ I said. ‘My goodness.’

  ‘Sounds unusual,’ said Todd.

  ‘Cooked with two tablespoons of cocoa powder and then, just before serving, a couple of squares of bitter chocolate added to the sauce.’ The Major sounded triumphant. ‘Absolutely bloody delicious, if I say so myself. It’ll go down a storm in France.’

  ‘Aren’t we getting slightly ahead of ourselves here?’ Todd smiled at the older man. ‘I only met you half an hour ago. You don’t know anything about me. I could be a … well, for instance, a confidence trickster, for all you know. Take your life’s savings and do a runner.’

  ‘I can well believe it,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense.’ The Major tapped the side of his nose. ‘Wouldn’t have got where I am today without being a good judge of character. I know an honest man when I see one.’

  Call me prejudiced, but I couldn’t help thinking he was way off beam here. If the so-called Todd DuBois was an honest man, I was a Rolling Stone. The man was as phoney as a five-legged hedgehog.

  Horrocks’s benign expression changed. ‘Truth to tell, I’d be glad to get out of this place for a while. Haunted by it all, you see. Well, I mean to say, how often do you stumble over a body all gashed about, carved up, if you please?’ He elaborated on the details of his recent early morning walk with the dog Marlowe: the hedge, the flies, the body. ‘Cheat,’ he said. ‘Clear as dammit, engraved, as it were, right into the poor chappie’s chest.’

  Todd opened his guileless eyes wide. ‘That’s … that’s terrible.’

  ‘I can’t get it out of my mind.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, sir. What a truly dreadful experience. What do the police think?’

  ‘As always, a useless bunch of tossers, if you’ll pardon the expression.’ He cut his eyes at me and then back away. ‘Not all of them, obviously. Trying to blame it all on a passing psychopath. My Aunt Fanny! Psychopaths don’t do a lot of passing, in my opinion. They’re more like mosquitoes: see a tasty meal and dive straight in. No, I reckon it was someone with a grudge. Ice cream salesmen, bloodthirsty lot, always at each other’s throats, brandishing stilettos and the like.’

  ‘This dead guy sold ice cream?’ Todd was looking confused, as well he might. ‘They didn’t mention that in the papers. And the cops have gone into the victim’s background, all that?’

  ‘I imagine so.’ The Major blew froth off his moustache and shuddered. ‘I’ll tell you, Brad—’

  ‘Todd.’

  ‘—Todd, I’ve spent my life in theatres of war, but finding that body was one of the most unnerving events of my life.’

  ‘I can well believe it, sir.’

  ‘And setting up a catering business in France with Todd would help you get over it, do you think?’ I asked.

  Horrocks nodded. ‘Could well be. And why not? Why the hell not?’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Todd.
‘Especially as you obviously know something about cooking and the gastronomic arts.’

  ‘Just call me Escoffier!’ The Major chuckled at his own wit.

  ‘A small café restaurant,’ Todd said wistfully. ‘I can see it so clearly.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got the cash, son, I’ve got the time.’ The Major drank deep and thoughtfully. ‘Matter of fact, if you’ve got the time, I’ve got the cash.’

  There was a very faint frisson in Todd’s expression. ‘Really?’

  ‘Just been left a few quid by my neighbour, d’you see?’ And Esther, my wife, might have been a dead loss around the house, but she turned out to have a pretty hefty bank account.’ He coughed. ‘Never wanted to dig too deeply into how she’d obtained the money.’

  Todd was looking thoughtful. ‘We could go down there, look at it as a reconnoître,’ he said. The word seemed to fall on the Major’s ears like a sonata. (Reconnoître … how many times had he set up a recce, in those far-off days of service?) ‘Suss the place out, see what’s what.’

  ‘Which area are you thinking about?’

  ‘Somewhere with decent vineyards where property doesn’t cost the farm. Bordeaux, St Emilion, Cahors.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You bet I am. Are you?’

  ‘Most definitely.’ The Major held out his hand (‘put it there, pardner!’) and the two men shook.

  ‘And how long do you have in mind for this preliminary recce?’ I asked. I felt I ought to take the Major on one side and tell him to keep his eyes open. I didn’t like the way Todd’s face had changed at the mention of cash.

  ‘What do you think, Maje? A week? A month?’

  ‘Two weeks minimum. A month might be better.’

  ‘OK, we’ll look into it.’

  ‘Draw up our … uh … battle plans.’

  ‘Battle plans, right. Do you have wheels?’

  ‘If you mean a car, of course I have.’

  ‘Maybe we could drive down, take our time, scout out the area. Not just for wines, but for suitable buildings we could convert.’

  ‘Excellent.’ The Major was obviously a happy man, hardly able to believe his luck. He looked refreshed. Invigorated. Happy at the thought that the days ahead already seemed filled with wine and sunshine. And purpose.