‘Tell WPC Connolly to be careful,’ said Edgar.
*
It was mid-afternoon by the time that Max got back to Brighton. It was time, he thought, to complete the Florence tour. Fortifying himself with a double whisky at the Railway Tavern, he walked up the hill (another hill!) to Montpelier Crescent, the house where she had died. This was an expensive area of Brighton, tall white houses with wrought-iron balconies looking out over a semicircle of lawn containing a may tree in full flower. Looking at the street in the soft spring sunshine, Max found it hard to believe that anything bad had ever happened there. In fact, his main memory was of calling on Florence one morning and drinking coffee in the elegant sitting room. They had faced each other across the burnished parquet floor, talking politely and knowing that they were going to end up in bed together. That room, though, was where she had died. Edgar had never described the crime scene to him but the papers had got hold of some of the details and these, now, were as clear to Max as if he had been there: Florence stretched out naked on the sofa, her dark hair touching the floor, a gold crown on her head, feather boa around her neck in morbid imitation of Cleopatra’s asp.
Had Florence been the love of his life, as he had intimated to Emma? The whole experience was so vivid and sensual – their bodies on the bed, Florence’s body on the sofa, rose-tinted lights, the mirrors in the apartment’s opulent bathroom – that it still seemed almost like a dream. What would have happened when he’d woken up and attempted to have a future with Florence? Would they have got married and had children? He couldn’t think of such things. That way madness lay. He had married Lydia and they had children. They were his life now. As Max turned away from the house he felt his heart lighten, as if something had floated away, as free and transient as the blossom on the may tree.
*
Emma was on time to collect the girls. They were thrilled to see Jonathan. A baby was almost as big a playground draw as a puppy. They soon had him out of his pushchair on a triumphal tour of classrooms, pupils, parents and teachers. It was a long time before Emma could corral them for the journey home. Once back at the house, Marianne instigated a game of schools with herself as a rather tyrannical teacher and Sophie and Johnny as the pupils. Jonathan’s role was to sit on the floor being ‘naughty boy’, a task he performed with ease. Emma felt that she could safely leave them and make herself a cup of tea. But as soon as she had descended to the basement kitchen and put the kettle on, the phone rang.
Marianne picked it up on the upstairs landing. As Emma made her way back up the stairs she could hear her repeating the number in the way that she had been taught at school. Emma couldn’t get used to there not being letter codes any more.
‘Mum! It’s for you.’
Emma took the receiver. ‘Hallo, Emma. It’s Ruby.’
‘Ruby!’ Not the last person she had expected, but very close to it.
‘Listen, Emma. I’m in Brighton tomorrow. Saturday. Can we meet? I’d like to talk to you.’
‘Talk to me?’ repeated Emma stupidly.
‘Yes. It’s important but I can’t explain on the phone. I’m calling from the studio and there are too many people listening. Can you meet me on the Palace Pier at one o’clock tomorrow? By the gypsy caravan?’
By Emma’s friend Astarte’s caravan. ‘Yes,’ said Emma, ‘but why—’
‘You’re a doll,’ said Ruby. ‘Can’t stop. Bye.’
She rang off but, for several minutes, Emma still held the receiver to her ear. The very dialling tone seemed to have a quizzical, interrogative sound.
Chapter 15
It was difficult to escape from the family. Marianne had a ballet lesson at ten and, though Edgar offered to take her, he looked so tired that Emma took pity on him. Instead Edgar took Sophie and Johnny for a walk on the seafront. This gave Emma time to do some shopping on her way home with a pirouetting Marianne. Then she laid out a light lunch, Grosvenor pie and salad, and announced that she was going out.
‘But you haven’t had anything to eat,’ said Edgar, who was trying to wedge Jonathan into his highchair.
‘I’m meeting Ruby,’ said Emma, her hand on the door.
‘Ruby?’ said Edgar. ‘Why?’
She didn’t know why she hadn’t mentioned it earlier, maybe because she still avoided talking about Ruby even after all these years. She knew that Edgar was no longer in love with Ruby but it still felt strange to think that her husband had once been engaged to that glittering creature. Now it was awkward, though, standing in the doorway, Marianne looking avidly from parent to parent, sensing a drama.
‘She said she wanted to talk to me,’ said Emma.
‘What about?’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out,’ said Emma. ‘I won’t be long. Back in an hour.’ And she shut the door on the mingled expressions of surprise, bemusement and dismay. As she set off down the street she could hear Johnny starting to cry.
It was a lovely day. The sky was the pale blue of a duck’s egg and the sea stretched out in bands of shallow turquoise, trimmed with white. The promenade was already filling up with day-trippers and a few brave souls were paddling. Next weekend, the bank holiday, it would be packed solid, especially if the good weather continued. Maybe she should take the children to the beach. On second thoughts, thinking of the threatened battle between mods and rockers, maybe they should steer clear of Brighton altogether and go to see her friend Vera’s horses in Rottingdean.
Palace Pier was crowded too. Children eating candyfloss, adults caught on the hop by the sun, shirtsleeves rolled up, bald heads reddening. Astarte’s caravan stood by the entrance to the penny arcade and a sign announced that Madame Zabini was in residence. Emma leant on the ornate railing by the caravan’s steps and thought about the previous Madame Zabini, Astarte’s grandmother, who had been thrown to her death from this very spot. From this vantage point the water looked deep and mysterious, blue-green depths. A seagull swooped in front of her and Emma jumped. Someone laughed. Emma turned around and saw a youngish man in a trilby hat looking at her.
‘On your own?’ His accent was South London tinged with a self-conscious American twang, reminding Emma of Joe Passolini.
‘I’m waiting for my husband.’
‘Suit yourself.’ The man loped away. Emma looked at her watch. A quarter past one. Where was Ruby? She should be easy to spot, even in the crowds, with her fashionable clothes and her TV star sheen. Why did Ruby want to see Emma anyway? It’s important but I can’t explain on the phone. Edgar was still the only real point of contact between Emma and Ruby. Well, Edgar and Max. But what could Ruby have to discuss with Emma, her ex-fiancé’s wife, that she couldn’t raise with her own father?
A woman descended the steps of Astarte’s caravan, looking shell-shocked. What had the crystal ball foretold for her? Astarte was not the kind of mystic who only gave her clients the good news. Emma was tempted to pop her head through the velvet curtain and say hallo but then she might miss Ruby. The merry-go-round on the end of the pier was playing ‘My Boy Lollipop’, a maddeningly catchy tune that was in the charts.
Emma looked at her watch again. Twenty-five past.
My boy lollipop. You make my heart go giddy up.
Ruby wasn’t coming.
Max was also looking at the Palace Pier but from within a Rolls Royce with tinted windows. Bobby Hambro sat in the front next to the chauffeur. Wilbur Wallace was next to Max, reading through a typescript.
‘Cedric could come here with his grandfather,’ he said. ‘Go on the pier, win a coconut or two.’
‘I’m not sure that it’s the first place that an eighteen-year-old would go,’ said Max. ‘Especially with his grandfather.’ However much he was told that the earl was ‘a handsome dissolute aristocrat’ he was still depressed to be cast in the grandfather role.
‘It’s where they start to get to know each other,’ said Wilbur. ‘Barriers start to break down.’
‘Perhaps they could go swimming,’ said Bobby. �
��Fans love a little shirt-off action.’
They were parked by the arches on Madeira Terrace. A tide of humanity washed past them, children with buckets and spades, girls in miniskirts, mods and rockers, flotsam and jetsam. Max felt as if he was invisible, a visitor from another planet, sent to deliver some cosmic warning. What would it be? Don’t go to see Golden Heart, starring Bobby Hambro and Max Mephisto?
When Bobby had suggested a day ‘scouting for locations’ in Brighton, Max had even thought that it might be rather fun – a drive in the purring Rolls, lunch at a country pub – but now he felt that if he heard one more word about Bobby’s fans and what they liked or disliked, he would throw himself off the nearest cliff.
‘Brighton is one hell of a town,’ said Wilbur. ‘Has it always been like this?’
‘Since the late eighteenth century, I believe,’ said Max. ‘The then Prince Regent brought it into fashion. Before that it was just a fishing village. Brighthelmstone, it was called.’
‘A royal connection,’ said Bobby. ‘Perhaps the prince could come into Golden Heart?’
‘Hardly, since the film is set in the late nineteenth century,’ said Max.
‘Who was on the throne then?’ asked Bobby.
‘Queen Victoria,’ said Max. ‘And she hated Brighton, apparently. Thought it was vulgar.’
You could see her point, although Max had always loved the cheerful brashness of the town. As he watched, a group of youths in semi-rocker clothes – leather jackets and torn jeans – crossed the road by the Aquarium. A woman passed and they whistled at her, one boy turning and shouting something that made the others laugh. The woman, dressed in a short pink summer coat that barely covered her even shorter skirt, swept past without a backward glance.
‘Would you look at that,’ said Wilbur.
But Max was already looking. The woman had been wearing a scarf and dark glasses that covered most of her face but Max was almost certain that it was Ruby.
*
Emma climbed the steps and called, ‘Astarte?’
‘Come in,’ came a voice.
Astarte Barton (aka Madame Zabini) was sitting at a table draped in midnight-blue cloth. Draperies covered the caravan’s windows too, giving the interior a mysterious and dusky glow. The only light came from candles on the table and from the glittering crystal ball that sent the motes dancing around the room. Astarte herself was wearing a red velvet cloak but she shrugged this off as soon as she saw Emma. She jumped up and gave her a hug.
‘Emma! This is a surprise.’
‘Surely you saw me coming?’
Astarte laughed and threw a cloth over the crystal ball. The room darkened immediately.
‘Want some tea? I’ve got a kettle in the back.’
Astarte pulled aside another curtain to reveal a small kitchen. She put the kettle on the hob looking, as ever, entirely unsuited to any domestic task. At nearly thirty, Astarte was as beautiful and other-worldly as she had been at nineteen, her white-blonde hair pulled back in a bun, her skin pale and flawless. But Astarte, like Ruby, had never married and didn’t have children.
They drank their tea at the table. Emma asked after Astarte’s father Tol who, after setting up a highly successful chain of coffee bars in Brighton, had married a rich woman and gone to live in the South of France.
‘Dad’s thriving,’ said Astarte. ‘He’s opening a casino in Menton. Not that he needs to work. Mimi’s got more than enough money for both of them.’
‘I can’t imagine Tol not working,’ said Emma.
‘No,’ said Astarte, shooting Emma one of her penetrating silvery glances. ‘So how are you? How are the lovely children?’
‘They’re fine. Marianne is growing up fast, sometimes she seems like the most sophisticated person in the house. Sophie wants to be a pirate and Johnno’s an angel. When he’s not being a devil, that is.’
‘I’d love to see them again.’ Astarte was a big favourite with the girls. She let them dress up in her fortune-teller’s robes and showed them how to read tarot cards. Edgar hadn’t been especially pleased at this last, especially when Marianne had predicted his imminent death.
‘You must come to lunch,’ said Emma. ‘With Sam perhaps.’
Despite – or because of – being so different, Sam and Astarte got on well. Sam thought that Astarte, beneath the draperies and incense, was a very shrewd businesswoman. Astarte thought that Sam was a ‘pure soul’.
‘I was meant to meet Ruby today,’ said Emma, sipping her tea which, like everything prepared by Astarte, tasted musky and aromatic.
‘Ruby Magic?’ said Astarte, who was a big fan of the programme. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. She said she had something important that she wanted to discuss with me. I suppose it’s about a man. At Diablo’s funeral, she told me that she had a new boyfriend.’
Astarte looked into her teacup before replying. Reading the leaves or just playing for time?
‘It’s not always about a man,’ she said.
Chapter 16
Max pushed open the heavy gates. It felt wrong that they weren’t locked but then, even if they were, he would have the keys. The solicitor had handed them over to him on a great fob, like something from a Gothic horror story, the day that he had read Max his father’s will. Now, waving the Rolls Royce through, the stone lions snarling on either side of the gates, Max felt more like the gatekeeper than the lord of the manor. But that was what he was.
He hadn’t wanted to visit Massingham Hall, much less with Bobby and Wilbur in tow, but, after a day spent fruitlessly driving around stately homes in Sussex, he had felt honour bound to tell them that he knew where there was an empty house replete with sweeping staircases, suits of armour and panelled walls. There were grounds too and a lake where Little Lord Fauntleroy could frolic to his heart’s content. Or, rather, where teenage Fauntleroy could canoodle with his American girlfriend, Sandy. Had he known all along that he would end up playing the lord of his own manor? Maybe. Or maybe it was just that he couldn’t quite face going back to the house alone. Bobby and Wilbur were company, at least.
‘Say,’ said Bobby, getting out of the car, ‘this is something like. So this is where you grew up, Max.’
‘Yes,’ said Max. He was looking up at the hall thinking, as ever, that it looked more like a school or a lunatic asylum than someone’s home. Massingham Hall had been a Tudor manor, modest for the times, famous only for its knot garden and its tower, an isolated folly believed to be haunted by Mad Max Massingham, a Regency rake who had parted company with his horse in the surrounding woodland. Max had no idea why his father had chosen to name him after his accident-prone ancestor but, when he was a child, the story used to terrify him. It was Alastair’s father, Max’s grandfather, who had created the current monstrosity, replacing the warm Tudor bricks with monolithic Bath stone and adding two new wings bristling with turrets and cloisters in Gothic-revival style. Now, the front door was reached by a double staircase, above which loomed a multitude of mullioned windows like the thousand eyes of Argus. The roof was pitched and grooved and crenellated in a dizzying range of heights and architectural styles. Max shut his eyes but, when he opened them, the house was still there.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Wilbur, ‘but not a very comfortable place to live, I imagine.’
Max was grateful for this unexpected understanding.
‘No,’ he said. ‘My grandfather was heavily into the Oxford Movement. He thought that we should go back to devout medieval times but he had a rather confused way of going about it. He built a chapel here too, a Catholic one. It used to be consecrated but my father went back to the Church of England after my mother died.’
‘How old were you when she died?’
‘Six.’
‘That’s tough. Mine only passed away last year but I still can’t get used to being without her.’ The producer took off his glasses and polished them. Max recognised the move as playing for time. He turned to Bobby who was still exclaiming
about the hall’s proportions.
‘It’s perfect for Dorincourt House. Perfect. I can just see the earl coming down those steps to greet Ceddy for the first time.’
‘Are you sure you won’t mind us filming here?’ said Wilbur, replacing his glasses.
‘No,’ said Max. ‘I need to spend some time in the place while I work out what to do with it. And, if Lydia and the children come over, they can stay here too.’
‘They’ll love it,’ said Bobby.
That was what Max was afraid of.
They climbed the steps and Max unlocked the double doors. The smell of the hallway – musty, woody, redolent of Sunday lunches and drawn curtains – almost sent Max reeling backwards. He must have spent years of his life here, sitting on the window seat halfway up the staircase, practising card tricks and dreaming of escape. He’d been homesick at boarding school but never for this place. Only for his mother.
‘Just look at that panelling,’ said Bobby. ‘And those oil paintings. Are those your ancestors, Max?’
‘Some of them.’
There had been some good paintings once, including a van Dyck, but the old boy had sold them long ago. Max had been rather fond of Mad Max Massingham, whose portrait had hung in the Long Gallery. He was tall and dark, wearing a ruffled shirt and breeches and carrying a riding whip. The eyes, Max remembered, had a distinctly saturnine gaze. As a child he’d felt that it was an evil face; now he had the uneasy suspicion that the two of them would be almost identical.
How long ago was it that he’d visited the house? The solicitor had offered to drive him there after the will reading but Max had declined. He was only in England a short time, he’d said, and had to get back to London that night. He’d brought a girlfriend down before the war, Gloria something, a chorus girl from the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. But that had been mainly to annoy his father. He’d brought Ruby to visit once, a happier memory. Lord Massingham had been unexpectedly enchanted by his unexpected granddaughter. He always said that she resembled his mother, reputedly the prettiest woman in five counties, and he’d left Ruby a generous bequest in his will. Suddenly Max wished that he had Ruby with him today, throwing back draperies and opening windows. He was meant to be meeting her for a meal this evening. Had it been Ruby that he’d seen in Brighton yesterday, sauntering along the promenade in her pink suit? He didn’t know why but the thought made him slightly uneasy.
Now You See Them: The Brighton Mysteries 5 Page 11