‘It seems to be either these days,’ Heap said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Grace said, favouring him with another of her killer smiles. ‘I’ve always had Peeping Toms bothering me here. Admittedly, it’s not as bad as when I first moved in, when one or more of them would steal my underwear from the washing line pretty much every time I put it up there. It’s probably my fault. I was a bit of an exhibitionist when I was young and before I realized how I was presenting myself.’
‘The passions you inspired, Ms Grace, were outside your control,’ Heap said, flushing as he said it.
Grace looked at Gilchrist and Heap then smiled. ‘I won’t write my autobiography. The minute it’s published, creeps will come out of the woodwork and sell their stories of sex with Naughty Nimue to some tabloid. Plus I’ve probably missed the boat. Tell my Warren Beatty or my Jack Nicholson stories and most people these days will have no idea who I’m talking about.’ She saw Gilchrist’s look. ‘Not that I did with either of them. On principle really. But it turned out I fell for the less obvious Lotharios.’
‘We’ll follow up on the restraining order,’ Heap said, his face now a constant pink. ‘But did you know Major Rabbitt?’
‘In the biblical sense? Certainly not, though not for his want of predatory trying. He was a lech, a bully and a creep and I’m not sorry he’s dead.’ In one effortless move she slid down from the arm of the chair into it, lifting her legs and raising herself to tuck her feet beneath her as she did so. She smiled a big, unfettered smile. ‘Oops. I guess I’ve just made myself a suspect. My big mouth again.’
Gilchrist couldn’t take her eyes off her. She’d met actresses before but never a bona fide movie star and she could see the difference. Without doing anything, Grace exuded a charisma. Corny as it sounded, her skin seemed to glow. Even without make-up – and Gilchrist couldn’t see any – she looked luminous. And then, of course, there was her beautiful, thick red hair.
Grace saw her examining her face and looked down with a small smile. ‘It’s the freshly fucked look.’
Gilchrist didn’t need to look at Heap to know he would be blushing. Grace gestured to her face. ‘That’s what cinematographers and still photographers call it. It looks so natural and full of life. It’s hard to fake.’ She looked sardonic. ‘But I guess I’m a better actress than people recognized since I haven’t been. Freshly fucked, that is. Or even not so freshly, actually.’
Gilchrist glanced at Heap. Yep.
‘Oh dear, there I go again,’ Grace said. ‘That’s why I don’t do interviews anymore – well, one of the reasons. I’m too frank. Can’t help it. Always been the same. In Hollywood I was famous for oversharing.’ She said the last word with an exaggerated American twang. ‘Which is another way of observing what you are now observing – once I get started I can’t stop gabbing.’
Gilchrist was enthralled by Grace’s low, intimate voice. She didn’t want her to stop talking. Pull yourself together, Sarah. She glanced at Heap.
‘Did Major Rabbitt visit your lake regularly?’ Heap said.
‘Not that I know of. It’s private. Nobody is supposed to go there. That’s partly because of the duck breeding. When I first bought the lake people were letting their dogs swim in it and traipsing through the wood. I didn’t really mind but then people kept leaving rubbish down there and I got fed up with it so put locks on the gates. And now we’ve encouraged more ducks we have to be careful of the dogs.’
‘When was the last time you were at the lake?’ Gilchrist said.
‘A few days ago. There was a time when I didn’t go there much at all. I created an idyll for children but then I didn’t have any.’ She grimaced and suddenly her face looked tragic and ten years older. ‘It was too, too painful.’
‘When was the last time you saw Major Rabbitt?’ Gilchrist said gently.
‘Months ago – I can’t really remember.’
‘How often do you go to the lake?’
‘Couple of times a week for a swim, if I’m here. A couple of times a month with my woodsman. In the summer, if I’m not away, I go with a few friends for picnics. Yes, I do have friends – carefully selected – contrary to the tabloid narrative about my reclusiveness.’
‘And you’ve never bumped into Major Rabbitt during those visits?’ Gilchrist said. ‘As I understand it the driveway to his house passes briefly between the two halves of your wood.’
‘That’s true but I only ever use the driveway when I’m going into the other part of the wood. The watercress bed side. Or what used to be a watercress bed. If I’m swimming I use a hidden entrance on Beard’s Lane at the far end of the lake. I park there and go into the wood from that side because it’s more private and people like Mr Kermode don’t realize I’m there. I hope. And I swim at the end of the lake furthest from the drive.’ She gestured to her body. ‘I do swim naked, you see. And, despite my reputation for always taking off my clothes in films, I’m actually quite private. Prudish even.’
Nimue Grace was a very beautiful woman. She was in her forties but didn’t seem to have had any work done on her face. Gilchrist was certainly looking for it, perhaps because she wanted to find fault with someone who naturally looked so perfect. There was a small scar or puckering near one of her ears but that looked to be more an accident than surgery.
‘When I’m not around it’s mostly fishermen and teenagers who trespass these days – although somebody did once rig up a camera in a tree to catch me swimming. Not Kermode that time. But these days, if I don’t find empty cider cans and used condoms by the lake I’m happy.
‘And the fishermen are wasting their time. The lake is very slow moving. It can’t sustain a habitat for any fish other than carp because there isn’t enough movement. Carp though, they like the mud. Which makes them inedible. As are the giant freshwater clams we found when I originally had the lake dredged. It was reckoned they were seventy years old but nobody really knows.’ She looked beyond them both up at Plumpton Hill.
‘That was quite a time. When I bought the lake it looked like a field of grass. It was covered with Parrot’s Feather weed – this alien invasive species from South America that has spread since it was introduced to the UK, for reasons beyond me, in 1960. Left uncontrolled it would have killed the lake in the next two years. The carp were in there because a fishing club that once owned the lake had stocked it with them. But they proliferated and were adding to the lake’s problems – it was becoming eutrophic.
‘Nature scientists and archaeologists all queued up to see what we might find there. The Romans first created the lake and the watercress beds in the other part of the wood. There was a medieval village somewhere round here. The military was camped in the area during both wars – the Canadians actually billeted in Plumpton Down House and Danny House over near Hurstpierpoint. So there were all kinds of possibilities. They got me excited too.’
She stood. ‘But there was nothing except the clams and the carp.’ She looked at Heap. ‘So, yes, I’m the Lady of the Rather Disappointing Lake. I’ll be impressed if you can come up with a joke or a sarcastic comment I haven’t already heard a dozen times from anyone who knows their Arthurian stuff. My parents were hippies. My father was a poet – wanted to be a poet – my mother an actress. Wanted to be an actress.
‘They were living in a shepherd’s hut in Wales when the Monty Python gang passed through to shoot a few scenes for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ She spread her hands. ‘Well, I was conceived when my parents were working as extras. My dad had got obsessed with reading all the early Arthurian stuff – Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, of course.
‘And my mother wanted to call me Vivien, the other main name for the enchantress, because she adored Vivien Leigh. Well, to be honest, I think she fancied herself as Vivien Leigh. But my dad was in his Celtic phase, even though he wasn’t Welsh. So I got stuck with Nimue as well as Vivien.
‘I wanted to change it when I decided to be an actress because n
obody ever knows how to pronounce it – you do very well, by the way. And I didn’t want people to think I was one of those wanky actresses who gives herself a silly name just to be different. You know, Lisbeth instead of Elizabeth or naming yourself after a country or state or a city like India this or Dakota that or Paris the other.’ She smiled. ‘Sorry, I talk too much. Anyway, Equity already had a Vivien Grace.’
‘It’s very interesting,’ Gilchrist said. ‘So is your mother still acting?’
‘She never really did. It was a dream.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Very much so,’ Grace said, with an expression on her face Gilchrist couldn’t immediately read.
‘She must be so proud of your acting achievements.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Grace said, the same odd expression on her face. She saw puzzlement flit across Gilchrist’s face. ‘Mother and daughter stuff,’ she added. ‘You probably have the same.’
Gilchrist nodded, thinking not of her mother but of Kate’s. ‘I think we all do.’
Grace gestured to the open French window. ‘Do you want to say hello to your friend?’
She led the way onto the terrace where Bob Watts was sitting with a cup of coffee in front of him, fiddling with his phone. He looked up and stood up. He both grinned and looked embarrassed. ‘Sarah. Bellamy. An unexpected pleasure. Why are you here?’
‘I think they wanted you to explain what you were doing here,’ Grace said, a mischievous lilt to her voice.
‘Ha! Well, I won Ms Grace – Nimue – in a raffle.’
‘Lucky you,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Indeed. Morning coffee at her lovely home.’
‘Which must now extend into lunch,’ Grace said. ‘Because he hasn’t really got his money’s worth this morning.’ She turned to Gilchrist and Heap. ‘Would you care to join us, since you’re all acquainted?’
‘We can’t, ma’am,’ Heap said. ‘We need to get back to your lake. With your permission. And we’ll probably need to dredge it.’
‘Oh, good – if you find a rather colourful necklace it’s mine – it came off my neck once when I was having a swim.’
Watts raised an eyebrow. ‘Ms Grace – Nimue – was just extending an invitation for me to swim in her lake whenever I wanted.’
‘Because Bob was just telling me about his aborted Channel Swim,’ Grace said. ‘But, having recognized his name as the chief constable here when I first moved down, I realize I have yet to learn about that.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Watts began, before Grace interrupted with:
‘And besides the wench is dead.’ She saw their blank looks. ‘Sorry, once an actress …’
‘We need to be going, Ms Grace,’ Gilchrist said. She turned to Bob Watts. ‘Enjoy your lunch – and you too, Ms Grace. We may be back with more questions later. We’ll call first – shall we call Francis, your, er …?’
‘My gender curious/gender fluid au pair?’ Grace said with a sardonic smile. She shrugged. ‘I know – this brave new world that has such wondrous creatures in it. But, yes, please, call first. Not that I’m going anywhere. I never go anywhere. I’m like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, except I never watch my old movies. I never watched them when they were new, for that matter. Can’t bear to see myself blown up on a big screen. But, like Norma, I have a dead body floating in my pool.’ She shrugged again. ‘Unlike her, I didn’t put it there.’
‘Where now, ma’am?’ Heap asked as they drove back onto Beard’s Lane.
‘I think we should go and see Mrs Rabbitt in her café in Lewes. Don’t you?’
‘I do.’
Gilchrist settled herself in her seat. ‘Nimue Grace is not what I was expecting at all. I like her.’
‘An enchantress,’ Heap said.
‘I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Charismatic, certainly.’
‘In the Arthurian legends, I mean,’ Heap said. ‘That Lady of the Lake thing. She enchanted Merlin and was Lancelot’s protector.’
‘So that’s what you were talking about earlier – all that Wolfram this and Malory that. I thought all the Lady of the Lake did was stick her hand up out of the water holding Excalibur for King Arthur.’
‘Actually, I’m hazy now on the story but I think Arthur pulled it out of a stone first then, years later, chucked it in the lake when he was going to Avalon. She caught it and took it down into the watery depths.’
‘Watery depths indeed.’
The café was halfway along the High Street in Lewes. As Granger had indicated it was between the last remaining antiquarian bookshop and a shop selling very little, laid out exquisitely on long shelves. Gilchrist had been in that shop once and come out bemused, asking just one thing: why?
The café was quiet, just a couple of people. A young man picked at his phone, a young woman was on her laptop with her headphones on. There was a woman behind the counter doing calculations on an iPad.
‘Liesl Rabbitt?’ Heap said.
‘And you are?’
‘DS Heap. We phoned ahead.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?’
‘I’m on my own this afternoon. The girl who should be here has phoned in sick. Typical English girl. We can talk here. If it’s about Richard I don’t care who hears what a shit he is.’
Liesl Rabbitt was a broad-faced, fake blonde with a full figure and full make-up. She had the frozen look of somebody who had had too much Botox. Gilchrist wondered where she was from. She had a kind of all-purpose Eastern European accent. As if Rabbitt could read her mind, she said: ‘I’m Albanian-Greek and I see things as they are.’
‘I believe you’ve been informed that your ex-husband was found dead this morning,’ Heap said.
‘That weakling. Yes, I’d heard before you phoned. He’s still my husband, actually – so that’s going to work out well for me, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, Mrs Rabbitt.’
‘Well, I would. He got what he wanted from me, whenever he wanted it. Now it’s payback, even with the prenup.’
How romantic, Gilchrist thought, but didn’t say. ‘Be that as it may,’ she did say. ‘When did you last see your husband?’
‘Is that like that English expression I’ve never understood: when did you last stop beating your wife?’
‘No,’ Heap said shortly.
Gilchrist saw the expression on his face. His weakness was that, while usually he could appear impassive, especially when he was joking, if he really didn’t like somebody, he couldn’t hide it.
‘It has been so long, I don’t even remember.’
‘You have children together?’
‘The brats? They are away at public school.’
‘And when they’re home, which is their home?’ Gilchrist persisted.
‘Well, his, obviously.’ She grimaced. ‘These are boys brought up to think they are better than anyone else. They wouldn’t want to be living in a poky flat above a café when they can imagine what it will be like to own all they survey. When will the will be read?’
‘You don’t want to know how he died?’ Heap said mildly.
‘Swallowed his dentures? Choked on a fur ball from his wig? I don’t really care, except I hope he died how he lived. Badly.’
‘His throat was cut,’ Heap said.
Liesl Rabbitt shrugged. ‘It should have been worse.’
‘When was the last time you went to Beard’s Pond?’ Heap said.
‘I’ve never been there. It’s private. That cray cray bitch my husband had the hots for owns it. And, as for him, the last time I saw him I told him he could xoshanha himself. And he has. Now I have to get ready to close up, so if there isn’t anything else …?’
‘Well, she’s quite something,’ Gilchrist said to Heap as they walked back to the car. ‘What’s cray, cray, Bellamy?’
‘I’m assuming it just means crazy but I don’t know where it comes from. And, before yo
u ask, ma’am, I haven’t the faintest idea what xoshanha means – but it doesn’t sound good.’
They got back in the car.
‘Home, James,’ Gilchrist said. ‘You’ve got a lot of homework to do tonight while I’m out with your woman. So let me hit you with another one: a red herring. Is Mrs Rabbitt one?’
‘Why do I get the distinct feeling you regard me as a resource like Google or Yahoo?’
‘All men need to have some purpose, don’t you think?’
‘If you say so, ma’am.’
‘I do.’
‘William Cobbett. Herrings get kippered by smoking and salting until they turn reddish brown. They have a strong smell. Back in the early 1800s William Cobbett used one to lay a false trail while training hunting dogs. So they say.’
‘Most of that was clear but, as usual, you got me on one part. Who is William Cobbett?’
‘A radical. A polemicist. He rode about most of England to report on the plight of the working class during the Industrial Revolution. His Rural Rides is a classic, ma’am.’
Gilchrist shook her head.
‘You continually amaze me, Bellamy.’
‘Is that a good thing, if I might ask?’
‘You might ask but I might not answer. So is Mrs Rabbitt one? A smoked kipper?’
‘Too early to say, ma’am. But, before you ask, those carp in Ms Grace’s lake are not the origin of the verb to carp.’
Gilchrist laughed.
‘So neither these nor any other carp are bad-tempered and narrow? OK, now I am officially exhausted. Bellamy, you told Liesl that Mr Rabbitt had died from having his throat cut. Wasn’t that jumping the gun? Bilson hasn’t come up with anything yet. Remember last time – that guy who was stabbed to death and drowned?’
‘I remember it well, ma’am. And, I’m sorry. You’re right. I was trying to shock her but it was partly because I assumed the same confusion couldn’t happen twice. Although we are in water again.’
The Lady of the Lake Page 4